“The male ego can in some cases be tied to how and where a man sees his place in the world and whether he’s living up to expectations — his and those of society.
Cultural stereotypes for men can be intricately tied to both the inflation and deflation of the male ego. Some men measure themselves by the answers to the following questions:
Am I strong enough? Am I wealthy enough? Do I meet the traditional definition of masculinity? Do I attract women? Do I control things or people? Do people recognize me for these things and am I respected and revered for them?”
“In a recent Ditch the Label study, we spoke to 7,347 people about bullying. We asked respondents to define bullying and then later asked if, based on their own definition, they had ever bullied anybody. 14% of our overall sample, so that’s 1,239 people, said yes. What we then did was something that had never been done on this scale before; we asked them intimate questions about their lives, exploring things like stress and trauma, home lives, relationships and how they feel about themselves.”
You are what you hate. What you hate says a lot about who you are and what you value. _ The response in the body when we dislike someone
In order to understand what happens in your body when you dislike someone, you can start by trying to understand #fear. As Robert Sapolsky writes in “Why Your Brain Hates Other People,” when we see someone who even looks different from us, “there is preferential activation of the amygdala,” which means the brain region associated with fear and aggression flares up. This visceral, emotional reaction can spark a long-term pattern of dislike when it’s validated by action: if you perceive that someone has hurt you, your fear of them becomes rational.
Our negative feelings toward someone get stronger as bad experiences with them pile up, and these negative thoughts trigger the fight-or-flight response in our bodies. As AJ Marsden, assistant professor of Psychology at Beacon College in Leesburg, Florida, puts it, “our fight-or-flight response is our bodies way of dealing with a stressor.” ⠀ Stressors that trigger fight-or-flight need not be life or death, though, says Marsden: “Sadly, our body cannot tell the difference between an actual stressor (being chased by someone with a knife) and a perceived stressor (having work with someone you hate).” This is why seeing posts from your high school bully can make you feel the anxiety of being bullied all over again: your fearful associations with disliking the person trigger your own need to protect yourself. ⠀ Source: headspace.com
Art Series: The Middle Finger #Organic T-Shirt.
Both physical and NFT items are now available in our store.
“The difference between an artist who finds sales and someone like Vincent van Gogh, who never did, is that van Gogh quietly changed the world—while others simply passed through it.”
The future of art is likely to be less about what tools are used and more about why someone chooses to make something at all.
Technology will keep expanding the surface of art. Digital tools, AI, mixed reality, and new display formats will make creating and sharing work easier and faster. But ease has a side effect: when almost anyone can generate images instantly, the value shifts away from novelty and toward intention. What begins to matter is not how impressive the output looks, but whether it carries a point of view.
Art will continue moving away from markets and institutions as the main judges of meaning. Many artists will work quietly, outside galleries, posting, archiving, or simply making without an audience in mind. This doesn’t reduce art’s importance; it returns it to something closer to personal necessity. As Marcel Duchamp once said, “Art is not what you see, but what you make others see” — Marcel Duchamp.
Handmade and slow processes will not disappear. In fact, they may feel more meaningful precisely because they resist speed. Painting, drawing, and physical materials will coexist with digital work, not in competition but as different ways of thinking. Choosing a medium will be an ethical or emotional decision, not a technical one.
Meaning, not perfection, will become the center. Viewers will be less impressed by polish and more attentive to honesty. Work that feels lived-in, uncertain, or incomplete may resonate more than finished statements. In a noisy world, quiet clarity becomes powerful.
Ultimately, the future of art is human. No matter how advanced tools become, art will still be a way to sit with questions, to notice small things, and to leave traces of thought behind. As long as people feel the need to reflect, resist, or simply pay attention, art will continue, just in forms we haven’t fully named yet.
Ryokan, a Zen master, lived the simplest kind of life in a little hut at the foot of a mountain. One evening a thief visited the hut only to discover there was nothing in it to steal.
Ryokan returned and caught him. “You may have come a long way to visit me,” he told the prowler, “and you shoud not return emptyhanded. Please take my clothes as a gift.”
The thief was bewildered. He took the clothes and slunk away.
Ryokan sat naked, watching the moon. “Poor fellow, ” he mused, “I wish I could give him this beautiful moon.”
“Be original… right now there’s so much copycatting, mimicking, sounding alike, and imitation. Find your production, your sound… and be original even if it ain’t hittin’.”
