A camera life, anyone?

I watched the Metallica-documentary “Some kind of Monster” and the Bonus DVD and Lars Ulrich mentions one interesting thing in the bonus-interviews. Without wanting to cite him literally here’s a loose quote resembling the message I want to talk about: “In all the therapy-sessions and the whole process of resolving our problems, I think it was due to the presence of the cameras we stopped bullshitting each other. The cameras were there, capturing every nuance, and so the truth was obsolete.”

This is really interesting. Combine it with something James Hetfield said and I strongly believe in since a long time (just as loose a quote as above): “Whenever you find something you don’t like in another person, it’s most likely a mirror of something you don’t like about yourself”.

Now what I think is that the camera is kind of like the third person view on yourself. It’s not just you anymore, it’s “you watching yourself”, or better put “you being watched by yourself”. And not to mix that up with some Big Brother bullshit the difference is that those cameras are there in your private life. In your home. In your most intimate zones and situations. They aren’t the purpose, they are just an addition.

I happened to see myself on camera a few times already (yah, I’m quite the filmstar, cheer now), mostly on rhetorics seminars where we’d review our own performance as a speaker. And I can tell you it’s not only really weird, but also very very mind-opening. You don’t “see” yourself usually, and by getting that outside view things change a hell of a lot.

I wonder if it would make the world a better place if everyone was recorded by his private own little camera all the time, getting to see a “best-of” of just about 20mins per day.