And now for something completely different.
I've been sobbing a lot recently, which seems somewhat appropriate for the end of a 4-ish year relationship that had long since passed it's expiration date. I don't need to talk about that here, but just mention it for context. I MAY have some things to say down the road about open relationships, among other things, but it's probably smarter not to burn my temporary personal distress into the internet forever. Of course, that's never stopped me before.
Where was I? Oh yes, in the middle of deep, gut-wrenching sobs on the floor of my shower. Or on my couch having just come home and unable to contain it any longer. It's very cathartic, necessary, helpful, etc. so please don't worry about that detail. I'm just being honest: I'm crying a lot right now as part of my process.
The interesting thing that's come up is the little golf announcer I've noticed narrating the session as it happens in the back of my mind. "Ah, stepping up to chest-wracking sob number 3 is existential dread. And next, deep personal self-doubt. Ah, the pang of loneliness, a frequent dessert to self-doubt, is waiting in the wings. And, I'm waiting for confirmation, yes that is the deep personal pain of putting up with a distressing situation far longer than you had to, almost as a form of self-punishment there warming up in the heaving cages." And so on.
It really strikes me as a situation not unlike a general transcendental mediation practice. Where the goal is to be still with right now and gently reminding the analytical mind to let go of the constant dialogue over and over and over. Not that it's not been important to understand why I'm ugly crying on my couch on a lovely Tuesday evening, but this is information is known, and requires no high-powered intellectual analysis to make sense of. It's knowledge that emerges spontaneously, given a little stillness and space to breathe. Old habits, old doubts, old sorrows (as old friends), as well as whatever fresh hell I've been putting myself through just kind of emerge fully known. It doesn't take a lot to understand them, just a bit of patience to acknowledge them and give them a bit of time on center stage, after too many hours/days/years of waiting in the wings. So this is an opportunity to hush the golf announcer further. Muted just far enough to hear if something important inadvertently escapes his stream of consciousness, but down far enough not to distract from the proceedings.
Maybe the purpose of such a dramatic physiological display is simply to create a moment to acknowledge what should no longer be ignored. Sometimes the inner puppy just has to howl and the much-praised intellect needs to just sit the fuck down and listen.
Tuesday, December 29, 2015
Sunday, December 20, 2015
My Star Wars Hot Take
I know we're all drowning in it right now, so I hate to add to the dangerous outgassing of hot air going on all over the world right now over the Force Awakens, but we obviously talk about Star Wars a lot because it's important to us. For some it's the "badassness" of the characters. For some it's the richly realized world and the art direction. Increasingly, for me, I think it's the post-christian philosophical and religious structure that's hinted at in the soothing religious connotations that they don't dive too deeply into. And, just putting this out there, I think that's a big reason for it's enduring popularity in the rest of the world as well. Star Wars is the only philosophical framework we can all agree in the gap caused by the increasing failures of modern religion in kindness to the other. Partly because in Star Wars the philosophy is appealing, but it's shallow enough that there's not enough dogma to really fight over. Partly because it's something you can secretly like for it's philosophical appeal while pretending to like the badassness of it all. And finally, because it's a popular and well-known fictional philosophy seriously trying to pick up the important pieces Christianity keeps leaving on the ground in favor of deference to power and fear of change.
Speaking as a mildly bitter, very gay ex-christian who has lots of complaints with church culture these days, I think the anger partly comes from disappointment in Christianity's failure to defend some vitally important ideas that must stand in opposition to greed and power, because they're too focused on playing the persecution complex card over their right to discriminate against people they don't like for superficial reasons. Christianity has been a wildly transformative influence because it championed ideas that even today still feel like heresy: redemption, even for the worst of the worst, community for all, the transcendent power of relentless kindness and the pursuit of peace, even when violence and demonization are emotionally justified and cathartic. The more they drop the ball on a consistent pattern of behavior based on these core ideals (and probably a few I'm missing), the more people tend to dismiss them as more or less hypocritical and/or actively harmful to the communities they claim to love.
The thing is, and this has been my struggle since coming out of the closet and leaving my church structure, there has yet to be a transformative ideology that encompasses the strongest, most true and important aspects of christianity and then taken them a step further. And one thing I'm starting to realize is, even though we collectively eschew institutional ideological structure, I assume because we've been so damaged by the institutional failures of christianity and democracy, we cannot help but live by philosophies and ideologies. So if we're not choosing them consciously and carefully, ad-hoc structures will form to take their place, either based on our own unconscious needs, or as imposed by the opportunistic sith lords currently roaming the populace bellowing fear and promising security if we'll only give up a little more. For instance, we shouldn't bow to Mark Zuckerberg's idea that privacy is out-dated, simply because he has money and influence, and no compelling intellectual or philosophical credentials. But we DO, because we don't think enough about what ideas are important to us and whether they're worth defending. This is an assumption, but one borne out by how passively people agree to the constant creep of privacy violations by Facebook and Google and other interested parties. Put another way, if you're not living by your own principles then you're living by someone else's.
And it's not that atheism or some variation of atheism can't embody and champion all the ideals christianity is so happy to drop, or at least only offer to the comfortably similar, but so far, in my experience, it does the opposite. Not only does modern atheism seem to reject the church, but they seem disdainful of people that even ask the questions christianity tries to answer. Do you wonder if there's life after death? Well that's stupid, because there isn't. Do you even wish there was life after death? That's stupid, because you should be content with your total obliteration as a token of your commitment to realism. Do you wonder if there's a grander purpose to life on this planet than it appears? Well that's stupid because there's only the cold hard laws of the universe and so you have to make your own meaning, before your inevitable, meaningless annihilation, which you would embrace with no complicated emotions if you were as enlightened as THIS atheist. And so on. In too many situations, dogmatic and evangelical atheism offers little but nihilism in a fancy dress, which, I'm afraid offers little chance at a transformative cultural moment. Many of us step back from religion and say "well, I don't believe in invisible sky gods," but then have no compelling philosophical framework to latch onto that is well on it's way to subsuming and surpassing the institutional philosophies we're rejecting.
So we know what we don't believe in, but I'm not sure we know what we actually do believe in just yet. But we DO believe in star wars. It's nice in this post-christan idealogical hellscape to hear, just for a couple hours, that there are more important things binding us than fear and power. That it's important to know what you believe and fight for it. That redemption is possible, even for the worst of the worst. That community is possible, even if you get lost for a while. That we are connected more than we are separate. That it's not wrong to hope for a grander purpose to the universe that has yet to reveal itself. That your feelings are just as important as your reason. That your meditations are just as important as your action. That your humanity should not be crushed for the sake of expedience or fear or a really beautiful societal machine that craves your blood to grease its wheels.
I think we need a better post-christian framework than Star Wars. And that the longer we resist forming it consciously ourselves, the more space we leave for opportunistic demagogues to step in and carry us all off in the wrong direction. But while we're trying to untangle this mess we've made of things ideologically, Star Wars will have to do as the one thing we can agree on.
Speaking as a mildly bitter, very gay ex-christian who has lots of complaints with church culture these days, I think the anger partly comes from disappointment in Christianity's failure to defend some vitally important ideas that must stand in opposition to greed and power, because they're too focused on playing the persecution complex card over their right to discriminate against people they don't like for superficial reasons. Christianity has been a wildly transformative influence because it championed ideas that even today still feel like heresy: redemption, even for the worst of the worst, community for all, the transcendent power of relentless kindness and the pursuit of peace, even when violence and demonization are emotionally justified and cathartic. The more they drop the ball on a consistent pattern of behavior based on these core ideals (and probably a few I'm missing), the more people tend to dismiss them as more or less hypocritical and/or actively harmful to the communities they claim to love.
The thing is, and this has been my struggle since coming out of the closet and leaving my church structure, there has yet to be a transformative ideology that encompasses the strongest, most true and important aspects of christianity and then taken them a step further. And one thing I'm starting to realize is, even though we collectively eschew institutional ideological structure, I assume because we've been so damaged by the institutional failures of christianity and democracy, we cannot help but live by philosophies and ideologies. So if we're not choosing them consciously and carefully, ad-hoc structures will form to take their place, either based on our own unconscious needs, or as imposed by the opportunistic sith lords currently roaming the populace bellowing fear and promising security if we'll only give up a little more. For instance, we shouldn't bow to Mark Zuckerberg's idea that privacy is out-dated, simply because he has money and influence, and no compelling intellectual or philosophical credentials. But we DO, because we don't think enough about what ideas are important to us and whether they're worth defending. This is an assumption, but one borne out by how passively people agree to the constant creep of privacy violations by Facebook and Google and other interested parties. Put another way, if you're not living by your own principles then you're living by someone else's.
And it's not that atheism or some variation of atheism can't embody and champion all the ideals christianity is so happy to drop, or at least only offer to the comfortably similar, but so far, in my experience, it does the opposite. Not only does modern atheism seem to reject the church, but they seem disdainful of people that even ask the questions christianity tries to answer. Do you wonder if there's life after death? Well that's stupid, because there isn't. Do you even wish there was life after death? That's stupid, because you should be content with your total obliteration as a token of your commitment to realism. Do you wonder if there's a grander purpose to life on this planet than it appears? Well that's stupid because there's only the cold hard laws of the universe and so you have to make your own meaning, before your inevitable, meaningless annihilation, which you would embrace with no complicated emotions if you were as enlightened as THIS atheist. And so on. In too many situations, dogmatic and evangelical atheism offers little but nihilism in a fancy dress, which, I'm afraid offers little chance at a transformative cultural moment. Many of us step back from religion and say "well, I don't believe in invisible sky gods," but then have no compelling philosophical framework to latch onto that is well on it's way to subsuming and surpassing the institutional philosophies we're rejecting.
So we know what we don't believe in, but I'm not sure we know what we actually do believe in just yet. But we DO believe in star wars. It's nice in this post-christan idealogical hellscape to hear, just for a couple hours, that there are more important things binding us than fear and power. That it's important to know what you believe and fight for it. That redemption is possible, even for the worst of the worst. That community is possible, even if you get lost for a while. That we are connected more than we are separate. That it's not wrong to hope for a grander purpose to the universe that has yet to reveal itself. That your feelings are just as important as your reason. That your meditations are just as important as your action. That your humanity should not be crushed for the sake of expedience or fear or a really beautiful societal machine that craves your blood to grease its wheels.
I think we need a better post-christian framework than Star Wars. And that the longer we resist forming it consciously ourselves, the more space we leave for opportunistic demagogues to step in and carry us all off in the wrong direction. But while we're trying to untangle this mess we've made of things ideologically, Star Wars will have to do as the one thing we can agree on.
Friday, December 18, 2015
Sexistentialism
What do I cling to at my lowest anymore? Do I look up inspiration Carl Sagan quotes? Do I join a cult? Do I join a sex cult? A sex cult built around Carl Sagan quotes? Do I follow the Buddha? Do I find balance in the Tao? Do I run back into the crushing arms of Jesus? Do I flag down an alien spaceship and hope they've got more of it figured out than we do? Does anyone have it figured out or are we all just keeping busy? Is becoming a monk a good plan? Do they rent rockets to fly those seeking to eternal union with the Sun? How many roads must a man walk down? I wish I knew.
Not all who wander are lost. Not all who are lost wander. Sometimes they just sit there, not knowing where to go.
Not all who wander are lost. Not all who are lost wander. Sometimes they just sit there, not knowing where to go.
Thursday, October 22, 2015
Born in a lost colony
Every now and then I tilt my head a little bit to the side and Christianity sounds like a science fiction story. A lost planet, originally under the rule of an alien empire with it's own laws, has gone it's own way, under the rule of a rebellious offshoot of the royal houses. An ambassador was sent to bring it back into the fold, a prince in fact, but was summarily murdered. One day, sooner or later, the emperor will arrive, crush the rebellion and reintroduce galactic law to this backwater planet. Christianity is the faction betting on the galactic emperor, and hoping adopting what it believes to be galactic law now will guarantee safe zones or evacuation when the emporer's battleships finally arrive in orbit.
Friday, October 16, 2015
Work harder, not smarter
Maybe the fucked-upedness of the world takes this shape:
Mind fuck #1: The already rolling in it assert you too can be rolling in it if you just worked very, very hard for a while, as they assure you're they're likely to have done. Or their parents. Or their underlings. The point is, someone worked very hard to get them where they are now, so if you want to share in the wonder of rolling in it, you'd better get to working hard.
Mind fuck #2: The typical american worker is generally NOT working hard, given the amount of time they spend on the internet when they should be working, and is too worried about being called out in their lack of productivity to put voice to the idea that plenty of people work hard and yet aren't rolling in it. Nor have they really tried working as hard as the rolling-in-its insist one should, to really confidently assert that the "work makes you rich" as a universal to truth to be empirically bullshit.
Mind fuck #3: Everyone actually working hard enough to please the ones who roll but who, inexplicably to one who rolls, still do not have the money to afford people to tend to life for them so they too can spend their days rolling in it, are just too damn tired to deal with the nonsense inherent in mind fucks #1 and #2.
Mind fuck #1: The already rolling in it assert you too can be rolling in it if you just worked very, very hard for a while, as they assure you're they're likely to have done. Or their parents. Or their underlings. The point is, someone worked very hard to get them where they are now, so if you want to share in the wonder of rolling in it, you'd better get to working hard.
Mind fuck #2: The typical american worker is generally NOT working hard, given the amount of time they spend on the internet when they should be working, and is too worried about being called out in their lack of productivity to put voice to the idea that plenty of people work hard and yet aren't rolling in it. Nor have they really tried working as hard as the rolling-in-its insist one should, to really confidently assert that the "work makes you rich" as a universal to truth to be empirically bullshit.
Mind fuck #3: Everyone actually working hard enough to please the ones who roll but who, inexplicably to one who rolls, still do not have the money to afford people to tend to life for them so they too can spend their days rolling in it, are just too damn tired to deal with the nonsense inherent in mind fucks #1 and #2.
Wednesday, October 14, 2015
Dark Continuums
Canadian TV has blessed me with two out-of-the-blue SF shows on Netflix recently. Continuum, which I believe just wrapped up a final half-season that I have yet to watch, has been a pretty decent ride. I keep thinking the tech kid is Frankie Muniz though for some reason. But it's had some good material. I recommend it, for the most part.
Dark Matter I'm still a little on the fence about. Among the highlights are the FTL drive effect (and name). If you're not shouting "launch all fighters!" in an SF show, I'll take "spin up the FTL!" Although they may have never actually shouted that. The android character is pretty interesting, although most plots involve her getting incapacitated because she's kinda the deus ex machina character and having her conscious trivializes most plots (which is a formula they may want to re-think for season 2). The CGI is spectacular for the most part, if infrequently used, presumably for budgetary reasons. And Stargate actors drop by once in a while!
The main downside is it has all the energy of a casual afternoon in the living room. I'm not sure what it is exactly but the tension is generally loose enough to play jump rope with and, especially in the first few chapters, boredom is a frequent problem, both ours and theirs. I don't know if it's that the hook really wasn't compelling enough to drive more than the first couple episodes or what, but the series drags frequently, until it gets to the episode with Stargate actors, and then it gets about 10 times better.
The last few episodes started to pull some kind of chemistry and momentum together, which it can hopefully roll into a solid second season, assuming it's getting one? I don't know, I'm not a professional TV commentator so I don't really bother to look this stuff up before I talk about it.
Also, has anyone else noticed how much more violent TV has gotten in the last 10 years or so? I'm not complaining exactly, I always though television norms were a teensy bit too puritanical and over-obsessed with the possibility of some child somewhere seeing a boob or hearing a swear, but my god do action shows seem to be splatter-fests now. Both in continuum and this people are getting shot in the head, sliced to pieces, burned to death, etc. I'm not sure what's driving it, but I find the change interesting.
Dark Matter I'm still a little on the fence about. Among the highlights are the FTL drive effect (and name). If you're not shouting "launch all fighters!" in an SF show, I'll take "spin up the FTL!" Although they may have never actually shouted that. The android character is pretty interesting, although most plots involve her getting incapacitated because she's kinda the deus ex machina character and having her conscious trivializes most plots (which is a formula they may want to re-think for season 2). The CGI is spectacular for the most part, if infrequently used, presumably for budgetary reasons. And Stargate actors drop by once in a while!
The main downside is it has all the energy of a casual afternoon in the living room. I'm not sure what it is exactly but the tension is generally loose enough to play jump rope with and, especially in the first few chapters, boredom is a frequent problem, both ours and theirs. I don't know if it's that the hook really wasn't compelling enough to drive more than the first couple episodes or what, but the series drags frequently, until it gets to the episode with Stargate actors, and then it gets about 10 times better.
The last few episodes started to pull some kind of chemistry and momentum together, which it can hopefully roll into a solid second season, assuming it's getting one? I don't know, I'm not a professional TV commentator so I don't really bother to look this stuff up before I talk about it.
Also, has anyone else noticed how much more violent TV has gotten in the last 10 years or so? I'm not complaining exactly, I always though television norms were a teensy bit too puritanical and over-obsessed with the possibility of some child somewhere seeing a boob or hearing a swear, but my god do action shows seem to be splatter-fests now. Both in continuum and this people are getting shot in the head, sliced to pieces, burned to death, etc. I'm not sure what's driving it, but I find the change interesting.
Hey, what's this?
Oh my god, I totally forgot I changed the design of my blog. Was it a good idea? Hell if I know. I just like to re-arrange things every now and then. But truthfully, this blog has never quite been what I wanted. I either need to design a better one or find a better platform.
Wednesday, September 30, 2015
What I've learned about spacing between sentences
I have been getting the side-eye recently for using 2-spaces after the period that ends a sentence. An inference, a subtle hint, that the cool kids don't do it this way anymore. Here's the thing: if you want to get me to change my habits, you need to give me a good reason why, and "it's not currently fashionable" is typically not a good reason why for me.
After my typically ignorant and unsubtle inquiries on twitter, @mattthomas gave me a link to this Slate article (which I recommend you read), which lead me to this rebuttal (which I also suggest you read). The comments in the Slate article were also helpful.
So what's my conclusion so far? It's an aesthetic choice, a minor culture war blip amongst writing nerds, and it doesn't truly matter whether you use one or two spaces in your writing. To hear it told from the Slate article, there is a conclave of typesetters who have determined the purity of the single space and there are rogue english teachers leading people astray due to a love of former teachers and a too-great attachment to mid-centure typewriter aesthetics.
Given the rebuttal and some other facts, I'm not sure this is an accurate assessment. For one, I have not seen real compelling evidence that all typesetters believe in one space between sentences and for another there are plenty of style guides who ask for 2-spaces (the current APA style guides for instance) and others that don't have much to say on the matter. I am sure there are typesetters and publications that prefer 1-space, but I see little proof that this is an industry-wide standard and I've seen little documentation to back up the insistence on 1-space as anything more than a fashionable aesthetic choice. Even Manjoo admits that is exactly what it all boils down to, he's just arguing your aesthetic choice is bad because you aren't him and the typesetters he knows, whose opinion should be deferred to because of expertise. This is not the most compelling argument for an industry standard.
It may be possible that 1-space is more suitable for certain fonts and publications types and 2-spaces may be more appropriate for others. This might be an okay scenario that we can all live with in harmony.
My advice, based on the evidence so far, is if you're looking to publish for a certain community or publication, simply look up and follow the style guides they have provided (and if they haven't provided a style guide they have no right to complain about style). If it calls for one-space, use that. If it calls for 2, use that. CTRL-F (or command-F for you mac users) is your friend in either scenario. Beyond that? Use whichever spacing style seems most readable to you and doesn't get in the way of your writing flow.
If advocates for either style want to enshrine either practice as a universal standard, they're going to need to make better arguments to more people (especially people who write style guides) than they have so far.
Tuesday, September 29, 2015
Starting to Take Stock
Careening out of coming out of the closet and the concomitant mid-life crisis, I have yet to right myself entirely. There has been progress, to be sure, but I still operate far too much on a fuzzy-headed getting by in the day-to-day, rather than action with a clear purpose with even a short-term plan in mind. And frankly, I'm not quite where I want to be professionally and socially so simply getting by is increasingly intolerable.
So I'm entering the phase of feeling stuck in the mud when I'm sitting back, splashing a little, entering a sort of radical acceptance of the situation. "So, you're stuck. What's this like then?" I'm asking myself. I'm taking stock in other words.
"So this is the situation you've created for yourself, what would you like to do now?"
I'm not sure. I've been trying to organize myself with limited results, both professionally and personally. I increasingly despise living in digital environments for so much of my day (work and then home and then eventually in my sleep once we have the technology I guess). Plus, I just have a hard time of feeling attached and motivated by organizing file folders on a desktop or in an app? So I bought a bunch of paper notebooks because writing with a pen, even if it's just kind of simple statements about the structure I want the day to have, has been very helpful to me. Still, I haven't been able to devise a system on paper that feels sufficient to me. I have a "triage" journal where I go to write out what I need to do to salvage the day after generally procrastinating for the first half of it. I have a work "to-do" to help me get through the priority work tasks for the day. And I have a general journal for "I need some paper to write or draw some shit out so I can think about it more clearly."
For now these suffice, but ideally I'd have several notebooks organizing my work projects (because there are many happening simultaneously usually) and several organizing and detailing my writing projects, of which there are many ideas but few actualities. Why I can't make the leap from my current system to a more organized system I can almost visualize, I don't know.
I want to blame ADD, but I feel like anyone willing to confirm that diagnosis is just going to throw pills at me like I should fuck with my brain chemistry as an ongoing experiment with a shrug and a "yes, thank you doctor."
I am currently very stubborn about reasoning and feeling my way to the psycho-emotional knot that holds me captive and unraveling it. In other words I want to work through the source of my depression and dissociation and solve it rather than medicating the symptoms simply to function properly in capitalism. But sometimes, I feel like I'm just thinking myself in circles instead of accomplishing anything productive. Is this madness? Sometimes it feels like it.
To this end, group therapy has been an amazingly positive choice. I can't recommend it highly enough. But there is more to do, especially with regards to exercise and some sort of disciplined mental/spiritual practice, which is a subject for a future post.
I definitely look back at where I was in Reno and where I am now and see progress I am happy with. But a side-effect about allowing yourself to know who you really want to be, is noticing you aren't quite there yet.
Ask your doctor is knowing yourself is right for you.
So I'm entering the phase of feeling stuck in the mud when I'm sitting back, splashing a little, entering a sort of radical acceptance of the situation. "So, you're stuck. What's this like then?" I'm asking myself. I'm taking stock in other words.
"So this is the situation you've created for yourself, what would you like to do now?"
I'm not sure. I've been trying to organize myself with limited results, both professionally and personally. I increasingly despise living in digital environments for so much of my day (work and then home and then eventually in my sleep once we have the technology I guess). Plus, I just have a hard time of feeling attached and motivated by organizing file folders on a desktop or in an app? So I bought a bunch of paper notebooks because writing with a pen, even if it's just kind of simple statements about the structure I want the day to have, has been very helpful to me. Still, I haven't been able to devise a system on paper that feels sufficient to me. I have a "triage" journal where I go to write out what I need to do to salvage the day after generally procrastinating for the first half of it. I have a work "to-do" to help me get through the priority work tasks for the day. And I have a general journal for "I need some paper to write or draw some shit out so I can think about it more clearly."
For now these suffice, but ideally I'd have several notebooks organizing my work projects (because there are many happening simultaneously usually) and several organizing and detailing my writing projects, of which there are many ideas but few actualities. Why I can't make the leap from my current system to a more organized system I can almost visualize, I don't know.
I want to blame ADD, but I feel like anyone willing to confirm that diagnosis is just going to throw pills at me like I should fuck with my brain chemistry as an ongoing experiment with a shrug and a "yes, thank you doctor."
I am currently very stubborn about reasoning and feeling my way to the psycho-emotional knot that holds me captive and unraveling it. In other words I want to work through the source of my depression and dissociation and solve it rather than medicating the symptoms simply to function properly in capitalism. But sometimes, I feel like I'm just thinking myself in circles instead of accomplishing anything productive. Is this madness? Sometimes it feels like it.
To this end, group therapy has been an amazingly positive choice. I can't recommend it highly enough. But there is more to do, especially with regards to exercise and some sort of disciplined mental/spiritual practice, which is a subject for a future post.
I definitely look back at where I was in Reno and where I am now and see progress I am happy with. But a side-effect about allowing yourself to know who you really want to be, is noticing you aren't quite there yet.
Ask your doctor is knowing yourself is right for you.
Wednesday, September 23, 2015
Template Changes
So this dynamic view is interesting. I like the classic view a lot, but I'm not sure why it has a nav bar that's just looking at various modes of look at the same stuff? Timeline is kind of interesting, but the rest, meh. I might remove them manually. I think I'd rather the nav bar be links to different kinds of content than different ways of looking at the same stuff.
This is approaching the simplicity I want though. Feels less like a geocities webpage and a little cleaner and less cluttered. I like it so far, although I'm still planning to play around with wordpress and/or another blogging platform. Except Medium, because I'm not an earnest start-up entrepreneur in California.
This is approaching the simplicity I want though. Feels less like a geocities webpage and a little cleaner and less cluttered. I like it so far, although I'm still planning to play around with wordpress and/or another blogging platform. Except Medium, because I'm not an earnest start-up entrepreneur in California.
Tuesday, September 22, 2015
Unbearably Vinyl
I started collecting records this year, against my better judgement. Not wanting to be another unbearable hipster in Portland, I had avoided it for some time. Of course, hating hipsters can be its own version of unbearable, and I eventually realized obnoxiousness is generally an attitude thing. I can enjoy records, and as long as I don't get all pretentious about the sound or otherwise be a dick to people who don't give a shit about records, it would probably be okay. As it turns out, giving less of a shit what people think about my hobbies is generally a good life choice.
The hobby has been more fun that I really could have possible imagined. Not because the sound is just so superior, although I quite like it. Not because the album artwork is large and pleasing. Not because the entire process, from bin searches, to handling the record to using the turntable is so pleasingly tactile in an age of touch screens (which are tactile, but only ever in one limited fashion as you're always just touching glowing glass). Really, it's been fun just because I've discovered so much music I have never come across before.
Aside from a bunch of rock and roll favorites from the 70s and 80s, and re-buying Devin Townsend's stuff because I am a hopeless groupie as far as he is concerned, I've really been enjoying just browsing the large used record store distressingly near my apartment and finding gems from the past. Of particular note to me are Alan Parson's Project, Tomita, Electric Light Orchestra right now. Although they are far from my only new favorites. I'm listening to full albums from old favorites I've never heard before (David Bowie and Elton John), I'm listening to albums I never got around to buying on itunes (Pink Floyd's Dark side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here) and I'm finally diving into classical music and getting to know Bach, Strauss, Brahms, Tchaikovsky and Mozart in ways I never really bothered to before.
So is this a passing phase? I don't know, I heard someone say that people who did vinyl the first time around are skipping this phase the second. I think for me a key to longevity will be letting go of records that I didn't end up enjoying that much or when I've simply listened to it as much as I'm going to. In other words, I don't want this to be just another pile of crap I lug around so maybe only keep the keepers.
In short, I've found a bunch of new music to love, I've found depth in artists I already loved, I listen to more of my music more often and I'm enjoying music overall much more than I was a year ago. What's not to love about vinyl?
thoughts in flux
I keep thinking about what I want to do with this blog. Well, about all my online presences really. I think my tumblr blog will be exclusively devoted to curating "things that are emotionally important to me for some reason." So not a lot of original content there, but a way to get a sense of the stuff that resonates with me.
Twitter is where I'm most academic, although, notably, not about the things I'm professionally paid to be academic about. I tend to do most of my tech and anti-tech philosophy retweeting there. I try to stay away from the outrage of the day but occasionally get sucked in. More rarely over time I hope. I may conscious restrict the topics I talk about there in order to foster more conversational depth, but we'll see.
This blog, I don't know. I could try and build a following but a) I'm a little embarrassed by the apparent age of the blogspot format, and b) I'm not sure my thoughts, such as they are, are really ready for prime time. I do like some of the new blog formats and I do want to create a new blog I maintain. The only question here is am I going to just switch to a more modern, flexible platform, or am I going to try and make one myself, for myself? The latter is less dubious, given my history of focus and discipline, but it's my ideal. The kind of blog I want to make, both in appearance and functionality is probably one I'd have to make myself. The existing social media platforms all have their strengths, but none are quite what I really want, and some are outright obnoxious. I just want and online presence that's not bullshit.
All that said, the writing topics have continued to pile up, overflow and fall down the memory hole. There is lots I want to write about but haven't been writing about. There's really only a limited window to do so before the thoughts that want to be expressed are stale and no longer emotionally resonant. So that sucks. I may try and knock out a few simple ones tonight. I am in the middle of another "taking stock" phase, which is important and usually leads to a big post, but which is also my least interesting writing as it is largely glorified navel-gazing. Although I suppose that's true of most of the internet right now. I'm not sure the pizza rat topic from yesterday had much of deep importance about it but it still summoned a lot of words from people.
Beyond that, I'm not sure I ever want this blog to get "famous" unless I actually start producing some actually notable works of art or writing that would lead people to want to hear what I have to say. That seems like the proper route to me, in any case. And as always, I am all about proprietary.
In any case, dear reader who has no name, I hope you are well. And I sincerely hope to shape this blog, or something like it, into something worth reading in the near future.
Twitter is where I'm most academic, although, notably, not about the things I'm professionally paid to be academic about. I tend to do most of my tech and anti-tech philosophy retweeting there. I try to stay away from the outrage of the day but occasionally get sucked in. More rarely over time I hope. I may conscious restrict the topics I talk about there in order to foster more conversational depth, but we'll see.
This blog, I don't know. I could try and build a following but a) I'm a little embarrassed by the apparent age of the blogspot format, and b) I'm not sure my thoughts, such as they are, are really ready for prime time. I do like some of the new blog formats and I do want to create a new blog I maintain. The only question here is am I going to just switch to a more modern, flexible platform, or am I going to try and make one myself, for myself? The latter is less dubious, given my history of focus and discipline, but it's my ideal. The kind of blog I want to make, both in appearance and functionality is probably one I'd have to make myself. The existing social media platforms all have their strengths, but none are quite what I really want, and some are outright obnoxious. I just want and online presence that's not bullshit.
All that said, the writing topics have continued to pile up, overflow and fall down the memory hole. There is lots I want to write about but haven't been writing about. There's really only a limited window to do so before the thoughts that want to be expressed are stale and no longer emotionally resonant. So that sucks. I may try and knock out a few simple ones tonight. I am in the middle of another "taking stock" phase, which is important and usually leads to a big post, but which is also my least interesting writing as it is largely glorified navel-gazing. Although I suppose that's true of most of the internet right now. I'm not sure the pizza rat topic from yesterday had much of deep importance about it but it still summoned a lot of words from people.
Beyond that, I'm not sure I ever want this blog to get "famous" unless I actually start producing some actually notable works of art or writing that would lead people to want to hear what I have to say. That seems like the proper route to me, in any case. And as always, I am all about proprietary.
In any case, dear reader who has no name, I hope you are well. And I sincerely hope to shape this blog, or something like it, into something worth reading in the near future.
Wednesday, August 19, 2015
Building Momentum
Three new, if short, book reviews on CMS today. Which, by implication, means I've been developing a reading habit again! Yay, forward motion.
That's not funny
I remember being about 10-years-old and laughing my ass off at Bill Cosby. I had stumbled onto his bit about his kids thinking their names were "Damn It" and "Jesus Christ" because those were the two most common things he shouted at them.
"Damn it! Get in here!"
"But dad, my name's Jesus Christ!"
Which, for all of Cosby's sins, is still one of the funniest comedy routines I've every heard. Even at 10 I couldn't stop laughing. My mother, who came into the room just in time to hear the end of that, said only, "That's not funny, James."
And it wasn't, not to her. I doubt any modern lefty would care or agree, but Jesus Christ was a topic sacred to her and not only was it not funny, not only did she feel it was unfair mockery of her beliefs and lifestyle (what she might have called "punching down" today), but she didn't want to even hear the joke. I wasn't allowed to laugh at it, Cosby shouldn't have said it, she just wanted it to go away because she found it uncomfortable and hurtful.
This is the story that pops into my head every time I hear the endless "kids are too PC to get humor" thing that's still going around. It's a little different than what people are talking about. Cosby isn't intending to make fun of Christians, but himself, and while he is using my mom's sacred cow to do it, it's not with the intent to offend her, he just doesn't find taking the lord's name in vain to be much of a problem. There's definitely a difference between that and a humor intended to diminish, belittle and mock a given human stereotype or identity. So should Cosby not be allowed to make that joke because people like my mother think it's punching down at them? I think a large part of the problem is we're conflating too much in this conversation. Not all humor comes from the same place, with the same effect and for the same purpose.
So is making fun of Christians punching down, even if they have privilege? What is the clearly delineated hierarchy of suffering by which we can universally determine what humor is punching down and what is in good fun? Can we make fun of conservative christians with whatever unkind mockery we like because they have historically operated from a place of privilege? What if they report back that they don't feel that way, and that the humor feels unfair? Who gets to decide that? Can we unilaterally declare ourselves off limits to jokes because we have suffered? If so, how much suffering do we need to endure before we are safe from ridicule?
I think rather than focus on making sure no one is ever uncomfortable, which is both unworkable and unwise (sometimes people may need to point things out about us that are uncomfortable but important to hear), it's better to focus on intent. Some jokes are intended to be absurd, and maybe play too carelessly with people's sacred ideas. Some jokes are pointedly meant to shock and skewer sacred ideas because the teller feels it necessary. Some jokes are meant to simply uphold power and privilege and dehumanize the already demonized. Those scenarios all need to be handled differently. If an absurd joke would still be funny if they characters all had their identities switched around or changed for others, it's hard to get too worked up about it. Irreverent sacred cow skewering will always be controversial, but there's room for disagreement when it's institutions and ideologies being attacked instead of people. Humor meant to demonize and dehumanize can simply be met with a flat, "that's not funny."
The mistake generally seems to be declaring topics off-limits, regardless of intent. Or, from the other end, trying to pretend jokes that were clearly intended to dehumanize and demonize were "just a joke" i.e. absurdist. It's fair to point out the intent and quality of a joke can be critiqued. It's fair to point out you don't get to declare yourself off-limits from criticism or critique, whether it comes in the form of humor or not.
I look forward to dissecting humor until it stops moving with all of you in the coming months.
"Damn it! Get in here!"
"But dad, my name's Jesus Christ!"
Which, for all of Cosby's sins, is still one of the funniest comedy routines I've every heard. Even at 10 I couldn't stop laughing. My mother, who came into the room just in time to hear the end of that, said only, "That's not funny, James."
And it wasn't, not to her. I doubt any modern lefty would care or agree, but Jesus Christ was a topic sacred to her and not only was it not funny, not only did she feel it was unfair mockery of her beliefs and lifestyle (what she might have called "punching down" today), but she didn't want to even hear the joke. I wasn't allowed to laugh at it, Cosby shouldn't have said it, she just wanted it to go away because she found it uncomfortable and hurtful.
This is the story that pops into my head every time I hear the endless "kids are too PC to get humor" thing that's still going around. It's a little different than what people are talking about. Cosby isn't intending to make fun of Christians, but himself, and while he is using my mom's sacred cow to do it, it's not with the intent to offend her, he just doesn't find taking the lord's name in vain to be much of a problem. There's definitely a difference between that and a humor intended to diminish, belittle and mock a given human stereotype or identity. So should Cosby not be allowed to make that joke because people like my mother think it's punching down at them? I think a large part of the problem is we're conflating too much in this conversation. Not all humor comes from the same place, with the same effect and for the same purpose.
So is making fun of Christians punching down, even if they have privilege? What is the clearly delineated hierarchy of suffering by which we can universally determine what humor is punching down and what is in good fun? Can we make fun of conservative christians with whatever unkind mockery we like because they have historically operated from a place of privilege? What if they report back that they don't feel that way, and that the humor feels unfair? Who gets to decide that? Can we unilaterally declare ourselves off limits to jokes because we have suffered? If so, how much suffering do we need to endure before we are safe from ridicule?
I think rather than focus on making sure no one is ever uncomfortable, which is both unworkable and unwise (sometimes people may need to point things out about us that are uncomfortable but important to hear), it's better to focus on intent. Some jokes are intended to be absurd, and maybe play too carelessly with people's sacred ideas. Some jokes are pointedly meant to shock and skewer sacred ideas because the teller feels it necessary. Some jokes are meant to simply uphold power and privilege and dehumanize the already demonized. Those scenarios all need to be handled differently. If an absurd joke would still be funny if they characters all had their identities switched around or changed for others, it's hard to get too worked up about it. Irreverent sacred cow skewering will always be controversial, but there's room for disagreement when it's institutions and ideologies being attacked instead of people. Humor meant to demonize and dehumanize can simply be met with a flat, "that's not funny."
The mistake generally seems to be declaring topics off-limits, regardless of intent. Or, from the other end, trying to pretend jokes that were clearly intended to dehumanize and demonize were "just a joke" i.e. absurdist. It's fair to point out the intent and quality of a joke can be critiqued. It's fair to point out you don't get to declare yourself off-limits from criticism or critique, whether it comes in the form of humor or not.
I look forward to dissecting humor until it stops moving with all of you in the coming months.
Monday, August 10, 2015
College Humor and other oxy morons
I don't know why I'm bothering to wade in on the "college kids are too PC to understand humor anymore," pseudo-controlversy, but there are a couple things I want to parse.
First, the idea of humor as necessary counterweight to one's own pride and hubris seems to be a little bit dead on certain segments of the left. There is this sense, especially among lefty types who seem grimly determined to have a firmer grasp of "what's going on" than everyone else, that it is known who the villains are (them) and it is known what is punching up (punching away from them) and what is punching down (punching down towards them) and that comedy acts should then comfortably re-affirm what it is they already know to be true. The kind of people who love the Onion until it hits too close to home in other words. So I do agree that there is kind of a generally obnoxious sense that for the educated left, the court jester could not possibly point out something uncomfortable that they are already not keenly aware of and have formed all the opinions that everyone has all decided are correct. Leaving me to wonder if comedy on campus is supposed to be something not so much laughed at as nodded along with sagely.
Yes, those are the sins of corporations. Yes, those are the sins of patriarchs. Yes, those are the sins of the majority and a rigged system. Well done comedy man, you checked all the right boxes.
Which is all to say, of course some members of the left are sometimes over-the-top in their preening self-regard, lack of personal humility and generally annoying "know-it-all" self-righteous attitude. Hey, it happens to the best of us. The good news is it's a nice reminder how much we have in common with the right sometimes!
That said, some caveats.
One, I'm not sure how much of a plague this really is. While yes I think the left could use some kind of lessons in not repeating the sins attributed to conservatism without the slightest hint of self-awareness, this certainly isn't all leftists and may not even be enough people to warrant the press coverage. There are lots of very nice liberal types who are willing to entertain a comedian who doesn't 100% line up with their values. The left contains multitudes. My "sense of things" written out above is just that, "a sense of things" and should not be considered worth more than the paper it's printed on. But I certainly don't think it's a dire emergency, I just want some people to tone it down with the self-righteousness and the un-ending purity crusades from time to time.
Two, it's not really true that kids these days hate comedy. Louis C. K. is filthy and pushes all kinds of boundaries and college kids love him. True, he generally seems to punch in the direction they want to see comedians punching, but that doesn't make his work sometimes very challenging (see his most recent SNL monologue for some of that! Ooph, that was hard to sit through). But, "comedians" contains multitudes too. And it IS true that some comedians are hacks who rely on tired stereotypes that more and more people don't find too funny anymore. There is a growing sense of extreme exhaustion with the traditional lack of accountability for sexist, racist, and seemingly unaccountable patriarchs who all remain firmly at the helm of so much of our civilization and so comedy that just seems to reinforce the idea that "boys will be boys" (i.e. unaccountable to anyone else) is getting less and less play. And I can't say I blame anyone for being tired of a lot of those tropes.
I don't know if I have the wherewithal to parse this much further tonight, but there does seem to some mic grabbing going on, as who gets to define what is and isn't funny. And I get it, there is power in humor. There is power in who gets to decide who and what is worthy of ridicule and therefore who it is acceptable to treat poorly. Humor is a powerful tool in normalizing cultural stories about who the heroes and villains are in a given age. True power is exposed in who and what are considered beyond the pale to joke about. So while I understand the urge to keep comedians from punching towards oneself and one's allies who are perceived as vulnerable, and therefore to be protected, a movement that can't laugh at it's own foibles is in really dangerous territory.
Maybe we should focus less about laughing at other people, and focus more on laughing at ourselves.
First, the idea of humor as necessary counterweight to one's own pride and hubris seems to be a little bit dead on certain segments of the left. There is this sense, especially among lefty types who seem grimly determined to have a firmer grasp of "what's going on" than everyone else, that it is known who the villains are (them) and it is known what is punching up (punching away from them) and what is punching down (punching down towards them) and that comedy acts should then comfortably re-affirm what it is they already know to be true. The kind of people who love the Onion until it hits too close to home in other words. So I do agree that there is kind of a generally obnoxious sense that for the educated left, the court jester could not possibly point out something uncomfortable that they are already not keenly aware of and have formed all the opinions that everyone has all decided are correct. Leaving me to wonder if comedy on campus is supposed to be something not so much laughed at as nodded along with sagely.
Yes, those are the sins of corporations. Yes, those are the sins of patriarchs. Yes, those are the sins of the majority and a rigged system. Well done comedy man, you checked all the right boxes.
Which is all to say, of course some members of the left are sometimes over-the-top in their preening self-regard, lack of personal humility and generally annoying "know-it-all" self-righteous attitude. Hey, it happens to the best of us. The good news is it's a nice reminder how much we have in common with the right sometimes!
That said, some caveats.
One, I'm not sure how much of a plague this really is. While yes I think the left could use some kind of lessons in not repeating the sins attributed to conservatism without the slightest hint of self-awareness, this certainly isn't all leftists and may not even be enough people to warrant the press coverage. There are lots of very nice liberal types who are willing to entertain a comedian who doesn't 100% line up with their values. The left contains multitudes. My "sense of things" written out above is just that, "a sense of things" and should not be considered worth more than the paper it's printed on. But I certainly don't think it's a dire emergency, I just want some people to tone it down with the self-righteousness and the un-ending purity crusades from time to time.
Two, it's not really true that kids these days hate comedy. Louis C. K. is filthy and pushes all kinds of boundaries and college kids love him. True, he generally seems to punch in the direction they want to see comedians punching, but that doesn't make his work sometimes very challenging (see his most recent SNL monologue for some of that! Ooph, that was hard to sit through). But, "comedians" contains multitudes too. And it IS true that some comedians are hacks who rely on tired stereotypes that more and more people don't find too funny anymore. There is a growing sense of extreme exhaustion with the traditional lack of accountability for sexist, racist, and seemingly unaccountable patriarchs who all remain firmly at the helm of so much of our civilization and so comedy that just seems to reinforce the idea that "boys will be boys" (i.e. unaccountable to anyone else) is getting less and less play. And I can't say I blame anyone for being tired of a lot of those tropes.
I don't know if I have the wherewithal to parse this much further tonight, but there does seem to some mic grabbing going on, as who gets to define what is and isn't funny. And I get it, there is power in humor. There is power in who gets to decide who and what is worthy of ridicule and therefore who it is acceptable to treat poorly. Humor is a powerful tool in normalizing cultural stories about who the heroes and villains are in a given age. True power is exposed in who and what are considered beyond the pale to joke about. So while I understand the urge to keep comedians from punching towards oneself and one's allies who are perceived as vulnerable, and therefore to be protected, a movement that can't laugh at it's own foibles is in really dangerous territory.
Maybe we should focus less about laughing at other people, and focus more on laughing at ourselves.
Sunday, August 02, 2015
A Festivus for the rest of us!
My thoughts on Alain de Botton's Religion for Atheists are here. Short version: I loved it. The questions he asks are important.
Monday, July 20, 2015
Do You Even Lift?
I’m kinda at this point where I need to embrace some body positivity about myself, but also kind of want to start exercising again because it helps me stay sane and evens out the peaks and valleys of my emotional roller-coaster.
And it’s weird to phrase it this way, but if I get fit, it won’t be so much a warm embrace of fitness culture so much as hate-fucking it with a “yuck” face. Which is a phrase or idea I’ve never liked, and I kind of hate to use it, but it’s the closest I can come to describing my sense of unease with the fitness industry. There’s just something cult-ish and unbearably smug about fitness culture as a whole.
For one, there’s kind of this constant mind fuck around attitude that I understand is just an attempt to push me past my bullshit and do the thing, but still, the kind of single-minded zealousness people work themselves into around the gym is very off-putting, especially if you grew up in fundamentalism and are now currently allergic to anything remotely resembling it. And I think there might be such a thing as fitness fundamentalists. I can barely go to yoga, even though I like the basic experience of it, because they so rarely seem to be able to leave well enough alone without bringing in some new agey bullshit around the whole endeavor, especially the yoga gurus, who conveniently have a book I can buy.
The other thing that bothers me about “the fit” is this bizarre protestant/capitalist work ethic angle where if you put in the time and the work into shaping your body into something generally regarded as pleasing by modern tastes, you shall be rewarded, and indeed perhaps owed, a relationship with someone possessing a body of equal or better well-shaped pleasingness. On some level, I understand, this is just how humans mate, typically by selecting someone a lot like them, but …. still. It just makes the whole thing seem so superficial and a little yucky.
If the over-whelming takeaway message was, “we want you to be healthy and live a long, happy life” I might be able to swallow it better. But, I don’t know, that’s just not the over-whelming message that seems to shine through the brightest.
Sunday, July 12, 2015
Post-trip realization
I have no idea where i fit in the world anymore, nor the faintest idea what I'm doing.
I've basically found no place that makes sense to me since leaving my religion and I'm not going back. My religion was structured and purpose-filled but dystopian in its fundamentaist authoritarianism. The secular world is freer, but chaos, with an anti-pathy to purpose beyond capitalism and self-interest.
Who do you think you are to struggle with existential questions and doubt in any way other that alone, in quiet desperation?
So everyone scavenges for purpose and community as best they can.
I don't understand it. I don't understand my place in it. I don't like the sense of helplessness that inspires.
I don't like how much I don't try to change things.
I'd walk the earth, but I don't know Kung Fu.
So there's that awkward fact about me.
I've basically found no place that makes sense to me since leaving my religion and I'm not going back. My religion was structured and purpose-filled but dystopian in its fundamentaist authoritarianism. The secular world is freer, but chaos, with an anti-pathy to purpose beyond capitalism and self-interest.
Who do you think you are to struggle with existential questions and doubt in any way other that alone, in quiet desperation?
So everyone scavenges for purpose and community as best they can.
I don't understand it. I don't understand my place in it. I don't like the sense of helplessness that inspires.
I don't like how much I don't try to change things.
I'd walk the earth, but I don't know Kung Fu.
So there's that awkward fact about me.
Thursday, July 02, 2015
Defining Adventure Down
I think I'm finally narrowing down my strong antipathy to "must love adventure" crowd on dating sites and, uh, almost everywhere else (I know this is a weird thing to obsess over, but here I am). It comes down to a couple things for me.
First, it seems like a completely mindless capitulation to the current advertising push in all sectors. It's an adventure to buy a coke, it's an adventure to buy a car, it's an adventure to choose your brand, etc. Every ad now is that ubiquitous stadium anthem music dreck and free spirits waving their arms about while they buy shit they don't need. I understand our bland, consumer-driven lives might need some punch, this does not mean going to the mall is now an epic of homerian proportions. We don't have to accept "participating in the economy" as the definition of "adventure" just because the soulless and sad Don Draper wannabes tell us to. For god's sake have some pride.
Second, it defines adventure away to mean everything and nothing. Much like the Louis C.K.'s bit on "everything's amazing and nobody's happy.", once you use adventure to describe going to the mall with your friends, or going on an easy hike 30 min out of town, what' s left to describe reporting in a war zone? Hacking your way through the amazonian jungle in search of new species? Going to space in a rocket? If adventure is a glorified "leaving the house" then adventure is the definition of normalcy and tedium.
Third, has it really come to this? Has modern life beaten us down so much that having the bravery to leave the house is now adventure-level status? Do we need it to be such an epic to even summon the motivation? I'd like to think we can make it a norm again, and not the extraordinary act of extraordinary people. Like maybe it's possible to perform the basic responsibilities of adult life without creating a grossly inflated and narcissistic mythology around how wonderful and meaningful everything we do is simply by virtue of it being us that's doing it, you know? It's delusional, and it's the kind of delusion that only benefits advertisers who want everyone to share in the delusion that brand engagement and an obscene focus on brand preference is an important and meaningful part of life. It isn't. It never will be.
It's an adventure for a toddler to leave the house. It's an adventure for an adult to leave the country, or in a few notable cases, the planet. You don't like adventure, you just like leaving the house.
First, it seems like a completely mindless capitulation to the current advertising push in all sectors. It's an adventure to buy a coke, it's an adventure to buy a car, it's an adventure to choose your brand, etc. Every ad now is that ubiquitous stadium anthem music dreck and free spirits waving their arms about while they buy shit they don't need. I understand our bland, consumer-driven lives might need some punch, this does not mean going to the mall is now an epic of homerian proportions. We don't have to accept "participating in the economy" as the definition of "adventure" just because the soulless and sad Don Draper wannabes tell us to. For god's sake have some pride.
Second, it defines adventure away to mean everything and nothing. Much like the Louis C.K.'s bit on "everything's amazing and nobody's happy.", once you use adventure to describe going to the mall with your friends, or going on an easy hike 30 min out of town, what' s left to describe reporting in a war zone? Hacking your way through the amazonian jungle in search of new species? Going to space in a rocket? If adventure is a glorified "leaving the house" then adventure is the definition of normalcy and tedium.
Third, has it really come to this? Has modern life beaten us down so much that having the bravery to leave the house is now adventure-level status? Do we need it to be such an epic to even summon the motivation? I'd like to think we can make it a norm again, and not the extraordinary act of extraordinary people. Like maybe it's possible to perform the basic responsibilities of adult life without creating a grossly inflated and narcissistic mythology around how wonderful and meaningful everything we do is simply by virtue of it being us that's doing it, you know? It's delusional, and it's the kind of delusion that only benefits advertisers who want everyone to share in the delusion that brand engagement and an obscene focus on brand preference is an important and meaningful part of life. It isn't. It never will be.
It's an adventure for a toddler to leave the house. It's an adventure for an adult to leave the country, or in a few notable cases, the planet. You don't like adventure, you just like leaving the house.
Tuesday, June 30, 2015
Redshirts Review Up
I think it's probably wise (and kind) to not review books I don't like, especially if I ever hope to make friends that are writers, but I think Scalzi can take it. I have a review of Redshirts up at CMS. Theoretically it's right up my alley, but I ended up hating how meta it was. Going meta is a tool best used sparingly and with subtlety.
Blocked
I have a tangled mess of things I want to write about in my head, but I can't figure out which thread to pull first. This coupled with poor self-discipline and a mental diet of candy for 15 years and a lack of practice in actually putting my thoughts together in a coherent or compelling fashion has left me, regrettably, a little blocked.
I do journal, and it's occurred to me I should just take a couple years to write in those without the need to put it online for all to see, at least until I establish some confidence and stop being embarrassed by how my words look when put all together.
But I would hate to regret not saying what I have to say before I die. They'd send me back to do it proper I'm sure.
I do journal, and it's occurred to me I should just take a couple years to write in those without the need to put it online for all to see, at least until I establish some confidence and stop being embarrassed by how my words look when put all together.
But I would hate to regret not saying what I have to say before I die. They'd send me back to do it proper I'm sure.
Sunday, June 28, 2015
Consuming and Identity
So, I've finally finish Technics and Civilization, which I have failed to properly review here. it's a dense, thought-provoking philosophical work by Lewis Mumford addressing the relationship of our society to the machine that, despite being written in the 1930s, still feels timely. Partly because his thoughts were largely ignored by the movers and shakers of the world, so the problems he addresses have either continued in increased in the meantime. I really which I could have done a better job than my goodreads review, but this is all I got at the moment. I hope I can come back to it later for another read-through, because I think it's a work that merits a deeper treatment than I've given it here.
But in writing down some of the things I liked about it, I remembered one of my favorite parts. Towards the end of the book he's listing things we need to change to put our society on a course more centered towards human happiness (for ALL humans) and steer it back from a societal over-emphases on machines and mechanistic thinking. He seems to have very little use for the kind of consumerism where consumption is a substitute for personality and this was an idea I have never fully entertained before. Consuming as identity and personality.
This is the idea the ad companies have been selling for at least 100 years right? You're not a nobody, you're a Lexus driver. You're not a wallflower, you wear the latest fashions at the gap. Consumption as a substitute for personality. At times I am maddened by the world and it this, exactly this, that drives me batty. The substitution of consumer goods for a personality. What do I need to know about you except that you listen to the right music, wear the right clothes, watch the right movies, eat at the right places, etc.?
It's I think at the core of a lot of my complaints with geek culture especially. I love geek things, I love nerdy imaginative things, but I could give a shit if you've played the latest releases are wearing the all the franchise merchandise, have all the right collectibles, etc. Those things are not what make you you. Those things aren't what make you (or me!) worth talking to. They're just some crap anyone can buy. I don't care. Why do we care?
Maybe the kind of culture we get cobbled together from people who form identities based on consumer purchases and surround themselves with people who purchase the same things, more or less, so they can justify their own consumption isn't the strongest web of human inter-connection we can form. Like maybe, right?
I know I get preachy about this shit, but the dominance of brands in our cultural landscape is just very frustrating to me. It leaves so little room for meaningful ideas and meaningful people. "Purchasers of the right things." is like the least interesting of all the possible people we can be. I just wish we heard that more often instead of the opposite.
But in writing down some of the things I liked about it, I remembered one of my favorite parts. Towards the end of the book he's listing things we need to change to put our society on a course more centered towards human happiness (for ALL humans) and steer it back from a societal over-emphases on machines and mechanistic thinking. He seems to have very little use for the kind of consumerism where consumption is a substitute for personality and this was an idea I have never fully entertained before. Consuming as identity and personality.
This is the idea the ad companies have been selling for at least 100 years right? You're not a nobody, you're a Lexus driver. You're not a wallflower, you wear the latest fashions at the gap. Consumption as a substitute for personality. At times I am maddened by the world and it this, exactly this, that drives me batty. The substitution of consumer goods for a personality. What do I need to know about you except that you listen to the right music, wear the right clothes, watch the right movies, eat at the right places, etc.?
It's I think at the core of a lot of my complaints with geek culture especially. I love geek things, I love nerdy imaginative things, but I could give a shit if you've played the latest releases are wearing the all the franchise merchandise, have all the right collectibles, etc. Those things are not what make you you. Those things aren't what make you (or me!) worth talking to. They're just some crap anyone can buy. I don't care. Why do we care?
Maybe the kind of culture we get cobbled together from people who form identities based on consumer purchases and surround themselves with people who purchase the same things, more or less, so they can justify their own consumption isn't the strongest web of human inter-connection we can form. Like maybe, right?
I know I get preachy about this shit, but the dominance of brands in our cultural landscape is just very frustrating to me. It leaves so little room for meaningful ideas and meaningful people. "Purchasers of the right things." is like the least interesting of all the possible people we can be. I just wish we heard that more often instead of the opposite.
Monday, June 08, 2015
Hail Siri, full of grace
My outrageous thesis is we may have abandoned the idea of mindlessly worshipping gods, but not mindless worship itself.
— James Haus (@SoylentHHH) June 8, 2015
I'm trying to learn when to turn my tweets into a blog post. This is one of those times, less for profundity and more for verbosity.I remarked earlier today that the modern posture of tablet/phone/watch use is submission. Which I meant in the most leftist, hippie fashion, where people are being subtly being trained to adopt a submissive pose, which leads to a more submissive society. I believe there is actual research floating around out there documenting the biofeedback inherent in looking up versus looking down, at least as it relates to depression and happiness. Is it actually true that phones are making us more submissive by instilling a reflexive submissive posture? Hell if I know, but I'm running with the idea.
Interestingly, someone else thought I was referring to the posture as prayer-like. I wish! Prayer feels like a much more mindful, and thoughtful thing than bowing one's head in ritualistic response to the little glass gods we all carry around with us now. To be sure, prayer can be a mindless thing, as a childhood in a conservative church taught me, but it can also be a thoughtful thing, which is something I learned from the same place. Prayer is what you make of it. Indeed, meditative prayer is a genuine form of mindfulness meditation and has a strong tradition within the christian community. My respect for anyone who meditates or prays mindfully on what he or she believes to be good is leaps and bounds greater than the bowed head that comes of a reflexive response to one's mobile tech. "Oh, Siri wants me to stand now. Yes Siri, I hear and obey."
After coming out of the closet I went pretty far into the atheist/materialist side of the spectrum, and while I am still angry about a great many things involving christianity and my time in the closet, I have slowly swung back around to an appreciation of the nuance involved in what we collectively worship and why. I can't fault christians for wanting to worship God, nor do I think it cool to mock them for the desire, because "God" be he/she real or fictional embodies a nexus of concepts Grace/forgiveness/kindess/etc. that are an extremely important and necessary part of human civilization. And while those concepts can be found and worshipped outside of the christian experience, I can't fault people for wanting to worship those concepts, even if they come bundled with some unfortunate extras such as homophobia/persecution complex/etc. Especially since I don't believe those good and bad ideas are inextricably intertwined.
It's especially aggravating to watch people who clearly worship ideas such as technological progress and capitalism without much apparent thought turn around, and with great arrogance, mock other people for their unmindful worshipping. Like, if you go to WWDC and you sit with a quite sense of expectation and excitement for the wonders about to be revealed, you are, in fact, having a church experience and you don't have room to mock the religious for their habits. And if you bob your head mindlessly in deference to your tiny glass masters every time they ping at you, you certainly don't have room to mock the concept of mindless worship in other people. You are them and they are you and we are all together.
My radical thesis is that if we repeatedly practice the age-old postures of submission and subservience, we will by measure over time, find ourselves more submissive. To our phones, or the people who make them, to the algorithms they run, or to whatever I don't know. Just more submissive. My suggestion is that we maybe do that less. Don't assume the people who make apps are smarter than you and know what you need better than you do. Don't offload reasonable adult responsibility onto your phone like it's a manufactured parent or master. Turn off as many unnecessary demands for your attention as possible.
My dad used to tell me this story of him and his dad. My dad loved to watch old movies late on Saturday nights. And inevitably, he said, his father would knock on the door to his room, about half-way through the movie and just ask the question, "Does the TV control you, or do you control the TV?" And he would stand there until my dad turned the TV off and went to bed. I used to think this was the height of unreasonableness. Now, I think my grandpa was maybe a wise man.
Do you control your tech? Or does your tech control you? Raise your head if you understand.
Monday, June 01, 2015
Both Wicked and Divine
I think one of the most humbling aspects of aspiring to create anything is the knowledge that it's not all that unique. I'm a little stucky in a not-to-great place creatively where I read some amazing authors with wonderfully bonkers ideas and instead of being grateful for the experience, I'm instead envious and mad at myself for not participating in the construction of such wonders. These feelings are only magnified when the material in question is perilously close to ideas I've been sitting on forever, but have yet to get over my own bullshit sufficiently to explore.
This weekend I bought a number of delightfully imaginative graphic novels, that more or less read like an organized acid trip and I'm grateful once again for comics as a medium, where borderline hallucinogenic ideas can be explored so shamelessly just for the fun of it. In that lot were Trees by Warren Ellis and Jason Howard, who still delights with the unexpected, the new Prophet reboot by Brandon Graham and Simon Roy, volumes 2-4 of Saga by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples and the Wicked and the Divine by Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie.
Trees is about giant alien pillars that crash into the landscape and proceed to ignore us for 10 years, and is a slow burn towards revelation that I couldn't put down. Prophet is a glorious acid trip that really takes off in the closing story, in which Rob Liefeld's silly 90s character is reborn into a long-abandoned earth, seeking to restore the human empire, while navigating alien settlements teeming with death and slime. There's more to it than that, but a large part of the enjoyment of the story is a series of ever-more-interesting twists that lead to promising cliffhanger.
Saga, as most people seem to agree, is wonderful, if crass. A bananas new concept or image every issue or your money back kind of thing. I can't say anything more than a million people haven't said already, but it's worth your time, if you're into weird alien odysseys.
The Wicked and the Divine blew me away, and prompted the need to write about it all. It's the story of the pantheon of gods (a mixture of all regional pantheons apparently) who reincarnate every 90 years, inspire the world with their over-the-top antics for a couple years and then die horribly. The story frames itself around Lucifer, who defies the mysterious rules of the gods by using divine powers to destroy some would-be assassins, and who is later framed for killing the judge at her trial. It's maybe not a story for everyone, but if you like any sort of mythology, it's worth a look.
I got a sick feeling while reading that last though. Not because it isn't good, it is, but because it's so perilously close to a story I've been dragging my feet on where the gods are re-incarnated as children periodically (although the set-up and the overall themes/direction are fairly different). Which is a silly response on a number of levels. It's not like this author is the first to write about gods incarnate. It's not like I can't write my own take on it anyway as long as I'm forthright about the similarities and don't lift anything wholesale and claim it as my own. It's not like I imagine I'll ever actually be the kind of writer that people will pay human dollars to read, so there's really not competition here.
But I'm still getting that, "Oh god, I've procrastinated too long and now the moment has passed me by," kind of feeling, which I get a lot, and I'm maybe getting tired of it. Both in a, "there's no reason not to write my crappy stories" kind of way and in a broader more philosophical, "nobody really owns an idea, man" kind of way.
Which is true right? There's no such thing as "my ideas," there's just ideas I've discovered on my own, or have been expressed to me by other people and I discard them, or incorporate them or champion them to other people as shiny golden wonders. But I certainly don't own them, and I can't take credit for them and I shouldn't feel bad when someone takes an idea I stumbled across roaming free and snaps them onto other ideas they also find pleasing and calls it a story and tries to share it with me, right? I mean, what are we if not idea-processing machines who snap thoughts together like lego into what we consider pleasing shapes and then share with other people? If that's ownership, then it's the kind of ownership strengthened and validated when shared as far and wide as possible I think. Especially since there is no artificial scarcity involved. Ideas are an infinite resource that can be replicated as many times as there are sentient minds to do so.
And we should do that. I should do that. I should make little lego-idea objects to send to you, which you should examine as a whole and then pick apart and reassemble incorporating any lego ideas you've managed to hold on to in your time here. Or not, if that doesn't seem like a good idea to you.
Maybe it doesn't matter who touched an idea first, how long it's taken me to piece mine together, how many people care to receive it, maybe it's just the ideas that are important, and championing the ideas that seem particularly important in the here and now. Maybe I can just get out of my own way for once.
I am not unique. I am not original. I do not create or own ideas, there is no artificial scarcity in idea-space, I am not the first to swim here and I will not be the last. And that's all okay. Because ideas are fun. Creativity is fun. And I only have so much time to play with them. Why waste that gift on petty jealousy over a thing that no one can own?
This weekend I bought a number of delightfully imaginative graphic novels, that more or less read like an organized acid trip and I'm grateful once again for comics as a medium, where borderline hallucinogenic ideas can be explored so shamelessly just for the fun of it. In that lot were Trees by Warren Ellis and Jason Howard, who still delights with the unexpected, the new Prophet reboot by Brandon Graham and Simon Roy, volumes 2-4 of Saga by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples and the Wicked and the Divine by Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie.
Trees is about giant alien pillars that crash into the landscape and proceed to ignore us for 10 years, and is a slow burn towards revelation that I couldn't put down. Prophet is a glorious acid trip that really takes off in the closing story, in which Rob Liefeld's silly 90s character is reborn into a long-abandoned earth, seeking to restore the human empire, while navigating alien settlements teeming with death and slime. There's more to it than that, but a large part of the enjoyment of the story is a series of ever-more-interesting twists that lead to promising cliffhanger.
Saga, as most people seem to agree, is wonderful, if crass. A bananas new concept or image every issue or your money back kind of thing. I can't say anything more than a million people haven't said already, but it's worth your time, if you're into weird alien odysseys.
The Wicked and the Divine blew me away, and prompted the need to write about it all. It's the story of the pantheon of gods (a mixture of all regional pantheons apparently) who reincarnate every 90 years, inspire the world with their over-the-top antics for a couple years and then die horribly. The story frames itself around Lucifer, who defies the mysterious rules of the gods by using divine powers to destroy some would-be assassins, and who is later framed for killing the judge at her trial. It's maybe not a story for everyone, but if you like any sort of mythology, it's worth a look.
I got a sick feeling while reading that last though. Not because it isn't good, it is, but because it's so perilously close to a story I've been dragging my feet on where the gods are re-incarnated as children periodically (although the set-up and the overall themes/direction are fairly different). Which is a silly response on a number of levels. It's not like this author is the first to write about gods incarnate. It's not like I can't write my own take on it anyway as long as I'm forthright about the similarities and don't lift anything wholesale and claim it as my own. It's not like I imagine I'll ever actually be the kind of writer that people will pay human dollars to read, so there's really not competition here.
But I'm still getting that, "Oh god, I've procrastinated too long and now the moment has passed me by," kind of feeling, which I get a lot, and I'm maybe getting tired of it. Both in a, "there's no reason not to write my crappy stories" kind of way and in a broader more philosophical, "nobody really owns an idea, man" kind of way.
Which is true right? There's no such thing as "my ideas," there's just ideas I've discovered on my own, or have been expressed to me by other people and I discard them, or incorporate them or champion them to other people as shiny golden wonders. But I certainly don't own them, and I can't take credit for them and I shouldn't feel bad when someone takes an idea I stumbled across roaming free and snaps them onto other ideas they also find pleasing and calls it a story and tries to share it with me, right? I mean, what are we if not idea-processing machines who snap thoughts together like lego into what we consider pleasing shapes and then share with other people? If that's ownership, then it's the kind of ownership strengthened and validated when shared as far and wide as possible I think. Especially since there is no artificial scarcity involved. Ideas are an infinite resource that can be replicated as many times as there are sentient minds to do so.
And we should do that. I should do that. I should make little lego-idea objects to send to you, which you should examine as a whole and then pick apart and reassemble incorporating any lego ideas you've managed to hold on to in your time here. Or not, if that doesn't seem like a good idea to you.
Maybe it doesn't matter who touched an idea first, how long it's taken me to piece mine together, how many people care to receive it, maybe it's just the ideas that are important, and championing the ideas that seem particularly important in the here and now. Maybe I can just get out of my own way for once.
I am not unique. I am not original. I do not create or own ideas, there is no artificial scarcity in idea-space, I am not the first to swim here and I will not be the last. And that's all okay. Because ideas are fun. Creativity is fun. And I only have so much time to play with them. Why waste that gift on petty jealousy over a thing that no one can own?
Wednesday, May 20, 2015
The strange convergence of comics and movies.
We currently live in the movie age I only dared dream of as a child: all my favorite heroes rendered big as life on the big screen. It's only kind of a shame I've outgrown it to some degree. But nostaliga is a hell of a drug, so I dutifully watch the majority of them anyway, from the clunkers to the keepers. And while I'm not so interested in seeing spider-man's origin story for the umpteenth time anymore, I am interested in the broader phenomenon of the comic book industries shift in focus from print to cinema.
To be sure, both DC and Marvel and printing books and promoting the hell out of them, but sometime since Iron Man and Iron Man busted into the screen, it seems the central canon of their myth-making has shifted quite rapidly from the print universe to the MCU. With that, the movies themselves have begun to resemble comics books in editing an execution in a way that really hinders the story-telling, imo.
It used to be you'd watch more or less a complete movie, more or less contained with itself, with only Agent Coulson and the little bits at the end hinting at a broader lead-in to the Avengers movie. Since the Avengers, however, the movies themselves seem more like summer comic book events, with all the positives and negatives that go along with it. All your favorite heroes in one place? Check. Broader tie-ins to spin-off stories? Check. Epic-scope action but so many moving pieces there's no time to actually focus on any one character or idea with any depth? Check, check, a thousand times check.
I was addicted to comic books for quite a while. The main culprit was an addictive personality and the teaser at the end of ever issue. It didn't matter how tidily an individual issue was at the end, there'd always be some sort of non-sequitor] leading into the next plot. For me, it was just enough of a hook to get me into the next issue "What does mister sinister have planned!!!?", even if it made no sense in the context of the current issue. It was aesthetically damaging to the story of the issue, while completely functional in giving me a reason to tune in next week too. I found it and my inability to not check the next week out completely annoying.
Unfortunately, the MCU movies are turning into this type of story-telling almost exclusively. Avengers 2 was so busy setting up all the spin-offs and sequels it almost didn't have time to tell the story it was actually there to tell. It felt much more like comic book editing and storytelling, especially in the worst sort of pulpy, "I promise the real pay-off is in the next issue" kind of way.
It took me a long time to figure this out, but the primary motive of the storyteller plays an important part of the storytelling experience. There's stories that an artist has to tell because they are truth, beauty and wonder and there are stories a corporation tells because it's building a franchise and it matters less that the stories express the truth, beauty and wonder of the world, which they might, than viewers buy the next installment. They're trying to run a business here after all.
I'm not saying the latter style of storytelling is evil or anything, but I prefer the former, which generally only occurs in a utopian ideal where whether the story makes enough money to feed the artist isn't really a factor. If you write to eat you write to please others more than yourself, and that's not wrong. That said, it feels like the current editorship at the MCU in particular, (the complete bro-run clusterfuck that is the DCCU is better left untouched for my current purposes) has lost a certain sense of subtlety in weaving it's universe together.
GotG was delightful in part, I believe, because it had so little connection to the MCU at the time, and no reason to include material irrelevant to the proceedings at hand. In fact, I'd argue that the parts of the movie that dragged the most were the bits with Thanos, precisely because they were there as a placeholder to tie it in to the larger MCU, with the implicit promise of a pay-off down the road. Avengers 2, on the other hand, was all the more insufferable because it felt like the action occasionally got paused, and an editor walked out from behind the screen, coughed into a mic and said, "See this? This has nothing to do with the movie, be sure to watch Thor 3 to get the rest of the story!" In a comic book this kind of asterisk is skippable, in a movie it grinds momentum to a halt.
All of which is to say, in terms of tying all the MCU movies together, less would be so much more. It WAS so much more pre-avengers. I feel like the editors and producers have lost sight of the fact that ALL that is necessary to get my ass in a seat for the next installment, is to make this one so good I'll leave the theater hungry for more. This was my experience with Fury Road, and I didn't even know a sequel was in the works until after. The movie itself certainly didn't waste time horning that in. I'm hoping someone above my paygrade can gently remind the folks in the Disney story-telling empire of the beauty of simplicity.
When I was young and dumb, among my greatest wishes was that before the end of the world, Lucas would get around to making the Star Wars prequels he'd always hinted at and special effects would get good enough to bring all my favorite superheroes to life. I never imagined that so many of these movies would so unnecessarily leaving me feeling so hollow. Be careful what you wish for kids.
To be sure, both DC and Marvel and printing books and promoting the hell out of them, but sometime since Iron Man and Iron Man busted into the screen, it seems the central canon of their myth-making has shifted quite rapidly from the print universe to the MCU. With that, the movies themselves have begun to resemble comics books in editing an execution in a way that really hinders the story-telling, imo.
It used to be you'd watch more or less a complete movie, more or less contained with itself, with only Agent Coulson and the little bits at the end hinting at a broader lead-in to the Avengers movie. Since the Avengers, however, the movies themselves seem more like summer comic book events, with all the positives and negatives that go along with it. All your favorite heroes in one place? Check. Broader tie-ins to spin-off stories? Check. Epic-scope action but so many moving pieces there's no time to actually focus on any one character or idea with any depth? Check, check, a thousand times check.
I was addicted to comic books for quite a while. The main culprit was an addictive personality and the teaser at the end of ever issue. It didn't matter how tidily an individual issue was at the end, there'd always be some sort of non-sequitor] leading into the next plot. For me, it was just enough of a hook to get me into the next issue "What does mister sinister have planned!!!?", even if it made no sense in the context of the current issue. It was aesthetically damaging to the story of the issue, while completely functional in giving me a reason to tune in next week too. I found it and my inability to not check the next week out completely annoying.
Unfortunately, the MCU movies are turning into this type of story-telling almost exclusively. Avengers 2 was so busy setting up all the spin-offs and sequels it almost didn't have time to tell the story it was actually there to tell. It felt much more like comic book editing and storytelling, especially in the worst sort of pulpy, "I promise the real pay-off is in the next issue" kind of way.
It took me a long time to figure this out, but the primary motive of the storyteller plays an important part of the storytelling experience. There's stories that an artist has to tell because they are truth, beauty and wonder and there are stories a corporation tells because it's building a franchise and it matters less that the stories express the truth, beauty and wonder of the world, which they might, than viewers buy the next installment. They're trying to run a business here after all.
I'm not saying the latter style of storytelling is evil or anything, but I prefer the former, which generally only occurs in a utopian ideal where whether the story makes enough money to feed the artist isn't really a factor. If you write to eat you write to please others more than yourself, and that's not wrong. That said, it feels like the current editorship at the MCU in particular, (the complete bro-run clusterfuck that is the DCCU is better left untouched for my current purposes) has lost a certain sense of subtlety in weaving it's universe together.
GotG was delightful in part, I believe, because it had so little connection to the MCU at the time, and no reason to include material irrelevant to the proceedings at hand. In fact, I'd argue that the parts of the movie that dragged the most were the bits with Thanos, precisely because they were there as a placeholder to tie it in to the larger MCU, with the implicit promise of a pay-off down the road. Avengers 2, on the other hand, was all the more insufferable because it felt like the action occasionally got paused, and an editor walked out from behind the screen, coughed into a mic and said, "See this? This has nothing to do with the movie, be sure to watch Thor 3 to get the rest of the story!" In a comic book this kind of asterisk is skippable, in a movie it grinds momentum to a halt.
All of which is to say, in terms of tying all the MCU movies together, less would be so much more. It WAS so much more pre-avengers. I feel like the editors and producers have lost sight of the fact that ALL that is necessary to get my ass in a seat for the next installment, is to make this one so good I'll leave the theater hungry for more. This was my experience with Fury Road, and I didn't even know a sequel was in the works until after. The movie itself certainly didn't waste time horning that in. I'm hoping someone above my paygrade can gently remind the folks in the Disney story-telling empire of the beauty of simplicity.
When I was young and dumb, among my greatest wishes was that before the end of the world, Lucas would get around to making the Star Wars prequels he'd always hinted at and special effects would get good enough to bring all my favorite superheroes to life. I never imagined that so many of these movies would so unnecessarily leaving me feeling so hollow. Be careful what you wish for kids.
Monday, May 18, 2015
So I lied about not writing more about Fury Road.
So let's take it as a given that I don't have anything more intelligent to say than any of the legions of people who wrote about Mad Max: Fury Road so far. I complained last week that the proliferation of think pieces of every good thing threatens to destroy my enjoyment of good things before I have the chance to see them, but really that is a silly thought. If the necessary consequence of good art is getting people to think, and then those people go on to actually express what they think using words, I can't be against it. Telling stories to each other and talking about the kinds of stories we tell to each other is very important to me, after all.
My favorite commentary so far comes from Warren Ellis, whose work I adore. He likens the film to a scream from the last century, a doomsday time capsule telling us the same stories of apocalyptic collapse that weighed heavily on everyone's mind in the 80s. I like that theory. I have no good counter-narrative. I would suggest, as an aside, however, that the collapse of Mad Max's world has never really gone away, we've just gotten used to the possibility and think about it less. The nuclear arsenals remain, in what level of maintenance and upkeep I don't know. I trust the system to maintain those systems indefinitely not at all. I can imagine a future where nuclear war happens because we maintain the necessary infrastructure so poorly that accidents happen and we unleash nuclear hell more or less by accident and incompetence. This is the scenario that actively concerns me.
Beyond the nuclear danger, little else has changed either. Profit is still at war with the environment, women still fight an intractable war against men who believe it is their heritage to dominate, war itself is still a very profitable business for arms makers. In the aftermath of a really stupid misfire of thermonuclear armament, we would still be dealing with the societal poisons currently kept at bay by our more civilized impulses. All of which is why Mad Max is still strangely relevant and thought-provoking.
Fury Road shies from these ideas not at all, although I wouldn't say it beats you over the head with them. In fact, any think pieces beating readers over the head with the politics of the film run the risk of diminishing the beautiful minimalism of the plot. The film is, first and foremost, capital-A Art and should be appreciated as such. The themes are poignant, yes, but first and foremost it is goddamn beautiful. The cinematography, the wide shots, the costuming, the characters, all completely, 100% mesmerizing from start to finish. Just when you think you're getting bored with the aesthetic novelty of the shot a new wonder pops into frame. Just when you think you might have time to catch your breath it shifts back into gear again. Just a spectacle from start to finish, one made all the more delightful by actual character development and heart with absolutely no fat left to trim.
Very few movies seem to come along like this anymore. It almost seems like we're ecstatic when a movie comes along that has even a basic competence in telling a clean, engaging story. Which isn't to diminish Fury Road as merely competent, but to say that basic competence, and dare I say some actual heartfelt soul, is part of what I think has people going gaga over it for. I think maybe we're all currently kind of drowning in a flood of nostalgic, corporate creations, in a maybe we should be careful what we wish for kind of way. Movies like the Avengers are nice, but they seem less works of art, and more carefully tested and pruned franchises, where every scene exists in service of leveraging the franchise as a whole for maximum profit. The percentage of time in Avengers 2 devoted purely and exclusively to setting up other characters and franchises for content in future movies is not inconsequential, as others have noted, and it has a real, detrimental impact to the story-telling.
Mad Max has none of that bullshit and that is part of what makes it wonderful. I'm still thinking about scenes a day later, not for the political statement, not for the franchise potential, purely because they were just gorgeous moments in time. The blind leader of bullet-town riding astride his car-tank in the marshlands, firing his guns defiantly. Immortan Joe's completely mesmerizing look as he drove his big-boy big-wheeled truck to get back "his property." Max and his insane visions. The craziest, most beautiful dust storm you've ever seen, the completely bonkers vehicles (porcupine sedan, people fishing platforms, a truck solely devoted to a guitarist whose axe breathes fire, complete with giant drum section in the back). The war boys. The grizzled women of the desert biker gang. It is an experience, and it stays with you.
The violence, while always my least favorite part, while occasionally disturbing in implication, especially for new parents I would think, was probably just right in that it was enough to instill a sense of danger , one that starts very quickly and never really lets up, but not reveled in to the point of distracting from the film. It also serves as a indicator of just how mad everyone has gone in the aftermath of societal collapse, much like every other Mad Max movie. Everyone seems a little gone to one degree or another, and the brutal violence is just one facet of that new reality.
The politics and themes are themselves beautiful. The redemption themes are far and away my favorite part. Furiosa's drive to redeem herself for her part in the system she perpetuated, Nux's redemption by women who refuse to hate him, and insist on kindness in the fact of madness. The seeds of civilization (literally and figuratively) are essentially carried exclusively by the women of the film in a way that felt honest to me. While the women are indeed protected by an extremely violent man and woman, I love that they never flinch from the ideal that maybe more killing is not the path to a better future. Idealistic or not, someone has to carry that torch to the other side of madness. Max is not so much hero here, as survivor. Grappling with his demons, struggling to maintain a grip on the here and now, even as it threatens to destroy him. Furiosa is on the real hero's journey. It was her arc and Nux's redemption that really grabbed me the most. Max is mostly there to witness and survive it, as usual.
Fury Road is gorgeous. It is a provocative work of art. If you can stomach the violence I can't recommend it enough. Yes, it's a little bonkers, but let's be honest: we're all mad here. Max's world is a warning of just how mad we can get.
My favorite commentary so far comes from Warren Ellis, whose work I adore. He likens the film to a scream from the last century, a doomsday time capsule telling us the same stories of apocalyptic collapse that weighed heavily on everyone's mind in the 80s. I like that theory. I have no good counter-narrative. I would suggest, as an aside, however, that the collapse of Mad Max's world has never really gone away, we've just gotten used to the possibility and think about it less. The nuclear arsenals remain, in what level of maintenance and upkeep I don't know. I trust the system to maintain those systems indefinitely not at all. I can imagine a future where nuclear war happens because we maintain the necessary infrastructure so poorly that accidents happen and we unleash nuclear hell more or less by accident and incompetence. This is the scenario that actively concerns me.
Beyond the nuclear danger, little else has changed either. Profit is still at war with the environment, women still fight an intractable war against men who believe it is their heritage to dominate, war itself is still a very profitable business for arms makers. In the aftermath of a really stupid misfire of thermonuclear armament, we would still be dealing with the societal poisons currently kept at bay by our more civilized impulses. All of which is why Mad Max is still strangely relevant and thought-provoking.
Fury Road shies from these ideas not at all, although I wouldn't say it beats you over the head with them. In fact, any think pieces beating readers over the head with the politics of the film run the risk of diminishing the beautiful minimalism of the plot. The film is, first and foremost, capital-A Art and should be appreciated as such. The themes are poignant, yes, but first and foremost it is goddamn beautiful. The cinematography, the wide shots, the costuming, the characters, all completely, 100% mesmerizing from start to finish. Just when you think you're getting bored with the aesthetic novelty of the shot a new wonder pops into frame. Just when you think you might have time to catch your breath it shifts back into gear again. Just a spectacle from start to finish, one made all the more delightful by actual character development and heart with absolutely no fat left to trim.
Very few movies seem to come along like this anymore. It almost seems like we're ecstatic when a movie comes along that has even a basic competence in telling a clean, engaging story. Which isn't to diminish Fury Road as merely competent, but to say that basic competence, and dare I say some actual heartfelt soul, is part of what I think has people going gaga over it for. I think maybe we're all currently kind of drowning in a flood of nostalgic, corporate creations, in a maybe we should be careful what we wish for kind of way. Movies like the Avengers are nice, but they seem less works of art, and more carefully tested and pruned franchises, where every scene exists in service of leveraging the franchise as a whole for maximum profit. The percentage of time in Avengers 2 devoted purely and exclusively to setting up other characters and franchises for content in future movies is not inconsequential, as others have noted, and it has a real, detrimental impact to the story-telling.
Mad Max has none of that bullshit and that is part of what makes it wonderful. I'm still thinking about scenes a day later, not for the political statement, not for the franchise potential, purely because they were just gorgeous moments in time. The blind leader of bullet-town riding astride his car-tank in the marshlands, firing his guns defiantly. Immortan Joe's completely mesmerizing look as he drove his big-boy big-wheeled truck to get back "his property." Max and his insane visions. The craziest, most beautiful dust storm you've ever seen, the completely bonkers vehicles (porcupine sedan, people fishing platforms, a truck solely devoted to a guitarist whose axe breathes fire, complete with giant drum section in the back). The war boys. The grizzled women of the desert biker gang. It is an experience, and it stays with you.
The violence, while always my least favorite part, while occasionally disturbing in implication, especially for new parents I would think, was probably just right in that it was enough to instill a sense of danger , one that starts very quickly and never really lets up, but not reveled in to the point of distracting from the film. It also serves as a indicator of just how mad everyone has gone in the aftermath of societal collapse, much like every other Mad Max movie. Everyone seems a little gone to one degree or another, and the brutal violence is just one facet of that new reality.
The politics and themes are themselves beautiful. The redemption themes are far and away my favorite part. Furiosa's drive to redeem herself for her part in the system she perpetuated, Nux's redemption by women who refuse to hate him, and insist on kindness in the fact of madness. The seeds of civilization (literally and figuratively) are essentially carried exclusively by the women of the film in a way that felt honest to me. While the women are indeed protected by an extremely violent man and woman, I love that they never flinch from the ideal that maybe more killing is not the path to a better future. Idealistic or not, someone has to carry that torch to the other side of madness. Max is not so much hero here, as survivor. Grappling with his demons, struggling to maintain a grip on the here and now, even as it threatens to destroy him. Furiosa is on the real hero's journey. It was her arc and Nux's redemption that really grabbed me the most. Max is mostly there to witness and survive it, as usual.
Fury Road is gorgeous. It is a provocative work of art. If you can stomach the violence I can't recommend it enough. Yes, it's a little bonkers, but let's be honest: we're all mad here. Max's world is a warning of just how mad we can get.
Wednesday, April 22, 2015
Fessing up
Not that anyone actually reads this blog, but you may have noticed I removed Edward Feser from the blogroll. Not that anyone cares about blogrolls anymore either. Anyway, I enjoy his anti-materialist philosophy, even though it comes from a conservative catholic place. That is, until I started reading some of his "arguments" against homosexuality. To wit, he thinks what I do and who I love is an abomination and I'm not impressed with his arguments for why he thinks that. It boils down to naturalism and anything not "penis in vagina" being some kind of moral sexual sin, which is ridiculous. Our entire civilization is built on using our appendages to do "unnatural" things. From building airplanes so we can fly to using the mouth to give blow jobs, which don't, in and of themselves, seem to be cratering civilization as we know it. I just don't buy that sex has some special need to be "natural", I don't buy that "penis in vagina" is the only "natural" sexuality given the high degree of homosexuality in nature, I don't buy that sex catholics are uncomfortable with is the same thing as sex that is destructive to society. "I'm personally uncomfortable with it, therefore society is ruined." is a terrible argument, with few, if any, justifications.
And as much I like to see materialism taken down a peg from time to time (I support materialism as far as it goes and no farther), I can't continue to advertise for yet another christian looking for reasons to be uncomfortable with the gay, especially one using the same tired, old arguments. Who I love isn't wrong, it's just not what he prefers. I wish people like him could tell the difference between those two things. If your philosophy is flatly contradicted by the lived experience of people you are lecturing to, maybe it's time to re-examine your philosophy. Just saying.
*editting to add:*
Honestly, it was the comments that sealed the deal. The fact that he tolerates such a toxic "christian" community in his comments was reason enough to stop reading.
And as much I like to see materialism taken down a peg from time to time (I support materialism as far as it goes and no farther), I can't continue to advertise for yet another christian looking for reasons to be uncomfortable with the gay, especially one using the same tired, old arguments. Who I love isn't wrong, it's just not what he prefers. I wish people like him could tell the difference between those two things. If your philosophy is flatly contradicted by the lived experience of people you are lecturing to, maybe it's time to re-examine your philosophy. Just saying.
*editting to add:*
Honestly, it was the comments that sealed the deal. The fact that he tolerates such a toxic "christian" community in his comments was reason enough to stop reading.
Monday, April 13, 2015
Bootstaps - A Rant About Gaming
I game, a lot (TOO MUCH), but I don't like identifying as a gamer. I know there are other gamers like me, who are a little older and enjoy the hobby but are equally embarrassed to claim the hobby because of all the, sadly quite rightful, negative associations with it. Which is to say, the general culture of gaming is incredibly juvenile and selfish and immature and any adult worth his salt is probably going to want to seek identity beyond a simple "player of games." I run a large, LGBT-friendly guild in FF14, which I got riddicked into leading but maintain because I like having a safe haven for LGBT people to go where they can play without having to tolerate juvenile homophobia. Even there though, I run into a lot of situations where being asking to be the tiniest bit considerate of other people is considered a grave affront in this modern, sophisticated consumer culture, where no tastes should not be indulged and no thoughts left unfiltered, apparently. The customer gamer is always right after all.
Most of my adult friends, who I know all play games, all seem to do so in privacy and treat it like a guilty pleasure away from their wives and lives and I don't really blame them, although I wish we could still talk about it occasionally without the embarrassment. And yet I'm conflicted too. It's fine to play games, but I've come to find I need a broader, more interesting and challenging set of activities to absorb myself in as I get older. Children are players of games and they are better at it than I am, (in that they enjoy and embrace them without complication) and I do, contrary to appearances, aspire to master more as an adult than I did as a child. My job is very adult, sure, but it increasingly seems like I owe it to myself to challenge myself more in my hobbies to learn new and complicated things that are worth sharing with other people. Gaming is fun, and I enjoy playing with friends, but it's hard to share with other people, you know? Try sharing your level 70 character with another gamer or non-gamer and watch their eyes glaze over. It's like sharing a dream you had once. Or the details of your masturbation sessions. No one cares how you make the little man jump or how many times you stroked it 'til you came.
I tend to see our collective and comforting wallow in nostalgia and gaming in particular as a sign of massive arrested development across western culture. I could be wrong, I'm not saying yes definitely that is what that has to be, but it is my impression. An entire generation of men (and women) collectively refusing to embrace the mantle of "adult" with some post-modern sophistry dancing around the idea that "adult" can mean anything, so why can't it mean eternally a teenager in thought and deed, and who says our parent's generation really grew up anyway? Look at how they're ruinning the world and how childish THEY are.
Yes. Exactly. Look how they're ruinning the world. And where is our generation while christian leaders tell their flock that christian charity should not extend to homosexuals and secular leaders crucify their own in pointless purity crusades (Do you now or have you ever felt uncomfortable with homosexuality? If so, you are history's worst monster). And so what if people are older than you act childish? If you're mature enough to understand that certain behaviors are childish and unhelpful, you're mature enough to understand you choose your own behavior regardless of what other people are doing.
The world needs our generation to put down the controller and pick up a book. Despite our triumphant moralizing on twitter, a lifetime of gameplay and consumerism does not in fact prepare one to challenge adult leadership on a practical or philosophical level. It's not enough to know something's wrong, you have to know why it's wrong, which principle it violates, why that principle is important, where you get that principle from, why one principle is better than another, how to convince someone who holds different principles than you that yours might be better, how to honestly listen to someone when they try to convince you that their principles are actually better than yours, how to be humble, how to be kind to those you really dislike, how to serve others without losing your purpose or dignity or rights, how to be, in essence, actually GOOD are not qualities you learn from a-b, jump, jump, right-trigger. Or from buying the thing that promises to end your eternal search for something you have as yet been unable to define, but you keep shelling out money for regardless. Challenging power will require us to do more studying, and less consuming, at the very least.
The one of the many great tragedies of adulthood is the number of people that leave college prepared to fall into a job that doesn't challenge them by day, and hobbies that don't challenge them by night, like the learning was over the moment they graduated. The bizarre disconnect of education in a consumerist culture is college is theoretically teaching us to learn how to learn with the idea that we keep learning after we leave college. We are supposed to learn more languages, more about humanity, more about religion and humanism and philosophy and what makes us human and how to get along and all that stuff. Some of us are lucky enough to get this on our job, the rest of us are working jobs we don't like or learn much at to pay for the netflix binging and gaming and therapeutic consuming in the evening, all the while bitching about how awful the adults are making everything. I'm not saying we're 100% wasting our lives away, but I am concerned that we are, as Postman put it, amusing ourselves to death. Or perhaps gaming while the world burns.
When I see news articles about educators or parents calling cops on a child throwing a tantrum it boggles my mind, like they need an adult to handle a child and consider police the grown-ups, somehow not realizing that there are already adults on scene who should be prepared to handle the situation. Or adults willing to hand over their preferences to algorithms who choose things for them, or adults eating up the spiritually and philosophically dead and divisive garbage their leaders spew out to keep the culture war churning and frothing enough so that nothing ever changes without ever even questioning it. I mean, I don't know if you've noticed but this government has effectively ceased to function (in that it takes them years to agree on a yearly budget and both parties [and I'm sorry, but especially republicans] seem committed to throwing their sabos in the gears when the other party does something so illegitimate and reckless as win an election). When you don't challenge the opinions and ideas of your leadership you are essentially letting them infantilize you, or keep you like cats. Adults challenge bad ideas. Adults ask for and give accountability. Adults train themselves to recognize factual and philosophical inconsistencies between what their leaders say and do. Adults remove other adults from power when they cannot meet these basic standards.
It is my increasing conviction that adulthood actually requires something of us beyond self-gratification and masturbatory self-congratulation having finished gratifying ourselves*.
And I know that as I say all this, that it's pointless to say all this, that you and I are going to keep gaming, and keep shotgunning netflix and hope some adult out there stands up and champions some good ideas against the absolute onslaught of dehumanizing and dangerous ideological sludge currently threatening to drown us all. Far better, I know, for me to actually live by example and encourage people to join me. I'm not there yet. But I think it's important to actually say out loud, at least every now and then, that we are the adults we've been waiting for, and nothing gets better until we finally grow up.
So why am I yelling at you? I'm not, I'm yelling at me. But perhaps you disagree. Fine. I'll try and make my case better another time. There are a couple of assertions and straw men that could probably be cleaned up. I think I've been mostly writing this more as a message to me than a message to you, which is not an uncommon occurrence in my life. But I think adulthood requires more of me than I've been giving it. I think that is an idea that will require action on my part**. I suspect I might not be the only one.
*If we ever want anything to get better.
** If I ever want anything to get better.
When I see news articles about educators or parents calling cops on a child throwing a tantrum it boggles my mind, like they need an adult to handle a child and consider police the grown-ups, somehow not realizing that there are already adults on scene who should be prepared to handle the situation. Or adults willing to hand over their preferences to algorithms who choose things for them, or adults eating up the spiritually and philosophically dead and divisive garbage their leaders spew out to keep the culture war churning and frothing enough so that nothing ever changes without ever even questioning it. I mean, I don't know if you've noticed but this government has effectively ceased to function (in that it takes them years to agree on a yearly budget and both parties [and I'm sorry, but especially republicans] seem committed to throwing their sabos in the gears when the other party does something so illegitimate and reckless as win an election). When you don't challenge the opinions and ideas of your leadership you are essentially letting them infantilize you, or keep you like cats. Adults challenge bad ideas. Adults ask for and give accountability. Adults train themselves to recognize factual and philosophical inconsistencies between what their leaders say and do. Adults remove other adults from power when they cannot meet these basic standards.
It is my increasing conviction that adulthood actually requires something of us beyond self-gratification and masturbatory self-congratulation having finished gratifying ourselves*.
And I know that as I say all this, that it's pointless to say all this, that you and I are going to keep gaming, and keep shotgunning netflix and hope some adult out there stands up and champions some good ideas against the absolute onslaught of dehumanizing and dangerous ideological sludge currently threatening to drown us all. Far better, I know, for me to actually live by example and encourage people to join me. I'm not there yet. But I think it's important to actually say out loud, at least every now and then, that we are the adults we've been waiting for, and nothing gets better until we finally grow up.
So why am I yelling at you? I'm not, I'm yelling at me. But perhaps you disagree. Fine. I'll try and make my case better another time. There are a couple of assertions and straw men that could probably be cleaned up. I think I've been mostly writing this more as a message to me than a message to you, which is not an uncommon occurrence in my life. But I think adulthood requires more of me than I've been giving it. I think that is an idea that will require action on my part**. I suspect I might not be the only one.
*If we ever want anything to get better.
** If I ever want anything to get better.
Tuesday, April 07, 2015
Breaking Rebel Hearts
I have been working on a deadline for the last week and a half or so working 10-12 hour days and my brain is pretty much mush at this point. So the only thing I have to talk about is the new Madonna album I've been absorbing since it came out, and it's eventually dawned on me that it's really two separate disks that someone unwisely smashed together into an unholy super-album. There's an album more focused on pop, sex, love, and dance and another which, while still pop, is more focused on spirituality, personal growth, existential malaise. I have split them up into two playlists that I think make more sense in terms of tone/content.
Rebel Heart - Sinner
1. Unapologetic Bitch
2. Bitch I'm Madonna
3. Hold Tight
4. Iconic
5. HeartBreakCity
6. Body Shop
7. Holy Water
8. Inside Out
9. Best Night.
10. S.E.X.
Rebel Heart - Saint
1. Living for Love
2. Devil Pray
3. Ghosttown
4. Illuminati
5. Joan of Arc
6. Wash All Over Me
7. Veni Vidi Vici
8. Messiah
9. Rebel Heart
You're welcome.
Rebel Heart - Sinner
1. Unapologetic Bitch
2. Bitch I'm Madonna
3. Hold Tight
4. Iconic
5. HeartBreakCity
6. Body Shop
7. Holy Water
8. Inside Out
9. Best Night.
10. S.E.X.
Rebel Heart - Saint
1. Living for Love
2. Devil Pray
3. Ghosttown
4. Illuminati
5. Joan of Arc
6. Wash All Over Me
7. Veni Vidi Vici
8. Messiah
9. Rebel Heart
You're welcome.
Thursday, March 26, 2015
Learning isn't Easy
So there's this atlantic article, which @freddiedeboer is currently tearing to pieces on twitter, which is yet another article asserting that the tech version of any aspect of human civilization, in this case teaching, immediately renders the human aspect inferior and irrelevant. Which is a wonderful idea if you're a tech giant selling teaching equipment, less so if you actually care about whether people are learning and motivated to learn.
Said article references TED talks as a key educational element in future classroom lectures, as broadcast by "super-teachers", which is similarly ridiculous. TED talks are roughly as informative as NPR programs which are roughly informative as the back of a cereal box, and they function mostly as infotainment for educated people so they feel good about being educated and conspicuous consumption thereof signals to other citizens that you are in fact, educated and modern and know all the right things. It's the intellectual version of keeping up with the Joneses'.
So how can I dismiss TED talks and NPR (just to pick on a couple) as not educational, when they are clearly given by well-educated people on very thoughtful topics? Because they demand almost nothing of the listener is my response, and as such function more as brain candy than brain food. Or at best, a brain bite, rather than a full meal. It reminded me of an article I read earlier this week from Robert Twigger on Aeon, talking about polymaths. Specifically, the section on the importance of the Nucleus basalis on learning. This is the portion of the brain, if I understand correctly, that generates acetylcholine, a key neurotransmitter in memory formation and learning.
In his article, Twigger asserts that:
The third, aspect of what activates improved memory is what interests me the most: "intense focus, maintained through repetition or continuous application." Which is not something I'm convinced that the modern emphasis on tech and tech products is actively fostering in the world. When you see people addicted to their phones and their computers, and complaining about their use of such, what are they typically complaining about? In my experience, almost universally their reduced attention span, their constant need to be dividing their attention between this app and that app and this other thing. To be sure, the highly motivated can mostly likely minimize distractions and focus heavily on learning through apps and computers, but what about people who are constantly asking, like the over-used acting joke, "What's my motivation?"
Ideally, this is where a teacher comes in. Again, the answer I'm being given from the Atlantic is that kids are just naturally drawn to tech because it is it, and now and modern and shiny and why wouldn't they learn when given a computer? To be sure, children are drawn to computers, but what app inspires them to focus hard on a topic and learn it well in a virtual environment? It brings to mind another article I read this week, via @shelske. In it, he outlines the key factors in motivating change (from the book Change or Die by Alan Deutschman), the first of which being:
"a new, emotional relationship with a person or community that you can relate to who inspires the possibility of change."
Isn't that what we want a school to be? A community that inspires students to the possibility of change? Moreover, can we ever realistically expect machines themselves to be the sole motivator for learning? If human relationships are one of the key motivators for change, and I suspect they are, does it not make the role of responsive, interactive human teacher irreducible in education?
So as far as I can tell, if it is indeed true that intense focus is required to genuinely learn, and human relationships are key (be it parent, teacher or more likely some combination of the two) in providing the inspiration and willpower to focus and learn anything well, then any tech solution that diminishes either one of those two elements of education is either misguided at best or actually harmful and counterproductive at worst. So while tech and tech promoters do seem to answer the questions of, "is it new, is it modern, is it shiny, do people want to fiddle with it", it seems important to point out that these are not really important questions in to how to best serve students in their education.
A better question might be, "How do we get students inspired and focused in a world seemingly hell-bent on distraction and entertainment disguised as education?" Hint: the answer is NOT, "disguise our own education as entertainment and distraction."
As bastions of education and learning that have existed for centuries, the universities needed to do nothing more than provide the materials and space for focus, and the human beings, or "teachers" as I like to call them, to inspire students to take advantage of it. Embracing the attitudes and equipment of universal distraction as a way of keeping up with the times and appearing modern is not victory for education, it is the surrender of the timeless necessities of human learning to the fickle consumerism of the present moment by the strangely weak-willed guardians of institutional power and as such, in my humble opinion, is a gigantic mistake.
Said article references TED talks as a key educational element in future classroom lectures, as broadcast by "super-teachers", which is similarly ridiculous. TED talks are roughly as informative as NPR programs which are roughly informative as the back of a cereal box, and they function mostly as infotainment for educated people so they feel good about being educated and conspicuous consumption thereof signals to other citizens that you are in fact, educated and modern and know all the right things. It's the intellectual version of keeping up with the Joneses'.
So how can I dismiss TED talks and NPR (just to pick on a couple) as not educational, when they are clearly given by well-educated people on very thoughtful topics? Because they demand almost nothing of the listener is my response, and as such function more as brain candy than brain food. Or at best, a brain bite, rather than a full meal. It reminded me of an article I read earlier this week from Robert Twigger on Aeon, talking about polymaths. Specifically, the section on the importance of the Nucleus basalis on learning. This is the portion of the brain, if I understand correctly, that generates acetylcholine, a key neurotransmitter in memory formation and learning.
In his article, Twigger asserts that:
Between birth and the age of ten or eleven, the nucleus basalisis is permanently ‘switched on’. It contains an abundance of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, and this means new connections are being made all the time. Typically this means that a child will be learning almost all the time — if they see or hear something once they remember it. But as we progress towards the later teenage years the brain becomes more selective. From research into the way stroke victims recover lost skills it has been observed that the nucleus basalis only switches on when one of three conditions occur: a novel situation, a shock, or intense focus, maintained through repetition or continuous application.
The third, aspect of what activates improved memory is what interests me the most: "intense focus, maintained through repetition or continuous application." Which is not something I'm convinced that the modern emphasis on tech and tech products is actively fostering in the world. When you see people addicted to their phones and their computers, and complaining about their use of such, what are they typically complaining about? In my experience, almost universally their reduced attention span, their constant need to be dividing their attention between this app and that app and this other thing. To be sure, the highly motivated can mostly likely minimize distractions and focus heavily on learning through apps and computers, but what about people who are constantly asking, like the over-used acting joke, "What's my motivation?"
Ideally, this is where a teacher comes in. Again, the answer I'm being given from the Atlantic is that kids are just naturally drawn to tech because it is it, and now and modern and shiny and why wouldn't they learn when given a computer? To be sure, children are drawn to computers, but what app inspires them to focus hard on a topic and learn it well in a virtual environment? It brings to mind another article I read this week, via @shelske. In it, he outlines the key factors in motivating change (from the book Change or Die by Alan Deutschman), the first of which being:
"a new, emotional relationship with a person or community that you can relate to who inspires the possibility of change."
Isn't that what we want a school to be? A community that inspires students to the possibility of change? Moreover, can we ever realistically expect machines themselves to be the sole motivator for learning? If human relationships are one of the key motivators for change, and I suspect they are, does it not make the role of responsive, interactive human teacher irreducible in education?
So as far as I can tell, if it is indeed true that intense focus is required to genuinely learn, and human relationships are key (be it parent, teacher or more likely some combination of the two) in providing the inspiration and willpower to focus and learn anything well, then any tech solution that diminishes either one of those two elements of education is either misguided at best or actually harmful and counterproductive at worst. So while tech and tech promoters do seem to answer the questions of, "is it new, is it modern, is it shiny, do people want to fiddle with it", it seems important to point out that these are not really important questions in to how to best serve students in their education.
A better question might be, "How do we get students inspired and focused in a world seemingly hell-bent on distraction and entertainment disguised as education?" Hint: the answer is NOT, "disguise our own education as entertainment and distraction."
As bastions of education and learning that have existed for centuries, the universities needed to do nothing more than provide the materials and space for focus, and the human beings, or "teachers" as I like to call them, to inspire students to take advantage of it. Embracing the attitudes and equipment of universal distraction as a way of keeping up with the times and appearing modern is not victory for education, it is the surrender of the timeless necessities of human learning to the fickle consumerism of the present moment by the strangely weak-willed guardians of institutional power and as such, in my humble opinion, is a gigantic mistake.
Sunday, March 22, 2015
Technics and my complete inability to put a longform thought together
I'm still kind of stuck on Technics and Civilization. Not because it's not a good read, it's great, but because I keep thinking I need to take copious notes and write some kind of meaningful essay-length review about it once I'm done. But, I'm starting to realize this is maybe like trying to run a marathon first thing after not exercising at all for 10 years. Plus, my to-read pile is only getting larger, that last trip to Powell's really put an exclamation point on how big my to-read list has gotten. And realistically I'd probably be better served with some reading for a while, if only to relearn the ability to patiently focus on something for more than five minutes.
So I think the new plan is to plow through my reading list at a comfortable pace, and write whatever I have to say in whatever way I can manage to form the words, and hope both the reading and the writing and the thinking get better over time. Gotta learn to run before you can fly. And walk before you can run. And crawl before you can walk. And flail helplessly while rolling about before you can crawl apparently.
If you need me, I'll just be over here flailing about helplessly.
So I think the new plan is to plow through my reading list at a comfortable pace, and write whatever I have to say in whatever way I can manage to form the words, and hope both the reading and the writing and the thinking get better over time. Gotta learn to run before you can fly. And walk before you can run. And crawl before you can walk. And flail helplessly while rolling about before you can crawl apparently.
If you need me, I'll just be over here flailing about helplessly.
Friday, March 20, 2015
Mind Muscles
One of the many reasons I've dialed down my know-it-all cynicism is just how limited our language and ideas are on certain topics. For instance, there's very little more important to my daily life than my mental health, but the language and tools to address mental health barely exist in the common culture, and maybe not even in a clinical setting.
We know what it means to be physically healthy more or less. Each person will have an ideal weight, and should have a certain blood pressure and resting heart rate and blood sugar level, etc. And if those are out of whack for some reason, the solution is relatively straight forward: eat healthier, and do some regular exercise. And one can go into MANY specifics, or try to short-cut them with magic pills that may or may not contain side effects, but the in general we all know the solution: eat better and exercise. AND we generally understand what those activities entail (working up a sweat, and eating as close to un-processed as possible). And while there is still a ways to go on our knowledge of nutrition and the biochemistry of the body, we still know things like: leafy vegetables and regular exercise seem to be very good for the human body and there's a fairly solid body of practical research backing that up.
So what about my precious, fragile mind? What are the metrics for maintaining my mental health? What is a preventative health regimen for the mind? What mental exercises should I do to maintain optimal mental health? For the most part, the questions of "what mental exercises should I do" seem to be held back by "what are the specific metrics of mental health" as far as I can tell. Is mental health simply being able to function in my daily life, in the culture I was born into? Is it thriving in my environment, as opposed to simple functioning? Is lots of memorization good for me? Is it actively learning new things every day (I've read some interesting things on that front)? Is it reading challenging material? Is there such a thing as mental candy and should I avoid too much of it? Is there such a thing as mental health food and I should consume more of it? We have a wealth of material attempting to address these questions with specific answers, but so far, in nailing down specifics of how to talk about and assess mental health and processing it seems to come down to shrugs and how we feel about it, you know? In fact, most of the solutions in mental health seem to be in pill form, as if to address a simple chemical imbalance, but the medication seems clumsy and I'm really much more interested in the mental equivalent of eating right and exercising, and I still haven't found something satisfying on that front with any kind of intelligent and compelling research to support it. Of course, it's possible they exist and I just haven't seen them. I'm pretty sure I haven't been exercising my brain very well or otherwise contributing to my own good mental health.
The only thing I need to know, that some other people seem to agree on, is that the mind and body are linked, so a healthy body is a tremendous asset to good mental health. I struggle with depression, but I would much rather do the equivalent of eating right and exercising to claw myself out of it rather than take meds. I don't like anti-depression meds, they let me function day to day, but kill my sex drive something fierce. And I think a healthy sex-drive is maybe a key component of my long-term mental health, you know?
But are touch screens rotting my brain? Is a trashy novel really junk food? Do I need to rigorously study something for a few hours every week/day to stay in tip-top mental shape? I honestly don't know, and I'm not sure anyone else really does either. I find that frustrating, don't you?
We know what it means to be physically healthy more or less. Each person will have an ideal weight, and should have a certain blood pressure and resting heart rate and blood sugar level, etc. And if those are out of whack for some reason, the solution is relatively straight forward: eat healthier, and do some regular exercise. And one can go into MANY specifics, or try to short-cut them with magic pills that may or may not contain side effects, but the in general we all know the solution: eat better and exercise. AND we generally understand what those activities entail (working up a sweat, and eating as close to un-processed as possible). And while there is still a ways to go on our knowledge of nutrition and the biochemistry of the body, we still know things like: leafy vegetables and regular exercise seem to be very good for the human body and there's a fairly solid body of practical research backing that up.
So what about my precious, fragile mind? What are the metrics for maintaining my mental health? What is a preventative health regimen for the mind? What mental exercises should I do to maintain optimal mental health? For the most part, the questions of "what mental exercises should I do" seem to be held back by "what are the specific metrics of mental health" as far as I can tell. Is mental health simply being able to function in my daily life, in the culture I was born into? Is it thriving in my environment, as opposed to simple functioning? Is lots of memorization good for me? Is it actively learning new things every day (I've read some interesting things on that front)? Is it reading challenging material? Is there such a thing as mental candy and should I avoid too much of it? Is there such a thing as mental health food and I should consume more of it? We have a wealth of material attempting to address these questions with specific answers, but so far, in nailing down specifics of how to talk about and assess mental health and processing it seems to come down to shrugs and how we feel about it, you know? In fact, most of the solutions in mental health seem to be in pill form, as if to address a simple chemical imbalance, but the medication seems clumsy and I'm really much more interested in the mental equivalent of eating right and exercising, and I still haven't found something satisfying on that front with any kind of intelligent and compelling research to support it. Of course, it's possible they exist and I just haven't seen them. I'm pretty sure I haven't been exercising my brain very well or otherwise contributing to my own good mental health.
The only thing I need to know, that some other people seem to agree on, is that the mind and body are linked, so a healthy body is a tremendous asset to good mental health. I struggle with depression, but I would much rather do the equivalent of eating right and exercising to claw myself out of it rather than take meds. I don't like anti-depression meds, they let me function day to day, but kill my sex drive something fierce. And I think a healthy sex-drive is maybe a key component of my long-term mental health, you know?
But are touch screens rotting my brain? Is a trashy novel really junk food? Do I need to rigorously study something for a few hours every week/day to stay in tip-top mental shape? I honestly don't know, and I'm not sure anyone else really does either. I find that frustrating, don't you?
Operating note
Two mini-reviews of Saga and Sex Criminals over at my "reviews and crap" blog. Short version: both are pretty good. Note to self: read more comics.
Tuesday, March 10, 2015
I went for a walk
Depression has as many faces as the people it wears. For me, it most frequently manifests as a denial of self. For me, depression is refusing to thrive, for reasons I can rarely articulate.
Depression is denying myself the pleasure of _______.
So, generally, for reasons I cannot even now explain, I deny myself the pleasure of hiking (and the greater outdoors), the stars, sex (even masturbation to a degree that seems to surprise my male friends), of exercising and getting fit, of becoming good at something like piano or Japanese or drawing, maintaining a social network, going out, going to bed on time, waking up at an hour that leaves me room to breathe, of getting my work done on time, of finding a career that matches me better, of not feeling anxious, and, in general, of feeling good about myself.
Sunday, I allowed myself the pleasure of a long (6ish mile) hike in Forest Park. I don't know what it is about silence right now but goddamn I need it. The birds and the wind in the trees were acceptable noises. Soothing even. There were some children accompanied by a bored parent who were shrieking in delight at streams and mud, but the trees politely muffled the sound for me. Children can be loud, but I can't hold it against them. I'm secretly just jealous that I'm not that uninhibited anymore.
But there was a decidedly pleasurable relaxation of tension deep in my chest as a result of the exercise and the luxurious quiet of the great outdoors and I am glad I decided not to deny myself the pleasure, at least for a day.
Depression is denying myself the pleasure of _______.
So, generally, for reasons I cannot even now explain, I deny myself the pleasure of hiking (and the greater outdoors), the stars, sex (even masturbation to a degree that seems to surprise my male friends), of exercising and getting fit, of becoming good at something like piano or Japanese or drawing, maintaining a social network, going out, going to bed on time, waking up at an hour that leaves me room to breathe, of getting my work done on time, of finding a career that matches me better, of not feeling anxious, and, in general, of feeling good about myself.
Sunday, I allowed myself the pleasure of a long (6ish mile) hike in Forest Park. I don't know what it is about silence right now but goddamn I need it. The birds and the wind in the trees were acceptable noises. Soothing even. There were some children accompanied by a bored parent who were shrieking in delight at streams and mud, but the trees politely muffled the sound for me. Children can be loud, but I can't hold it against them. I'm secretly just jealous that I'm not that uninhibited anymore.
But there was a decidedly pleasurable relaxation of tension deep in my chest as a result of the exercise and the luxurious quiet of the great outdoors and I am glad I decided not to deny myself the pleasure, at least for a day.
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