here we go again

In my essay, I used quotes from Highmore to emphasize my argument that humans are alienated in both work and leisure; moreover, there is chaos in every part of everyday life in the search for satisfaction.

An interesting part of Highmore's essay that I want to touch on is his analysis of parent-child relationships and the routine that affects them. "Parents are continually told that routine also provides stability, predictability and most important of all, security. Establishing routines is thus the key to happiness: 'chaos makes us all feel as if we've got no control over the situation. Children are happiest when they have a structured routine" (Highmore 311). He goes on to say that setting childcare routines are not only effective for the children, but more so for the adults. When a parent is exhausted from his or her work day, they want to come home to immerse themselves in leisure time, not deal with a screaming kid. This proves the point that there is extreme difficulty in finding consciousness in our modern world.

"These days, solitude is a luxury too. People are rarely alone; they're either at the office or at home with the family" (Sagan). With the constant innate need to live a productive life, we completely lose our sense of consciousness. Routine, in my opinion, is a distraction from true conciousness and is put in place to prevent complete and total chaos in the never-ceasing everyday life.

Stress, fatigue, and dissatisfaction stem from, as "Lefebvre [suggests,] the contemporary experiences of routine life (mealtime, bedtime, the school run, the commute and so on,) [which] are the outcome of processes of modernization" (Highmore 322). Technology adds to the stress of work life and that stress nevertheless carries on to other aspects of life.

Homework

In Highmore's passage "homework" , he first talk about "home and work", by giving Charles Chaplin as an example, of how he is dedicated to machine assembly work: everyday he repeats the same steps of assembling, and when this becomes a routine, his concentration can be relaxed, and his mind can be used to do other things, such as daydreaming. And by Lefebvre, this is called a "reverse image". The way Chaplin's experience of routine contributed to his later film work, is by participating in this kind of machine himself, he can feel of the truth of relationship between human and machine, thus he can express this relationship in his film performance more lively, and this is how it is contributed to aesthetics. 

However Chaplin's example cannot apply to normal people that is basically doing office work, so in the next part he furthermore talks about aesthetic and everyday in a more specific way. In "art, experience and everyday life", Dewey's essay is quotes, and we can see that "everyday experience is thus figured as the material basis of aesthetics", here experience is in general instead of "an experience". From his perspective of view, an aesthetic of routine centers on the notion of inchoate experience.

He then talks about how doing cooking and childcare is related to aesthetics. For example, when it comes to childcare, children is trained to get used to some routines, and even this training process is tedious, they could still obtain a lot of joy.

My personal view of routine and aesthetic is that by experiencing a daily routine, you can always explore a pattern or some special relationship between something, and when you combine this pattern with your emotions and thoughts at every specific moments, and when you jump out of the routine and go back to see all of this, it can create some kind of aesthetic with your daily life.

Routine and Social Aesthetics

As I was reading Highmore's piece, one passage in particular was very relatable to me. On page 311 he writes, "Routines and habits can be hard to acquire and harder still to break. In this sense everyday life is often experienced as something deeply ambiguous, as simultaneously comforting and frustrating." He then goes on to detail a pattern of wanting to change, but reverting to his old habits every night. I think this is something that many of us can relate to. In my own experience, I often find myself resolving to change in some way. Read more, procrastinate less, go to the gym more. I make up my mind to do all of these things, but when my free time comes I wind up just doing the same old things that I had done every other night. The act of deciding to change my routine has become somewhat routine.  I know that a change could be more beneficial to me, but I also know that my current routine still (somewhat) works for me. I think this is the danger in our every day lives. The monotony of completing the same tasks everyday becomes stale after a while, but it is still seen as good because it is familiar.

Routine of Everyday Life

While reading the Highmore homework he comes to a point where he starts to talk about routines of everyday life and how drab and dreary they are.  He then goes on to say that though these are that boring once we become accustomed we tend to relax and mistakes start to happen.  I found this quite interesting because I feel like this happens in the work place almost daily regardless of which job you have.  Whether it be a big mistake like breaking a machine or something as simple and giving customers much more change then they were supposed to get back.  Also he talks about these routines mainly in work but I can see this becoming a huge factor in sports as well.  A top seeded team goes to face a lower team and gets complacent, and relaxed with their play ultimately losing the game.

Another thing I had found in the Highmore homework that had caught my attention was his analysis of the Doing Cooking reading.  I felt that he had the exact same reaction to it as we did in class as far as what he thought the author was trying to do and how he perceived the reading overall.  Also it made you think about the whole reading a lot more when he went deeper with the overall idea of cooking and really investigated the hidden meaning of cooking.

Routine and Social Aesthetics~ ~ ~

I really enjoyed reading Highman's essay- I felt as though the mundanity that we are subject to in routine really is a large part of our lives, and we should be able to acknowledge this, and be able to possibly veer away from our routines in order to add to our experience.

Routine makes life predictable, and it gives us order and control. How often do you find yourself taking a different way to work, or a different way to class? How often do you wake up t the same time, eat at the same time, do things according to a set schedule? Each and every day, people are living and performing their everyday routines, interacting with the same people and following the same pattern of routine.

When routine is enacted upon us, we can finally relax (309). The stress and the worry is brushed away, because we created that sense of security for us through routine. We are the rhythm of the machine, we are the assembly line.

This is is; this is life. This is all we have to look forward to. The routines that we are tired of performing, and the detours of these routines we never take the chance to take, is what is slowly making this world miserable. This isn't a phase, this isn't something we grow out of. We lose old problems and gain new ones- bills, jobs, family, politics instead of school, popularity, tv shows and who knows what else will be popular in 20 years.

Highmore'a Homework

I thought Highmore's take on the everyday was very interesting. He talks about this repetition that we go through in our everyday lives. He is highly critical of this routine we all have by calling it a "straightjacket of dull repetition." I was puzzled by this view of routine. We are creatures of patterns. Our brains like to find repetition and patterns to help conceptualize the world we live in. If we were to completely break our repetitive everyday routines each time one is created, would we be able to survive? Could we live a full life without any type of structure?

When it came to discussing childcare, he acknowledged that it is important that children learn about routines. He also said that this routine can be straining between parents who are "exhausted" from work and children who want to get their attention. He points out that even though these interactions can be frustrating, they are also tender and joyous. My initial observation here was "well duh." These interactions are more than just routine, they are connections between people who care about each other.

My overall reaction is that even though normal routine may seem constrained when you are doing it, when you look back at what you were doing, it seems special. Going to elementary school was extremely boring when you are seven, but looking back at it as an adult, it was a very special time of your life. I think this could be said for many of the normal routines we have.

Highmore and Defining Experience

Ben Highmore

HOMEWORK

Routine, social aesthetics and the

ambiguity of everyday life

Highmore is most concerned with everydayness and routine in terms of social aesthetics.  I understand social aesthetics to mean the nature or appreciation of social behavior, as it exists within the everyday, particularly in a domestic context.  One concept I would like to understand more extensively is the “relationship between experience and expression” that Highmore suggests with regard to Giard’s essay on “Doing Cooking” (318).  Does anyone have any further thoughts on this topic?

This goes back to the underlying question: What constitutes an experience?  Highmore quotes Dewey several times throughout his essay, but the one passage that really resonated with me says, “There is an experience, but so slack and discursive that it is not an experience. Needless to say, such experiences are anesthetic.” (316)  The tension between daily, routine experience and an experience is an essential issue to understanding and appreciating the everydayness of the everyday.  How do we separate and understand the two concepts individually when there is such a vast gray area of experiences to consider?

I found it interesting that the dictionary defines homework as “paid work carried out in one’s own home”, while Giard and Highmore understand homework to be simple housework, not recognizable as compensated effort.  In “Doing Cooking”, Giard reminds us that homework is only “women’s work, without schedule or salary (except to be paid off through service to others)” (323).  This “service to others” is the center of alienation in today’s capitalist society.  Where is the value in doing service that fails to produce self-satisfaction?  Highmore touches on this when he speaks of the capitalist reason that shrouds the everyday in profit motive and deprives us of authenticity in modern life.