The Second Set of Goals: Cultural Literacy

After that November Sunday when I spontaneously decided to rejoin the world, I began to research ways of increasing happiness and well-being. Finally, on December 28, 2010 I discovered Happiness-Project.com and knew that I had found what I had been looking for. There was book about what I had been doing! There was a whole community dedicated to doing it too! I joined the next day and started taking my baby steps.

The Second Set of Goals was born. Like the first set, they were born suddenly and completely formed, on the 29th of December. Whatever flash of lightning hit me that day, it has saved me from a future of being surrounded by a culture I do not understand. Current events, technology, entertainment, fashion, all of it was slowly becoming opaque to me. This is critically dangerous, because society moves very fast now and I am middle aged, a time when it is easy to get disconnected if you don't try. I don't want to find myself frightened and confused in a world I don't recognize. So I set out to maintain cultural awareness.

The goals are: 1.Develop an online presence through participation in positive online communities 2.Daily posts in my Happiness Project, this blog, facebook, and twitter. 3.Develop awareness of mainstream culture as well as things that specifically appeal to me.

I'm commiting to doing an awful lot of daily reading and writing. My daily list includes facebook, librarything, Happiness Project, blogger, twitter, and RSS feeds from Google Reader of Wired, Vogue, Time, MSNBC and Instapundit. That's a lot of words coming and going! I expect to get a lot of recommendations from librarything, so I will be adding books to read on the Kindle.

So far I have started my Happiness Project, this blog, and accounts on facebook and librarything. I still need to get set up on livejournal and twitter. So I am making progress already.

I know that it's hip to despise popular culture as being of the lowest common denominator. I think that there are many levels and one can pick and choose the best from it. I don't intend to be an uncritical consumer. I have tastes and interests, and I intend to follow them. But I'm also aware that there is a big Venn diagram of society, and the greatest social security is to be found where the most circles overlap. That might mean that something totally inane becomes culturally relevant. I don't have to subsume myself in it, but I should at least be aware of something about it. If you're too superior to even pay attention to what the majority of other people are interested in, then you're going to be up shit creek if you ever find yourself outside your little bubble.