I guess most people are aware how amazon.com has this thing where “if you like this, you might also like that.” Thus, if you like the movie 1984, you might also like V For Vendetta (which I do actually). This had me thinking whether we are really that much predictable. From liking certain movies, to songs, to even colors, we invest so much of ourselves in what we prefer that we gradually begin to search for our “self” in things that other people like. This is where recommendations, similar interests and hobbies come into the picture to turn us into pieces of an endless puzzle. But we are determined to find someone who shares our interests, because we want to fit, regardless of our attempts to distinguish ourselves from everybody else. Thus, we want to find a unique way of means to belong somewhere, instead of doing it in a straight forward way. To sum it up, the crux of all of this seems to lay not in where we end up (because we always end up somewhere), but how we end up there. Let me tell you, we have some pretty creative ways of getting where we want to end up.

Books seem to be the all time favorite history-wise. It is fascinating how something written hundreds of years ago can inspire the modern man. I think that we

appreciate the silence that we get when reading a book. It is a very peaceful process, in which we compare our ideas with those of another human being who had something to say. However, this one-sided process isn’t enough for us, because we are selfish creatures even in our attempts to get closer to each other. We want more and more ways to find the missing pieces. So, naturally, our interaction needs to be more direct. We need songs to express our ambitions more lyrically and/or cryptically, we also need movies to have a visual confirmation and understanding of where we stand in our beliefs. Then, we combine those mediums to obtain million other ways to find the unique path – songs about books, movies about books, songs about movies, movies about movies, books about books. It seems that we recycle the same basic ideas over and over again in order to adapt them to the next generation.

Lately, we have been taking this to a whole new level. Myspace and Facebook let us search each other based on songs, movies, religion, etc. With such abundance of ways, there have been some alterations, or what I call consumerist mutations, like finding our “self” in cars, cell phones, clothes, etc. Undoubtedly, that’s the easy way out, because unlike the one-sided journeys mentioned above, the material things can be easily found, traded, discussed, bought, manipulated, priced; while reading books, requires more of a inner challenge.

Everything has been heavily categorized. Even if we wanted to discuss fundamental issues, we would have thousands of ways to express ourselves and get to the information we need. Kenneth Clark said that, “The great artist takes what he needs.” I think that we are all artists in taking what we need from life. Notice, we take not what is best for us, but just what we need to carry on our quest to find our beliefs in someone else. What is best for us and what we need often coincide with each other; however I really doubt that anyone would need a fifty room mansion with three pools and a butler, but that goal is more visible than having to constantly question yourself through one-sided conversations, two-sided arguments, or three-sided…thresomes.

What makes me an individual,  somebody with educated opinions, or “a single organism as distinguished from a group?” Well, how do we distinguish ourselves from a group when each of our actions has been historically duplicated time after time? We might appear as one physically, but our thoughts and ambitions constitute of bits and pieces that have been transformed through time in order to reach us now, at this moment. Our surroundings might drastically change, our means of expression might have some more mutations, but our ambition to find our beliefs somewhere else remains the same. So, when amazon.com tells you that people who bought this also bought that, it’s just another way for you to try to connect to other missing pieces of your puzzle. Although, I would consider it a mutation because I wouldn’t really care if the toaster you bought is similar to the toaster that I want to buy. And still, I want to know.

PS. The title of the post doesn’t make any sense.

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