There are only two kinds of positive pleasure that I am aware of.
First, oral pleasure. Tasting a pleasant thing. Sugar, salt.
Second, orgasm.
I could add a third, which is drugs, but I have limited experience in the matter, and of the drugs I have tried, none specifically elicited a feeling of pure pleasure, but instead feelings of altered awareness.*
All of the other pleasures are negative pleasures. The pleasure of warmth is only significant because of the pain of cold. The pleasure of bright coloured light is only significant because of the darkness of night. The pleasure of a gentle touch is only significant because of the feeling of loneliness.
*Perhaps though, it is enough to shock the body with something new, so that endorphins and adrenalin are produced, and a feeling of pleasure simulated. The same can be said about bitter and sour tastes, which cannot in themselves be said to be pleasurable, yet create a pleasure-like response. Music can also be explained in this way, I think, in that any single tone, by itself, cannot be considered pleasurable, nor is an unfamiliar sequence generally considered pleasurable, but a kind of alchemy must occur in the mind in order to manufacture pleasure out of such an experience, usually after being repeated several times.
Friday, December 26, 2008
Science is beautiful. Art is shit.
Science is beautiful. Art is shit.
I could leave that statement to stand on its own, as another aphorism, another piece to meditate on, but I feel that some people won't exactly get it.
So I'll try to explain as best I can. My problem is that I am pretty sure of the truth of the aphorism, but it is quite another thing to explain its truth.
So which should I start with, science or art? If you were to ask me whether I consider myself more of a scientific or an artistic person, I'd have to say the latter. And we can find in that admission, coupled with my opinion that all art is shit, a kind of universal self-loathing that we often see among artists. Perhaps it is the case that artists are more self-hating because it is a universal truth that science is beautiful and art is shit. Or, perhaps it is simply that I'm looking at science from my yellowish side of the fence, and seeing something much greener. Perhaps scientists are indeed as self-hating as artists, and I just don't happen to hang around with enough of the right kind of scientists.
Suffice it to point out: even artists tend to lambast artists in their own plays, novels, and television shows. It is a time-honored cliche that art is not particularly useful, and that artists tend to be poor, generally bad choices for career- and success-oriented people. Science, on the other hand, is generally seen in works of art as being respectable and admirable.
But enough of the digression, for that is not the meat of this posting. The meat, I mean to say, is the fact that science tends to seek completion.
Science is always in search of perfection. Science wants to fill in the gaps, and learn what happens between the cause and the effect. Science seeks to tell the story of what actually happened. And, science tends to be beautiful. Scientists tend to describe complete, elegant, and resonant theories as beautiful. But, perhaps that is just a side effect of them lacking art. They simply lack the poetic vocabulary to express these emotional ideas, which are close to a sense of awe and beauty, but significantly different concepts from beauty. In that way, scientists are primitive artistically, just as artists are primitive scientifically.
But what about all the double-threats, like Swedenbourg, for example? Well, being artistic myself, and having a streak of psychoanalyst in me, I don't see individuals as indivisible. Everyone has their artistic aspect and their scientific aspect, and the two sides don't communicate particularly well. Some call it a left-brained/right-brained dichotomy, but I just say that there are some things in the realm of the mind that pertain to art, and others in the realm of the mind that pertain to science, and whether or not they are located in the same hemisphere is basically irrelevant to my argument.
Now, about art. I say art is shit. I mean all art. I say there is no such thing as good art. How can I say this? Well, I'm trying to explain, so just keep reading. Some people think "oh, yes, I like this art, it is good; but I don't like that art, it is bad." Well, what is the criteria of good and bad? Obviously these are subjective terms. Art could in theory be evaluated in scientific terms, and in fact, attempts have been made to do so. However, as far as I know, all attempts to objectively determine the value of art have ended in failure. The only thing it is possible to do with art is to evaluate its various properties and effects, one or two dimensions at a time. One of the most successful, perhaps the only successful such metric, is the ability of art to effect the viewer/listener. In other words, how successful is the work of art as a communication tool for ideas?
Thus, at its core, art is really a communication device. As a communication device, we can further examine criteria for the effectiveness of art. However, we cannot now begin to say whether art is beautiful unless it is by the same criteria which we might have applied to scientific theories earlier in this post. By scientific standards, art never comes close to beauty. The demands placed on art as a communicative tool make it impossible to be both beautiful and art.
See, by definition a communication is never complete until there is a sender and a receiever. Completion is one of my (arbitrary) criteria for beauty, and so art in itself can never be considered beautiful. Only after the message has been recieved and digested can it be considered complete.
But I'm getting confused as to the definition of beauty once again. I said that the definition of beauty was similar to completion and perfection, but not the same thing. Beauty can only come into being through an emotional response.
Here's how I think beauty and art work. Art is appealing, or beautiful, only when it means the following two criteria. First, it conforms to some standard, fits within expected parameters, and on a psychological level, puts the mind at ease, because it is familiar. Second, it deviates in some way. More traditional tastes would have the deviation be smaller, while the conformity is larger. Radical tastes would have a great deal of deviation, with little conformity. However, no matter who you are, you will always demand some amount of conformity from whatever art you value, in order that you can recognize it as art.
Radical groups may even accustom themselves to a certain subset of art, and then ossify. They might appear radical to the eye of the general public, but they become extremely conservative within their own group. This may also have to do with cultural identity, but I won't talk about that, I think.
So when someone says "This art is really beautiful," they mean to say "this conforms to my expectations about what art should be, enough to make me comfortable enough to examine it more closely, and yet it deviates enough to excite me."
So how can I say all art is shit? Well, I guess my point would be that art tends to be manipulative. It's a play between familiarity and difference. (I read an essay once by Jaques Derrida, but I didn't understand it, though I suspect he might have been getting at something similar.) It's kind of like a fishing lure, and it is deceptive.
But I don't approve of either part of art. I don't approve of the familiar, because we already have that. There's no point in going on living for the familiar. And neither do I approve of the radical, because it is a kind of pain to accept new things. No one should have to experience pain and discomfort. Thus, the only thing art is good for is to prolong suffering. Art proliferates and excuses suffering, and we humans have the audacity to call it beautiful.
I could leave that statement to stand on its own, as another aphorism, another piece to meditate on, but I feel that some people won't exactly get it.
So I'll try to explain as best I can. My problem is that I am pretty sure of the truth of the aphorism, but it is quite another thing to explain its truth.
So which should I start with, science or art? If you were to ask me whether I consider myself more of a scientific or an artistic person, I'd have to say the latter. And we can find in that admission, coupled with my opinion that all art is shit, a kind of universal self-loathing that we often see among artists. Perhaps it is the case that artists are more self-hating because it is a universal truth that science is beautiful and art is shit. Or, perhaps it is simply that I'm looking at science from my yellowish side of the fence, and seeing something much greener. Perhaps scientists are indeed as self-hating as artists, and I just don't happen to hang around with enough of the right kind of scientists.
Suffice it to point out: even artists tend to lambast artists in their own plays, novels, and television shows. It is a time-honored cliche that art is not particularly useful, and that artists tend to be poor, generally bad choices for career- and success-oriented people. Science, on the other hand, is generally seen in works of art as being respectable and admirable.
But enough of the digression, for that is not the meat of this posting. The meat, I mean to say, is the fact that science tends to seek completion.
Science is always in search of perfection. Science wants to fill in the gaps, and learn what happens between the cause and the effect. Science seeks to tell the story of what actually happened. And, science tends to be beautiful. Scientists tend to describe complete, elegant, and resonant theories as beautiful. But, perhaps that is just a side effect of them lacking art. They simply lack the poetic vocabulary to express these emotional ideas, which are close to a sense of awe and beauty, but significantly different concepts from beauty. In that way, scientists are primitive artistically, just as artists are primitive scientifically.
But what about all the double-threats, like Swedenbourg, for example? Well, being artistic myself, and having a streak of psychoanalyst in me, I don't see individuals as indivisible. Everyone has their artistic aspect and their scientific aspect, and the two sides don't communicate particularly well. Some call it a left-brained/right-brained dichotomy, but I just say that there are some things in the realm of the mind that pertain to art, and others in the realm of the mind that pertain to science, and whether or not they are located in the same hemisphere is basically irrelevant to my argument.
Now, about art. I say art is shit. I mean all art. I say there is no such thing as good art. How can I say this? Well, I'm trying to explain, so just keep reading. Some people think "oh, yes, I like this art, it is good; but I don't like that art, it is bad." Well, what is the criteria of good and bad? Obviously these are subjective terms. Art could in theory be evaluated in scientific terms, and in fact, attempts have been made to do so. However, as far as I know, all attempts to objectively determine the value of art have ended in failure. The only thing it is possible to do with art is to evaluate its various properties and effects, one or two dimensions at a time. One of the most successful, perhaps the only successful such metric, is the ability of art to effect the viewer/listener. In other words, how successful is the work of art as a communication tool for ideas?
Thus, at its core, art is really a communication device. As a communication device, we can further examine criteria for the effectiveness of art. However, we cannot now begin to say whether art is beautiful unless it is by the same criteria which we might have applied to scientific theories earlier in this post. By scientific standards, art never comes close to beauty. The demands placed on art as a communicative tool make it impossible to be both beautiful and art.
See, by definition a communication is never complete until there is a sender and a receiever. Completion is one of my (arbitrary) criteria for beauty, and so art in itself can never be considered beautiful. Only after the message has been recieved and digested can it be considered complete.
But I'm getting confused as to the definition of beauty once again. I said that the definition of beauty was similar to completion and perfection, but not the same thing. Beauty can only come into being through an emotional response.
Here's how I think beauty and art work. Art is appealing, or beautiful, only when it means the following two criteria. First, it conforms to some standard, fits within expected parameters, and on a psychological level, puts the mind at ease, because it is familiar. Second, it deviates in some way. More traditional tastes would have the deviation be smaller, while the conformity is larger. Radical tastes would have a great deal of deviation, with little conformity. However, no matter who you are, you will always demand some amount of conformity from whatever art you value, in order that you can recognize it as art.
Radical groups may even accustom themselves to a certain subset of art, and then ossify. They might appear radical to the eye of the general public, but they become extremely conservative within their own group. This may also have to do with cultural identity, but I won't talk about that, I think.
So when someone says "This art is really beautiful," they mean to say "this conforms to my expectations about what art should be, enough to make me comfortable enough to examine it more closely, and yet it deviates enough to excite me."
So how can I say all art is shit? Well, I guess my point would be that art tends to be manipulative. It's a play between familiarity and difference. (I read an essay once by Jaques Derrida, but I didn't understand it, though I suspect he might have been getting at something similar.) It's kind of like a fishing lure, and it is deceptive.
But I don't approve of either part of art. I don't approve of the familiar, because we already have that. There's no point in going on living for the familiar. And neither do I approve of the radical, because it is a kind of pain to accept new things. No one should have to experience pain and discomfort. Thus, the only thing art is good for is to prolong suffering. Art proliferates and excuses suffering, and we humans have the audacity to call it beautiful.
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Definition: Professional
Okay, this isn't as aphoristic as I'd like it to be, so consider it a work in progress.
A professional is someone who has to resort to working at something in order to make a living.
A professional is someone who accepts the least objectional vocation possible. A professional starts at the bottom of the list, and works his way up until he gets to something he can't do. A professional's choice of profession is driven by the avoidance of unpleasantness.
A professional is someone who has to resort to working at something in order to make a living.
A professional is someone who accepts the least objectional vocation possible. A professional starts at the bottom of the list, and works his way up until he gets to something he can't do. A professional's choice of profession is driven by the avoidance of unpleasantness.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Another aphorism
Blaming corporations for the evils of society is like blaming the bush that hides a sniper.
Monday, November 24, 2008
A quick note on rhyming and the English language.
A man I admire very much indeed has said that any work which claims to be poetry and does not rhyme makes a liar out of its clasier. I happen to agree in part, and yet disagree quite completely.
I said that this would be a quick note, and I don't feel like doing a bunch of research. As much as I'd like to make a historical argument, it would be pretty time-consuming, especially for me. So I'm going to make up imaginary examples, along with imaginary etymologies, and you'll have to follow along with my argument suspending your disbelief, until you get to the end, at which time you can accept my conclusion as valid, or discard it, according to your preference.
So, let us take a pair of rhyming words. Let's say, neighbour and tabor. Tabor is a good example, because I don't recall having heard it spoken aloud, though there is a Tabor Arms Pub in the city of Prince George, and I think I might have remembered it if I had heard it pronounced differently in a radio advertisement. Neighbour is a good word too, because I'm reminded of a white comedian who used it as a substitute for another n-word whenever he sang his favorite black rap songs aloud in public.
Anyways, according to my friend, if you were to put neighbour at the end of one line, and tabor at the end of a subsequent line, you'd have a rhyme, and therefore, you've gone most of the way toward making a poem. If you're me, and you speak like me, then that's fine. These words do indeed have the same ending sound in English. However, historically, they emerged from totally different sounds. (I'm assuming they are unrelated; if they turn out to be related, suspend your disbelief.)
I have a number of problems with the principle that rhyming is a good thing for poetry. Many times it is argued that rhyming makes a poem satisfying to the ear. What rhyming does is it creates a sense of closure in a series of lines. When we end the first line, we're opening a door. When we rhyme it in a subsequent line, we're gently closing the door. Do you notice how I just rhymed "door" with "door"? That was the kind of thing that rhyme was originally supposed to do. Rhyming creates the illusion, the deception, that a logical connection has been made.
In the beginning of language, there were no rhymes. Every word had a different ending. Over time, speakers began to combine words, and some words became nothing more than common endings. For example, "ing" lost its status as an individual word, and in exchange, the Devil gave him a place among all the verbs in all the language. A fair bargain, I would say, and I have no quibble with the Devil on this point.
*Aside: Even to this day, bad poets who claim not to like rhyming will still continue to use "ing" in their poems. Falling, scintillating, gasperating, fulmingating (two ings!), turning, smiling, illuminating. Ing is the new invisible rhyme.
At this point though, you might be objecting. You might say "The English language is so vast, and there are only so many sounds you can end a word with." Well, I explained one part of it already, but there are some other parts of the reason here. (I should also note that I'm not talking about an English that was ever physically spoken, but more of a primordial English spoken in the time before time.) One other reason is simply that the language had a smaller number of concepts to convey per speaker. That is to say, the average English speaker came across a smaller number of things for which he needed words. People travelled less in those days. And what about the few who travelled more and further? Well, these people had other languages. For in those days too, there were a lot more languages around in a relatively smaller area. Not only that, but there was a lot more variation on what might be called a single language today. So much so that some clasiers describe, say, the border between linguistic regions as more of a continuum, in which the transformation is virtually seemless. The only thing that later set down language barriers was the rise of nationalism, or possibly the rise of the state.
And so, any given speaker had a relatively small vocabulary from which to draw possible rhymes. And because of his accent, combined with the accents of the people that brought new words to the region, even words that sort of sounded the same were quite different. In other words, in this time before time, neighbour and tabor did not rhyme. Everyone knew the word "neighbour" although each town had its own special way of pronouncing it. But only a few people knew a "tabor" as such. They had much more varying ways of expressing the concept of a certain kind of drum, usually referring to whatever their local model was called.
The one exception of there not being any rhymes was the fact that words with a common origin, meaning the same thing, and containing the same "sub-words" or lexemes, tended to sound alike. This gave rise to the quite correct belief that rhyming expressed truth. To rhyme was to close a topic off from discussion. A pear is a pear is a pear. A rhyme was an indication of completeness. A rhyme indicated the equivalence of two lines.
Enter the bards. The poets. The wordsmiths. These people realized that some words sounded the same despite being completely unrelated. They also discovered (those of them who could write) that the spelling of words could be altered to be the same or different from that of other words, while the sound of them would remain unaltered, except by the accent of the speaker. Thus, neighbour and tabor, it was realized, could be made to relate in a poem.
The first poet to realize this was an idiot, and he made very crappy poetry. A few other idiots followed, but then one or two poetic geniuses realized that rhyme could be judiciously used to relate heretofore unrelated concepts to each other, and yet still attain some level of profundity. That is, an unknown truth became unearthed when two unrelated concepts were made related. Thus was born the power of rhyme.
But soon after this, rhyme came to be seen as an end in itself. The idiots returned, and built fenceposts out of elephant tusks. Rhyming became nothing more than an address for the librarians at the Libary of Congress to file each work.
I said that this would be a quick note, and I don't feel like doing a bunch of research. As much as I'd like to make a historical argument, it would be pretty time-consuming, especially for me. So I'm going to make up imaginary examples, along with imaginary etymologies, and you'll have to follow along with my argument suspending your disbelief, until you get to the end, at which time you can accept my conclusion as valid, or discard it, according to your preference.
So, let us take a pair of rhyming words. Let's say, neighbour and tabor. Tabor is a good example, because I don't recall having heard it spoken aloud, though there is a Tabor Arms Pub in the city of Prince George, and I think I might have remembered it if I had heard it pronounced differently in a radio advertisement. Neighbour is a good word too, because I'm reminded of a white comedian who used it as a substitute for another n-word whenever he sang his favorite black rap songs aloud in public.
Anyways, according to my friend, if you were to put neighbour at the end of one line, and tabor at the end of a subsequent line, you'd have a rhyme, and therefore, you've gone most of the way toward making a poem. If you're me, and you speak like me, then that's fine. These words do indeed have the same ending sound in English. However, historically, they emerged from totally different sounds. (I'm assuming they are unrelated; if they turn out to be related, suspend your disbelief.)
I have a number of problems with the principle that rhyming is a good thing for poetry. Many times it is argued that rhyming makes a poem satisfying to the ear. What rhyming does is it creates a sense of closure in a series of lines. When we end the first line, we're opening a door. When we rhyme it in a subsequent line, we're gently closing the door. Do you notice how I just rhymed "door" with "door"? That was the kind of thing that rhyme was originally supposed to do. Rhyming creates the illusion, the deception, that a logical connection has been made.
In the beginning of language, there were no rhymes. Every word had a different ending. Over time, speakers began to combine words, and some words became nothing more than common endings. For example, "ing" lost its status as an individual word, and in exchange, the Devil gave him a place among all the verbs in all the language. A fair bargain, I would say, and I have no quibble with the Devil on this point.
*Aside: Even to this day, bad poets who claim not to like rhyming will still continue to use "ing" in their poems. Falling, scintillating, gasperating, fulmingating (two ings!), turning, smiling, illuminating. Ing is the new invisible rhyme.
At this point though, you might be objecting. You might say "The English language is so vast, and there are only so many sounds you can end a word with." Well, I explained one part of it already, but there are some other parts of the reason here. (I should also note that I'm not talking about an English that was ever physically spoken, but more of a primordial English spoken in the time before time.) One other reason is simply that the language had a smaller number of concepts to convey per speaker. That is to say, the average English speaker came across a smaller number of things for which he needed words. People travelled less in those days. And what about the few who travelled more and further? Well, these people had other languages. For in those days too, there were a lot more languages around in a relatively smaller area. Not only that, but there was a lot more variation on what might be called a single language today. So much so that some clasiers describe, say, the border between linguistic regions as more of a continuum, in which the transformation is virtually seemless. The only thing that later set down language barriers was the rise of nationalism, or possibly the rise of the state.
And so, any given speaker had a relatively small vocabulary from which to draw possible rhymes. And because of his accent, combined with the accents of the people that brought new words to the region, even words that sort of sounded the same were quite different. In other words, in this time before time, neighbour and tabor did not rhyme. Everyone knew the word "neighbour" although each town had its own special way of pronouncing it. But only a few people knew a "tabor" as such. They had much more varying ways of expressing the concept of a certain kind of drum, usually referring to whatever their local model was called.
The one exception of there not being any rhymes was the fact that words with a common origin, meaning the same thing, and containing the same "sub-words" or lexemes, tended to sound alike. This gave rise to the quite correct belief that rhyming expressed truth. To rhyme was to close a topic off from discussion. A pear is a pear is a pear. A rhyme was an indication of completeness. A rhyme indicated the equivalence of two lines.
Enter the bards. The poets. The wordsmiths. These people realized that some words sounded the same despite being completely unrelated. They also discovered (those of them who could write) that the spelling of words could be altered to be the same or different from that of other words, while the sound of them would remain unaltered, except by the accent of the speaker. Thus, neighbour and tabor, it was realized, could be made to relate in a poem.
The first poet to realize this was an idiot, and he made very crappy poetry. A few other idiots followed, but then one or two poetic geniuses realized that rhyme could be judiciously used to relate heretofore unrelated concepts to each other, and yet still attain some level of profundity. That is, an unknown truth became unearthed when two unrelated concepts were made related. Thus was born the power of rhyme.
But soon after this, rhyme came to be seen as an end in itself. The idiots returned, and built fenceposts out of elephant tusks. Rhyming became nothing more than an address for the librarians at the Libary of Congress to file each work.
Friday, November 21, 2008
Rejection
I don't deal particularly well with rejection. So you can imagine how I might have felt the other morning when I woke up from a dream in which I was being consistently and systematically being rejected by a series of recruiters from various agencies, including the government and the armed forces. Everything about me was inadequate. I hadn't studied the field sufficiently. I needed more experience. I didn't know the answers to basic questions. I didn't know the history of each field. I couldn't do basic calculations because I didn't have the formulas memorized. I didn't know the people I needed to know. I didn't have references. All of this was enormously frustrating in my dream.
However, if I may attempt to comfort myself, I also noticed, while dreaming, that there were thousands of other applicants to the same positions (there were several dozen jobs I was trying out for) and many of them received a zero in most, if not all, of their aptitude tests. My average score was around 20% on every test. The successful applicants scored at or near 100%.
What is wrong with me? Well, there's nothing wrong with me. The reasons for scoring low on tests and failing criteria was that I simply had not had the exposure to the right factors. I could have had all the knowledge, if I had been arsed to go out and learn it. I could have met the people involved, got to know them, and got references from them. They were listed in directories for that purpose. And yet, for some reason, I had never done any of these things. I had never wanted any of these jobs badly enough to go out and actually learn anything about them. This is why I was rejected 100% of the time.
So what is the lesson that I need to learn? Well, people aren't ready to just take a chance on someone who has no knowledge of what it is they're getting themselves into. I know I'll be a great asset, but they don't, and I don't have any evidence beyond my word to go by. And these days, no one's word is worth anything. Especially the word of a stranger. The word of someone who nobody knows, who just showed up out of the blue.
After all, how have things gotten done throughout history? People did what their parents did. And why can't I do that? Well, it is an option. It's not something I want to do, but I could go work for my dad, doing exactly what he's doing.
Except in my dad's case, he didn't do what his dad did. My dad created his own niche in the world, and I suppose that is why I have such a hard time occupying the niche that he carved. He's a niche-carver, an entrepreneur, and if I want to follow in his footsteps, what I have to do is not follow in anyone's footsteps. Which makes life difficult for me. But maybe if I am mindful of this, I can watch out for the pitfalls. And yes, I can call him up and ask him for advice about treading in untrodden territory.
Well, that out of the way, I have this problem of rejection. The other aspect of it, which I was hinting at earlier, is that a lot of people get rejected before they even get in the door. So obviously I have something special. I am somehow unique, and I do have the skills to at least get a good deal of momentum going and get my career rolling. If only I could convince someone to take a chance on me.
Ugh, but I hate that language. As if I'm begging. I'm special, dammit! Why can't anyone see that? Why do I have to go with my hands wringing?
Well, I guess I don't. All I need is solid evidence that I am the perfect asset for the job. And this will take some education. It will take digging, and hand-shaking. I will have to get to know some of the people who are in this industry. It'll take reading whatever there is to read about it. And it will take me trying not to get bored, or bogged down in my own thing.
Speaking of getting bogged down, I think my attitude toward my current work could use an adjustment. One option I have is to just accept the job I have now as a good job, and just keep on doing it, saving money until the end. There's nothing wrong with that. Lots of people work crappy, low-paying jobs their entire lives.
But am I lots of people? Well, I thought I wasn't, but part of the problem is that a lot of people in the world of job opportunities are going to want to classify me as one of the many who don't deserve anything better than a Joe-job. At least, as far as their sphere is concerned. You see, I take things too personal. To the vast majority of people in the world, I'm of absolutely no consequence. I might as well just die. I'm taking up space in their busy schedule. But why should I take this personally? I shouldn't. I know my own value, and that's enough for me. And every once in a while, if I should happen to encounter someone who seems to take an unwarranted interest in me, I should be ecstatic. I know this can happen, because it has happened.
Mind you, I find that the people who are most interested in me as a person are the people I'm paying to do so. For example, my college professors. They're working for me. And so they exhibit this degree of care that I don't see elsewhere. I seem to get the same treatment from my doctor, the hairdresser, people at the clothing store, counsellors, therapists, and the people at the blood donor clinic (although I'm paying them in blood, not money).
But to go back a little bit in my thoughts, my theory on rejection, the lesson I got from the dream I had last night, is that rejection is avoidable. And every time I was rejected in my dream, there was a pretty clear reason for it. Mainly, it is a lack of concrete evidence that I am capable of doing this job which I claim to want to do, or a lack of concrete evidence that I am capable and willing to learn the workings of this job which I want to do.
After all, I am struck every day by images of things going wrong because people didn't do their jobs. The very computer I'm working on is full of bugs and imperfections because someone didn't take their job seriously enough. I am amazed that Intel's processors actually work after hearing about all the bugs built into the physical structure of their chips. I'm amazed that Windows Vista runs anything at all. And these are the best of the best, building these computers. These are the smartest people with the best, most prestigious jobs.
And what about when the stakes are even higher, or rather, when the stakes are of a human nature? What about doctors, surgeons, policemen, and the military? When a policeman makes a mistake, not only is he guilty of not taking his job seriously enough, but he undermines the legitimacy of the state that he represents. When a policeman unintentionally kills someone with a taser, the entire government is accused of fascism.
Our world is riddled with incompetence, and here I am asking for potential employers to give me a chance? Without solid evidence?
This is what makes me glad that we go through hard times. Economically, I'm thinking, though it could also apply to things like wartime, and natural disasters. What a recession does for us, is make it harder to succeed as an incompetent. Either you smarten up, or your whole company, industry, or country, goes down the drain. The theory goes: someone else will rise up to replace you. And that someone will, at least in the beginning, be smarter than you, more competent, more efficient.
But what does this mean for me? Well, it means going in there without evidence and asking them to "give me a chance, I can learn" is not going to cut it. I'm going to have to learn a heck of a lot first, and then approach them. I'm going to have to make myself irresistable.
What else does this mean? Well, it means every time I consider a company, I'm going to have to ask myself tough questions about whether I really want to go there. This is no longer just my vetting process, or the vetting process of myself. This is a vetting process for both parties. I have to examine them, and recognize how much I approve of their activities, and whether I think they deserve me as a member. And I'm going to have to reject a few organizations myself.
However, if I may attempt to comfort myself, I also noticed, while dreaming, that there were thousands of other applicants to the same positions (there were several dozen jobs I was trying out for) and many of them received a zero in most, if not all, of their aptitude tests. My average score was around 20% on every test. The successful applicants scored at or near 100%.
What is wrong with me? Well, there's nothing wrong with me. The reasons for scoring low on tests and failing criteria was that I simply had not had the exposure to the right factors. I could have had all the knowledge, if I had been arsed to go out and learn it. I could have met the people involved, got to know them, and got references from them. They were listed in directories for that purpose. And yet, for some reason, I had never done any of these things. I had never wanted any of these jobs badly enough to go out and actually learn anything about them. This is why I was rejected 100% of the time.
So what is the lesson that I need to learn? Well, people aren't ready to just take a chance on someone who has no knowledge of what it is they're getting themselves into. I know I'll be a great asset, but they don't, and I don't have any evidence beyond my word to go by. And these days, no one's word is worth anything. Especially the word of a stranger. The word of someone who nobody knows, who just showed up out of the blue.
After all, how have things gotten done throughout history? People did what their parents did. And why can't I do that? Well, it is an option. It's not something I want to do, but I could go work for my dad, doing exactly what he's doing.
Except in my dad's case, he didn't do what his dad did. My dad created his own niche in the world, and I suppose that is why I have such a hard time occupying the niche that he carved. He's a niche-carver, an entrepreneur, and if I want to follow in his footsteps, what I have to do is not follow in anyone's footsteps. Which makes life difficult for me. But maybe if I am mindful of this, I can watch out for the pitfalls. And yes, I can call him up and ask him for advice about treading in untrodden territory.
Well, that out of the way, I have this problem of rejection. The other aspect of it, which I was hinting at earlier, is that a lot of people get rejected before they even get in the door. So obviously I have something special. I am somehow unique, and I do have the skills to at least get a good deal of momentum going and get my career rolling. If only I could convince someone to take a chance on me.
Ugh, but I hate that language. As if I'm begging. I'm special, dammit! Why can't anyone see that? Why do I have to go with my hands wringing?
Well, I guess I don't. All I need is solid evidence that I am the perfect asset for the job. And this will take some education. It will take digging, and hand-shaking. I will have to get to know some of the people who are in this industry. It'll take reading whatever there is to read about it. And it will take me trying not to get bored, or bogged down in my own thing.
Speaking of getting bogged down, I think my attitude toward my current work could use an adjustment. One option I have is to just accept the job I have now as a good job, and just keep on doing it, saving money until the end. There's nothing wrong with that. Lots of people work crappy, low-paying jobs their entire lives.
But am I lots of people? Well, I thought I wasn't, but part of the problem is that a lot of people in the world of job opportunities are going to want to classify me as one of the many who don't deserve anything better than a Joe-job. At least, as far as their sphere is concerned. You see, I take things too personal. To the vast majority of people in the world, I'm of absolutely no consequence. I might as well just die. I'm taking up space in their busy schedule. But why should I take this personally? I shouldn't. I know my own value, and that's enough for me. And every once in a while, if I should happen to encounter someone who seems to take an unwarranted interest in me, I should be ecstatic. I know this can happen, because it has happened.
Mind you, I find that the people who are most interested in me as a person are the people I'm paying to do so. For example, my college professors. They're working for me. And so they exhibit this degree of care that I don't see elsewhere. I seem to get the same treatment from my doctor, the hairdresser, people at the clothing store, counsellors, therapists, and the people at the blood donor clinic (although I'm paying them in blood, not money).
But to go back a little bit in my thoughts, my theory on rejection, the lesson I got from the dream I had last night, is that rejection is avoidable. And every time I was rejected in my dream, there was a pretty clear reason for it. Mainly, it is a lack of concrete evidence that I am capable of doing this job which I claim to want to do, or a lack of concrete evidence that I am capable and willing to learn the workings of this job which I want to do.
After all, I am struck every day by images of things going wrong because people didn't do their jobs. The very computer I'm working on is full of bugs and imperfections because someone didn't take their job seriously enough. I am amazed that Intel's processors actually work after hearing about all the bugs built into the physical structure of their chips. I'm amazed that Windows Vista runs anything at all. And these are the best of the best, building these computers. These are the smartest people with the best, most prestigious jobs.
And what about when the stakes are even higher, or rather, when the stakes are of a human nature? What about doctors, surgeons, policemen, and the military? When a policeman makes a mistake, not only is he guilty of not taking his job seriously enough, but he undermines the legitimacy of the state that he represents. When a policeman unintentionally kills someone with a taser, the entire government is accused of fascism.
Our world is riddled with incompetence, and here I am asking for potential employers to give me a chance? Without solid evidence?
This is what makes me glad that we go through hard times. Economically, I'm thinking, though it could also apply to things like wartime, and natural disasters. What a recession does for us, is make it harder to succeed as an incompetent. Either you smarten up, or your whole company, industry, or country, goes down the drain. The theory goes: someone else will rise up to replace you. And that someone will, at least in the beginning, be smarter than you, more competent, more efficient.
But what does this mean for me? Well, it means going in there without evidence and asking them to "give me a chance, I can learn" is not going to cut it. I'm going to have to learn a heck of a lot first, and then approach them. I'm going to have to make myself irresistable.
What else does this mean? Well, it means every time I consider a company, I'm going to have to ask myself tough questions about whether I really want to go there. This is no longer just my vetting process, or the vetting process of myself. This is a vetting process for both parties. I have to examine them, and recognize how much I approve of their activities, and whether I think they deserve me as a member. And I'm going to have to reject a few organizations myself.
Monday, September 8, 2008
Glee! Elections!
For basically the past year I've been feeling very left-out, because the Americans have been having their whole electoral process going on for about half of their current President's latest term in office. And since I'm exposed to a whole lot of American culture, I can't help but absorb the issues and opinions of all those people working passionately south of the border to get their candidates elected. As a result, ever since the American campaign started, I've been feeling bummed that I won't be able to vote in the American election. I've often found myself saying "if I was an American, I'd vote for [Obama, McCain, H. Clinton, etc.]" depending on the issue of the day.
A couple of the shows I watch include: The Daily Show with Jon Stewart/The Colbert Report, Real Time with Bill Maher, Penn and Teller's Bullshit, The MSNBC Nightly News, The Tonight Show/The Late Show/Late Nite/The Late Late Show.
Anyways, as my own way of participating, I did manage to make a small financial contribution to the campaign of Senator Barack Obama. So at least I felt like I was sort of a part of the electoral process. US$15 is probably worth more than 1 vote to him anyways, at least right now. [Is it technically illegal for a Canadian to contribute to an American political candidate? It's probably not illegal on my end, just illegal for Barack Obama to accept my donation. Well, he did, and he keeps sending me email asking for more, which I might yet do as November draws near.]
But despite feeling like I at least have a small measure of influence (about as much as voting, to be honest) in the US election, I still feel disappointed because I know that Obama and McCain aren't going to act for me overtly. In other words, they're not going to give me the same platitudes that they give to the citizens of the USA. And I want those platitudes. Oh, they'll act in my interest. Obama can't not know that some of his campaign funding is coming from Canada, and McCain is perfectly aware of the Canada-USA close relationship in matters of trade, defence, etc, etc. So it's not like they're working against my interests as a Canadian. But the fact is that their policy decisions have no way to affect me directly.
Which is why I'm so excited about the upcoming Canadian election. We're going to beat the Americans to the punch! We're going to have an election in a matter of 40 days, while theirs takes 2 years. We're going to finally have a chance to vent all that pent-up Canadian civic tension. And it'll be quick and painless.
Of course, we're not going to make any history. We've already had our first female Prime Minister. In fact, I see this election largely as just a jump-start to a broken parliament. It just needs to be put back on the rails. I don't think anything is going to change. The Conservatives will simply win another minority.
Anways though, what is great about this Canadian election is that it is kind of like piggy-backing on the US election. In the US, they're making all these arguments, putting political ideas out there, discussing them in the news, and analyzing various trends. And all of this stuff is leaking over the border into Canada: essentially for free. On American networks that are broadcast into Canada (along with American newspapers and other media), the candidates are paying advertising dollars to allow Canadians to see the pros and cons of themselves and their opponents. True, not all of it applies directly to Canada, but many of the principles and issues are shared between our countries, and we are essentially getting free analysis. Our own networks will have to do some work converting some of it into Canadianese, but the ideological heavy lifting is done.
All that remains is to get to know the candidates personally. But unlike the US, we know our candidates pretty well already. We don't need multi-million dollar campaigns to introduce them to us. At most, Harper and Dion will swap jobs. That'll be fun; kind of like Christmas in the UK.
A couple of the shows I watch include: The Daily Show with Jon Stewart/The Colbert Report, Real Time with Bill Maher, Penn and Teller's Bullshit, The MSNBC Nightly News, The Tonight Show/The Late Show/Late Nite/The Late Late Show.
Anyways, as my own way of participating, I did manage to make a small financial contribution to the campaign of Senator Barack Obama. So at least I felt like I was sort of a part of the electoral process. US$15 is probably worth more than 1 vote to him anyways, at least right now. [Is it technically illegal for a Canadian to contribute to an American political candidate? It's probably not illegal on my end, just illegal for Barack Obama to accept my donation. Well, he did, and he keeps sending me email asking for more, which I might yet do as November draws near.]
But despite feeling like I at least have a small measure of influence (about as much as voting, to be honest) in the US election, I still feel disappointed because I know that Obama and McCain aren't going to act for me overtly. In other words, they're not going to give me the same platitudes that they give to the citizens of the USA. And I want those platitudes. Oh, they'll act in my interest. Obama can't not know that some of his campaign funding is coming from Canada, and McCain is perfectly aware of the Canada-USA close relationship in matters of trade, defence, etc, etc. So it's not like they're working against my interests as a Canadian. But the fact is that their policy decisions have no way to affect me directly.
Which is why I'm so excited about the upcoming Canadian election. We're going to beat the Americans to the punch! We're going to have an election in a matter of 40 days, while theirs takes 2 years. We're going to finally have a chance to vent all that pent-up Canadian civic tension. And it'll be quick and painless.
Of course, we're not going to make any history. We've already had our first female Prime Minister. In fact, I see this election largely as just a jump-start to a broken parliament. It just needs to be put back on the rails. I don't think anything is going to change. The Conservatives will simply win another minority.
Anways though, what is great about this Canadian election is that it is kind of like piggy-backing on the US election. In the US, they're making all these arguments, putting political ideas out there, discussing them in the news, and analyzing various trends. And all of this stuff is leaking over the border into Canada: essentially for free. On American networks that are broadcast into Canada (along with American newspapers and other media), the candidates are paying advertising dollars to allow Canadians to see the pros and cons of themselves and their opponents. True, not all of it applies directly to Canada, but many of the principles and issues are shared between our countries, and we are essentially getting free analysis. Our own networks will have to do some work converting some of it into Canadianese, but the ideological heavy lifting is done.
All that remains is to get to know the candidates personally. But unlike the US, we know our candidates pretty well already. We don't need multi-million dollar campaigns to introduce them to us. At most, Harper and Dion will swap jobs. That'll be fun; kind of like Christmas in the UK.
Saturday, September 6, 2008
Addictions Are Bullshit
I remember hearing the following quote from a co-worker (at the Casino, where I am a Count), and I'm pretty sure I heard it before from a fairly reputable source, probably someone having something to do with law enforcement or social work.
"Some drugs are so addictive that 1 in 10 people who take it once are permanently addicted from that moment on."
Anyways, there are variations in which drug is mentioned by name, usually heroin, but may include other drugs like crack, ecstacy, and meth. Sometimes it is said 1 in 10, sometimes 9 in 10, and sometimes it is claimed that 10 in 10, or 100% become addicted after one taste.
What?
Even the most legitimately scientific and factual instance of this quotation is still utter bullshit, and I'll tell you why:
People have free will.
You'd think that being addicted to something was a life sentence. You know what, I'm addicted to food. I can't live without it. I'm addicted to sleep. I'm addicted to the internet. (I also happen to be "mildly" addicted to caffein, but as a recovering anything-a-holic might tell you, there is no such thing as being mildly addicted.) And this is in the clinical sense. I'm not just using "addicted" in its rhetorical sense, like the tongue-in-cheek so-called "work-a-holic." I'm really addicted to the stuff that I feel compelled to do and partake of on a daily basis. That's the definition of addiction. It is a compulsion.
Now, the compulsion of addiction is not voluntary. In a word, it is involuntary. In two words, it is a physiological phenomenon. I don't feel hungry because I choose to. But what I can do is choose to eat. Well, I couldn't choose not to eat, or else I'd starve, but what I can choose is where, when, and what to eat.
This is how it is with addictions. You can't choose whether or not you want a cigarette, or another hit of heroin. You can only choose your response to the signal your body gives you.
A lot of people see addiction as dictating behavior. An addict can't help wanting, desiring, craving, therefore, the popular logic goes, they are not in control of their own responses. And some addicts like this line of reasoning. They even explain their feelings in terms of powerlessness and helplessness against the internal demon of addiction. This is a convenient line of reasoning for the addict, because it allows them to justify bad choices. Ultimately though, this line of reasoning is counterproductive to the addict, because it results in a cycle of believing that they are indeed powerless.
An addiction is a bad excuse for a poor choice of behavior.
The problem with our conception of addictions is that they are not real. They are a fabrication. Addictions do not exist, not in the popular sense. In the clinical sense, anything can be an addiction, and the definition ceases to be useful to someone fighting wrong behavior. You might just as well call them demons, because addictions are exactly as real as demons.
The reality of what is commonly called addictions is that it is a conflict of interest within the human body. It's a more extreme version of the conflicts we encounter every day, like when the alarm clock rings in the morning, and we feel compelled to sleep an extra half-hour, but we also feel compelled to get up and fix ourselves some breakfast (on account of being hungry).
The physical compulsions felt due to addictive substances, like nicotine, can seem powerful, especially when the means to satisfy them is so close to our grasp on the kitchen table. But the long-term desires that we have, like to avoid developing cancer, seem far away when it comes down to the moment. Despite the latter desire, the fact of the matter is that our body wants a cigarette now. But we can still refuse.
However, what I'm trying to say about addictions is that we are not slaves to our compulsions. Perhaps it would help to remind ourselves of this in our "moments of weakness". An addiction is never irresistable. An addiction can never get ahold of us completely, leaving us without free will.
Having an addiction is never a good excuse for any act. A reasonable excuse for smoking a cigarette might be that it makes you feel good, that you wanted to smoke it. However, in the bigger picture, a reasonable person could conclude that smoking cigarettes is not in their best interest, and therefore make the rational choice. It is, of course, equally rational to decide that one values the pleasure of the present moment over the lengthening of future moments. However, over time, and over the course of a series of present moments, it would seem that the pleasure added to each of these moments would never weigh up against the pleasure of a longer, healthier, happier life.
What I had hoped to do with this post was to at least begin to question the idea of the addict as a hopeless case. Of course, once you've tried a highly addictive drug, you are automatically addicted. But what it means to be addicted to a drug is a very different thing from automatically becoming a slave to it. To be addicted merely means that you will, from now on, have a physiological compulsion to acquire it again. But there is nothing supernatural about it. You are not condemned to a life in the gutter.
"Some drugs are so addictive that 1 in 10 people who take it once are permanently addicted from that moment on."
Anyways, there are variations in which drug is mentioned by name, usually heroin, but may include other drugs like crack, ecstacy, and meth. Sometimes it is said 1 in 10, sometimes 9 in 10, and sometimes it is claimed that 10 in 10, or 100% become addicted after one taste.
What?
Even the most legitimately scientific and factual instance of this quotation is still utter bullshit, and I'll tell you why:
People have free will.
You'd think that being addicted to something was a life sentence. You know what, I'm addicted to food. I can't live without it. I'm addicted to sleep. I'm addicted to the internet. (I also happen to be "mildly" addicted to caffein, but as a recovering anything-a-holic might tell you, there is no such thing as being mildly addicted.) And this is in the clinical sense. I'm not just using "addicted" in its rhetorical sense, like the tongue-in-cheek so-called "work-a-holic." I'm really addicted to the stuff that I feel compelled to do and partake of on a daily basis. That's the definition of addiction. It is a compulsion.
Now, the compulsion of addiction is not voluntary. In a word, it is involuntary. In two words, it is a physiological phenomenon. I don't feel hungry because I choose to. But what I can do is choose to eat. Well, I couldn't choose not to eat, or else I'd starve, but what I can choose is where, when, and what to eat.
This is how it is with addictions. You can't choose whether or not you want a cigarette, or another hit of heroin. You can only choose your response to the signal your body gives you.
A lot of people see addiction as dictating behavior. An addict can't help wanting, desiring, craving, therefore, the popular logic goes, they are not in control of their own responses. And some addicts like this line of reasoning. They even explain their feelings in terms of powerlessness and helplessness against the internal demon of addiction. This is a convenient line of reasoning for the addict, because it allows them to justify bad choices. Ultimately though, this line of reasoning is counterproductive to the addict, because it results in a cycle of believing that they are indeed powerless.
An addiction is a bad excuse for a poor choice of behavior.
The problem with our conception of addictions is that they are not real. They are a fabrication. Addictions do not exist, not in the popular sense. In the clinical sense, anything can be an addiction, and the definition ceases to be useful to someone fighting wrong behavior. You might just as well call them demons, because addictions are exactly as real as demons.
The reality of what is commonly called addictions is that it is a conflict of interest within the human body. It's a more extreme version of the conflicts we encounter every day, like when the alarm clock rings in the morning, and we feel compelled to sleep an extra half-hour, but we also feel compelled to get up and fix ourselves some breakfast (on account of being hungry).
The physical compulsions felt due to addictive substances, like nicotine, can seem powerful, especially when the means to satisfy them is so close to our grasp on the kitchen table. But the long-term desires that we have, like to avoid developing cancer, seem far away when it comes down to the moment. Despite the latter desire, the fact of the matter is that our body wants a cigarette now. But we can still refuse.
However, what I'm trying to say about addictions is that we are not slaves to our compulsions. Perhaps it would help to remind ourselves of this in our "moments of weakness". An addiction is never irresistable. An addiction can never get ahold of us completely, leaving us without free will.
Having an addiction is never a good excuse for any act. A reasonable excuse for smoking a cigarette might be that it makes you feel good, that you wanted to smoke it. However, in the bigger picture, a reasonable person could conclude that smoking cigarettes is not in their best interest, and therefore make the rational choice. It is, of course, equally rational to decide that one values the pleasure of the present moment over the lengthening of future moments. However, over time, and over the course of a series of present moments, it would seem that the pleasure added to each of these moments would never weigh up against the pleasure of a longer, healthier, happier life.
What I had hoped to do with this post was to at least begin to question the idea of the addict as a hopeless case. Of course, once you've tried a highly addictive drug, you are automatically addicted. But what it means to be addicted to a drug is a very different thing from automatically becoming a slave to it. To be addicted merely means that you will, from now on, have a physiological compulsion to acquire it again. But there is nothing supernatural about it. You are not condemned to a life in the gutter.
Monday, August 25, 2008
Let's Talk About Writing
Why? Why not. Writing is a kind of thinking. Especially blogging, since the point of it is to get it out there. To be honest, I have not honed the art of the argument; I have a lot of work to do in developing my mind before I'm there.
The question in writing is whether to write down whatever it is you just thought. Is that important? Does it support what I'm trying to do? Okay, so outlines help, but do they really? I find outlines are quickly abandoned. Perhaps I simply lack discipline.
Writing is a train of thought, but I cannot bring myself to lay the tracks in an ordered way. They just go wherever they want to go. Then, when I've written a little bit of writing, I go back to the start. What was I trying to say again? Oh, yeah. Well, I guess I'll just repeat it, think it again, and this time I'll see what words come to mind to say it. And the words are always different. And the cat is on the counter again, so I have to go put him on the floor. Where was I?
In writing, the writer is trying to reproduce the pattern of thoughts that exist in our minds. The writer is trying to lead the reader from point A to point Z, through points B, C, D, and so on. me though, as a reader, I am rarely so receptive. Never grateful for a path laid out for me. I'm always heading off. I try to get through a work, but if I engage it, then I am distracted from it. If I let myself get caught up in this other man's thoughts, then I forget that I'm reading, and my comprehension and retention are reduced to nothing. Or, if I read while thinking of other things, my eyes move across the page, but my brain doesn't pick up any of it.
So, writing. Now the cat is in my lap. Now he wants to overturn the wastebasket, which has empty jerky packages in it. Those two sentences were not in chronological order; I obviously couldn't have written them while dealing with the cat.
The writer has to be able to freeze-frame the thought process. He has to capture each moment as a photograph in words. The photograph portrays a thoughtscape, not a landscape. Thus, it is never enough for the writer to merely think. Otherwise he would speak. Speech can take place in real time. An audio-video recording device can preserve a thought process. Only writing can create a totally new one. Only writing can create something from the ground up.
But can it be done? Has anyone ever done it? Perhaps not. The problem with charting out a thought process is that the terrain to be encountered in each mind is different. How can you anticipate the attitudes that your text is going to be encountering as it plunges through the space of the mind. Well, good writers do anticipate objections. They anticipate the most common objections. The objections that they themselves had as they were exploring this idea in their mind. However, it is impossible to anticipate all objections. For one thing, not all objections are equally valid as each other. To be sure, no objection is truly valid. The nature of an objection is that it contradicts the text in question. The objection is a challenge. One or the other must be sustained. This is a zero-sum game. If the objection is valid, it kills the argument. But if the objection is not valid, which must be shown by the argument itself or in a supporting statement demonstrating the bankruptcy of the objection, then the argument kills the objection.
Valid or not, objections do tend to arise. As I have already stated, the skilled writer predicts common objections. He does this through his education and through his knowledge of the reader, who probably has some education in common with the writer. Obviously they share a language, unless the work is in translation.
The skilled reader learns to ignore the objections that arise in the corners of his mind, threatening to overshadow his understanding of the text in question. The reader assimilates what is needed, and even compensates for any extraneous writing that the writer has included. For example, a reader who does not share a certain opinion expressed can simply disregard the opinion while continuing to assimilate the useful knowledge that is contained within the work, even if the only useful knowledge is the fact that the writer does purportedly hold the opinion expressed.
However, it is not enough for someone to write something down. That does not make it an opinion. Note that I said "purportedly". Some readers read believing that the writer means everything he says. This is not necessarily the case. This is also why writing is both superior to and more dangerous than speech. A writer has many different options for what he writes down. A speaker has fewer. A speaker only has access to the thoughts that he currently holds in his mind at the moment. The writer has months or years to revise. (Objection: Some speakers practice and hone the same speech repeatedly; Defense: these are more akin to writers than speakers, in the sense that I am using here.)
When a writer writes, he will consider several alternative methods of expressing the idea, before typing it out. Or, he may even type out several examples, trying out the best one before committing to it, and moving on to the next portion of his argument. I know I'm doing a bad job at arguing any single point. I have not created a thesis for this blog post.
Yes, people seem to prefer theses, but there is something liberating about just writing to discuss, not to come to conclusions. Besides, no one comes to clear conclusions anymore anyways. Even in the
Damn! The roof is leaking, and my bowl is full. I have to go empty it. I'll be right back.
It's kind of funny. I think a very large number of thoughts about certain other individuals. For example, my mother. Or my brother. Or my friend. And yet, if I am to go and write a letter to them, how can I express these multitudinous thoughts? I must selectively choose what to say to them in order to evince a desired response. I want my mother to know that I love her, but isn't that the part that you put at the end of the letter? And isn't it evidence enough that I am writing to her? I want her to know that I am well, but again, the letter itself is evidence of that fact. I want her to know that I enjoyed our last visit. Ah! Good, something concrete. I want her to know that I'm looking forward to our next visit. Well, it stands to reason that if I tend to enjoy our visits, then obviously I'd be looking forward to the next one, so that's out. Shall I send her news? The problem with news is that I have already shared anything newsworthy with her on the telephone. Perhaps with instant global communications, letter-writing is forever going to die. And yet, I do want something permanent by which to remember our relationship.
Still there are many things I could write. Some are true. Some are not true. Some will only become true by virtue of them being written down. There are feelings invented for the purpose of a letter. In writing a letter to my mother, my main purpose is to make my mother happy. Feelings can be assumed.
And, I have to go to work. I have a lot more to say on this subject, but it is not organized. Just looking back over what I've written, I see several places where I'd like to clarify my thoughts, and address objections that I've thought of. But if I don't get in the shower right now, I'll be late for work.
The question in writing is whether to write down whatever it is you just thought. Is that important? Does it support what I'm trying to do? Okay, so outlines help, but do they really? I find outlines are quickly abandoned. Perhaps I simply lack discipline.
Writing is a train of thought, but I cannot bring myself to lay the tracks in an ordered way. They just go wherever they want to go. Then, when I've written a little bit of writing, I go back to the start. What was I trying to say again? Oh, yeah. Well, I guess I'll just repeat it, think it again, and this time I'll see what words come to mind to say it. And the words are always different. And the cat is on the counter again, so I have to go put him on the floor. Where was I?
In writing, the writer is trying to reproduce the pattern of thoughts that exist in our minds. The writer is trying to lead the reader from point A to point Z, through points B, C, D, and so on. me though, as a reader, I am rarely so receptive. Never grateful for a path laid out for me. I'm always heading off. I try to get through a work, but if I engage it, then I am distracted from it. If I let myself get caught up in this other man's thoughts, then I forget that I'm reading, and my comprehension and retention are reduced to nothing. Or, if I read while thinking of other things, my eyes move across the page, but my brain doesn't pick up any of it.
So, writing. Now the cat is in my lap. Now he wants to overturn the wastebasket, which has empty jerky packages in it. Those two sentences were not in chronological order; I obviously couldn't have written them while dealing with the cat.
The writer has to be able to freeze-frame the thought process. He has to capture each moment as a photograph in words. The photograph portrays a thoughtscape, not a landscape. Thus, it is never enough for the writer to merely think. Otherwise he would speak. Speech can take place in real time. An audio-video recording device can preserve a thought process. Only writing can create a totally new one. Only writing can create something from the ground up.
But can it be done? Has anyone ever done it? Perhaps not. The problem with charting out a thought process is that the terrain to be encountered in each mind is different. How can you anticipate the attitudes that your text is going to be encountering as it plunges through the space of the mind. Well, good writers do anticipate objections. They anticipate the most common objections. The objections that they themselves had as they were exploring this idea in their mind. However, it is impossible to anticipate all objections. For one thing, not all objections are equally valid as each other. To be sure, no objection is truly valid. The nature of an objection is that it contradicts the text in question. The objection is a challenge. One or the other must be sustained. This is a zero-sum game. If the objection is valid, it kills the argument. But if the objection is not valid, which must be shown by the argument itself or in a supporting statement demonstrating the bankruptcy of the objection, then the argument kills the objection.
Valid or not, objections do tend to arise. As I have already stated, the skilled writer predicts common objections. He does this through his education and through his knowledge of the reader, who probably has some education in common with the writer. Obviously they share a language, unless the work is in translation.
The skilled reader learns to ignore the objections that arise in the corners of his mind, threatening to overshadow his understanding of the text in question. The reader assimilates what is needed, and even compensates for any extraneous writing that the writer has included. For example, a reader who does not share a certain opinion expressed can simply disregard the opinion while continuing to assimilate the useful knowledge that is contained within the work, even if the only useful knowledge is the fact that the writer does purportedly hold the opinion expressed.
However, it is not enough for someone to write something down. That does not make it an opinion. Note that I said "purportedly". Some readers read believing that the writer means everything he says. This is not necessarily the case. This is also why writing is both superior to and more dangerous than speech. A writer has many different options for what he writes down. A speaker has fewer. A speaker only has access to the thoughts that he currently holds in his mind at the moment. The writer has months or years to revise. (Objection: Some speakers practice and hone the same speech repeatedly; Defense: these are more akin to writers than speakers, in the sense that I am using here.)
When a writer writes, he will consider several alternative methods of expressing the idea, before typing it out. Or, he may even type out several examples, trying out the best one before committing to it, and moving on to the next portion of his argument. I know I'm doing a bad job at arguing any single point. I have not created a thesis for this blog post.
Yes, people seem to prefer theses, but there is something liberating about just writing to discuss, not to come to conclusions. Besides, no one comes to clear conclusions anymore anyways. Even in the
Damn! The roof is leaking, and my bowl is full. I have to go empty it. I'll be right back.
It's kind of funny. I think a very large number of thoughts about certain other individuals. For example, my mother. Or my brother. Or my friend. And yet, if I am to go and write a letter to them, how can I express these multitudinous thoughts? I must selectively choose what to say to them in order to evince a desired response. I want my mother to know that I love her, but isn't that the part that you put at the end of the letter? And isn't it evidence enough that I am writing to her? I want her to know that I am well, but again, the letter itself is evidence of that fact. I want her to know that I enjoyed our last visit. Ah! Good, something concrete. I want her to know that I'm looking forward to our next visit. Well, it stands to reason that if I tend to enjoy our visits, then obviously I'd be looking forward to the next one, so that's out. Shall I send her news? The problem with news is that I have already shared anything newsworthy with her on the telephone. Perhaps with instant global communications, letter-writing is forever going to die. And yet, I do want something permanent by which to remember our relationship.
Still there are many things I could write. Some are true. Some are not true. Some will only become true by virtue of them being written down. There are feelings invented for the purpose of a letter. In writing a letter to my mother, my main purpose is to make my mother happy. Feelings can be assumed.
And, I have to go to work. I have a lot more to say on this subject, but it is not organized. Just looking back over what I've written, I see several places where I'd like to clarify my thoughts, and address objections that I've thought of. But if I don't get in the shower right now, I'll be late for work.
Friday, August 22, 2008
Nationalism: The Great Lie or the Greatest Lie?
I've never considered myself a nationalist. I don't believe that I inherently belong to any particular nation. I guess the reason is that I find myself almost indistinguishable from a large number of English-speaking white people from countries around the world.
I do, however, consider myself a humble person, or in other words, a cultural relativist. I'm probably using the term wrong, but I'm trying to say that I don't want to be quick to jump to conclusions about what the right way of living is for other people. In other other [sic] words, if someone in a faraway land wants to be a nationalist, that's fine with me. In fact, if the people of my own countries were to divide themselves into nations, that's okay with me too. Indians and Quebecois come immediately to mind. Weird how that works: Indians and Quebecois have nationss, but I have none. Or if I do, it's the nation of Canada, whose self definition implies the non-existence or compositional existence of the Indian and Quebecois nations. Ie. the nation of Canada is made up of many smaller, weaker nations, plus miscellaneous English-speaking white people who happen to live in the territory and be the majority.
Well now, what's the problem with this kind of nationalism? Isn't it kind of organic? If you're living in the Stone Age, then yes. But anything beyond the age of empires has to have a different mode of organization. I have no tribal council to bring my grievances to my government. I have no heroes, no young men to fight in the name of my tribe. I have personal access to government services acting in the name of the monarch. If I have a complaint, I can take it to the court. This has been the case for just about as long as we have had civilization. And yet, somehow tribes and nations have continued to exist. The reason for this has something to do with the inefficiency of central authority. When the central authority is designed to deal with all people, inevitably some of the people fall through the cracks. And when these people are similar enough to each other, as happens when they share a common origin, territory, culture, and language; they can assign a council and a band of heroes to advance their cause within the empire.
But what is it that seems strange? Well, I was actually surprised at something that was said about the war in Georgia, or rather, I was surprised at my own reaction to what was said. Mr. Gorbachev was giving his opinion on the situation, and he said that the people of Georgia and the people of Russia and South Ossetia have nothing against each other. They like each other. This makes sense to me. I have relatives in Alberta, Washington, and Idaho. I wouldn't want Canada and the United States to go to war, because that puts all of my friends in danger. Civilians don't like war. Huh.
No duh. But what surprised me was that I hadn't even thought of this when the first news of the war came in on my Google feeds. When news services tell us about wars, they tell us: "South Ossetia tried to break away from Georgia, so Georgia attacked them. Russia likes South Ossetia, so Russia attacked Georgia." The problem is in the proper names. And when I read this, I read it in a nationalistic sense, for some reason. Am I just used to nationalist conflicts? I read it and thought to myself "ah, yes, two nations who hate each other." Why else would anyone go to war?
Well, apparently (and I knew this already) war is not fought between people who dislike each other. We don't kill because we want to kill. We kill because our friends, brothers, and neighbours are in our way. And when we outsource our warrior class to a professional military and centralized state government, they kill our friends, brothers, and neighbours in our name, whether we like it or not.
It's kind of interesting how soldiers think and operate. A normal person works his whole life for a house and a family, and a car or two. A soldier is given millions of dollars worth of equipment and the capability to destroy thousands of normal people's lives. The difference in scale is almost unbelievable. A man could work his entire life to build a life, only to have it all destroyed by a "wayward" missile. A soldier doesn't make as much money as a businessman, but a soldier has the power to bring a thousand businessmen to ruin. Or, more like a few dozen if the soldier has the authority to destroy a small town.
Anyways, I just found it strange to find nationalistic assumptions collecting cobwebs in the back of my mind. I know that nationalism is not true or correct, but I seem to have believed that some people in the world are still nationalists. Or that there is some connection between nationalism and interstate conflict.
I do, however, consider myself a humble person, or in other words, a cultural relativist. I'm probably using the term wrong, but I'm trying to say that I don't want to be quick to jump to conclusions about what the right way of living is for other people. In other other [sic] words, if someone in a faraway land wants to be a nationalist, that's fine with me. In fact, if the people of my own countries were to divide themselves into nations, that's okay with me too. Indians and Quebecois come immediately to mind. Weird how that works: Indians and Quebecois have nationss, but I have none. Or if I do, it's the nation of Canada, whose self definition implies the non-existence or compositional existence of the Indian and Quebecois nations. Ie. the nation of Canada is made up of many smaller, weaker nations, plus miscellaneous English-speaking white people who happen to live in the territory and be the majority.
Well now, what's the problem with this kind of nationalism? Isn't it kind of organic? If you're living in the Stone Age, then yes. But anything beyond the age of empires has to have a different mode of organization. I have no tribal council to bring my grievances to my government. I have no heroes, no young men to fight in the name of my tribe. I have personal access to government services acting in the name of the monarch. If I have a complaint, I can take it to the court. This has been the case for just about as long as we have had civilization. And yet, somehow tribes and nations have continued to exist. The reason for this has something to do with the inefficiency of central authority. When the central authority is designed to deal with all people, inevitably some of the people fall through the cracks. And when these people are similar enough to each other, as happens when they share a common origin, territory, culture, and language; they can assign a council and a band of heroes to advance their cause within the empire.
But what is it that seems strange? Well, I was actually surprised at something that was said about the war in Georgia, or rather, I was surprised at my own reaction to what was said. Mr. Gorbachev was giving his opinion on the situation, and he said that the people of Georgia and the people of Russia and South Ossetia have nothing against each other. They like each other. This makes sense to me. I have relatives in Alberta, Washington, and Idaho. I wouldn't want Canada and the United States to go to war, because that puts all of my friends in danger. Civilians don't like war. Huh.
No duh. But what surprised me was that I hadn't even thought of this when the first news of the war came in on my Google feeds. When news services tell us about wars, they tell us: "South Ossetia tried to break away from Georgia, so Georgia attacked them. Russia likes South Ossetia, so Russia attacked Georgia." The problem is in the proper names. And when I read this, I read it in a nationalistic sense, for some reason. Am I just used to nationalist conflicts? I read it and thought to myself "ah, yes, two nations who hate each other." Why else would anyone go to war?
Well, apparently (and I knew this already) war is not fought between people who dislike each other. We don't kill because we want to kill. We kill because our friends, brothers, and neighbours are in our way. And when we outsource our warrior class to a professional military and centralized state government, they kill our friends, brothers, and neighbours in our name, whether we like it or not.
It's kind of interesting how soldiers think and operate. A normal person works his whole life for a house and a family, and a car or two. A soldier is given millions of dollars worth of equipment and the capability to destroy thousands of normal people's lives. The difference in scale is almost unbelievable. A man could work his entire life to build a life, only to have it all destroyed by a "wayward" missile. A soldier doesn't make as much money as a businessman, but a soldier has the power to bring a thousand businessmen to ruin. Or, more like a few dozen if the soldier has the authority to destroy a small town.
Anyways, I just found it strange to find nationalistic assumptions collecting cobwebs in the back of my mind. I know that nationalism is not true or correct, but I seem to have believed that some people in the world are still nationalists. Or that there is some connection between nationalism and interstate conflict.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
3 Radical Conclusions
Okay, not entirely original ideas. I've seen these expressed before, but I did sort of derive them myself, through my own thought process. It was only after thinking them through that I realized I'm just copying other people. Oh well, it's not like there's anything new under the sun.
1. One of the biggest complaints about capitalism is that it focuses so heavily on money, which is often considered evil. But that's not what capitalism does. Money has gotten a lot of attention as the mechanism for capitalism, but what capitalism really does is make ideas the new capital. In a capitalist system, money is no longer relevant. Good ideas succeed financially because they are good ideas. Contrary to what you may have been taught, money doesn't just grow new money. Money does need to be present in order for an idea to be allowed to fly, but money alone isn't sufficient. Think of money as the tracks, and ideas as the train. Better ideas move you along faster, and the type of tracks doesn't make much difference, as long as they're durable and well-maintained. Ideas are the true motivating force of capitalism.
2. The pre-toppled statue. As a regime, we build a statue that already appears toppled. It's not top-heavy: no hands upraised, no branches, no great heights. It is simply a wide, circular, almost puck-like shape, already appearing to slip off whatever base it sits on. It's leaning over at what appears to be almost an unnatural angle, as if it's been violently pushed over. But that's the intent. The message to be sent is that there is no establishment. This way, it is impossible for a revolution to destroy what is already in its most entropic state. This obviously isn't my own idea, since I only got it after looking at a bunch of modern architecture and wondering "why the heck would they build something that doesn't even look like anything." Well, that's why.
3. The media is not reality. Do not worry at all what the media, that is, the newspapers, television, etc. are saying. They do not dictate what is real. What is real is independent of the media. Don't worry about them getting the facts "right". The facts are the facts no matter what is reported. It's not your job to keep the media honest. Everyone complains about the media, saying that they're getting a bad deal, not enough coverage, the wrong coverage. People have to begin to realize that you can't believe everything you hear from the media. The media was never meant to be gospel truth. I'm surprised that the media even tries to portray itself as fair. They never should have started that trend. That the media never lies is just another lie that the media tells us.
1. One of the biggest complaints about capitalism is that it focuses so heavily on money, which is often considered evil. But that's not what capitalism does. Money has gotten a lot of attention as the mechanism for capitalism, but what capitalism really does is make ideas the new capital. In a capitalist system, money is no longer relevant. Good ideas succeed financially because they are good ideas. Contrary to what you may have been taught, money doesn't just grow new money. Money does need to be present in order for an idea to be allowed to fly, but money alone isn't sufficient. Think of money as the tracks, and ideas as the train. Better ideas move you along faster, and the type of tracks doesn't make much difference, as long as they're durable and well-maintained. Ideas are the true motivating force of capitalism.
2. The pre-toppled statue. As a regime, we build a statue that already appears toppled. It's not top-heavy: no hands upraised, no branches, no great heights. It is simply a wide, circular, almost puck-like shape, already appearing to slip off whatever base it sits on. It's leaning over at what appears to be almost an unnatural angle, as if it's been violently pushed over. But that's the intent. The message to be sent is that there is no establishment. This way, it is impossible for a revolution to destroy what is already in its most entropic state. This obviously isn't my own idea, since I only got it after looking at a bunch of modern architecture and wondering "why the heck would they build something that doesn't even look like anything." Well, that's why.
3. The media is not reality. Do not worry at all what the media, that is, the newspapers, television, etc. are saying. They do not dictate what is real. What is real is independent of the media. Don't worry about them getting the facts "right". The facts are the facts no matter what is reported. It's not your job to keep the media honest. Everyone complains about the media, saying that they're getting a bad deal, not enough coverage, the wrong coverage. People have to begin to realize that you can't believe everything you hear from the media. The media was never meant to be gospel truth. I'm surprised that the media even tries to portray itself as fair. They never should have started that trend. That the media never lies is just another lie that the media tells us.
Saturday, August 9, 2008
Another Aphorism
I don't like leftovers because they taste good (though they do); I like them because they take so little time to prepare.
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Getting Tired of Allusion
Before I start, I'm not entirely sure if I've used the correct word. Allusion may in fact be one of many special cases of the phenomenon that I'm thinking of. What I'm trying to describe is when you come across something in a text that reminds you of another text, perhaps even to the point of stirring a desire to go back and read that other text. This can be explicitly intended by the author, as when shklee quotes/cites/references someone else, or mentions another text or author by name; or it can be more subtle or even unintended, ie. simply using a turn of phrase, trope, or theme that conjures up the other author.
Allusion drives me crazy, especially in recent works. I cannot sit down and read a book without getting two or three pages in and being prompted to go pick up another text and read it. As I begin to collect more books in my personal library, the opportunities for me to go and actually get a physical copy of the work being alluded have become more frequent.
But I won't say that all allusion is bad. I just find it badly done even in works that I otherwise consider quite good. Let's see if I can't outline my beef in this blog post.
First, it bugs me when an author mentions someone as influential or inspirational to them, but doesn't actually quote any example of the inspiring work. They just say "as a student I read a lot of X [X typically being just the author's surname], and it was really inspiring." As a reader, the effect this usually has on me is that I have to go to the computer, look that person up, and add some of their work to my wish list. Or, if I already have some of their work, I put down whatever I'm reading in order to pick up the work and refresh myself on it. Maybe this is a good thing, but it's not a good sign for whoever I was trying to read in the first place, although the chances are that I got there by being referred by yet another work.
When they do mention someone, but include a quote, or an example of what they find inspiring, this usually sates my curiosity, and I'm able to go on reading without getting up to search for some other book. Lately, it's been sufficient for me to search my brain to at least see if I have any examples of the alludee on my bookshelf.
Another problem I have though, is when educated writers use the surname of a thinker as a kind of shorthand for a whole bunch of ideas. Sometimes I have no idea what this means, and I have to watch it whoosh over my head. Other times I've read some of the name in question, but the reference doesn't make sense, or is a different reading of the texts than what I know. Sometimes a different meaning is good, because I like to hear a different perspective on something I've read, even if I disagree with it. When I read opinions with which I disagree, this tends to strengthen my original opinion.
I would prefer though, if the writer would just address the specific idea or theme. I realize that this might be too much to ask, since you can break down almost any issue or idea into constituent parts, ad infinitum. At some point, short words have to be able to stand for complex ideas.
And now, to undermine myself, as is my style, I guess this kind of allusion might also be called intertextuality, and it is not necessarily a bad thing. Maybe books should be read this way; read straight through, only until a reference to something more interesting comes up. Why should texts be self-contained?
Allusion drives me crazy, especially in recent works. I cannot sit down and read a book without getting two or three pages in and being prompted to go pick up another text and read it. As I begin to collect more books in my personal library, the opportunities for me to go and actually get a physical copy of the work being alluded have become more frequent.
But I won't say that all allusion is bad. I just find it badly done even in works that I otherwise consider quite good. Let's see if I can't outline my beef in this blog post.
First, it bugs me when an author mentions someone as influential or inspirational to them, but doesn't actually quote any example of the inspiring work. They just say "as a student I read a lot of X [X typically being just the author's surname], and it was really inspiring." As a reader, the effect this usually has on me is that I have to go to the computer, look that person up, and add some of their work to my wish list. Or, if I already have some of their work, I put down whatever I'm reading in order to pick up the work and refresh myself on it. Maybe this is a good thing, but it's not a good sign for whoever I was trying to read in the first place, although the chances are that I got there by being referred by yet another work.
When they do mention someone, but include a quote, or an example of what they find inspiring, this usually sates my curiosity, and I'm able to go on reading without getting up to search for some other book. Lately, it's been sufficient for me to search my brain to at least see if I have any examples of the alludee on my bookshelf.
Another problem I have though, is when educated writers use the surname of a thinker as a kind of shorthand for a whole bunch of ideas. Sometimes I have no idea what this means, and I have to watch it whoosh over my head. Other times I've read some of the name in question, but the reference doesn't make sense, or is a different reading of the texts than what I know. Sometimes a different meaning is good, because I like to hear a different perspective on something I've read, even if I disagree with it. When I read opinions with which I disagree, this tends to strengthen my original opinion.
I would prefer though, if the writer would just address the specific idea or theme. I realize that this might be too much to ask, since you can break down almost any issue or idea into constituent parts, ad infinitum. At some point, short words have to be able to stand for complex ideas.
And now, to undermine myself, as is my style, I guess this kind of allusion might also be called intertextuality, and it is not necessarily a bad thing. Maybe books should be read this way; read straight through, only until a reference to something more interesting comes up. Why should texts be self-contained?
What is the Nature of Pain?
I asked myself this question when I was feeding the cat today. Socks has a plaintive and pitiful meow when he's hungry. However, he always seems to get hungry before his food dish is empty. Sometimes he won't be satisfied with dry food, and he insists on wet food, which I started buying for him as an occasional treat. Whether he wants a top-up of dry food, or a new helping of wet food, he makes these awful noises which I cannot resist. He makes me believe in my heart that he is suffering from some immense pain which can only be alleviated by a new serving of food. After this, he takes about two bites, and then he, apparently contented, goes on to do his other catly activities.
This makes me wonder though. What about the poor cats out there in the street who don't have a human around to feed them when they're hungry? Objectively, they must have more pain than my cat. Sometimes they won't be able to find food, and some could even die from hunger. Or possibly from cold during the winter. What is it about my own cat's pain that makes it so intolerable to me, that I have to find a solution immediately?
My cat expresses his pain a lot more than the strays out there. He probably does this because he has learned that it tends to get results. The more pitiful he sounds, the faster I get up from the computer to go and feed him. Still, I can't help but wonder if he really believes that his own pain is so horrible that it necessitates crying out the way he does. I guess he doesn't believe anything, doesn't even think about it. "This is what you do when you feel that funny feeling in your tummy, and after you do it, the big hairless, two-legged kitty gets the food out, and the funny feeling goes away, and I can go sit by the window and watch the birds."
I know too, that there's something about fresh food that's better than food that's been sitting in his dish overnight. Heck, the stuff from the sealed bag smells better even to me. But I also know that he's eaten the stale stuff before. It's not like it's completely inedible. So I can tell that there are degrees to his hunger. If he was really truly starving, the first place he would go would be to his stale food, because at least it's food.
This brings me to humanity. Actually, never mind. I won't talk about humanity, because that's too depressing. I'll just leave this as a blog about my cat.
This makes me wonder though. What about the poor cats out there in the street who don't have a human around to feed them when they're hungry? Objectively, they must have more pain than my cat. Sometimes they won't be able to find food, and some could even die from hunger. Or possibly from cold during the winter. What is it about my own cat's pain that makes it so intolerable to me, that I have to find a solution immediately?
My cat expresses his pain a lot more than the strays out there. He probably does this because he has learned that it tends to get results. The more pitiful he sounds, the faster I get up from the computer to go and feed him. Still, I can't help but wonder if he really believes that his own pain is so horrible that it necessitates crying out the way he does. I guess he doesn't believe anything, doesn't even think about it. "This is what you do when you feel that funny feeling in your tummy, and after you do it, the big hairless, two-legged kitty gets the food out, and the funny feeling goes away, and I can go sit by the window and watch the birds."
I know too, that there's something about fresh food that's better than food that's been sitting in his dish overnight. Heck, the stuff from the sealed bag smells better even to me. But I also know that he's eaten the stale stuff before. It's not like it's completely inedible. So I can tell that there are degrees to his hunger. If he was really truly starving, the first place he would go would be to his stale food, because at least it's food.
This brings me to humanity. Actually, never mind. I won't talk about humanity, because that's too depressing. I'll just leave this as a blog about my cat.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
What Will A Human Presence in Space Look Like?
Okay, that's a pretty broad-reaching question in the title of this post, but one of the things I wanted to say was that it probably won't look like what most of us picture in our mind when we try to think about it.
Star Trek gives us gargantuan space stations and faster-than-light space vessels, made of metal, or at least made of atoms bonded together through the electromagnetic forces. Yes, there are a few exotic materials powering these ships, including anti-matter and something called Sub-Space. (Isn't it weird how Star Trek uses Sub-Space, meaning "under space" or "below space" or "less than space" or "falling short of space", while Star Wars uses Hyper-Space meaning "over space" or "beyond space" or "exceeding space". Make up your mind, you geeks. Is it going to be over or under? Above and beyond or under and in?) But the other thing Star Trek brings us is massive empty spaces. Basically the Star Trek Galaxy is a featureless ocean, dotted by the occasional star system, and crossed by tiny ships. And if we were to be able to look at a map of the galaxy produced by Starfleet, we would probably see a few well-established shipping lanes between inhabited systems, surrounded by a lot of empty space.
Okay, maybe this is what humanity in space will look like for the next few centuries. Even then, we're not realistically going to be exploring much beyond the Solar System. At best, we'll have gotten a probe to the nearest star. As far as Galactic colonization, as depicted in Star Trek, I think this will take quite a different kind of paradigm than what we see in that show. In order to colonize other star systems, we'll need a kind of infrastructure in order to get there. That is, we can't think of the Solar System as being mostly empty space, even though it kind of sort of basically is. When we're thinking of the universe, we need to start envisioning it as a place where gravitational forces have a kind of objective presence. That is, gravity doesn't just emanate from objects; gravity is those objects. This is because in space, gravity is all there is.
Just as a tiny electron has an incredibly powerful electrical charge that can affect its own atom as well as nearby atoms, despite having a size on the order of millions of times smaller than that which it can affect; so the machines that will eventually take us to the stars will have a similar reality. Indeed, objects in space could do away with the concept of volume or objective existence entirely, as long as the concept of gravity (and mass, and speed) are retained. Any given object in the universe can be defined entirely by its mass and its speed.
Now that we have this picture though, we can begin to make it more complicated. For example, what about galaxies? Galaxies are incredibly complex collections of objects, and yet can often be mathematically treated as individual objects. So on one hand you might predict some fairly straight-forward gravitational effects in the vicinity of a galaxy, but in observational practice, you might see some totally bizarre effects, in which the laws of gravity seem to be violated.
In a way, this is kind of like how it is with manned flight. People observed that they were stuck to the surface of the planet, and they believed that they couldn't fly. But they learned something about the effects of the atmosphere, including the fact that you could treat air, or gas, or the atmosphere, just like any other kind of matter, manipulating it, and causing it to support solid objects. The flight of birds was no longer a mystery.
So essentially, if you could manipulate the forces of a galaxy, you could create almost automatic shipping lanes, or currents, leading in and out of that galaxy. I don't know, something like that anyways.
I don't know if anything like this could work on a scale smaller than a Solar System, but if it did work, the technology required would be mechanical, not necessarily involving exotic particles or rare materials. You'd just have to know how to correctly position whatever material you need to generate lots of gravity. Instead of self-contained space ships, you'd have widely-spread systems, containing a vehicle in the core, several orders of magnitude smaller than the whole system.
So the human presence of space would look like, to outside observers, massive gravitational systems, conduits throughout the galaxy, through which pass objects so small they are virtually undetectable. At least, you couldn't use the same instruments to detect the conduits as you would use to detect the vehicles. There might be no evidence at all that the system was designed by an intelligent species, unless you happened to be located at one of the exits of the gravitational conduits.
In conclusion, a human presence in space wouldn't look like anything we'd be able to recognize as human, or possibly even as intelligent. You wouldn't be able to "see" our vessels at all, because our systems would move from the visual to the purely gravitational and theoretical. Sure, at the very core, there would be tiny human vessels, maybe even made out of metal. My point is that "structure" in space is not something made of struts and girders, but of gravity and mathematical predictions. We will need to leave behind the world of the electromagnetic, in favor of the world of the gravitational.
Anyways, I'm not the first to have such ideas, I just wanted to kind of share these thoughts. There are much more developed ideas in Carl Sagan's Contact, for example, though I have only seen the movie; I haven't read the book.
Star Trek gives us gargantuan space stations and faster-than-light space vessels, made of metal, or at least made of atoms bonded together through the electromagnetic forces. Yes, there are a few exotic materials powering these ships, including anti-matter and something called Sub-Space. (Isn't it weird how Star Trek uses Sub-Space, meaning "under space" or "below space" or "less than space" or "falling short of space", while Star Wars uses Hyper-Space meaning "over space" or "beyond space" or "exceeding space". Make up your mind, you geeks. Is it going to be over or under? Above and beyond or under and in?) But the other thing Star Trek brings us is massive empty spaces. Basically the Star Trek Galaxy is a featureless ocean, dotted by the occasional star system, and crossed by tiny ships. And if we were to be able to look at a map of the galaxy produced by Starfleet, we would probably see a few well-established shipping lanes between inhabited systems, surrounded by a lot of empty space.
Okay, maybe this is what humanity in space will look like for the next few centuries. Even then, we're not realistically going to be exploring much beyond the Solar System. At best, we'll have gotten a probe to the nearest star. As far as Galactic colonization, as depicted in Star Trek, I think this will take quite a different kind of paradigm than what we see in that show. In order to colonize other star systems, we'll need a kind of infrastructure in order to get there. That is, we can't think of the Solar System as being mostly empty space, even though it kind of sort of basically is. When we're thinking of the universe, we need to start envisioning it as a place where gravitational forces have a kind of objective presence. That is, gravity doesn't just emanate from objects; gravity is those objects. This is because in space, gravity is all there is.
Just as a tiny electron has an incredibly powerful electrical charge that can affect its own atom as well as nearby atoms, despite having a size on the order of millions of times smaller than that which it can affect; so the machines that will eventually take us to the stars will have a similar reality. Indeed, objects in space could do away with the concept of volume or objective existence entirely, as long as the concept of gravity (and mass, and speed) are retained. Any given object in the universe can be defined entirely by its mass and its speed.
Now that we have this picture though, we can begin to make it more complicated. For example, what about galaxies? Galaxies are incredibly complex collections of objects, and yet can often be mathematically treated as individual objects. So on one hand you might predict some fairly straight-forward gravitational effects in the vicinity of a galaxy, but in observational practice, you might see some totally bizarre effects, in which the laws of gravity seem to be violated.
In a way, this is kind of like how it is with manned flight. People observed that they were stuck to the surface of the planet, and they believed that they couldn't fly. But they learned something about the effects of the atmosphere, including the fact that you could treat air, or gas, or the atmosphere, just like any other kind of matter, manipulating it, and causing it to support solid objects. The flight of birds was no longer a mystery.
So essentially, if you could manipulate the forces of a galaxy, you could create almost automatic shipping lanes, or currents, leading in and out of that galaxy. I don't know, something like that anyways.
I don't know if anything like this could work on a scale smaller than a Solar System, but if it did work, the technology required would be mechanical, not necessarily involving exotic particles or rare materials. You'd just have to know how to correctly position whatever material you need to generate lots of gravity. Instead of self-contained space ships, you'd have widely-spread systems, containing a vehicle in the core, several orders of magnitude smaller than the whole system.
So the human presence of space would look like, to outside observers, massive gravitational systems, conduits throughout the galaxy, through which pass objects so small they are virtually undetectable. At least, you couldn't use the same instruments to detect the conduits as you would use to detect the vehicles. There might be no evidence at all that the system was designed by an intelligent species, unless you happened to be located at one of the exits of the gravitational conduits.
In conclusion, a human presence in space wouldn't look like anything we'd be able to recognize as human, or possibly even as intelligent. You wouldn't be able to "see" our vessels at all, because our systems would move from the visual to the purely gravitational and theoretical. Sure, at the very core, there would be tiny human vessels, maybe even made out of metal. My point is that "structure" in space is not something made of struts and girders, but of gravity and mathematical predictions. We will need to leave behind the world of the electromagnetic, in favor of the world of the gravitational.
Anyways, I'm not the first to have such ideas, I just wanted to kind of share these thoughts. There are much more developed ideas in Carl Sagan's Contact, for example, though I have only seen the movie; I haven't read the book.
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Why Haven't I Posted Anything About D&D?
Uh, I guess I haven't really had any great insights lately. I'll let you know when I do. I still love the game, but I'm coming up dry as far as new ideas go.
Not that anyone is reading this blog, because I still haven't told anyone about it. So no one is asking that question. So for now, it doesn't even need an answer.
Not that anyone is reading this blog, because I still haven't told anyone about it. So no one is asking that question. So for now, it doesn't even need an answer.
Province Names
In my last post, I mentioned that the names of some provinces are really cool, while others are lame. I thought it might be fun to go through some of the reasons why I think that of each name. So let's start with my home province of BC.
British Columbia. First of all, the name is too long. We need to shorten it down to about 2-4 syllables at the most. Second of all, the British Empire is gone. I am still a monarchist, but I don't think we need to advertise our allegiance to the British Crown on our flag, in our name, and everywhere else. Queen Elizabeth II is the Queen of British Columbia (or whatever new name we might decide on) in addition to being the Queen of Britain and a bunch of other places. We like Britain, but I don't see any reason why we still need to depend on them for our identity. So British anything is out. Columbia, however, is a fine name. We're lucky enough that no one else uses it, except for Colombia, which spells it differently. One problem I have with using Columbia as a name is that it is also the name of one of our major rivers, which we share with the United States. I love the Columbia River, and I'm happy to share it, but I also happen to think that our province should be named after something distinctly us. I'd advocate renaming the province Fraser, but it lacks the poetic ring of Columbia, and I'd rather trade up than down. Not to mention, Fraser sounds like a ten-year-old piano prodigy. Still, there's something to be said for a province with a name that rhymes with razor, and brings to mind a million-square kilometer freezer. For once I'd like to see some honesty in naming a place [I'm looking at you, Greenland!]. Except not the entire province is freezing, and we're actually for the most part, balmier than Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and parts of Ontario, not to mention the Territories. No, most of BC is probably more like the freezer sitting out in the back yard gathering mold and rust.
Anyways, enough about BC. Let's move east.
Alberta. I have no problem with the name Alberta. Except that I'm pretty sure I have an aunt named Alberta. In fact, I'm pretty sure everyone has an Aunt Alberta, and well, actually I was going to say that Aunt Alberta is never a very physically attractive image, and you wouldn't associate a country that's supposed to evoke pride with such a name. However, I think the name is particularly suited to Alberta. Still, if she had a prettier name, maybe we wouldn't be so quick to dismiss her natural heritage, destroying her sensitive environment, and such. Maybe if she had a classier name, or at least a more common, youthful name, like Christina.
Saskatchewan. I like this name. It's cool and fun to say. Four syllables is pushing it, but it's poetic and alliterative, so I don't mind. I also don't mind, in this case, that it's hard to spell. The only thing I would change about Saskatchewan is the shape of its borders. They're so darn boring. Saskatchewan is the only province in Canada that's a complete, perfect rectangle (or close enough). Actually, scratch that. That kind of does make Saskatchewan interesting in its own way. Here's what I'd rather see: change the borders of Alberta and Manitoba so that they're less square-shaped, but leave Saskatchewan the way it is, so that it's the only province with a flat, square shape in the whole country. I guess it would be mathematically difficult to do that, since it has to share borders with some other provinces. Ah well, one can dream, can't one?
Manitoba. Okay, we're talking about names, not borders or flatness, or personality, or anything like that. So Manitoba has a pretty cool name. You could shorten it to 'Toba if you wanted to. The one complain I have about the name is that it might be considered sexist. Why not Womanitoba?
Ontario. As much as I dislike Ontario [mainly on account of Toronto], I have to admit it has a pretty cool name. I'm also happy with Ontario for losing Upper Canada as a name. Way to go Ontario, for taking one for the team and giving up your name for the good of the whole country! I mean, Upper Canada? Who did they think they were? Archangels? Besides, if any province is Upper, it's BC, because we have the most, highest mountains. Hey, I guess I just thought of the perfect new name for BC!
Quebec. It doesn't really make a difference whether or not I approve of the name of Quebec, since I'm an Anglophone.
New Brunswick. Now we're getting into the names I don't like. Minus 10 points for having "New" in your name. If you liked Brunswick so much, why the Hell did you leave? And did you ever consider the feelings of the poor people of Old Brunswick, who get stuck being yesterday's news? I know I wouldn't like it if someone decided to call themselves "New Josh", implying that I am now Old Josh, and somehow outdated. Anyways, you have a lot of history, so you could easily find a fitting name. I hear "Acadia" isn't even being used right now. At the very least, steal an Indian word. Why not Micmac?
Nova Scotia. Minus 10 points; you're not fooling me with your fancy Latin; I know it means "New Scotland." Go back and read everything I said about New Brunswick: that applies to you too. Plus, shame on you for changing your name from Acadia, which was ten times as cool as Nova Scotia. In case you didn't read my entry on New Brunswick, I'm offering them the name Acadia. However, I will award plus 3 points, because you are impressing me with your fancy Latin. Nova Scotia is pretty fun to say. Just try it: say Nova Scotia over and over again, let's say, one hundred times. See? It just doesn't get old. Now try doing it on a cross-country drive all the way from BC to Nova Scotia.
Prince Edward Island. Any province that frequently has to use its initials as its name is in need of a change of names. Just like BC, PEI is just too long to say in its normal format. Plus, I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but I don't approve of royalist names with the actual title in the place name. If you must name the place after Prince Edward, just call it Edward Island [admittedly boring, another ten-year-old piano-playing prodigy, methinks]. Or Augustus Island. That would be cool. One thing I'm glad for though, is that you didn't stick with John's Island, or St. John's Island. We have far too many places named after St. John in the world. I like him too, but we don't need an island and a town named after him in every country in the world.
Newfoundland and Labrador. Or is it Labrador and Newfoundland? Seriously guys, separate into two separate provinces already! You're confusing the rest of us in Canada. [No one else in the world cares.] In fact, I'm going to discuss each of you separately.
Newfoundland. Okay, we get it. New found land. You were the first part of Canada to be "Found" by Europeans. Whoop-di-freaking-doo! Except, that was 1000 years ago [if we're counting the Vikings, which we probably shouldn't be]. 400 if we're talking John Cabot. I think it was pretty obvious, pretty quick, that you weren't the only new land to be found in the region at the time.
So why did the name stick? Why couldn't you come up with a better name? Labrador did. Canada did. Acadia did. Quebec did. Listen up people! Can't you realize you need to stop putting "New" in your countries' names? It will just make you look stupid in 400 years (still calling yourself "new"? ha!), and it will piss off the Oldfoundlands who don't think they're really that old at all. But all right, one thing I have to grant you, Newfoundland, is that you've managed to slur your name right beyond recognition as a series of English words. This does, I'll admit, make Newfoundland a little fun to say. Even worse than Newfoundland as a name, would be "The Rock". As if you're the only place in the world with rocks. Or maybe I should feel sorry for you because all you've got is a big rock. But that's not true either. I know for a fact that you have a rich cultural tradition you could draw a suitable name from.
Labrador. Awesome name. Sounds like something out of Lord of the Rings. Sounds like a powerful nation that doesn't need fancy long, complicated names. Just Labrador. Reminds me of Rus. Not that you live up to such a name, but I can't ask for everything, can I? While I'm in the asking business, please ditch Newfoundland until it finds a better name.
The Northwest Territories. Congratulations, you've won! The worst name of any Canadian province or territory, and you did it without even having "new" in your name. Your prize: an all-expenses-paid trip to Nunavut! Seriously, when are we finally going to carve this piece of land up and make it into interesting-sounding territories? How many years has it been since Confederation? Okay, I'll admit we've made a heck of a lot of progress in shrinking this disgrace to toponomy over the years, carving more interesting bits out of it. But, annoyingly, it's still there! And it's gotten worse: the Northwest Territories used to be made up of actual territories that had cool-sounding names like Franklin, Keewatin, Devlon, and Butterberg. Okay, I made some of those up, but that's because I can't find them on any map of Canada I own anymore. Now it's all just the boring old Northwest Territories. What are these territories? Well, we couldn't be bothered to name or describe or bound them. They're just loose territories. Out there. Kind of vague and you have to sort of squint to see them. Even Rupert's Land, which is a pretty stupid name, was better than the Northwest Territories. Not that you don't have any interesting names. Yellowknife, for example, is a name I can get behind. It's kind of badass, almost like Rusty-knife, or Bloody-bone-that-I-cut-out-from-a-still-breathing-elk-Knife. You have to be badass to live in the Northwest Territories, or just batshit insane, so maybe they're just not the kind of people concerned with nomenclature, but rather the kind of people concerned with not freezing or starving to death. That doesn't exactly explain things though, since they do happen to have the Yukon Territory and Nunavut, both creatively named, right next to them. I don't know, I guess I can only hope that the NWT gets a name change within my lifetime, since it's already taken several lifetimes just to get to where it is today.
Yukon. Ah, much better. Although, like the Columbia mentioned way back in BC, I dislike naming territories based on stuff that they share with neighbouring states. After what I've seen in Atlantic Canada, I think my standards have been lowered quite a bit, so I might be willing to let this one slide. Yukon is another fun one to say. I wish BC had a name as cool and quirky as Yukon.
Nunavut. I guess I've saved the best for last. Nunavut is a pretty sweet name. Ignoring the fact that it sounds like "none of it," which I've been able to do since about three years after I learned about the new territory, everything else about the name is awesome. It comes from an indigenous language, and it wasn't stolen or bastardized any more than it had to be in order to be pronounced by Anglophones. There's no needless qualifications like "Canadian Nunavut" or "East Inuitland" or "North Canada". Just three syllables. Nunavut. As in "none of your damn business." Okay, I guess I never did get over the fact that the first two syllables sound like "none of." You know, I really don't know how they did it in Nunavut, came up with a creative name, and a whole writing system that isn't based on the Latin alphabet, when they should have been doing what the NWTers were doing and trying not to starve or freeze. If I were cynical, I might suspect that it was a ploy by the federal government in order to solidify Canadian sovereignty over Arctic waters. NWT just doesn't have the same access to all the islands that Nunavut does. And if the Canadians hadn't courted the Inuit, perhaps the Americans would have done so. [I don't think the Inuit would have gone for anything offered by the Americans, but I do think the threat of such events would be sufficient to motivate the Canadians to take action.] I just honestly hope that Nunavut doesn't follow the American model of various Indian territories becoming states, becoming farms for European immigrants, forcing Indians into smaller reserves.
Well, that's it.
British Columbia. First of all, the name is too long. We need to shorten it down to about 2-4 syllables at the most. Second of all, the British Empire is gone. I am still a monarchist, but I don't think we need to advertise our allegiance to the British Crown on our flag, in our name, and everywhere else. Queen Elizabeth II is the Queen of British Columbia (or whatever new name we might decide on) in addition to being the Queen of Britain and a bunch of other places. We like Britain, but I don't see any reason why we still need to depend on them for our identity. So British anything is out. Columbia, however, is a fine name. We're lucky enough that no one else uses it, except for Colombia, which spells it differently. One problem I have with using Columbia as a name is that it is also the name of one of our major rivers, which we share with the United States. I love the Columbia River, and I'm happy to share it, but I also happen to think that our province should be named after something distinctly us. I'd advocate renaming the province Fraser, but it lacks the poetic ring of Columbia, and I'd rather trade up than down. Not to mention, Fraser sounds like a ten-year-old piano prodigy. Still, there's something to be said for a province with a name that rhymes with razor, and brings to mind a million-square kilometer freezer. For once I'd like to see some honesty in naming a place [I'm looking at you, Greenland!]. Except not the entire province is freezing, and we're actually for the most part, balmier than Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and parts of Ontario, not to mention the Territories. No, most of BC is probably more like the freezer sitting out in the back yard gathering mold and rust.
Anyways, enough about BC. Let's move east.
Alberta. I have no problem with the name Alberta. Except that I'm pretty sure I have an aunt named Alberta. In fact, I'm pretty sure everyone has an Aunt Alberta, and well, actually I was going to say that Aunt Alberta is never a very physically attractive image, and you wouldn't associate a country that's supposed to evoke pride with such a name. However, I think the name is particularly suited to Alberta. Still, if she had a prettier name, maybe we wouldn't be so quick to dismiss her natural heritage, destroying her sensitive environment, and such. Maybe if she had a classier name, or at least a more common, youthful name, like Christina.
Saskatchewan. I like this name. It's cool and fun to say. Four syllables is pushing it, but it's poetic and alliterative, so I don't mind. I also don't mind, in this case, that it's hard to spell. The only thing I would change about Saskatchewan is the shape of its borders. They're so darn boring. Saskatchewan is the only province in Canada that's a complete, perfect rectangle (or close enough). Actually, scratch that. That kind of does make Saskatchewan interesting in its own way. Here's what I'd rather see: change the borders of Alberta and Manitoba so that they're less square-shaped, but leave Saskatchewan the way it is, so that it's the only province with a flat, square shape in the whole country. I guess it would be mathematically difficult to do that, since it has to share borders with some other provinces. Ah well, one can dream, can't one?
Manitoba. Okay, we're talking about names, not borders or flatness, or personality, or anything like that. So Manitoba has a pretty cool name. You could shorten it to 'Toba if you wanted to. The one complain I have about the name is that it might be considered sexist. Why not Womanitoba?
Ontario. As much as I dislike Ontario [mainly on account of Toronto], I have to admit it has a pretty cool name. I'm also happy with Ontario for losing Upper Canada as a name. Way to go Ontario, for taking one for the team and giving up your name for the good of the whole country! I mean, Upper Canada? Who did they think they were? Archangels? Besides, if any province is Upper, it's BC, because we have the most, highest mountains. Hey, I guess I just thought of the perfect new name for BC!
Quebec. It doesn't really make a difference whether or not I approve of the name of Quebec, since I'm an Anglophone.
New Brunswick. Now we're getting into the names I don't like. Minus 10 points for having "New" in your name. If you liked Brunswick so much, why the Hell did you leave? And did you ever consider the feelings of the poor people of Old Brunswick, who get stuck being yesterday's news? I know I wouldn't like it if someone decided to call themselves "New Josh", implying that I am now Old Josh, and somehow outdated. Anyways, you have a lot of history, so you could easily find a fitting name. I hear "Acadia" isn't even being used right now. At the very least, steal an Indian word. Why not Micmac?
Nova Scotia. Minus 10 points; you're not fooling me with your fancy Latin; I know it means "New Scotland." Go back and read everything I said about New Brunswick: that applies to you too. Plus, shame on you for changing your name from Acadia, which was ten times as cool as Nova Scotia. In case you didn't read my entry on New Brunswick, I'm offering them the name Acadia. However, I will award plus 3 points, because you are impressing me with your fancy Latin. Nova Scotia is pretty fun to say. Just try it: say Nova Scotia over and over again, let's say, one hundred times. See? It just doesn't get old. Now try doing it on a cross-country drive all the way from BC to Nova Scotia.
Prince Edward Island. Any province that frequently has to use its initials as its name is in need of a change of names. Just like BC, PEI is just too long to say in its normal format. Plus, I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but I don't approve of royalist names with the actual title in the place name. If you must name the place after Prince Edward, just call it Edward Island [admittedly boring, another ten-year-old piano-playing prodigy, methinks]. Or Augustus Island. That would be cool. One thing I'm glad for though, is that you didn't stick with John's Island, or St. John's Island. We have far too many places named after St. John in the world. I like him too, but we don't need an island and a town named after him in every country in the world.
Newfoundland and Labrador. Or is it Labrador and Newfoundland? Seriously guys, separate into two separate provinces already! You're confusing the rest of us in Canada. [No one else in the world cares.] In fact, I'm going to discuss each of you separately.
Newfoundland. Okay, we get it. New found land. You were the first part of Canada to be "Found" by Europeans. Whoop-di-freaking-doo! Except, that was 1000 years ago [if we're counting the Vikings, which we probably shouldn't be]. 400 if we're talking John Cabot. I think it was pretty obvious, pretty quick, that you weren't the only new land to be found in the region at the time.
So why did the name stick? Why couldn't you come up with a better name? Labrador did. Canada did. Acadia did. Quebec did. Listen up people! Can't you realize you need to stop putting "New" in your countries' names? It will just make you look stupid in 400 years (still calling yourself "new"? ha!), and it will piss off the Oldfoundlands who don't think they're really that old at all. But all right, one thing I have to grant you, Newfoundland, is that you've managed to slur your name right beyond recognition as a series of English words. This does, I'll admit, make Newfoundland a little fun to say. Even worse than Newfoundland as a name, would be "The Rock". As if you're the only place in the world with rocks. Or maybe I should feel sorry for you because all you've got is a big rock. But that's not true either. I know for a fact that you have a rich cultural tradition you could draw a suitable name from.
Labrador. Awesome name. Sounds like something out of Lord of the Rings. Sounds like a powerful nation that doesn't need fancy long, complicated names. Just Labrador. Reminds me of Rus. Not that you live up to such a name, but I can't ask for everything, can I? While I'm in the asking business, please ditch Newfoundland until it finds a better name.
The Northwest Territories. Congratulations, you've won! The worst name of any Canadian province or territory, and you did it without even having "new" in your name. Your prize: an all-expenses-paid trip to Nunavut! Seriously, when are we finally going to carve this piece of land up and make it into interesting-sounding territories? How many years has it been since Confederation? Okay, I'll admit we've made a heck of a lot of progress in shrinking this disgrace to toponomy over the years, carving more interesting bits out of it. But, annoyingly, it's still there! And it's gotten worse: the Northwest Territories used to be made up of actual territories that had cool-sounding names like Franklin, Keewatin, Devlon, and Butterberg. Okay, I made some of those up, but that's because I can't find them on any map of Canada I own anymore. Now it's all just the boring old Northwest Territories. What are these territories? Well, we couldn't be bothered to name or describe or bound them. They're just loose territories. Out there. Kind of vague and you have to sort of squint to see them. Even Rupert's Land, which is a pretty stupid name, was better than the Northwest Territories. Not that you don't have any interesting names. Yellowknife, for example, is a name I can get behind. It's kind of badass, almost like Rusty-knife, or Bloody-bone-that-I-cut-out-from-a-still-breathing-elk-Knife. You have to be badass to live in the Northwest Territories, or just batshit insane, so maybe they're just not the kind of people concerned with nomenclature, but rather the kind of people concerned with not freezing or starving to death. That doesn't exactly explain things though, since they do happen to have the Yukon Territory and Nunavut, both creatively named, right next to them. I don't know, I guess I can only hope that the NWT gets a name change within my lifetime, since it's already taken several lifetimes just to get to where it is today.
Yukon. Ah, much better. Although, like the Columbia mentioned way back in BC, I dislike naming territories based on stuff that they share with neighbouring states. After what I've seen in Atlantic Canada, I think my standards have been lowered quite a bit, so I might be willing to let this one slide. Yukon is another fun one to say. I wish BC had a name as cool and quirky as Yukon.
Nunavut. I guess I've saved the best for last. Nunavut is a pretty sweet name. Ignoring the fact that it sounds like "none of it," which I've been able to do since about three years after I learned about the new territory, everything else about the name is awesome. It comes from an indigenous language, and it wasn't stolen or bastardized any more than it had to be in order to be pronounced by Anglophones. There's no needless qualifications like "Canadian Nunavut" or "East Inuitland" or "North Canada". Just three syllables. Nunavut. As in "none of your damn business." Okay, I guess I never did get over the fact that the first two syllables sound like "none of." You know, I really don't know how they did it in Nunavut, came up with a creative name, and a whole writing system that isn't based on the Latin alphabet, when they should have been doing what the NWTers were doing and trying not to starve or freeze. If I were cynical, I might suspect that it was a ploy by the federal government in order to solidify Canadian sovereignty over Arctic waters. NWT just doesn't have the same access to all the islands that Nunavut does. And if the Canadians hadn't courted the Inuit, perhaps the Americans would have done so. [I don't think the Inuit would have gone for anything offered by the Americans, but I do think the threat of such events would be sufficient to motivate the Canadians to take action.] I just honestly hope that Nunavut doesn't follow the American model of various Indian territories becoming states, becoming farms for European immigrants, forcing Indians into smaller reserves.
Well, that's it.
Greece and Macedonia
I'm trying to wrap my mind around the insanity that is the argument between Greece and Macedonia.
I guess the argument is about heritage. Each group wants the right to be named Macedonians.
I guess I could try to imagine a scenario that might apply to me. I live on what was Carrier, or Leidli Tenneh, territory. So I can sort of imagine what might happen to me if I started calling myself Carrier. People would think I was daft, and some would actually be angry at me, thinking I was trying to steal someone else's heritage. But overall I don't think the effect would be very big. What I do think would be problematic is if we decided to separate British Columbia into several smaller provinces, and we named the Northern BC province Carrierland. Some might like it, some would be indifferent, but I think the leadership and the majority would oppose it. Northern BC isn't Carrierland, and no amount of wishing by whites or Indians will make it so. Certainly a name change won't fool anybody. Or will it?
Or what if the tables were turned? What if someone else wanted to steal my identity? What am I anyways? Canadian I guess. What if a bunch of Minnesotans suddenly decided they were going to call themselves Canadian? Well, that wouldn't bother me much, because Minnesota might as well already be part of Canada. They're so much like us already, it wouldn't bother me a bit. But the parallel doesn't compare to the Balkans. In order to have something like that, you need the infringing group to have a different language and culture. So, hmm? Are there any different linguo-culturistic groups around that might bother me if they decided they were going to take the name Canada? Well, there's the Quebecois, who I think would rather die than turn into English-speaking Canadians. There's Mexicans. What if a whole bunch of Mexicans decided to settle in Northwestern Washington, and name their new state Canada? That would only bother me insofar as it's absurd and it would be really annoying to have two countries with the same name side by side.
Part of the weird thing about Greece and Macedonia is that Greece already has a name. Several, in fact. Macedonia has none. If Greeks really wanted to be the true Macedonians, then they should rename their country Macedonia.
"But Macedonia is a region within Greece. It doesn't define the whole country. It's a sub-nation, like Quebec."
Hmm, okay, would I be bothered if a state set itself up on the border between Washington and British Columbia, calling itself Columbia? Not really.
Maybe the problem is that I simply lack a strong enough national identity to compare myself to the Greeks. What else defines me? Well, I already mentioned language. I speak English and I have white skin. I guess that makes me some kind of race. Would I be upset if a nation of Francophone black people moved into Alberta and called themselves WASP-land? What if a bunch of Koreans did this?
Nope. It just doesn't have an effect on me. I mean, I would think it was absurd, but I wouldn't feel the need to stop them from calling themselves whatever they wanted. I guess I would just have to ask them, "what's the point?" Maybe I would argue that, for their own good, they should come up with a slightly more sustainable thing to build their nation on. And perhaps that is the basis of the Greek criticism of Macedonia. It's a bad idea to just make things up in order to build your nation, because those things can then be undermined.
Still, the name itself I can find no objection in. After all, I live in British Columbia. On the opposite side of the world from Britain, and there is no such thing as any other Columbia. Colombia doesn't count; it's spelled different.
Actually, come to think of it, the name of our own province really stinks. Canada got a cool name. So did Alberta, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Ontario, Quebec, Labrador, Nunavut, and The Yukon Territory. (Sorry Newfoundland, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and The Northwest Territories, but your names are even worse than BC's.)
I think BC should change its name to Macedonia.
I guess the argument is about heritage. Each group wants the right to be named Macedonians.
I guess I could try to imagine a scenario that might apply to me. I live on what was Carrier, or Leidli Tenneh, territory. So I can sort of imagine what might happen to me if I started calling myself Carrier. People would think I was daft, and some would actually be angry at me, thinking I was trying to steal someone else's heritage. But overall I don't think the effect would be very big. What I do think would be problematic is if we decided to separate British Columbia into several smaller provinces, and we named the Northern BC province Carrierland. Some might like it, some would be indifferent, but I think the leadership and the majority would oppose it. Northern BC isn't Carrierland, and no amount of wishing by whites or Indians will make it so. Certainly a name change won't fool anybody. Or will it?
Or what if the tables were turned? What if someone else wanted to steal my identity? What am I anyways? Canadian I guess. What if a bunch of Minnesotans suddenly decided they were going to call themselves Canadian? Well, that wouldn't bother me much, because Minnesota might as well already be part of Canada. They're so much like us already, it wouldn't bother me a bit. But the parallel doesn't compare to the Balkans. In order to have something like that, you need the infringing group to have a different language and culture. So, hmm? Are there any different linguo-culturistic groups around that might bother me if they decided they were going to take the name Canada? Well, there's the Quebecois, who I think would rather die than turn into English-speaking Canadians. There's Mexicans. What if a whole bunch of Mexicans decided to settle in Northwestern Washington, and name their new state Canada? That would only bother me insofar as it's absurd and it would be really annoying to have two countries with the same name side by side.
Part of the weird thing about Greece and Macedonia is that Greece already has a name. Several, in fact. Macedonia has none. If Greeks really wanted to be the true Macedonians, then they should rename their country Macedonia.
"But Macedonia is a region within Greece. It doesn't define the whole country. It's a sub-nation, like Quebec."
Hmm, okay, would I be bothered if a state set itself up on the border between Washington and British Columbia, calling itself Columbia? Not really.
Maybe the problem is that I simply lack a strong enough national identity to compare myself to the Greeks. What else defines me? Well, I already mentioned language. I speak English and I have white skin. I guess that makes me some kind of race. Would I be upset if a nation of Francophone black people moved into Alberta and called themselves WASP-land? What if a bunch of Koreans did this?
Nope. It just doesn't have an effect on me. I mean, I would think it was absurd, but I wouldn't feel the need to stop them from calling themselves whatever they wanted. I guess I would just have to ask them, "what's the point?" Maybe I would argue that, for their own good, they should come up with a slightly more sustainable thing to build their nation on. And perhaps that is the basis of the Greek criticism of Macedonia. It's a bad idea to just make things up in order to build your nation, because those things can then be undermined.
Still, the name itself I can find no objection in. After all, I live in British Columbia. On the opposite side of the world from Britain, and there is no such thing as any other Columbia. Colombia doesn't count; it's spelled different.
Actually, come to think of it, the name of our own province really stinks. Canada got a cool name. So did Alberta, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Ontario, Quebec, Labrador, Nunavut, and The Yukon Territory. (Sorry Newfoundland, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and The Northwest Territories, but your names are even worse than BC's.)
I think BC should change its name to Macedonia.
I Gave Blood Yesterday!
Yesterday I gave blood and made it through the whole process without feeling faint or dizzy. This was my fourth trip to the blood donor place, and it was my first complete, successful donation. I was seriously considering giving up on trying, but I gave it one more shot, and it worked!
The first time I went in, I didn't even let them get the little sample they take first; I guess this is the part they send away to test for blood type and composition. It's a couple of mLs at most, but I didn't even let them get that, before I started seeing spots, getting dizzy, and I guess when a patient reports that, they abort the procedure immediately, which they did. I never actually went completely out, but I was pretty darn close. After that, they told me that some people take three or four attempts before they can get through it, so I could come back and try again.
The second time, I made it through the sample phase, so they got to the point where they were actually drawing blood, which they could use, but about halfway through that process, once again I saw spots, my vision shrunk into tiny little circles of awareness in front of me, and all the sounds got really far away, though I did manage to stay conscious, as the nurses were telling me to keep my eyes open, though it sounded like they were telling me this from miles away. One thing I should note about my second donation was that I read about how fighter pilots keep from blacking out (if they don't have a G-suit) under high G-forces, wherein they apparently have a similar problem of blood leaving the head and leading to unconsciousness. When they don't have the luxury of a G-suit, which squeezes your legs under high G-forces, forcing the blood to stay in your head and upper body, they learn exercises involving clenching of the abdominal muscles and leg muscles, in order to physically force blood up to their heads. I thought I'd give this a try during my second donation attempt, but it didn't work. I also worked out my arm a bit during the process, and flexed my arm so hard I got a bruise, which is a definite no-no.
The third time was pretty much the same as the second time. No ill feelings up until about halfway through the donation process, and then it hit me again. By the third time, it starts to feel like a pattern, and I was pretty sure this was how I was going to react to every subsequent attempt, but I thought I'd try again. Oh, and the third time I didn't even bother with the muscle-clenching.
The fourth time, I totally relaxed my arm, except for very gently opening and closing my hand. But I flexed my legs about every 10 or 20 seconds. I never once felt an onset of dizziness or faintness coming on this time. I tried to read a book, but I couldn't concentrate on the book; I was probably just too nervous to read, plus it was hard to hold the book open with just one hand.
Anyways, I'm just proud of giving blood and having finally given an entire unit without having to stop halfway through.
The first time I went in, I didn't even let them get the little sample they take first; I guess this is the part they send away to test for blood type and composition. It's a couple of mLs at most, but I didn't even let them get that, before I started seeing spots, getting dizzy, and I guess when a patient reports that, they abort the procedure immediately, which they did. I never actually went completely out, but I was pretty darn close. After that, they told me that some people take three or four attempts before they can get through it, so I could come back and try again.
The second time, I made it through the sample phase, so they got to the point where they were actually drawing blood, which they could use, but about halfway through that process, once again I saw spots, my vision shrunk into tiny little circles of awareness in front of me, and all the sounds got really far away, though I did manage to stay conscious, as the nurses were telling me to keep my eyes open, though it sounded like they were telling me this from miles away. One thing I should note about my second donation was that I read about how fighter pilots keep from blacking out (if they don't have a G-suit) under high G-forces, wherein they apparently have a similar problem of blood leaving the head and leading to unconsciousness. When they don't have the luxury of a G-suit, which squeezes your legs under high G-forces, forcing the blood to stay in your head and upper body, they learn exercises involving clenching of the abdominal muscles and leg muscles, in order to physically force blood up to their heads. I thought I'd give this a try during my second donation attempt, but it didn't work. I also worked out my arm a bit during the process, and flexed my arm so hard I got a bruise, which is a definite no-no.
The third time was pretty much the same as the second time. No ill feelings up until about halfway through the donation process, and then it hit me again. By the third time, it starts to feel like a pattern, and I was pretty sure this was how I was going to react to every subsequent attempt, but I thought I'd try again. Oh, and the third time I didn't even bother with the muscle-clenching.
The fourth time, I totally relaxed my arm, except for very gently opening and closing my hand. But I flexed my legs about every 10 or 20 seconds. I never once felt an onset of dizziness or faintness coming on this time. I tried to read a book, but I couldn't concentrate on the book; I was probably just too nervous to read, plus it was hard to hold the book open with just one hand.
Anyways, I'm just proud of giving blood and having finally given an entire unit without having to stop halfway through.
Friday, July 11, 2008
The Anti-Marketer
All the conventional wisdom in marketing says that building a strong brand is your key to success in business. In fact, building a strong brand is the key to success in any endeavor, including non-businesses, like churches.
Brands are the ultimate straw men, and quite an achievement. Basically a brand works like a word in the language. The sound by itself doesn't mean much, if anything. Everything that gets put into a brand is artificial. It's completely made up by humans communicating this idea, trying to get it ingrained in other people's minds. Generally, the more money you spend, the more people's heads you can get into. Branding success isn't necessarily sales. It's getting everybody to associate your product with an identified need. It's getting embedded in everybody's mind, that when they have problem A, they get an X. [X being the brand name, and not the generic name for the item.] Viral marketing can have a big impact for little dollars spent, but it can also sometimes backfire, creating unwanted associations with your brand, such as illegality at worse [cf. Aqua Teen Hunger Force], or illegitimacy [cf. YouTube vs. Viacom] in some cases.
A brand is like any other word in the language, but on steroids, because people want you to learn this word. No one gets paid if you learn "ignominious" (Merriam Webster's Word of the Day 11 July 2008) but someone gets paid to teach you "Bacardi Mojito."
Anyways. So much for what brands are supposed to do. Now for my idea on the anti-brand. What if there was a thing that was un-pin-down-able. What if there was a thing out there, a thing that had no set spelling, no set definition, and no way to brand it? Could it still be made into a marketing success? I have to believe that yes, it could, and once it was done, it would be amazingly successful. Essentially, this would be something totally new, something that's never been thought before. See my previous post on the name of God for some similar thoughts. But basically I want to start a brand that is never spelled the same way twice. I don't really care what product it is. It could even be a religion, for all I care, but it would be the ultimate anti-brand.
In a way, it would be using all of the traditional principles of branding. You'd pay someone to try to educate the public on the brand, but once you get it going, people would educate themselves. There's nothing people like better than being on the inside.
Here's one of my favorite examples. Take E. E. Cummings. Notice what I did there? Most people think that the "correct" way to write the poet's name is with lower-case Es. People will even take time out of their schedules to correct someone on the spelling on the internet. And yet there's not a lot of evidence that Mr. Cummings himself ever signed his name this way. He had his own opinions on capitalisation, but as far as his name went, he didn't seem to have this idea that his name should be always written with lower-case Es. Another great example is Prince. People go crazy when somebody famous changes their name. He changed his name to a symbol, and everybody was saying "what are we supposed to do now?"
Heck, maybe my great new idea isn't so new after all. I mean, look at what's been done by Sean Coombs and Jennifer Lopez. What? You don't recognize those names? How about P. Diddy and J-Lo?
Still, even these experimental artists have to stick with a particular brand for at least a small period of time. They change the brand though, and the fans go wild. I don't know if you need a huge, dedicated fanbase to start with, but I do know that this name-changing thing does fan the flames of fame. People who weren't interested in you before are suddenly asking "what's the meaning behind this change? Should I be interested in him now? Is he reinventing himself? I liked/didn't like the old Puff Daddy, but maybe I'll like/dislike P Diddy. I'd better take a listen and find out." A name change is news.
But there are practical reasons for changing your name from time to time. People love putting things in categories. Puff Daddy made one kind of hip hop music. [Is it hip hop or rap? I probably shouldn't be using him as an example so much, because I know absolutely nothing about his music, only that he's a guy who changed his name a lot.] P Diddy might make a slightly different kind of hip hop music. And Sean Coombs is the millionaire producer.
Prince, on the other hand, had his name changed over issues of copyright and ownership of his name, if I have the story correct. That's another can of worms though.
Which brings me to my blog. Problem is, people want things categorized. If I'm going to get people to read my blog (and no one has even seen it yet), I might want to categorize things so that they can find the topics that interest them. In fact, it might even be preferable to have multiple blogs, multiple identities blogging about multiple issues. As you might be able to see from the few scant entries so far, my thoughts are kind of wide-spread.
So a blog with a changing name, or a name that's never spelled the same way twice, could work, or it could be a total dismal flop. I don't even see how it could technically be done, except if I just made a new account every week and people had to go find it. I'd use a different provider every week too. No, that's not really what I want to apply this idea to. Maybe there is no perfect model product that this idea can work on, but I'm willing to watch what floats by in the stream of life to see if anything fits the anti-branding model.
Stay tuned, I guess.
Brands are the ultimate straw men, and quite an achievement. Basically a brand works like a word in the language. The sound by itself doesn't mean much, if anything. Everything that gets put into a brand is artificial. It's completely made up by humans communicating this idea, trying to get it ingrained in other people's minds. Generally, the more money you spend, the more people's heads you can get into. Branding success isn't necessarily sales. It's getting everybody to associate your product with an identified need. It's getting embedded in everybody's mind, that when they have problem A, they get an X. [X being the brand name, and not the generic name for the item.] Viral marketing can have a big impact for little dollars spent, but it can also sometimes backfire, creating unwanted associations with your brand, such as illegality at worse [cf. Aqua Teen Hunger Force], or illegitimacy [cf. YouTube vs. Viacom] in some cases.
A brand is like any other word in the language, but on steroids, because people want you to learn this word. No one gets paid if you learn "ignominious" (Merriam Webster's Word of the Day 11 July 2008) but someone gets paid to teach you "Bacardi Mojito."
Anyways. So much for what brands are supposed to do. Now for my idea on the anti-brand. What if there was a thing that was un-pin-down-able. What if there was a thing out there, a thing that had no set spelling, no set definition, and no way to brand it? Could it still be made into a marketing success? I have to believe that yes, it could, and once it was done, it would be amazingly successful. Essentially, this would be something totally new, something that's never been thought before. See my previous post on the name of God for some similar thoughts. But basically I want to start a brand that is never spelled the same way twice. I don't really care what product it is. It could even be a religion, for all I care, but it would be the ultimate anti-brand.
In a way, it would be using all of the traditional principles of branding. You'd pay someone to try to educate the public on the brand, but once you get it going, people would educate themselves. There's nothing people like better than being on the inside.
Here's one of my favorite examples. Take E. E. Cummings. Notice what I did there? Most people think that the "correct" way to write the poet's name is with lower-case Es. People will even take time out of their schedules to correct someone on the spelling on the internet. And yet there's not a lot of evidence that Mr. Cummings himself ever signed his name this way. He had his own opinions on capitalisation, but as far as his name went, he didn't seem to have this idea that his name should be always written with lower-case Es. Another great example is Prince. People go crazy when somebody famous changes their name. He changed his name to a symbol, and everybody was saying "what are we supposed to do now?"
Heck, maybe my great new idea isn't so new after all. I mean, look at what's been done by Sean Coombs and Jennifer Lopez. What? You don't recognize those names? How about P. Diddy and J-Lo?
Still, even these experimental artists have to stick with a particular brand for at least a small period of time. They change the brand though, and the fans go wild. I don't know if you need a huge, dedicated fanbase to start with, but I do know that this name-changing thing does fan the flames of fame. People who weren't interested in you before are suddenly asking "what's the meaning behind this change? Should I be interested in him now? Is he reinventing himself? I liked/didn't like the old Puff Daddy, but maybe I'll like/dislike P Diddy. I'd better take a listen and find out." A name change is news.
But there are practical reasons for changing your name from time to time. People love putting things in categories. Puff Daddy made one kind of hip hop music. [Is it hip hop or rap? I probably shouldn't be using him as an example so much, because I know absolutely nothing about his music, only that he's a guy who changed his name a lot.] P Diddy might make a slightly different kind of hip hop music. And Sean Coombs is the millionaire producer.
Prince, on the other hand, had his name changed over issues of copyright and ownership of his name, if I have the story correct. That's another can of worms though.
Which brings me to my blog. Problem is, people want things categorized. If I'm going to get people to read my blog (and no one has even seen it yet), I might want to categorize things so that they can find the topics that interest them. In fact, it might even be preferable to have multiple blogs, multiple identities blogging about multiple issues. As you might be able to see from the few scant entries so far, my thoughts are kind of wide-spread.
So a blog with a changing name, or a name that's never spelled the same way twice, could work, or it could be a total dismal flop. I don't even see how it could technically be done, except if I just made a new account every week and people had to go find it. I'd use a different provider every week too. No, that's not really what I want to apply this idea to. Maybe there is no perfect model product that this idea can work on, but I'm willing to watch what floats by in the stream of life to see if anything fits the anti-branding model.
Stay tuned, I guess.
Dogma is Fun!
[This post has been dictated to me by the angel Gehubriel. He doesn't type well, so he came to me. I may have taken some liberties with his divine words. May God strike me down in a fiery blast if anything I have typed is not in accordance with His Divine Will. A{wo}men.]
The Church of the Cough.
Some time ago I read the following:
"From some undetermined point below had come a voice that was not a voice; a chaotic sensation which only fancy would transmute into sound, but which he attempted to render by the almost unpronounceable jumble of letters, 'Cthulhu fhtagn'." --H.P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu
Now, there are numerous discussions on the internet, discussions which go back to the days before the internet, to the time when such correspondence was actually done through physical correspondence. Ie. with pen and paper. Discussions about how to properly pronounce Cthulhu. I won't go into them now, but you can Google it and get a pretty good idea of what's going on.
Anyways, the phenomenon here seems to be more related to the stumbling around of history and archaeology students through ancient languages. Lovecraft gave his stories a pretty blatant supernatural angle, but there is obviously a kernel of linguistic and cultural studies which provides the genesis of the musings on how this alien language is spoken. Lovecraft's idea is that there are creatures "out there" that have really different physiologies from human beings, and that therefore it is only natural that they should have different languages made up of the different sounds they are able to make. But as for examples of really alien languages, well, we don't yet have any, and naturally this makes them hard to describe in a written format.
Heck, even spoken language is often hard enough to learn. I was trying to learn some words in Arabic. I wanted to learn how to give the Arabic greeting, but I gave up on trying to make it sound perfect, because to be honest, you'd think that Arabs were from another planet, the sounds they take as phonemes! They sound more like coughs and grunts than vowels or consonants. And this, I think, is the only place that Lovecraft could take analogy. Since he throws in a professor of Semitic language studies as a character in the story, he's obviously at least somewhat familiar with the fact that these people make languages out of some pretty weird sounds.
Enough of that, what is this blog post really about? Some time ago I was reading about the ancient Jews. I can't be bothered at the moment to look up the exact period and details, but that's not important right now. The important thing is the impression it made on me, and the connection that I believe I fabricated out of thin air, but that seems to fit the facts surprisingly well. Anyways, the item in question is the fact that the ancient Jews believed that the name of God was unpronounceable. There were a whole lot of interpretations of this, and the mainstream one is an explanation that you need to be reverent when talking about God, and to even speak his name could invoke his wrath. Something like that. Anyways, this is why we have the Tetragrammaton, the four-letter word that no one knows how to pronounce. "YHWH." All consonants. Except for sometimes Y. Because they didn't believe people should be going around pronouncing the name of God, or perhaps because they didn't believe that mortals could ever get it right, and would risk offending God if they got it wrong, they came up with this shorthand, reverent version when they wanted to talk about God.
Later, people stretched the name out, added some vowels, and came up with "Jehovah."
YHWH
YeHoWaH
Yehowah
Jehowah
Jehovah
I don't know though, because I seem to recall that there is some debate among scholars as to which came first, the tetragrammaton, or the fully pronounced name of Jehovah. I actually prefer the view that the real name of God was lost, or never existed to begin with, and Jehovah was only invented later to fill in the gap that earlier prophets had failed to fill in.
In all likelihood, because languages tend to change and have funny things like vowel shifts, we almost certainly don't know exactly how they would have pronounced it. And for all we know, some of the sounds they used might not exist in any language today. Which is what connects this to the Cthulhu story.
See, an alien language from another planet is sort of like an ancient language. To the unaccustomed ear, they sound like coughs and gurgles. Cthulhu, Jehovah. They have their modern accepted spellings, but they go back to some pretty strange origins [albeit quite fictional in Cthulhu's case]. And both of them could have come out in very different ways, via the evolution of language.
What does this have to do with dogma, you ask? Well, I just wanted to say that I'm creating my own dogma, or system of beliefs, regarding God. And one of the first is that God's name isn't known. In fact, God's name was never known, and can never be known. Most religious people deal with this in a standard way: they make up a name. Okay, we don't know his real name, so we'll call him "God." "Jehovah." "Yahweh." Over time, the name gets standardized, and some iconography gets added. He becomes male; he grows a beard, he throws lightning bolts. And before you know it, he's coming down to earth, seducing virgins, getting drunk, and causing all kinds of trouble, being anything but the regal and majestic and dignified creator of the universe.
This is why I say when we name God, we need to give him a different name every time we speak of him. And this is why I propose the foundation of the Church of the Cough. See, instead of praying, "Oh God, our Father, give us our daily bread." we should pray, "dear [make a coughing noise here], give us today our daily bread."
In addition, we shouldn't get in the habit of spelling his name the same way over and over again. We need to come up with a handful of variants that we can use, and we need to be making new spellings for God all the time. We should not be nailing him down with our words. Here's a quick list of names you can start using:
Goob
Tjallbg
Tiorbk
Pefodfgu
Fwqwhgds
Howie
For inspiration, just look at the word "cough". There's no "F" in cough, so why do we pronounce it? Equally, Tiorbkjh needs stranger, less coherent pronunciations in His name. Feel free to use as many gurgles, grunts, wheezes, and quick breaths as possible when you pray. The pronunciation doesn't need to resemble the written word, since the written word is going to change every time it is copied anyways. Try to pronounce his name with confidence. He is your friend after all.
Next, I'm going to try and ween myself away from the male pronoun for God. Personally, I'm a big fan of Futurama's suggestion for the gender-neutral pronouns shklee and shklim.
Finally, why is this blog titled "Fun with Dogma" [or whatever I called it, I don't remember]? Well, because this is what all the great dogmatists love to do. They love to create coherent systems and claim that this is the right way to do it. I would be thrilled if everyone started using my system, but I can't claim that it's the best way to do things. In fact, it's probably inconvenient for worship; which is kind of the point. Put a little effort back into praying and worshiping, and thinking about who this God person really is anyways, is a good thing, in my opinion.
But that aside, my point is that I see no dogmatic point as obviously correct. Besides the fact that the angel Gehubriel [Gabriel's annoying cousin] personally came down to my apartment and dictated the previous blog post to me. He just left, so I can type whatever I want now: Tjallbg! Was he ever annoying! People who come up with big coherent dogmatic systems are just setting themselves up for a fight with other people who have also come up with massive dogmatic systems. They think if they're all in the same church, they all have to believe the same thing. But for me, I can't be held down. I can read and understand a dogmatic treatise, but ask me to subscribe to it, to believe in it, and I can do it for a while, but when something new comes along, I'll just go ahead and believe that. [Not so much on the big issues, but on stuff like predestination, I sway back and forth with the winds.] I can even do some of my own thinking on why we should have certain dogmas, and I'd like to think I've created my own little piece of dogma in this post.
So there's really no guarantee that I'll adhere to the dogma I just received through divine inspiration. There's no guarantee that I'll adhere to any dogma. I can entertain any dogma for a while, but eventually it will be undercut. The only dogma that isn't (yet) undercut is the dogma of self interest. I do and believe the things that are in my interest, and that seems to be the extent of my fidelity. I've never stopped believing in God or Jesus, but I've never had a compelling reason to go either way. And I don't see myself giving up the faith anytime soon, but the dogma changes all the time.
And that's all I feel like typing now.
The Church of the Cough.
Some time ago I read the following:
"From some undetermined point below had come a voice that was not a voice; a chaotic sensation which only fancy would transmute into sound, but which he attempted to render by the almost unpronounceable jumble of letters, 'Cthulhu fhtagn'." --H.P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu
Now, there are numerous discussions on the internet, discussions which go back to the days before the internet, to the time when such correspondence was actually done through physical correspondence. Ie. with pen and paper. Discussions about how to properly pronounce Cthulhu. I won't go into them now, but you can Google it and get a pretty good idea of what's going on.
Anyways, the phenomenon here seems to be more related to the stumbling around of history and archaeology students through ancient languages. Lovecraft gave his stories a pretty blatant supernatural angle, but there is obviously a kernel of linguistic and cultural studies which provides the genesis of the musings on how this alien language is spoken. Lovecraft's idea is that there are creatures "out there" that have really different physiologies from human beings, and that therefore it is only natural that they should have different languages made up of the different sounds they are able to make. But as for examples of really alien languages, well, we don't yet have any, and naturally this makes them hard to describe in a written format.
Heck, even spoken language is often hard enough to learn. I was trying to learn some words in Arabic. I wanted to learn how to give the Arabic greeting, but I gave up on trying to make it sound perfect, because to be honest, you'd think that Arabs were from another planet, the sounds they take as phonemes! They sound more like coughs and grunts than vowels or consonants. And this, I think, is the only place that Lovecraft could take analogy. Since he throws in a professor of Semitic language studies as a character in the story, he's obviously at least somewhat familiar with the fact that these people make languages out of some pretty weird sounds.
Enough of that, what is this blog post really about? Some time ago I was reading about the ancient Jews. I can't be bothered at the moment to look up the exact period and details, but that's not important right now. The important thing is the impression it made on me, and the connection that I believe I fabricated out of thin air, but that seems to fit the facts surprisingly well. Anyways, the item in question is the fact that the ancient Jews believed that the name of God was unpronounceable. There were a whole lot of interpretations of this, and the mainstream one is an explanation that you need to be reverent when talking about God, and to even speak his name could invoke his wrath. Something like that. Anyways, this is why we have the Tetragrammaton, the four-letter word that no one knows how to pronounce. "YHWH." All consonants. Except for sometimes Y. Because they didn't believe people should be going around pronouncing the name of God, or perhaps because they didn't believe that mortals could ever get it right, and would risk offending God if they got it wrong, they came up with this shorthand, reverent version when they wanted to talk about God.
Later, people stretched the name out, added some vowels, and came up with "Jehovah."
YHWH
YeHoWaH
Yehowah
Jehowah
Jehovah
I don't know though, because I seem to recall that there is some debate among scholars as to which came first, the tetragrammaton, or the fully pronounced name of Jehovah. I actually prefer the view that the real name of God was lost, or never existed to begin with, and Jehovah was only invented later to fill in the gap that earlier prophets had failed to fill in.
In all likelihood, because languages tend to change and have funny things like vowel shifts, we almost certainly don't know exactly how they would have pronounced it. And for all we know, some of the sounds they used might not exist in any language today. Which is what connects this to the Cthulhu story.
See, an alien language from another planet is sort of like an ancient language. To the unaccustomed ear, they sound like coughs and gurgles. Cthulhu, Jehovah. They have their modern accepted spellings, but they go back to some pretty strange origins [albeit quite fictional in Cthulhu's case]. And both of them could have come out in very different ways, via the evolution of language.
What does this have to do with dogma, you ask? Well, I just wanted to say that I'm creating my own dogma, or system of beliefs, regarding God. And one of the first is that God's name isn't known. In fact, God's name was never known, and can never be known. Most religious people deal with this in a standard way: they make up a name. Okay, we don't know his real name, so we'll call him "God." "Jehovah." "Yahweh." Over time, the name gets standardized, and some iconography gets added. He becomes male; he grows a beard, he throws lightning bolts. And before you know it, he's coming down to earth, seducing virgins, getting drunk, and causing all kinds of trouble, being anything but the regal and majestic and dignified creator of the universe.
This is why I say when we name God, we need to give him a different name every time we speak of him. And this is why I propose the foundation of the Church of the Cough. See, instead of praying, "Oh God, our Father, give us our daily bread." we should pray, "dear [make a coughing noise here], give us today our daily bread."
In addition, we shouldn't get in the habit of spelling his name the same way over and over again. We need to come up with a handful of variants that we can use, and we need to be making new spellings for God all the time. We should not be nailing him down with our words. Here's a quick list of names you can start using:
Goob
Tjallbg
Tiorbk
Pefodfgu
Fwqwhgds
Howie
For inspiration, just look at the word "cough". There's no "F" in cough, so why do we pronounce it? Equally, Tiorbkjh needs stranger, less coherent pronunciations in His name. Feel free to use as many gurgles, grunts, wheezes, and quick breaths as possible when you pray. The pronunciation doesn't need to resemble the written word, since the written word is going to change every time it is copied anyways. Try to pronounce his name with confidence. He is your friend after all.
Next, I'm going to try and ween myself away from the male pronoun for God. Personally, I'm a big fan of Futurama's suggestion for the gender-neutral pronouns shklee and shklim.
Finally, why is this blog titled "Fun with Dogma" [or whatever I called it, I don't remember]? Well, because this is what all the great dogmatists love to do. They love to create coherent systems and claim that this is the right way to do it. I would be thrilled if everyone started using my system, but I can't claim that it's the best way to do things. In fact, it's probably inconvenient for worship; which is kind of the point. Put a little effort back into praying and worshiping, and thinking about who this God person really is anyways, is a good thing, in my opinion.
But that aside, my point is that I see no dogmatic point as obviously correct. Besides the fact that the angel Gehubriel [Gabriel's annoying cousin] personally came down to my apartment and dictated the previous blog post to me. He just left, so I can type whatever I want now: Tjallbg! Was he ever annoying! People who come up with big coherent dogmatic systems are just setting themselves up for a fight with other people who have also come up with massive dogmatic systems. They think if they're all in the same church, they all have to believe the same thing. But for me, I can't be held down. I can read and understand a dogmatic treatise, but ask me to subscribe to it, to believe in it, and I can do it for a while, but when something new comes along, I'll just go ahead and believe that. [Not so much on the big issues, but on stuff like predestination, I sway back and forth with the winds.] I can even do some of my own thinking on why we should have certain dogmas, and I'd like to think I've created my own little piece of dogma in this post.
So there's really no guarantee that I'll adhere to the dogma I just received through divine inspiration. There's no guarantee that I'll adhere to any dogma. I can entertain any dogma for a while, but eventually it will be undercut. The only dogma that isn't (yet) undercut is the dogma of self interest. I do and believe the things that are in my interest, and that seems to be the extent of my fidelity. I've never stopped believing in God or Jesus, but I've never had a compelling reason to go either way. And I don't see myself giving up the faith anytime soon, but the dogma changes all the time.
And that's all I feel like typing now.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Fuck Viacom? Why not Fuck the United States Government?
If you watch a lot of YouTube videos, like I do, you will have noticed that there's a lawsuit going on right now between YouTube and Viacom over copyright. Viacom asserts that YouTube built its business, including most of its initial revenue, on content that it had no right to distribute, and content that Viacom actually lost sales on because people were getting it for free. The United States courts haven't made a ruling yet, but what they have done is rule that YouTube has to give Viacom a whole bunch of information, in order for Viacom to build their case, and this information includes personal information about YouTube account holders. The account holders never consented to having their information shared in this way.
This, according to many YouTube users, is a violation of privacy. Thus, a great many YouTube users have got together to create a campaign to boycott Viacom. They argue that because Viacom is making unreasonable demands, it's a bad company, and in order to stop them, and send a message to other companies, the YouTube collective userbase needs to punish Viacom by some kind of boycott or something.
Here's my problem with that scenario. Viacom is a company, I presume publicly traded, but I don't have just 5 seconds at the moment to Google it. Even though I had 5 seconds to write that last disclaimer sentence. Fuck it, just hang on a second.
Yes.
Okay, I'm back.
So Viacom is a publicly traded company, and like any company with shareholders who aren't batshit insane sole proprietors, it needs to protect its own interests. This includes asking the government if it could please make YouTube give them some information that would really help them with their case.
After all, if Viacom has been damaged by YouTube, then they would by all rights deserve to get some of those profits back, which have been wrongfully taken from them.
No harm in asking, right?
Except when the government says yes, you can have access to information about users. Information which normally, due to privacy considerations, we couldn't let you have, but because we're the courts, we're allowed to break the rules and here you go. By the way, YouTube, fuck you for being a haven for dissenters and alternating viewpoints. As the government, we are officially against that.
So by now, you can probably see that it's obviously stupid for the collective of YouTube users, the YouTube Users Union, as the church of the cough predicts will soon come into existence, to try to do something to hurt Viacom. For one thing, it isn't Viacom that has done anything wrong. They just asked. For another thing, even if they manage to get Viacom to back down, there are at least one or two other Multinational Multimedia Conglomerates who will now have no legal reason not to pursue the same information, because Viacom by backing down has set no legal precedent. For another thing, Viacom finances some entertaining content which I would prefer to watch. I don't want to boycott, um, hang on again while I Google what it is that Viacom finances* .... Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull.
*Note that I write "finances" and not "produces", "creates", "puts out", or any creative word like that. Viacom is too big to "create" anything. It's the individuals who make stuff. Viacom just makes channels for them to get to their consumers. That's still a very big deal, and an extremely valuable contribution, but I feel that the distinction is necessary.
Okay, so I've lost my train of thought, but I think you get the picture that the evil being done here is being done by the courts and government, not Viacom. And yet, YouTube users are all too ready to go to war against Viacom. Why not go to war against the US Government?
No, I don't mean real war, which you might lose. Plus, if you had a revolution, you would face all the same problems over again in whatever new system you set up. I mean a lobbying war.
Instead of boycotting Viacom, boycott the DMV. Boycott the US court system. Boycott the police. No, don't really do that, because that would be stupid, but it's about as smart as boycotting whatever it is that Viacom puts out.
This, according to many YouTube users, is a violation of privacy. Thus, a great many YouTube users have got together to create a campaign to boycott Viacom. They argue that because Viacom is making unreasonable demands, it's a bad company, and in order to stop them, and send a message to other companies, the YouTube collective userbase needs to punish Viacom by some kind of boycott or something.
Here's my problem with that scenario. Viacom is a company, I presume publicly traded, but I don't have just 5 seconds at the moment to Google it. Even though I had 5 seconds to write that last disclaimer sentence. Fuck it, just hang on a second.
Yes.
Okay, I'm back.
So Viacom is a publicly traded company, and like any company with shareholders who aren't batshit insane sole proprietors, it needs to protect its own interests. This includes asking the government if it could please make YouTube give them some information that would really help them with their case.
After all, if Viacom has been damaged by YouTube, then they would by all rights deserve to get some of those profits back, which have been wrongfully taken from them.
No harm in asking, right?
Except when the government says yes, you can have access to information about users. Information which normally, due to privacy considerations, we couldn't let you have, but because we're the courts, we're allowed to break the rules and here you go. By the way, YouTube, fuck you for being a haven for dissenters and alternating viewpoints. As the government, we are officially against that.
So by now, you can probably see that it's obviously stupid for the collective of YouTube users, the YouTube Users Union, as the church of the cough predicts will soon come into existence, to try to do something to hurt Viacom. For one thing, it isn't Viacom that has done anything wrong. They just asked. For another thing, even if they manage to get Viacom to back down, there are at least one or two other Multinational Multimedia Conglomerates who will now have no legal reason not to pursue the same information, because Viacom by backing down has set no legal precedent. For another thing, Viacom finances some entertaining content which I would prefer to watch. I don't want to boycott, um, hang on again while I Google what it is that Viacom finances* .... Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull.
*Note that I write "finances" and not "produces", "creates", "puts out", or any creative word like that. Viacom is too big to "create" anything. It's the individuals who make stuff. Viacom just makes channels for them to get to their consumers. That's still a very big deal, and an extremely valuable contribution, but I feel that the distinction is necessary.
Okay, so I've lost my train of thought, but I think you get the picture that the evil being done here is being done by the courts and government, not Viacom. And yet, YouTube users are all too ready to go to war against Viacom. Why not go to war against the US Government?
No, I don't mean real war, which you might lose. Plus, if you had a revolution, you would face all the same problems over again in whatever new system you set up. I mean a lobbying war.
Instead of boycotting Viacom, boycott the DMV. Boycott the US court system. Boycott the police. No, don't really do that, because that would be stupid, but it's about as smart as boycotting whatever it is that Viacom puts out.
Saturday, June 21, 2008
Which is Worse: Poverty or Disease?
I'm pretty sure absolutely no one is reading this blog, considering I haven't told anyone about it. But that's fine for now. Eventually I'll get around to getting my friends to read it, and then I'll get some other people to read it. And then I won't be able to write the same things because everyone will expect something, and I can't be experimental anymore.
But I have a question for anyone who does eventually read this. And I ask this question of everyone in the future because I don't think it's going to be resolved anytime soon.
Let me set it up first:
I was talking to some people, having a conversation, and I told them about how I wanted to go ahead and do a bicycle trip across Canada. I've seen people do it in the news, and I thought I could maybe pick a cause and go for it. But I still don't know what cause I really should be supporting. Someone said to me: "why not cancer, or heart and stroke, or Alzeimer's?" Those are good causes, but my initial thoughts had been to raise money to fight "poverty."
"Poverty?" They asked. "We don't really have poverty in Canada. Or we do, but anyone who's poor, it's their own fault, and raising money isn't going to help them anyways. Give money to poor people, and they'll just stay poor."
Those are solid arguments. I agree with this person. I do think that it's the poor's own fault that they're poor. And I don't think throwing money at them will help them. However, I'm also a believer in the "little things" principle. How can I put this? You know that saying "Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day; teach a man to fish and he'll eat for the rest of his life." Well, disregarding for the moment that I've never caught a fish in my life, I'll share my worldview on this: This doesn't mean we shouldn't give fish to anybody. Sometimes people are just plain hungry Now. Yes, they screwed up, and yes, it's their own fault they're left with nothing. But they're still human, are they not? It being their own fault doesn't change the fact that they're hungry and there are other people out there who could easily spare a fish or two.
Or can they? Shouldn't they be focusing their efforts on raising money for research that might actually save their own skins in the future? When faced with a multitude of possible charities to support, and only a finite amount* of money to donate to all of them, wouldn't it be the self-interested thing to do to support the one that might pay you back later on, by curing you of cancer, or something like that?
*I'm talking about lower-middle class people here. People who work for wages on an hourly basis. People who have mortgages and car payments. People who have kids to put through school. (But not college, because the burden for that has shifted from the parents to the student himself in his later life.) They're not rich by any stretch, but they do have a little bit left over at the end of the day to spare for a good cause, if they have any sort of conscience. Still, the argument applies to anyone, because there is no such thing as infinite money.
Poverty is a black hole you're just throwing your money into, and you're just making the hole wider by throwing money in. Cancer research is an investment.
However, once cancer is cured, and we live an extra year or two, the next disease becomes prominent. Everyone has to die of something. So in that sense, the cancer money pit is just the first in a series of pits along the road of life, which becomes increasingly pitted as you get toward the end of it.
So what was the question? Given a choice between the two, which charity would you support: Cancer Research or Poverty Alleviation?
I ask this because I'm actually curious if I was to start trying to raise money via a cross-Canada bike trip, would I raise significantly more if I chose one or the other? If what ultimately matters is my own conscious, then I'm forced to conclude that I'd prefer to raise money to fight poverty, but I worry that that might prevent me from every getting the project off the ground.
But I have a question for anyone who does eventually read this. And I ask this question of everyone in the future because I don't think it's going to be resolved anytime soon.
Let me set it up first:
I was talking to some people, having a conversation, and I told them about how I wanted to go ahead and do a bicycle trip across Canada. I've seen people do it in the news, and I thought I could maybe pick a cause and go for it. But I still don't know what cause I really should be supporting. Someone said to me: "why not cancer, or heart and stroke, or Alzeimer's?" Those are good causes, but my initial thoughts had been to raise money to fight "poverty."
"Poverty?" They asked. "We don't really have poverty in Canada. Or we do, but anyone who's poor, it's their own fault, and raising money isn't going to help them anyways. Give money to poor people, and they'll just stay poor."
Those are solid arguments. I agree with this person. I do think that it's the poor's own fault that they're poor. And I don't think throwing money at them will help them. However, I'm also a believer in the "little things" principle. How can I put this? You know that saying "Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day; teach a man to fish and he'll eat for the rest of his life." Well, disregarding for the moment that I've never caught a fish in my life, I'll share my worldview on this: This doesn't mean we shouldn't give fish to anybody. Sometimes people are just plain hungry Now. Yes, they screwed up, and yes, it's their own fault they're left with nothing. But they're still human, are they not? It being their own fault doesn't change the fact that they're hungry and there are other people out there who could easily spare a fish or two.
Or can they? Shouldn't they be focusing their efforts on raising money for research that might actually save their own skins in the future? When faced with a multitude of possible charities to support, and only a finite amount* of money to donate to all of them, wouldn't it be the self-interested thing to do to support the one that might pay you back later on, by curing you of cancer, or something like that?
*I'm talking about lower-middle class people here. People who work for wages on an hourly basis. People who have mortgages and car payments. People who have kids to put through school. (But not college, because the burden for that has shifted from the parents to the student himself in his later life.) They're not rich by any stretch, but they do have a little bit left over at the end of the day to spare for a good cause, if they have any sort of conscience. Still, the argument applies to anyone, because there is no such thing as infinite money.
Poverty is a black hole you're just throwing your money into, and you're just making the hole wider by throwing money in. Cancer research is an investment.
However, once cancer is cured, and we live an extra year or two, the next disease becomes prominent. Everyone has to die of something. So in that sense, the cancer money pit is just the first in a series of pits along the road of life, which becomes increasingly pitted as you get toward the end of it.
So what was the question? Given a choice between the two, which charity would you support: Cancer Research or Poverty Alleviation?
I ask this because I'm actually curious if I was to start trying to raise money via a cross-Canada bike trip, would I raise significantly more if I chose one or the other? If what ultimately matters is my own conscious, then I'm forced to conclude that I'd prefer to raise money to fight poverty, but I worry that that might prevent me from every getting the project off the ground.
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