MANTITS

Giving my pretty melodies to everyone!
And going on tangeants:
Mantits is an attempt to shatter something and bring something else out. Whether either of these things are things is up for debate, I guess. Anyway, it's kind of an attempt to generate culture shock...in a way. People make concessions in life. There are certain necessary sacrifices. What these concessions and sacrifices consist of is determined largely by the very particular realities of a cultural context in which the individual lives. So a common sense cultural wisdom is based on a person's adaptation to their current environment. The notion that there are other possible ways of living, that possibly these concessions and sacrifices are not universal aspects of living, but transitory conditions in an unconsciously moving social organism, is scary, or at least hard to accept for a lot of people. I am not really sure why. Maybe because it threatens their need to be 'right', to posess what they claim as universal wisdom, or maybe it's because saying "that's life" helps people accept things that if they were to think otherwise, they might feel more conflicted about. Or maybe they're just tired and caught up in necessities and don't want to bother thinking too much. We are living in a sick fucking world. Granted? Thank you. People push it aside, it's easier not think about it, the problems are so huge, push it aside, drown in television or alcohol or pop culture or sports or social politics or underground subcultures or this or that, avoid the problems, why focus on them????? But of course they never really leave, and we think that the best we can do is push them away for the time being. Okay, so environmental collapse doesn't bother you because you'll probably be dead anyway by the time it affects you...maybe...and sure, war has been around forever, and yeah it sucks, but it's not impacting your immediate life. But then there's the other part. Everyday life in this culture...gee, the fact that we're living in a consumer society is nothing new to anyone (hopefully), but commodification doesn't end when you leave the store or leave the bank. The social/interpersonal world is hugely hugely monumentally impacted by capitalism. Personality is sold in shallow packages in a marketplace where people throw each other away at the drop of a hat so often. People smile and pretend they're happy in order to flow gracefully with currents of social normalcy, to get what they want out of a situation, and to mask to themselves and to others their other more 'ugly' thoughts and feelings. Meanwhile they step over eachother in countless competitive, more-or-less covert interpersonal battlefields. Substance is missing practically everywhere, and it doesn't matter what scene you're in or what social class or anything of the sort, and people can sit around and rant like I'm doing here and pretend they're above it, but may struggle with being able to really be present and open with another person because they are so ashamed of themselves and so frightened of appearing to not be a perfect representation of a prepackaged easily categorizable image that people will want to consume. It's not "cool," nor is it even "sane" to put yourself out there. Most of the time it's dangerous. And that part of it, even if you claim to not care about the rest of the world, is your everyday life. Mantits is about
1. Recognizing this underside to "hello, how are you?"
2. Trying to rise above this misery through self-knowledge, honesty, compassion, and meaningful and substantial connection.