In the modern world where do we find a sense of self.....?

Things have come to a pretty pass when we have to rely on designer labels and cellphone ring tones to give us a sense of self. The whole thing started in the 1980s I guess, when the wild - eyed advocates of free market economics were tearing apart the fabric of our communities and urging us all to follow the creed of "we are what we own" It was at that time people first started wearing labels on the outside of their clothes. "Look at me, I am a successful and cool person, those D&G or DKNY labels proclaimed. Fashions always change however and by the mid 1990s lads and ladettes ruled the roost, Jackson Pollocking city centre pavements with pools of vomit and abandoning all self restraint as they binge drank their way to social cachet. The supercool were by then wearing Sweatshirts that bore the legend FCUK, which sent out the message, "hey look at me, I'm a cool, wacky and outrageous person who does not give a damn about anything except having a good time. I wear clothes that nearly say FUCK.

The bottom line was these people were insecure ikkle bunnies who only wanted to be liked and so were almost naughty in a cute, cuddly and inoffensive way.

Next came the people who wore FUCK YOU! T - shirts. They thought this made them seem like the kind of person who drives outrageously expensive cars but wears clothes that look as if the came from a street market as a way of saying "I'm so rich and powerful I don't have to care what anyone thinks of me so FUCK OFF!"

The reality of the FUCK YOU T - shirt however is that behind it lurks a bitter and twisted loser who could only afford to buy a sense of self item in a street market and so feels it is necessary to express his anger and resentment publicly. The FUCK YOU T - shirt wearers desperately care what people think but are so convinced everybody hates them they feel they have to get their retaliation in first.

The most exclusive designer labels are now readily available on cheap and cheerless clothes imported from China so designer labels have lost their cool and are only for wannabees. Mobile telephone ring tones are the way to tell the world who you are now.

I have to say at this juncture, my cellphone lets me know it needs attention by going BEEP, BEEP. I call it the Roadrunner ring tone. It does the job.

The most irritating ring tones are those favoured by people who want to announce to the world "I'm fun!" each time their phone rings. The world seldom sees us as we see ourselves of course. The Monty Python theme far from announcing "I'm a wacky and zany, devil may care free spirit," actually says "I'm a boring old fart still stuck in the seventies." Mozart, Beethoven and any other classical ringtones are the superior sneer of an insufferable snob while Crazy Frog screams "feel free to kill me now because I am an arse!"

It was easier to know who we were in days of yore. A man named John who wrought fletched arrows for a living could look at his life with satisfaction, safe in the knowledge that everybody in his world, which probably did not extend much beyond the village where he was born, knew he was John Fletcher. He had a sense of self.

But what happens to a generation of Justin and Sheryl Customer-Service-Assistant? How do they find meaning in their mundane existence?

Perhaps, rather than looking for new tags to hang on ourselves it is time we all took a long look at the ant hill society we have become part of.

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