Are obsession & commitment mutually exclusive?

[Gomendosi]

I sometimes wonder if I am so committed to things due to obsession, or, do I become obsessed with something due to my level of commitment?
I find that nobody really commits to anything anymore, we are a world of diversity so easily accessible that people chop and change at will so often it is difficult to cope with for a humble Aspergical person like me.
As a child I got right into recurring fads, you know, like once a year yo-yo's would hit it big for a while, then would come the trading cards or marbles for a time, of course TV shows were similar in that you were commited to being in front of a TV at a certain time each day or each week to get your latest episode "fix".

It seems like nowadays nothing has a season or a "time" in which you know that that thing is THEE thing!
Even hatred is pass? it would appear, I mean, when was the last time you saw somebody that truly hated something?
If you told me today you hated something, I probably wouldn't believe you unless you are an aspie, I reckon we would be able to muster up full blown, 100% mind altering hatred, maybe?

(back to the point) So I wonder if it is possible to still be truly committed to anything or is that a thing of the past now, in this downloadable, everything is electronic data, easily replaced, bulk buy, mass produced, multiple selection, more quantity than quality world, are we still capable of true commitment or is a varying degree of obsession the order of the day?

 

[King_Oni]

This is an interesting observation and I guess I have to agree with you, heh.

I'm sometimes wondering how commitment and obsession are things that go hand in hand now. Especially when talking to "professionals" like a therapist. They note that I might have obsessions, cause I spend a decent amount of time to get somewhere. I call it commitment to get **** done.

Granted, I hop around through a few interests, but I tend to focus on one thing and thus stay committed until I have it done before I move on to something else. It's how, for my personally, I function best. There has been a lot of trial and error in my life to figure out that I just have to find stuff I like enough to stick with it and finish it first. There's been way too much that didn't get finished in my life and eventually got discarded.

I believe the lack of commitment nowadays is because people are in charge of their own "schedule" more. Which eventually is the fallout of being online, having TiVo (or whatever the alternative is) and most likely the endless sea of content that is being offered. People suffer from, something that in one of my hobbies is called "shiny new model syndrome", way too much. To expand on that "syndrome"; it's whenever there's a new rulebook coming out for a tabletop wargame with new models and all, and people pretty much flock around it as "the new thing". This happens pretty much every release, which is about once or twice a month. I believe something similar is happening to contemporary popculture as well.

Think about this; with the large amount of communities online (forums and the like), people want to be everywhere at once. They want a sample of everything so they're not missing out. This in fact is already being called FOMO-syndrome. And while FOMO (Fear of missing out) is mostly a social thing, it's not that far fetched to project that on new fads, tv shows, hobbies and other leisure time activities.

If I take a handful of randomly selected people on my facebook. They all like similar "new" things, thus I can assume they got into this thing they like. There's no reason to "like" Game of thrones if you haven't watched an episode once or read the books. If that's the case, these people are trying to hard to be popular and into "trendy" things. So anyhow, with the inclusion of Facebook working as an RSS feed for news about subject X, unless you're not logging on three times an hour to see what everyone is doing (and thus you're NOT missing out on anything; FOMO says hi), you're updated about the whereabouts of said subject X.

Let's see if we can get this discussion rolling

 

[Cyanide Lollipop]

It seems like nowadays nothing has a season or a "time" in which you know that that thing is THEE thing!

Oh I don't know. Recently I turned on my tv (it's an annual event) and reality shows are rife - growing in number in fact. That is a trend that I wish would end soon. It's a rather sad indictment upon society that backstabbing, bullying and other assorted nastiness is a popular form of entertainment. Needless to say it will probably be another year or so before I turn my tv on again.