As a symbol and a behavior, the tattoo has power. The quest to be better than ordinary is an appetite for more life, more good feeling about yourself and more response from others. The tattoo also promises to stop time. The tattoo implies youre in an eternal present, willing to change your body permanently, not worried that the image will eventually become an embarrassing cliché or a maze of wrinkles on grandmas tired skin. Tattoos idealize youth and fertility by drawing eyes to youthful skin and often erotic parts of the body. In the process they counter anxiety about aging and death. Nothing beats a butterfly for signaling rebirth. Many symbols, including hearts and ancient Egyptian ankhs, are comforting. And this is no surprise, since terror management experiments in social psychology show that people unconsciously honor the potency of immortality symbols such as the cross and the flag. But you dont have to believe in the magic of pharaonic goddesses or old glory to enjoy death-avoidance. The decision to submit to the tattoing needle is a modestly painful initiation rite. The design substantiates your choice: makes it physical, touchable, enduring. The commitment can be a kind of conversion experience, a mark of independence from parents and conformity. In opening toward ultimate concerns—self-esteem, fertility, death—the ritual is doing the sort of work religion does. Like a vaccine, fear of death can stimulate useful defenses such as anxiety that scouts for dangers ahead. But death and anxiety are pretty nebulous, especially when denial fuzzes them out. Hence the urge to confront the threat head on in order to subdue it. By putting a skull on your skin, for instance, you—and everyone who looks at you—honor your control over death. The skull insists youre not afraid, and even own death. If you emphasize teeth, as in images of wolfish jaws and fangs, the signal is a threat display that should intimidate potential adversaries and pump up you, the beasts owner, turning nervous system flight into courage and fight. Once upon a time skulls and fangs were mostly military insignia. Like the jaguar-masked warriors of Aztec Mesoamerica, combat soldiers sometimes cope with fear and rage by identifying with deaths heads and ferocious animals. Closer to home the ravenous beast is mascot to sports teams pumped up to wipe out opponents. These days you can even spot a petite blonde teenager sporting a ravenous beast on her arm. What gives? For one thing, that devouring maw is open to swallow more life: more food-energy, but also, as a tattoo, more vital attention. Were social animals. Its how were built. Remember: the self is an event, not a thing. In the neurochemical conditions of deep sleep, the self disappears. We rely on social behavior—attention—to substantiate us and make us feel real. Exile, solitary confinement, and social death punish by starving the self for attention. Tattoos promise to make you attractive, as if you have a personal force akin to gravity. Notice me. The more attraction you command, the more attention you get, and the more life you have—as we see in the publics devotion to celebrities and leaders. As the name says, hero-worship, too, has a religious character, and if youre the hero, youre superhuman. The more people you have thinking about you, the more of you there seems to be. In the wisdom of slang, you can be, if not godlike, at least a bigshot. The devouring beast tattoo is one way of compelling attention. Its threatening but also appealing as a sign of outsized appetite. Greed for attention—and more life—inspires fear and envy, so one function of groups is to regulate competition for attention. Gangs use tattoos to boost a feeling of unique but shared status and power. When it works, the gang emblem pumps up self-esteem even as it absorbs the individual into the group. Tattoos spotlight the individual but also signify membership in the group of similarly marked folks. psychologytoday/blog/swim-in-denial/201310/if-tattoos-could-talk
Posted on: Sun, 28 Sep 2014 04:16:01 +0000
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