While coming towards the end of my MFA and looking for something of greater substance besides my enjoyment of people watching and general draw to infrastructure and architecture that helps NYC to run 24/7 I started to become aware of the subtleties of society, The ‘rule of society’ became oblivious to me. I started asking the questions of who sets these rules and why do we follow. We have a herd like mentality as people… People in a community, who have some comradery with one another and a love hate relationship with the city we live. Just like any friend group or relationship, if you are together with a person enough you begin to pick up their talking style or interests, we begin to think and act like each other. I don't think it is always a bad thing, however it's an observation that I found interesting in a psychological sense.

Thinking about who sets these rules, I start to associate these norms not only with our friends or communities, but maybe less oblivious, our environment. Our environment, (specifically speaking about NYC) has the opportunity, particularly urban planners, developers, and people of power in allocating areas based on their desired result, for example, sticking a park in the middle of two residential areas allowing for a place to relax in a city where people tend to be cooped up in a small apartment with no space to sit and socialize with their community or enjoy nature. Now if we take that example and apply it throughout the city to where business and shops, school, or restaurants are placed, These planners have a huge control over an individual’s movement within that space. It’s the idea of, say, living in Brooklyn, traveling to Midtown for breakfast with a friend, after taking a subway to the financial district for work and finally returning to Brooklyn on a ferry at the end of the day. You are shown the city in a very curated manner.

Now we know it's curated, but for what result. It is done for capital gain, as in a capitalist society, we are constantly being advertised to by corporations, it could be a movie, an idea, clothing, food etc. non-stop. As we move through the city, we are greeted with wheat pasted poster on the construction hoarding and billboards on buildings, scaffolding and buses all feeding us a way of living. On your subway commute or ferry ride between work, lunch and our apartment, We are fed this information so that in the chance we open up our wallets to buy something, it is their product. It’s a strange occurrence, as we don't consciously acknowledge a lot of these advertisements, but our eyes capture images and stores that within our brain, influencing our purchases. This leads me to believe we don't have total free will within our life. If we were to take the scenario of the way we act at home by ourselves or with a significant other and compare that to the way we act in a public setting for the majority of people, they will be massively different. The way we act is in accordance to the ‘rule of society’ the question for me now is, is this rule even made by society or is it a greater power to bring a sense of order to society.

All these thoughts built from the simple act of me being interested in and watching people go through their daily lives in public. It’s pretty amazing to me how much we don't consciously realize about how we think. I was lucky enough to have some great professors that taught me to think about each little aspect of how I live life in a deeper manner that eventually uncovered what I thought to be a mundane thought.