A man has doubts and asks too many questions in a town/world where everyone else seems weirdly happy and content.
An aggressive look into the mirror of today's consumer society. Obsessed with being fit, fashion trends, showing off the marks of one's socially achieved/desired level, people tend to bypass the pleasure of simple things, they take shortcuts to what's easily accessible, avoid what's not trendy, and they implicitly educate their senses in such a way that they can only detect and react to that which has society's stamp of approval.
This amplified tendency leads to the numbness of real senses and of deep feelings to such an extent that it gives the superficial impression of real happiness and of reaching Nirvana - a thing that could not be more false, a fact of which the main character seems well aware from the start, at first in a shy and doubtful way, reacting to the cold and tasteless surrounding reality with a feeling of some sort of alienation from what he sees around and does not recognise, mixed in with a fear of rejection.
However he gradually becomes more and more convinced that the alienation was in the opposite direction, and the rejection came from him, directed at the unrealistic, plastic and unimpressive society.
The so called awakening happens in a brutal, but actually natural way nevertheless when comparing the lack of a meaningful reaction to anything which characterises this so called society to the aggravated and urgent desire to reach the world of real experiences, whether that's the taste of a simple pie in the oven or the terrible stings of frost. That desire is ever so strong even as that world is barely perceivable through a small and insignificant ... crack in the wall, a mere symbol of the flaw that was so difficult to detect in that which seemed perfect to everyone else.
This is a translation of an older post, see it here
An aggressive look into the mirror of today's consumer society. Obsessed with being fit, fashion trends, showing off the marks of one's socially achieved/desired level, people tend to bypass the pleasure of simple things, they take shortcuts to what's easily accessible, avoid what's not trendy, and they implicitly educate their senses in such a way that they can only detect and react to that which has society's stamp of approval.
This amplified tendency leads to the numbness of real senses and of deep feelings to such an extent that it gives the superficial impression of real happiness and of reaching Nirvana - a thing that could not be more false, a fact of which the main character seems well aware from the start, at first in a shy and doubtful way, reacting to the cold and tasteless surrounding reality with a feeling of some sort of alienation from what he sees around and does not recognise, mixed in with a fear of rejection.
However he gradually becomes more and more convinced that the alienation was in the opposite direction, and the rejection came from him, directed at the unrealistic, plastic and unimpressive society.
The so called awakening happens in a brutal, but actually natural way nevertheless when comparing the lack of a meaningful reaction to anything which characterises this so called society to the aggravated and urgent desire to reach the world of real experiences, whether that's the taste of a simple pie in the oven or the terrible stings of frost. That desire is ever so strong even as that world is barely perceivable through a small and insignificant ... crack in the wall, a mere symbol of the flaw that was so difficult to detect in that which seemed perfect to everyone else.
This is a translation of an older post, see it here
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