Gillian Anderson Interview

Recently, I went back with my boyfriend and watched most of the XFiles series. The last seasons start to plummet downhill at an exponential rate, so we almost made it through Season 7. Although they lost fuel to continue a government-conspiracy-cover-up-from-alien-plans-to-colonization-Earth plot line, they stretched it as thin as they could until they just weren't able to pretend anymore. 

I was feeling curious about Gillian Anderson's life outside of the XFiles. I found an interview with her and some of her comments about living in America were quite interesting (she's been back and forth between here and London her whole life):

 "It's easier to be myself here. I can go out wearing whatever the hell I want, no matter how ridiculous it looks. If I do that in America, people look at me like I'm insane. There are aspects of the British press which are incredibly intrusive, but then you'll go to a premiere and someone will ask permission to take a photo, and when you say, "That's enough", they'll back off. In the States, you go to a restaurant and there are people lined up outside with 8x10s of you. Or they just follow you with a video camera. I had someone deliberately rear-end my car a few years ago in L.A., and there was a video camera: they were videoing my reaction. Luckily, I was in a good mood.

I know people who are embarrassed to be American. They don't like showing their passports. It's becoming a scary place. It takes someone very brave not to be quiet, someone who doesn't mind death threats, their life being turned upside down, news cameras outside their door. There is no freedom of speech in America anymore. They are not living up to the constitution. There's so much fear in America and control."

Maybe Americans don't see it as much within the country, but I've definitely seen people not wanting to admit they are American when they travel outside the country. Their usual cover up is Canada, since the accents are close. 

Sometimes it's real embarrassment for the country as a whole, but other times it's just wanting to not be associated with certain images:

Gillian offers a distressing insight. Take Egypt, for example. They've just succeeded in overthrowing a dictatorial regime through revolution, so they can live a free, democratic life. Their most powerful guidepost, however, the United States, has citizens that don't feel free, feel fear to tell the truth, and want to deny they are Americans when they leave the country?

Everything is good in theory - but when it's put in the hands of flawed human beings and brought into reality, it never looks quite the same. 

On the positive, our democratic society has access to a cornucopia of knowledge and has significant personal freedoms compared to most people. That's worthy of inspiring others to ask for what they deserve as human beings. Even if this change doesn't result in a completely ideal world for the Egyptians, there will definitely be significant improvements, and that's nothing to sneeze at. 

The view of Cairo is nothing to sneeze at, either

On a different note:

"I walked in thinking, it's going to be like riding a bicycle. It wasn't. It was like riding a unicycle. I'd been trying so hard to stretch myself in other roles, and to catch myself when I did anything that remotely resembles Scully, that when I was put back in the ring with her, my brain started misfiring."

This is a personally relevant quote for me. Brings me back to my struggles of putting on a filter in my mind to make sure the 'right' thing is released, while subduing what I 'shouldn't' do. Then, somewhere down the line I try to access those oppressed parts of my mind, only to have the empowered parts rebel and misfire on me. 

The good news - it takes time and patience, and I have definitely become more patient in recent days. I'll talk more about patience in another post. 

My conclusion on my searchings - Gillian Anderson, aside from being more beautiful than was obvious in her frumpy FBI clothes in the series, seems to be a really cool person. She has a daughter named Piper Maru, got married the first time in a Buddhist ceremony on a Hawaiian golf course, the second time on an island off the coast of Kenya, and is heavily into philanthropic and charitable organizations. And - she has intelligent, insightful things to speak about. 

I love unexpected inspiration.

Apathy

Apathy bothers me more than anger . When I'm angry, I understand the cause, see it coming on, and see it dissipate. Apathy is more elusive. Sometimes I get stuck in an apathetic mindset and I don't know how I got there and worse - how to get out. 

Apathy ties in with desensitization - and we are desensitized in so many ways. Video games desensitize us to rampant violence. Comedy on TV desensitizes us to racist, vulgar humor and makes us critical of others. Lack of healthy outlets to release frustration and anger desensitize us to screaming at one another to get a point across. Impersonal communications such as text or social media desensitize us to how we really connect with others. 

And a personally poignant one - school desensitizes us to learning. 

I was navigating through 'apathy' in Wikipedia and I came across Robert Maynard Hutchins, who I hadn't been previously familiar with. Aside from become the Dean of Yale Law School when he was 30 years old, he has a laundry list of impressive life achievements. As an educational philosopher, he spoke about apathy and the disintegration of our generation. 

His book, The University of Utopia, speaks about a world where students learn about the intellectual concepts behind their majors rather than just the skills to simply 'get it done' - where children are first taught how to communicate with one another and then given the ability to choose for themselves what their school of thought will contain. He talks about having a full range of educational classes which focus on comprehension, rather than just 'getting through the class'. He talks about giving degrees to students who prove masterful comprehension, not just show their 120 credits. 

Utopian, indeed.

There is no question that while going through school my main focus was on getting good grades and getting through it. Not to say that I didn't learn anything, but I was more interested in the simple achievement of crossing the finish line than I was with gathering a deep understanding of the topic which so fascinated me - philosophy. I love philosophy and I loved it then - but it's only now that I'm devoting myself to getting to know it better. 

I'm sure those reading this can remember taking a class because it was pre-requisite credits you needed and you heard it was easy. Did it matter what the subject was? Minimally. And it never becomes as full of an experience as it could have been, and you never learn as much as you could have. 

There are so many distractions outside of class - video games, drinking, social scenes, social media, TV, movies - it's hard enough in this generation to keep focused on school. If the emphasis to really cherish the ability to learn isn't there in the professors, how will it be in the students?

Our culture needs to re-sensitize. Not that we have to become blubbering babies or anything, but we need readjust our grip on reality. If we keep pulling ourselves farther and farther away from reality, there's only so much we can handle before we shut off and ignore it all. 

I think the digital culture is a major culprit, but it doesn't have to be. Technology can aid in our evolution and connection to one another - but people struggle to see the reality that surrounds them when a device is in their midst. It seems more important to type what they are doing, in Facebook, than to actually live it. And the motto for the media and corporations, who keep making more and more and more, seems to be, "if it makes money, who cares what it does to our human culture?" 

Ah, I get apathetic just thinking about it. 

Slov