photo: Shirin K. A. Winiger
Madhouse Berlin: Therapy Session Nr. 4
Some new readers of us may wonder what this bullshit here is all about. I started this little series of articles last summer but had no chance or no spirit to continue them properly. But here I am writing about some serious problems a lot of Berliners have and don’t even really know about. Some of you may think of it as a bad habbit, but I am telling you that cliché-thinking is more than that. Why I think you should better cure your serious malignous disease and how to protect yourself from these people out there after the jump.
The basis of this disease is quite normal human behaviour. It all starts with observation, it turns into categorization and perhaps it becomes re-evalutaion if the information is not coheerent. You do this all the time! With things, topics, ideas, styles and humans surrounding you. It is a very important process so that your brain doesn’t go Tschernobyl for the overamount of information you have to process.
So this kind of Berliners – who I like to call the Cliché-maniacs – have the bad and annoying behaviour to show you how they categorize you and you might do whatever you want – they don’t seem to re-evaluate information, even if you join the peace army or get yourself into a mafia organization.
photo: drp from flickr
My personal encounter with this little psychosis started last week. I was meeting new people which seems really fine to me and they seemed to like me also very much. I am quite silent with people I don’t know so good because I like to listen to what they have to tell. So I was really alienated when after one hour of listening to these people talking they started talking about me while I was standing there without even thinking if it might be rude or not.
“You must be quite a Mitte-Boy” one said in a way that made his disapproval very obvious. Funny that people put you inside the superficial box using superficial conclusion themselves. I felt a little helpless and just moved my eyes around a little in the room coming back to the people sitting in front of me who watched me like a human resources department watches a really inadequate candidate.
“You are probably an only child?” they continued. I replied that I have a sister. “Oh than she is probably a Tussi!” – “Why?” – “Well she lives in Dresden! Everybody there is a Tussi!“
This was the culmination of all the bad behaviour these people showed me. This guy must be a cultural expert about German population… really. So the Mitte-Boy from Tussiland left and probably freed the room from all his superficial energy.
So you might ask why I am telling you this insignificant anecdote out of my live. Well, first of all, because I asked myself why it troubles me that people label you with categories. I know that there is nothing wrong with it. I realized that telling somebody in which category I will put him is a way to simplify and to deconstruct his personality. The more I show you how easy it is to put you in a box the more I show you that you are obvious and understandable to me and also not interesting.
photo: drp from flickr
Cliché-maniacs seem to be unable to overcome this way of thinking in boxes and so I decided to fight back with their own weapons putting them all in a box myself. Because this is what this article is in the end. Putting people with one bad habbit in a commune box and telling this to the public. Is my behaviour mature? Probably not! But I assure you that the next one who comes to me with a cliché remark or a fashionista joke I will have a speech prepared about the Cliché-maniacs…
