Going Against The Grain
What is considered normal in modern society? Societal norms define what is considered normal in modern society, but why is it that we have such an enclosed definition of normal? Just think of how many societal norms there are, surely too many to count on all of our toes and fingers. It also appears to me that everyone of the modern era has a universal thought to someone who goes out of the norm. They are either someone we look up to as a role model or someone who is crazy or an outcast. It’s a toxic double standard type of thinking but it is truly what occurs in some of our heads when it comes to people that “think out of the box” sometimes. An idea Jenny Odell brings into her book, How To Do Nothing, is the defiance of societal norms and the rebuttal of the attention economy.
In the first chapter, and even the second, Odell showed readers what it meant to do nothing. She laid forth a broad definition and gave restrictions to it. When we think about it, “doing nothing” acts as a defiant to societal norms. Specifically in the second chapter, Odell explains how retreats are not meant to be a permanent solution and that people have a responsibility to uphold. She states, “I’ve already written that the ‘doing nothing’ I propose is more than a weekend retreat. But that doesn’t mean I propose a permanent retreat either” (59). She then explains that emotion overtakes oneself when they realize how much they are leaving behind for their future selves. This relates to the third chapter because a retreat ends up being a contrast against the normal everyday life. When going on a retreat, the experience itself serves as something out of the box. It’s not something that we indulge in on a regular basis when living our everyday lives. What the third chapter talks about is how societal norms can be broken and in fact Odell encourages in it to a degree. Using the second chapter and the third chapter together, I want to talk about an example Odell puts forth. Diogenes was a man who defied all social norms in his timeline. He thought that “every ‘sane’ person in the world was actually insane for heeding any of the customs upholding a world full of greed, corruption, and ignorance” (66). During the times when people would normally spend vacations, Diogenes “would roll over hot sand in the summer, and hug statues covered in snow” (66). Retreats to him were a time where he felt he could live life to the fullest and be who he wanted to be. Of course people thought he was crazy, but that didn’t stop him. Odell states,
“He lived his convictions out in the open and went to great lengths to shock people out of their habitual stupor, using a form of philosophy that was almost slapstick” (66).
He was an unstoppable force defying every norm that one could list out. I think through Odell’s use of these examples, she tries to put forth the idea that we are all living too normal lives. We need to break free from the shell that is put around us through normal living.
Moving on, Odell begins the chapter by giving an example of a new employee working at an accounting firm. Other employees of the firm are said to have felt uncomfortable with the new employee because they were doing things that were not considered normal. The worker turned out to be someone conducting a social experiment on contrasting the norms of society. The person was “Pilvi Takala, a Finnish artist who is known for videos in which she quietly threatens social norms with simple actions” (64). The artist willingly goes against the social norms that people put into place to see the different reactions of people. If it were me in that situation, I am not gonna lie and say I would have done different, because I really wouldn’t have. Societal norms are something that feels so subconsciously right. It is something almost everyone grows up with, and something that can be so degrading at times.
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Later on in the chapter, Odells talks about how sometimes choosing to refuse the social norms is difficult to suffice. Many people are scared of doing something because they don’t know the outcome of it. Whether it will be good or bad, it’s not like someone can tell the future. That not knowing aspect of our lives can impact and even control our decisions because of the fear it instills on us. Odell states,
“The relationship between fear and the ability to refuse is clear when we consider that historically, some can more easily afford to refuse than others” (82).
Through this statement, Odell talks about the consequences of Rosa Parks’s actions, and how she was basically unable to properly live out a life because of what she did on the bus. “She was unable to find full employment for ten years after the boycott, lost weight and had to be hospitalized for ulcers” (82). No one wants to live under circumstances where their life is hindered in one way or another. It can be embarrassment, fear, or even physical obstructions in your life that are caused from the refusal of societal norms that get to our heads. Not to mention that her family was also affected due to her actions. Most of the time, we choose to not put ourselves through such an ordeal, which is also another reason why it is so out of this world when someone does decide to take that next step. Things like social media have the potential to embrace the fear and amplify it by manyfolds. Influencers or celebrities go through the effort to portray perfect lives through images or short videos; however, through these images, people develop negative emotions such as jealousy or sadness which can lead to major issues like depression. It is so easy for someone else to say, “Who cares what other people think?” or “Just do it”, but when it comes to making a decision it’s almost like life or death. Like I said earlier, no one knows what the future beholds, but when it comes to something like this, we believe to ourselves that the outcome is clear. That everything that can go bad will go bad. To conform is comfortable and humans like to keep themselves in a comfortable state. Even for me, a person who has no diagnosed anxiety issues, a person who seems uplifting and fun to be around (or at least that’s what others say) in certain situations, I too experience what it’s like to have an overwhelming sense of anxiety over oneself. Anxiety is like when you try to sleep, but it’s too hot so you keep tossing and turning but nothing works. You end up staying up the whole night and it’s not even your fault. The next day you are suffering even more because you are tired but you are forced to stay awake because of work or school. You try to get some sleep in again but the cycle repeats itself. This endless rabbit hole of events happens more than one thinks.
In the fourth chapter of the book, Odell also talks about differing perspectives. She offers people the idea of taking a step back just like in the second chapter, but this time in a different manner. To show ourselves a new reality that we’ve never seen but seems so obvious. As we live our lives, we pay attention to the things we want to and often ignore others. Attention has the ability to shape our entire lifespan depending on what we decide to give it to. Odell states,
“When the pattern of your attention has changed, you render your reality different. You begin to move and act in a different kind of world” (122).
To change our attention to something we never gave thought to, can change our whole process. Using this toward the theme of refusals, to change the way we think about societal norms, or to change the way we think of ourselves, can lead to a bigger change in the world. For example, recently, I have been trying to change my perspective on myself. I’ve been taking the idea of anxiety and my own self confidence and shifting that. I want to have confidence in myself and I want to resist having so many negative thoughts related to anxiety. Changing my perspective on these ideas has actually proved for the better. I realize now that when you are confident with whatever you do or even put a little bit of pride with every action you take, there is a huge difference in the outcome.
Going back to my Diogenes example, I want to point out something that Odell says. She states,
“It’s important to note that, faced with unrelenting hypocrisy of society, Diogenes did not flee to the mountains (like some philosophers) or kill himself (like still other philosophers). In other words, he neither assimilated to nor fully exited society; instead he lived in the midst of it, in a permanent state of refusal” (68). Surely Odell talks about the hardships that are presented to us when it comes to breaking societal norms, but she also reassures us that it’s possible to live with the subconscious knowledge that is breaking societal norms. This man who did everything in his ability to be an outcast ended up going down in history as a significant figure for the greater good.
Through this third chapter, Odell brings alight the idea of societal norms in the attention economy she centers her book around. Defying the social norms put into place by ourselves is hard and is proven to be so through Odell’s examples in the chapter. Not only is it hard, but it seems so disarranged in an era where everything is organized through things like technology. Odell ends the chapter saying,
“We need to be able to think across different time scales when the mediascape would have us think in twenty-four-hour (or shorter cycles, to pause for consideration when clickbait would have us click, to risk unpopularity by searching for context when our Facebook feed is an outpouring of unchecked outrage and scapegoating” (93).
I believe this sums up the idea that Odell has about the societal norms in life. She encourages readers to make decisions that they would not have done before. To take a little step back like in chapter two, and to give a little thought to our next actions and whether or not we will take them. Surely societal norms feel normal and comfortable, but that’s because it’s what we grew up knowing. Just like Diogenes, a man who took every societal norm and threw them away, we too can make that decision to branch out. Everyone’s refusal to accept him for who he was shaped him to be who he was. An outcast. In the end though, the outcast he was, ended up being a good thing for him.
