It’s pretty normal to see this picturesque town changed by certain things or events but Untold has a huge impact on our city and not in a good way. when we speak in terms of younger generations. So, I’m giving you 7 reasons why I don’t go to Untold and why I also do not encourage anyone to do so. There is much to be told about the UN-TOLD.
- Civic Consciousness
The first reason concerns my civic duty. I cannot participate in such a festival which, by the nature of its manifestation, destroys the quality of life in the city where I am a citizen. And here I speak first of all, about the sound intensity to which so many citizens, like me, are exposed throughout the festival. People who have nothing else to do but to endure the monstrous level of noise during these days. Without being able to do anything concrete, they are forced to survive the event, or if they have the money, to leave the city for a couple of days. Citizens like citizens, but what is really disgusting is the concerning people hospitalized in the vicinity of Simion Bărnuţiu Park. And we talk about patients from pediatric, gynecological, psychiatric hospitals and many others. Not in vain in the cities of the West such festivals no longer take place. Greed and quality of life do not make a good home together. At least they learned their lessons. But as long as the financial interest of the authorities protects this vender of illusions, we can do little. But little is not nothing.
- Magic and Spirituality
The second reason is my disapproval of magic. Magic and spirituality are part of the religious phenomenon. Magic is about controlling the universe and accessing invisible forces on the basis of algorithmic ritual, in order to satisfy personal desires. Spirituality, on the other hand, aims at personal surrender when the revelation of divine transcendence meets us subjectively, in our most intimate sense of the self. And after this revelation is internalized, practicing spirituality means: learning how to live beyond the compulsions of our mortal bodies, but in a peaceful way, not in an violent one. There are actually two totally opposite paths, control(magic) or growing into rest beyond control(spirituality). Untold builds its brand around magic, an experience beyond words, which can make you believe that anything you want is possible. Everyone has to decide for themselves what they want: the illusion of magical all-powerfulness or the joy of simplicity and the sufficiency of being open to reality. What do you feed on in your life: control or freedom?
- EDM and Addiction
The third reason is a conclusion of the previous one. To put it simply the desire for freedom, the desire not to cultivate dependency in our lives. Untold seems first a place of free expression, a place where everyone is welcome, without discrimination based on gender, race or age, a place of inclusion. But it’s important not to forget that this whole financial transaction between the ticket buyer and the Untold monster has the stakes of a sensory product of breathtaking intensity. Dopamine, the neurotransmitter of anticipatory pleasure, has such a perverse way of stealing us from the present moment when we don’t use it properly. By only pursuing its sensory effects through overuse, it will eventually lead to addiction to intense stimulants. Dopamine helps us, in a biological sense, to pursue our goals, giving us pleasure when we anticipate in our minds success in our targeted desires. But when we only want the pleasure, without the real effort that precedes success and without the real meaning that comes from living a purposeful life, addiction is sure to follow. EDM music itself, through its beats and drops, creates a predisposition towards pleasure through anticipation, so experiencing a generous dopamine rush is inevitable when listening to it. Relying on such a context to experience release, to distract yourself from the claws of loneliness, is not necessarily the answer when seeking true freedom.
- EDM and Drugs
The fourth reason we tell you so much about why not going to Untold, talks about how EDM and drugs are a popular mix. I know that at Untold people get arrested for drug dealing and there are probably a lot of catches from other people using just for their own pleasure. But still the reason I talk about using drugs in combination with EDM is based on the fact that although at first EDM music manages so easily to put you in a trance-like state, and the anticipation of the drop gives you an intense pleasure, eventually through repeated exposure, resistance to stimulation sets in. Resistance leads to a desire to bring back the intensity of sensation, and drugs can easily give you that. What I’m proposing here relates to the same cycle of dopamine addiction. To chemically induce states of ecstasy, will inevitably lead to psychological and physiological addiction to the experience. States that become more and more difficult to achieve, states for which you end up paying an increasingly high price. This can finally mean the death of your body if your drug dose increases too much. Maybe you say that I’m going too far with this view, but this is the finality, when ecstatic sensation becomes your logic.
- The Pseudo-religious Experience
Reason number five points to the significance of the Untold festival in today’s postmodern culture, but also to the illusion of such a pseudo-religious experience. Lost among the bits and pieces of reality, our inner sense of self melts into a jumble of stories we tell ourselves. The human tragedy is that the authors of these stories seem to be others. Postmodernity proposes a freedom based on the self-creation of one’s own identity, in terms of a distinctive language, focused on your specific emotions, those that lead to the perception of your own self. This is the root of the obsession about authenticity and validation of individual feelings in our postmodern culture. Others are obliged to conform to your language of self-expression, even if our experiences are lost in different horizons. It’s an empty reality, but it’s what makes us live with tolerance of others, they say. It gives us the opportunity to include in our society what is different, what until recently was pushed aside. Thus arises the intense need to be together in our own individuality, to diminish the sense of loneliness in our distinctions. Untold Festival offers an ecstatic experience that is felt together, in the same way that people in primitive tribes reaffirm their belonging to each other through ritual. Sacred dance and music stimulated by various consciousness-altering substances are staged together to honor the deities. These gods are embodiments of fundamental values, values necessary for community organization. The problem with modern festivals is that they remove the element of worship and recognition of limitations from the spectrum of life and encourage only the celebration of a cult of one’s own individuality, of the inner god, one might say. My carefully crafted individual world isolates me and thus pushes me into the cage of my own choosing. So I try to make this story, which describes my singular identity, credible again through a collective ecstasy. For a moment I forget the pain, only to relive it later, when the deprivation of these powerful stimuli brings us back to everyday life. Unless there is true connection, a connection that requires the courage to offer ourselves to the world of the other and to welcome the other into our world, we are condemned to a dual cycle. A movement between a sense of loneliness and forgetting it through sensation, only to wake up with an even deeper sense of isolation.
- Social Fragmentation
The sixth reason concerns social fragmentation. Division naturally occurs when you experience such a peak state with such a small group of people and then return to the banality of everyday habits. Much of life consists of repetitive actions. Life seems to lack the fascinating magic of festival days. At home we meet ordinary people with ordinary jobs. They are the real building blocks of society, those whose ordinary lives involve everyday work, those who, aware of their ordinary needs, seek to fulfill them through the routine of an ordinary job. Experiencing a sense of unity and inclusion, only in such special circumstances, ultimately leads to the rejection of a majority part of society. Your new inclusive group, made up of fellow festival-goers, is a minority that will give you a sense of false wholeness. Even if there are a lot of UNTOLD participants, this group is still a minority. And your new tribe, if not included in a larger social majority, will eventually become the justification you need so much to impose your unique self on others. Which is also a new form of tyranny? A tyranny of the minority we might call it. Community-wide interdependence is lost, transgenerational ties become impossible, and this ultimately dissolves our communities. But maybe that’s exactly what we want, isn’t it? If the giant UNTOLD offers to cheer us up endlessly…. Don’t dismiss the simple things, behind them lies the miracle of balance, and in a society that is changing at such a rapid pace, balance becomes a virtue.
- True Peace
The last reason, the seventh reason, has to do with the very notion of peace. Why peace? Because the number seven symbolically represents peace between God (three) and the world (four). And this notion of peace is born out naturally of our identity as a Christians. In the world’s terms, peace represents the absence of conflict and mutual tolerance, as long as everyone stays within territorial boundaries. The peace of the Messiah, the peace of Jesus, the true shalom, is something else entirely. In its true sense it represents wholeness, complete reality and harmonious unity. Sounds utopian, doesn’t it? And utopias have a way of turning into dystopias from what history teaches us. If imposed from outside, violence will occur, but if accepted personally, as an inner way of being in the world, peace will manifest itself. Don’t seek to buy illusions at the cost of your own effort, enjoy what you already have to the fullest! Become aware of and nourished by the reality of true peace, and what is broken within you, as well as the brokenness between others and yourself, will be healed as you embrace the gift of your acceptance in God through the peace of Christ. You were created to live in peace with yourself and you were created to live in communion with Him, with others and with creation. Don’t abandon your true self in the isolation of your virtual world. Come to Him to know who you are, don’t go to Untold to forget the pain of not being able to be who you were created to be!
In the words of Jesus Christ, our saviour, which are found in the Gospel of John:
“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you; I do not give it to you as the world does. Do not let your hearts be distressed or lacking in courage.”(chapter 14, verse 27)
