Rethinking Highlights:
EVENT DESCRIPTIONS
The blog post below with featuring some of my favourite event descriptions that I drafted for Rethinking. Ranging from their varying levels of seriousness, humour, length, etc; all of these descriptions stand out to me for one reason and one reason only:
how much I enjoyed writing them! :)
Hope you enjoy these as much as I do.
Rethinking War and the Military
With large numbers of Russian troops assembling near Ukraine and Western powers keeping a close eye, it almost seems as if war is on everyone’s mind.
Battle and conflict seem as if they have existed forever, or to be more precise, ever since the development of tribal social systems - possibly even before the beginning of recorded human history. This almost seems like a fact of life that stems from our protective and survivalist human nature.
From Agamemnon assembling troops around the walls of Troy to the missiles off the coast of Cuba, conflict has inevitably evolved and changed with our social and cultural evaluations. Is war innate to the human species, or did it emerge after the organisation of societies became increasingly complex?
Battle strategy might change but war in itself stays something real and true - it might change the way it is made but it is like an evil humans can’t ever seem to escape. Are we living in the age of wars?
Rethinking Romance
🌹 Love is in the air… 🌹
With Valentines Day just around the corner, here in Rethinking, we are feeling the love!
Let’s not kid ourselves, who here hasn’t fantasized with rain-soaked Mr. Darcy running towards you in a foggy field to ask for your hand in marriage? Or having Edward Cullen stop a speeding truck to save your life? Or, even better, Heath Ledger serenading “Can’t Take My Eyes off of You” in front of the whole football team?
We grow up reading and watching romance, it is like a drug. The mystery and high of it all gives us some excitement and exhilaration from our everyday dull, uni lives :(
But, romance these days looks a little bit different… from sliding in someone’s DM’s to YouTube promposals and the Bachelor, courting nowadays has drastically changed, and not only that, but our possibilities have expanded… it almost seems as if there are more fish in Tinder than in the sea…
Has the 21st Century killed romance? Is unconditional love only possible in a fictional setting? Is that why the romance genre is so popular? Because these things do not happen in real life?
That remains to be seen, but one thing is clear: we all want to be loved ♥️
Rethinking Advertising
Advertising has pervaded our everyday lives, so much so that words like Google and Tupperware have entered our human lexicon. These commercials have made us laugh; they have made us cry; they become topics of conversation during lunch.
Looking at screens the whole day, glancing at newspapers and even driving down the freeway, nobody bats an eye at advertisements anymore. Industry upon industry hurtle blatant promotional material at us that doesn't even seem to accurately represent their product (when have you seen a McDonalds burger look the way it is in the pretty, $1 million produced commercial?) yet, we are still unfazed and even somewhat entertained.
Even so, day after day, week after week we talk and discuss it as producers on media platforms galore become reliant on advertising to sustain themselves; sometimes with hilarious results. Other times, not so (we’re talking to you James Charles).
Albeit, without advertising, how else are we supposed to know about the life-changing product, sold by the housewife right down your street?!
So in this week’s Rethinking session we discuss both the dark and light side of advertising,
When does promoting your own business or goods become brainwashing? Is advertising manipulative? At what point is it deceit? Do we not have a right to promote our material? Heck, is it worth it to keep our favourite Youtuber alive? Is entertainment sufficient enough reason for lying?
Come on down to Rethinking this Thursday at 18:30 for another rousing discussion on ads ads ads.
We are in a new age of dating, sex and intimacy, with all of these new ways of meeting people, the rules of the dating game have changed. Technology has made hookups easier, faster and with less strings attached than before. Is modern hookup culture negatively affecting the way we think about sex?
Intimacy and sex are related, but they are not the same. Surely we can still have sex without intimacy just for fun? or simply to rank up your body count?
Be that as it may, studies have shown that intimacy leads to better sex - is it possible that hookup culture is making us all miserable BECAUSE we lack intimacy during sex?
So, I guess those in a couple got lucky 🤷♀️, and for those of you single folk, you know what they say: know thyself ;)
Rethinking Sex and Intimacy
Rethinking The Self
We have never been more aware of the self before with the advent of technology (and its slightly insane lovechild always mentioned; social media). However it seems our awareness of self relative to others has diminished along with it! We believe that’s why they call it an ego.
In light of people getting to know themselves much better in this time of isolation, the social experiment has already seemed wrought in this pandemic to explain how we become aware of ourselves. Can we develop a sense of self without other people? When is our first conception of self then?
This idea of self is so important, its underlying nature causes wars and conflicts but also unity and love. There’s a certain respect that we give to our self-awareness and the self-awareness of others that this reverence is a hill we live or die on.
This abstraction is equally strange, absurd and insane but also at the heart of the human spirit.
Let’s rip that heart out and put it into words this Thursday at 18:30 to equally destroy the idea of self and build it back up!
Rethinking Kinks
Hello Kinky Rethinkers!
Valentine’s Day shall be coming and going and though some will be having romantic home cooked meals - the especially lazy ones reaching for Deliveroo - others will be reaching over to grab some stranger items. To quote Rihanna, “Sticks and stones may break my bones but chains and whips excite me.”
Yes, it all comes down to preference as they say and in a world as expansive as ours, kinks are a dime a dozen. Our inner 13 year old having read 50 Shades for a giggle-induced glimpse would probably associate most kinks with some level of domination or pain but is there all there is to kinks? Do we crave that philosophical master-slave dialectic at our base level?
Maybe it isn’t all that. There are millions of other strange little finger-pulling actions that tickle thousands of other people below the belt. Who knows what could affect that? Family, friends, the internet or just biology providing you with a gift/curse.
Join us this Thursday 18th at 18:30 and let us know all about your kinks!
P.S. extra points for the ones brave enough to wear anything latex