Anchit Jain

The Crackling Shell

 

        Critical thinking is the basis for all thoughts to reconnect and form an idea or a perception. Authoritative figures attempt to dictate how we are to formulate these thoughts. Indoctrination and education are powerful agents to the masses. Being born, we cannot help but grow and develop in this controlling world. A world, that entraps a shell around us, creating barriers so we do not take a peek outside. This collection of works showcases that shell breaking.

 

        Estranged Rituals begins the first crack. It explores my first essence of critical thinking through my personal reluctance and apprehension towards religion. I question the forceful nature of it through an estranged experience.

 

        My shell cracks further in Inerasable Scribbles. Here I unleash my struggles as an imaginative thinker and the responsibilities and pressures that come from it. Using the ideologies of Mark Fisher, I critically process how his capitalist dystopian views play a dictating role in how I think about intellectual property.

 

        Its All Mine expands this view and plants my qualms about the logistics of what property is rightfully mine. Jonathan Lethem helps me to crack my shell and realize the psychology behind why I find myself having a greedy affection towards my old house and the desire in seizing a new one.

 

        The Once and Future Thing is a letter to my past self. I crumble through my shell by lecturing; warning and teaching an uninitiated version of myself, that the dangerous shell can potentially entrap anyone’s freedom to critically think. I divulge my current feelings towards how and why I must critically think.

 

        My shell is completely broken and I’m set free in Ground Control to Major Me. I review David Bowie’s song, Space Oddity and embrace an enhancing new experience of what critical thinking means, through my emergence of being incorporated into the song. My ride through critical thinking is exhibited through this personal interpretation of how I perceive these lyrics, with an unhinged mind.