Another cool word.
Literally, it means "divine wisdom." Kind of misleading. Practically, it means the totality of knowledge related to the nature of God (or gods). It's as opposed to theology, which is the study of religious teachings related to God.
There is a theosophical system that I've always been interested in. It goes by a number of names, but I'm not going to mention them just yet because it would be prejudicial, but some of you will recognize the system anyway. Shh. Don't give it away.
In this system, there is an ineffable God. He is beyond human understanding. We are unable to comprehend or describe him. The closest we can come to understanding him is through his emanations, or aeons. They are somewhat similar to angels, but they are not his creations, they are a direct result of his being. The two we're interested in are Sophia (wisdom) and Logos (the word).
Sophia desires to create. Some interpreters say her motive was pride, others say it was impatience. There is some divergence, but the point is that Sophia creates the demiurge. Literally, it means "public worker," but in practice it means creator. Fearful of what God, the Father will do with her creation, she hides him away. Thus isolated, the demiurge is unaware of his mother, or of the ineffable Father. Believing himself to be alone in the universe, he begins to create the physical cosmos. But, because he is an imperfect creation, what he creates is in error.
The demiurge is jealous and spiteful. When he creates humans, he tells them that they are to have no other god before him (sound familiar?). In one version of the system, the ineffable Father becomes aware of what Sophia and her creation have done. In another version, the Logos discovers this directly. In either case, the Logos takes on human form in order to enlighten humanity on the error of their creation and of the existence of the ineffable Father. The human aspect of the Logos is called The Christ. The Christ was sent to teach us how to return to the divine Pleroma (fullness, probably the basis for the idea of Heaven).
Didn't see that coming, did you?
The system teaches that the entire physical universe is an error. A mistake. It doesn't teach that any particular human activity is more in error than another. The whole physical cosmos is just completely wrong. There is no Hell, or concept of Hell in the system. Because the demiurge was formed of the stuff of the pleroma, and he used it to create the physical cosmos, we are all of the pleroma. Those with knowledge (gnosis) of it and of the Father will be returned to it. Those who find redemption through other means will have a lesser salvation. Pagans and Jews are destined for dirt and worms.
The system is widely credited to a man named Valentinus. He was born around 100 AD. At one point, he was in line to become a bishop of Rome. Obviously, his system is/was considered heretical by the mainstream church. One of the early church leaders accused him of dredging up this old idea just to discredit the church and its teachings. He wasn't specific about the original source of the idea, but it was probably Hermeticism and/or Platonism (not going there now). Valentinianism is generally classified as gnosticism.
I've always had an interest in apocryphal writings, especially related to early Christianity. Some of them are pretty interesting, like this one. Some of them are just silly. There is a Gospel of Somebody that has a story in it about Pontius Pilate's wife obtaining Jesus' diaper to wrap around the head of her sick son. He was cured. Ta da!
I'll probably post more of this kind of stuff.
Thursday, January 30, 2014
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
Boom! Dead End Again
I had a story I was going to post. It got very long and headed off in directions I never intended. Some writers say that's a good thing. Every time it happens to me, I find myself in a blind alley.
I won't delete the draft. For now. If I don't go back to it and I keep seeing its corpse on my dashboard, I'll probably delete it.
I won't delete the draft. For now. If I don't go back to it and I keep seeing its corpse on my dashboard, I'll probably delete it.
Tuesday, January 28, 2014
Flashes of Reality
Everyone probably knows this, but a movie is a lot of single photographs that are strung together, flashing by very quickly, one after the other, giving the impression of motion. You can make one by drawing pictures on the corners of the pages of a book and flipping through them quickly. Pretty tedious and the librarian tends to get pissed off. Anyway, the principle works the same for television and digital video (which is what most televisions are these days). For video, it is even more tedious because each frame (photograph) is made of hundreds and hundreds of little lines, and each line is made of hundreds and hundreds of little dots.
Let's go back to the standard movie analogy because it makes it a little easier to follow. In between each photograph, there is a black bar. It's used to create a frame of reference for each individual photograph, enhancing the impression of motion. If you've ever seen an old movie that looked jumpy, it can be because some frames are missing, usually because the film broke and it had to be spliced. Sometimes, the person splicing the film wasn't very good at it, and they changed the size of the black bar between the pictures. A movie works, because our sight and cognition works at a particular speed. Not everyone is the same, but we are close enough that the standard frame rate, 30 frames per second, works for most of us. Not all of us? No, but if your experience with movies is the same as it always has been and you don't know about anyone else's subjective experience, how would you know the difference? That's important, we'll come back to it.
Reality is (could be?) like a movie. Each individual instant of subjective reality is like each individual frame or photograph in a movie. Since the only thing we can experience is our consciousness during each instant, we don't see the black bars between each frame. And, since we don't see the bars, we can't say with any certainty how big they are or how much objective time goes by between them. So each glimpse of reality, lasting for a small instant, is separated by, well, nothing for some unknown span of time. Our consciousness is switched on for an instant, and then switch off again for some unknown duration. We have no idea what happens between the flashes of consciousness, or even if anything happens at all.
Remember what I said about subjective cognition? The part about not really knowing if your experience of viewing the movie is the same as everyone else's. The same question exists for the idea that our reality consists of instants of consciousness separated by nothing (or maybe something, we'll never know). For you and I to interact, our flashes of consciousness have to coincide. When we have a conversation, my bits of consciousness that flow by while I am speaking to you have to coincide with your bits of consciousness while listening to me. Or do they? I'm sitting here, writing this blog entry, and no one else is watching me. My glimpses of reality don't necessarily have to coincide with anyone else's but my computer and it doesn't have a subjective reality. However, when you read this blog entry, it has to have left some trace of itself in between the points at which our instances of consciousness coincided. Or take a simpler case. I carve my initials in a tree, and you see them ten years later. There has to be some trace of the world around us that persists between the flashes. The answer is (according to some) that reality isn't something that just happens with or without us. Going back to the movie analogy, when I film a movie and you watch it, we create an instant of shared consciousness of each frame that goes by. Every time our instants of consciousness coincide, we create a reality that carries along with them. Our flashes of consciousness are synchronized with each other, for brief moments or long years, subjectively, that is. Those flashes of coinciding consciousness can be synchronized with countless other instants experienced by countless other people, creating a universal reality, as far as we can tell, anyway. The point is, you and I don't have to have similar perceptions of the instants of reality, or even flashes that are objectively shorter or longer than one another. Our consciousness just has to collide with one another's to create a shared reality.
But wait, there's more. Stay tuned...
Let's go back to the standard movie analogy because it makes it a little easier to follow. In between each photograph, there is a black bar. It's used to create a frame of reference for each individual photograph, enhancing the impression of motion. If you've ever seen an old movie that looked jumpy, it can be because some frames are missing, usually because the film broke and it had to be spliced. Sometimes, the person splicing the film wasn't very good at it, and they changed the size of the black bar between the pictures. A movie works, because our sight and cognition works at a particular speed. Not everyone is the same, but we are close enough that the standard frame rate, 30 frames per second, works for most of us. Not all of us? No, but if your experience with movies is the same as it always has been and you don't know about anyone else's subjective experience, how would you know the difference? That's important, we'll come back to it.
Reality is (could be?) like a movie. Each individual instant of subjective reality is like each individual frame or photograph in a movie. Since the only thing we can experience is our consciousness during each instant, we don't see the black bars between each frame. And, since we don't see the bars, we can't say with any certainty how big they are or how much objective time goes by between them. So each glimpse of reality, lasting for a small instant, is separated by, well, nothing for some unknown span of time. Our consciousness is switched on for an instant, and then switch off again for some unknown duration. We have no idea what happens between the flashes of consciousness, or even if anything happens at all.
Remember what I said about subjective cognition? The part about not really knowing if your experience of viewing the movie is the same as everyone else's. The same question exists for the idea that our reality consists of instants of consciousness separated by nothing (or maybe something, we'll never know). For you and I to interact, our flashes of consciousness have to coincide. When we have a conversation, my bits of consciousness that flow by while I am speaking to you have to coincide with your bits of consciousness while listening to me. Or do they? I'm sitting here, writing this blog entry, and no one else is watching me. My glimpses of reality don't necessarily have to coincide with anyone else's but my computer and it doesn't have a subjective reality. However, when you read this blog entry, it has to have left some trace of itself in between the points at which our instances of consciousness coincided. Or take a simpler case. I carve my initials in a tree, and you see them ten years later. There has to be some trace of the world around us that persists between the flashes. The answer is (according to some) that reality isn't something that just happens with or without us. Going back to the movie analogy, when I film a movie and you watch it, we create an instant of shared consciousness of each frame that goes by. Every time our instants of consciousness coincide, we create a reality that carries along with them. Our flashes of consciousness are synchronized with each other, for brief moments or long years, subjectively, that is. Those flashes of coinciding consciousness can be synchronized with countless other instants experienced by countless other people, creating a universal reality, as far as we can tell, anyway. The point is, you and I don't have to have similar perceptions of the instants of reality, or even flashes that are objectively shorter or longer than one another. Our consciousness just has to collide with one another's to create a shared reality.
But wait, there's more. Stay tuned...
Thursday, January 23, 2014
Trickle-down
I could start this by saying that trickle-down was a good idea, but I won't. What I will say, is that it is sound economic theory.
Economics, contrary to what you may think, is nothing more than the study of human behavior. Economics professors will tell you that it is the science of scarcity, but that's just a sham. It is the art of understanding human behavior in the face of scarcity. Capitalism and Communism are economic systems. They both have something to offer. They both strive toward the common good, they just get there on different paths. Capitalism acknowledges self interest as human nature. Communism relies on sacrifice for the good of the community. Anti-capitalists will tell you that self-interest is bad, even evil. That's nonsense. Self interest keeps you from stepping in front of a bus, or being too lazy to feed yourself. Anti-communists will tell you that sacrifice means few produce, while many consume. Also nonsense. Neither system will tolerate an imbalance of net producers and net consumers. Unfortunately, both systems are fragile enough to be brought low by one of the baser traits of human nature: greed.
Trickle-down is a distinctly capitalist theory. It posits that if the state (a.k.a. the government) allows more capital to stay in the hands of net producers, they will be inclined to increase production, consuming more goods and services, labor, most notably, to do so. Capital flowing toward labor allows workers to have more means to consume, creating demand for goods and services created by net producers. It is a positive feedback system.
Capitalism and Communism have never been realized systems. Humans are well known for crippling theoretical systems. It is no more accurate to say that the United States is a capitalist state than it is to say that China is a communist state. It is safe to say that the United States is corporatist, while China is statist, making them both fascist states.
But I digress...
Trickle-down requires a truly capitalist economy, or as purely capitalistic as possible. There is its downfall. True Capitalism cannot function in the presence of greed. Therefore, neither can trickle-down. In the presence of extreme greed, trickle-down becomes destructive and tyrannical. Rather than balancing the system, it creates an ever-widening gap between the haves and the have-nots. It creates complicity between large producers and the government. The ruling class, both public and private, accrue power to themselves by withholding the capital meant for trickling down.
Wild-eyed anti-capitalists and proto-communists will make shrill accusations that the failure of trickle-down is proof that Capitalism is an evil system. That's like saying that because your blue Ford got carjacked, all cars must be bad. It's illogical and just plain not true.
So, to reiterate, trickle-down was a valid, if incomplete theory that inevitably failed in its implementation. Fortunately, Capitalism was not seriously injured in the ensuing train wreck.
Saturday, January 18, 2014
Cloud Atlas
The book, not the movie. Written by David Mitchell, it has won a number of awards.
Caution, spoilers ahead.
The movie did a lot of hopping around between the story elements. All of the elements from the book are there. Adam Ewing, Robert Frobisher, Luisa Rey, Timothy Cavendish, Sonmi~451, And Zachry, the Valleyman. In the book, half of each story is told in order, ending with the story of Zachry and Meronym, which is told in full. Then each of the remaining stories are finished in reverse order. The movie's forefront plot has a completely different focus, that being simply connection of past and present actions to our possible futures.
The story elements overlap to show us that each of the characters and events are connected. Frobisher finds Adam Ewing's diary while staying with Vyvyan Ayers. Luisa Rey searches for, and finally hears Frobisher's Cloud Atlas Sextet. One of Timothy Cavendish's authors writes mystery stories about Luisa Rey. Sonmi~451 and Hae Joo In watch an old "disney" (that era's generic term for a movie) called The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish. And, the Valleymen of Zachry's time worship Sonmi~451 as a goddess.
The theme of the novel is on the destructive nature of selfishness. In the Adam Ewing segment, it's slavery and the greed of Dr. Goose. In the Robert Frobisher segment, it is the shallow selfishness of all of the characters, including Frobisher. Vyvyan Ayers steals his music, Jocasta Ayers uses him as a sexual comforter, Eva Ayers is a shallow and self-absorbed brat. Meanwhile, Frobisher steals from all of them and uses his lover, Rufus Sixsmith, taking advantage of his love for his own, selfish ends. In the Luisa Rey segment, selfishness is embodied in everyone's favorite boogeyman, corporate greed. Timothy Cavendish is the embodiment of greed and selfishness, using everyone in sight to achieve his ends. In the Sonmi~451 segment, society has reached the pinnacle of greed. Consumerism is the law of the land. People are required by law to consume. If they can't afford what they consume, they must go into debt, effectively enslaving themselves to the "corpocracy." Sonmi~451 is a "fabricant," or clone. All fabricants are slaves to the consumerist society. The Valleymen story is a revelation of the fruits of greed and selfishness. Society has collapsed into semi-barbarism. What is left of civilization is slowly dying off.
Being a sermon on the fruits of selfishness, the consequences are both near and far term. The actions of Dr. Goose push Adam Ewing toward devoting his life to a noble cause, abolitionism. Frobisher commits suicide, The corporate evildoers are brought low by Luisa Rey. Timothy Cavendish is trapped in an nursing home involuntarily. The entire corprocratic society crumbles (we are led to assume) under the exposure of Sonmi~451's life story.
Mitchell is a skillful writer. He successfully manages to project the voice of each protagonist in an impressively deft manner, letting us forget that each story is told by the same author. The bits and pieces of each story are pleasing to read, even when they don't seem to add anything to the overall plot. Unfortunately, the end result is a Byzantine play put on in a Baroque cathedral. There are side trips that intrude on the story without having any real purpose or adding anything to it. The reincarnation theme, which we are meant to assume by way of the recurring comet-shaped birthmark, serves no apparent purpose. The reincarnated soul is alternately a witness and a protagonist for either side of the equation. The story doesn't gain anything by it. Robert Frobisher commits suicide for no apparent reason, other than to give a mini-soliloquy on reincarnation and the futility of trying to correct a wasted life. In the denouement of the Sonmi~451 story, it is revealed that her entire story is a controlled charade, supposedly for the education of the consumers. Defying logic, Sonmi~451 reveals that she knew this, and that it was her design that her story would somehow incite the masses to revolt. Knowing this, the corprocacy moves ahead with its plan and makes a martyr out of her by putting her to death. In the Zachry story, it is unknown whether she succeeded or not. The Valleymen worship her, but we don't know whether she really did have a hand in the collapse of civilization. At the end of the Zachry story, his (and we are led to believe, Meronym's) offspring tells us that the whole story might be fable, and that he watches the orison of Sonmi~451 (the holographic record of her interrogation) even though he doesn't understand her language. Are we supposed to believe that humanity will not have learned anything and will grow up again to make the same mistakes? Maybe, but I really had to reach for that.
In all, the book is enjoyable, if eccentric. It's worth the read, especially if you've already seen the movie. Give it a try.
Tuesday, January 14, 2014
Contextomy
Cool word.
It means using quotes without context and/or without knowing the author. I see it all the time. It is especially prevalent in the genre of platitude memes. You know, the pictures you find all over Facebook that have (more or less) profound observations on life, love, death, and so it goes. Please don't take this wrong if you are a regular poster of those memes. Your sentiment is genuine, but the intent of the author of the memes is, at best, unknown. But I digress...
How about this one? Who said it? What is the context?
"That which doesn't kill us makes us stronger."
Well, it was originally uttered by G. Gordon Liddy, but he was paraphrasing Nietzsche from Twilight of the Idols, or, How to Philosophize With a Hammer. The actual quote is, "From life's school of war: what does not kill me makes me stronger." I've even seen quote websites that attribute Liddy's words to Nietzsche. The context is that human suffering is universal, and there are many ways to deal with it, making it transformative being one of them. Nietzsche's expression of the sentiment is, as usual, heavy-handed, but that would be the philosophizing with a hammer part. So, for the most part, the platitude is in context. Like any other platitude, though, it generalizes the context to a sound bite. The work by Nietzsche is largely a criticism of German nihilism, but, as with just about everything else Nietzsche wrote, he takes potshots at Platonism and Christianity. It's a little ironic that I often see this quoted in context with...
"God never gives you anything you can't handle."
It must say that somewhere in the Bible, right? Umm... No... It's a bastardization of something Paul said in 1 Corinthians 10:13,
"God helps those who help themselves."
That one must be in the Bible, right? Nope. It doesn't say that anywhere in the Bible. There is nothing even close. The entire New Testament is a treatise on exactly the opposite; God always helps the helpless. The quote originates from a work by Algernon Sydney from 1698 called, Discourses Concerning Government (not at all where you expected it, huh?), a pretty standard liberal (as in 17th Century liberal, which we call libertarian these days) exposition on self determination. The context is self defense. Sydney says that not only shouldn't a man rely on government to protect him, it is not in his best interests to do so. I could go on for hours on that one, so I'll leave it at that. Sydney's context is pretty narrow, but platitude will always out. Let no good quote go ungeneralized. It's a statement made by a Christian, but it isn't a statement on Christianity.
There are lots of context-free and content-free platitudes, but this post is already pretty long. So, that is all. You can resume sharing memes.
It means using quotes without context and/or without knowing the author. I see it all the time. It is especially prevalent in the genre of platitude memes. You know, the pictures you find all over Facebook that have (more or less) profound observations on life, love, death, and so it goes. Please don't take this wrong if you are a regular poster of those memes. Your sentiment is genuine, but the intent of the author of the memes is, at best, unknown. But I digress...
How about this one? Who said it? What is the context?
"That which doesn't kill us makes us stronger."
Well, it was originally uttered by G. Gordon Liddy, but he was paraphrasing Nietzsche from Twilight of the Idols, or, How to Philosophize With a Hammer. The actual quote is, "From life's school of war: what does not kill me makes me stronger." I've even seen quote websites that attribute Liddy's words to Nietzsche. The context is that human suffering is universal, and there are many ways to deal with it, making it transformative being one of them. Nietzsche's expression of the sentiment is, as usual, heavy-handed, but that would be the philosophizing with a hammer part. So, for the most part, the platitude is in context. Like any other platitude, though, it generalizes the context to a sound bite. The work by Nietzsche is largely a criticism of German nihilism, but, as with just about everything else Nietzsche wrote, he takes potshots at Platonism and Christianity. It's a little ironic that I often see this quoted in context with...
"God never gives you anything you can't handle."
It must say that somewhere in the Bible, right? Umm... No... It's a bastardization of something Paul said in 1 Corinthians 10:13,
There hath not temptation taken hold of you but such as is common to man. But God is faithful; He will not suffer you to be tempted beyond that which ye are able to bear, but with the temptation will also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear itTechnically, the paraphrase is (somewhat) accurate, but it is almost always used out of context. What Paul meant by temptation was the will to sin. The meaning is that you won't be tempted by anything other than human sins, and that God will always give you a way out. The context of the platitude is usually that the bad things that happen to you will never be more than you can handle. In terms of Christian theology, nothing could be further from the truth. God puts no limits on what happens to you. The idea is to take your heavy load to Jesus and let him take the wheel (I really hated that song). Or, put otherwise, when it rains shit on you so heavy you need an umbrella, you can always count on Jesus. Strangely, a lot of Christians who swear by that platitude also swear by this one,
"God helps those who help themselves."
That one must be in the Bible, right? Nope. It doesn't say that anywhere in the Bible. There is nothing even close. The entire New Testament is a treatise on exactly the opposite; God always helps the helpless. The quote originates from a work by Algernon Sydney from 1698 called, Discourses Concerning Government (not at all where you expected it, huh?), a pretty standard liberal (as in 17th Century liberal, which we call libertarian these days) exposition on self determination. The context is self defense. Sydney says that not only shouldn't a man rely on government to protect him, it is not in his best interests to do so. I could go on for hours on that one, so I'll leave it at that. Sydney's context is pretty narrow, but platitude will always out. Let no good quote go ungeneralized. It's a statement made by a Christian, but it isn't a statement on Christianity.
There are lots of context-free and content-free platitudes, but this post is already pretty long. So, that is all. You can resume sharing memes.
Saturday, January 11, 2014
I Dreamed Myself?
I'm sitting here, groggy, on a dreary Saturday morning. One of the medicines I take gives me a head-slap of a sleep hangover. So, my mind is wandering. You're welcome to wander with me.
I was listening to some YouTube videos by a guy named Alan Watts. I don't know his pedigree, so I can't comment on why he makes the videos. They are on a number of philosophical and metaphysical topics. He has a beautiful speaking voice. One of the videos is on the topic of controlling one's dreams. There are two versions of the same talk posted on YouTube, and some overzealous poster named one, "What If God Got Bored?" I'm not sure where that came from. Certainly not from the content of the video. I've seen that line of thinking before. "What if God got bored?," followed by ,"He would create humanity." It then goes on to make some observation about humanity, usually taunting or derogatory, always cynical. Philosophy and metaphysics don't always deal with what is obviously true or even relevant. However, this line of thought is particularly irrelevant, true or not. It sounds very profound, but there is no reason to suggest that God ever gets bored, boredom being a uniquely human construct. There is also no reason to believe that he would create humanity for his amusement. Some cynical (pop) philosophers have tried to sell God's boredom as an explanation of the existence of evil. It is solely a tool for his psychopathic amusement. It's one attempted explanation for the plight of Job, but it doesn't wash. It's too contrived. It would be easier to slide into atheism, chalking it up to superstition.
Quite a digression. I told you my mind is wandering.
Anyway, on controlling dreams. Mr. Watts' meandering on the possibilities is certainly more interesting than pondering God's boredom, even if it is not really any more relevant. He narrates the possibilities enticingly. We would move ourselves limitless through time and space. We would follow each of the infinite possibilities created by the choices we would make. We could rocket ourselves through distant stars and galaxies to endless Earths and not-so-Earths. We could dive to the depths of the sea to visit places and species no man has ever seen before. We could create an unending set of situations for an infinity of characters. We could travel through unremembered pasts and futures that might never come to pass. It's a comfortable and comforting idea that our dreams might have more meaning than random synapses firing while our cognitive mind rests. Mr. Watts draws us back from our infinite wandering to dreaming the existence which we now live. Is he proposing that our reality is the dream of some metaphysical us? Is that how the poster mentioned above made his or her leap to the idea that human existence is a manifestation of God's bored dreaming? Are each of our metaphysical selves particles of the godhead? Did we create reality out of our of bored dreaming?
I can't follow Mr. Watts there because the conclusion of our self-creation is only momentarily interesting. Or, put differently, I can't stay with him there. It's not a conclusion. It's just an abrupt end to the mental gymnastics of infinite imagination. It begs the question of ultimate creation. If our über selves created our subjective reality, then what created those selves? Are our ethereal selves the product of the ultimate hen? It further puts aside an answer to why all of our metaphysical selves would dream the same reality simultaneously. Maybe the infinity of possibilities includes that situation. It's a conclusion that isn't a conclusion at all, but just another theory on the nature of reality that lacks proving.
Well, I'm awake now, so it's getting harder to mentally wander around because I feel like I should be doing something. Anyway, thanks for coming along for the ride.
I was listening to some YouTube videos by a guy named Alan Watts. I don't know his pedigree, so I can't comment on why he makes the videos. They are on a number of philosophical and metaphysical topics. He has a beautiful speaking voice. One of the videos is on the topic of controlling one's dreams. There are two versions of the same talk posted on YouTube, and some overzealous poster named one, "What If God Got Bored?" I'm not sure where that came from. Certainly not from the content of the video. I've seen that line of thinking before. "What if God got bored?," followed by ,"He would create humanity." It then goes on to make some observation about humanity, usually taunting or derogatory, always cynical. Philosophy and metaphysics don't always deal with what is obviously true or even relevant. However, this line of thought is particularly irrelevant, true or not. It sounds very profound, but there is no reason to suggest that God ever gets bored, boredom being a uniquely human construct. There is also no reason to believe that he would create humanity for his amusement. Some cynical (pop) philosophers have tried to sell God's boredom as an explanation of the existence of evil. It is solely a tool for his psychopathic amusement. It's one attempted explanation for the plight of Job, but it doesn't wash. It's too contrived. It would be easier to slide into atheism, chalking it up to superstition.
Quite a digression. I told you my mind is wandering.
Anyway, on controlling dreams. Mr. Watts' meandering on the possibilities is certainly more interesting than pondering God's boredom, even if it is not really any more relevant. He narrates the possibilities enticingly. We would move ourselves limitless through time and space. We would follow each of the infinite possibilities created by the choices we would make. We could rocket ourselves through distant stars and galaxies to endless Earths and not-so-Earths. We could dive to the depths of the sea to visit places and species no man has ever seen before. We could create an unending set of situations for an infinity of characters. We could travel through unremembered pasts and futures that might never come to pass. It's a comfortable and comforting idea that our dreams might have more meaning than random synapses firing while our cognitive mind rests. Mr. Watts draws us back from our infinite wandering to dreaming the existence which we now live. Is he proposing that our reality is the dream of some metaphysical us? Is that how the poster mentioned above made his or her leap to the idea that human existence is a manifestation of God's bored dreaming? Are each of our metaphysical selves particles of the godhead? Did we create reality out of our of bored dreaming?
I can't follow Mr. Watts there because the conclusion of our self-creation is only momentarily interesting. Or, put differently, I can't stay with him there. It's not a conclusion. It's just an abrupt end to the mental gymnastics of infinite imagination. It begs the question of ultimate creation. If our über selves created our subjective reality, then what created those selves? Are our ethereal selves the product of the ultimate hen? It further puts aside an answer to why all of our metaphysical selves would dream the same reality simultaneously. Maybe the infinity of possibilities includes that situation. It's a conclusion that isn't a conclusion at all, but just another theory on the nature of reality that lacks proving.
Well, I'm awake now, so it's getting harder to mentally wander around because I feel like I should be doing something. Anyway, thanks for coming along for the ride.
Thursday, January 9, 2014
The (not so) good old days
Every once in a while, I can compare notes with someone who has been around computing almost as long as I have. I very rarely run across anyone who has been around it longer than me any more. Chatting about the way things used to be is less a case of nostalgia and more a case of wonder at the changes. The first computer I was exposed to took up most of a room and wasn't even a tenth as powerful as your phone.
Truth is, the good old days kind of sucked. You can plug a USB stick the size of your thumb into your laptop and carry around billions of characters of information. We had to thread 10 inch reels of magnetic tape to carry around a few hundred thousand characters. Your laptop hard drive holds hundreds of billions of bytes. We had a stack of serving tray sized platters that we dropped into something that looked like a washing machine to hold less than a million bytes. Your computer's memory holds tens of billions of bits on chips the size of your thumbnail. Our computer's memory was made of little iron donuts the size of your index fingernail that each held one bit. You type on your pad or laptop and your words go directly where you want them. Facebook, the novel you are writing using Word, this blog. We had to type on a terminal with keys that looked like thimbles and sounded like a noisy sewing machine. The words were holes punched into long strips of paper or index cards that we had to feed to the computer. You have a backspace key for your boo boos. We had to start over.
We would never even have conceived of things like laptops or smartphones or even desktop computers. It was unthinkable for an individual to own a whole computer. Connecting computers together so they could communicate with each other was science fiction. This new thing called, "The Internet" was an experiment in a government lab (yes, kiddies, the internet has been around for over 40 years).
I don't have even a little bit of nostalgia for those days. I think it is extremely cool to have been around to watch the journey. I can hardly wait to see what will happen over the next 40 years.
Truth is, the good old days kind of sucked. You can plug a USB stick the size of your thumb into your laptop and carry around billions of characters of information. We had to thread 10 inch reels of magnetic tape to carry around a few hundred thousand characters. Your laptop hard drive holds hundreds of billions of bytes. We had a stack of serving tray sized platters that we dropped into something that looked like a washing machine to hold less than a million bytes. Your computer's memory holds tens of billions of bits on chips the size of your thumbnail. Our computer's memory was made of little iron donuts the size of your index fingernail that each held one bit. You type on your pad or laptop and your words go directly where you want them. Facebook, the novel you are writing using Word, this blog. We had to type on a terminal with keys that looked like thimbles and sounded like a noisy sewing machine. The words were holes punched into long strips of paper or index cards that we had to feed to the computer. You have a backspace key for your boo boos. We had to start over.
We would never even have conceived of things like laptops or smartphones or even desktop computers. It was unthinkable for an individual to own a whole computer. Connecting computers together so they could communicate with each other was science fiction. This new thing called, "The Internet" was an experiment in a government lab (yes, kiddies, the internet has been around for over 40 years).
I don't have even a little bit of nostalgia for those days. I think it is extremely cool to have been around to watch the journey. I can hardly wait to see what will happen over the next 40 years.
Monday, January 6, 2014
Customer Service - A Lament - But Not What You Think
I posted the following on Facebook the other day:
Before you say to yourself, "This is more of some old curmudgeon bitching about rude retail workers," read on. It's not. It's some old curmudgeon bitching about corporatism and consumerism.
I'm reading Cloud Atlas. If you saw the movie, the Sonmi~451 segment left out what I think was a salient point. In the corprocratic future, everyone is required consume. If you can't afford it, you still have to consume and go into debt. Debt means lifelong indentured servitude.
Back to the present, the corporate oligarchy wants us to consume and consume. It wants us to buy more stuff, and it wants us to use our credit cards to do it. We buy things from the corporate oligarchy using money we borrowed from the corporate oligarchy. If you have a large balance on a credit card, say $10,000 or more, it can take 15 years or more to pay it off if you stop using it now and make the minimum monthly payment. Now you're indentured to the corporate oligarchy. All of this, and we happily, brainlessly comply.
Customer service has died, partially because we're just not nice to each other any more, but mostly because the corporate oligarchy wants to shove as many of us through the consumer pipeline as possible in as short of a period of time as possible. At the big box stores, have you noticed that you have to chase an employee down to help you navigate the maze? That's not because the employees are hiding, as much as you would like to blame them for it. It's because the corporations want to keep their employee to customer ratios as small as possible. At a WalMart, what used to be called a floor walker (maybe they still are) has to cover an area double the square footage of my house. At Lowe's, there may be a dozen or so floor walkers to cover the entire store. At the cash register, employees are required to keep their lines as short as possible to reduce the number of employees manning them. That means they have to pump you through as quickly as possible.
As a consumer, you expect the corporations to treat you like a king (or a queen). You expect them to require their employees to treat you like a king. After all, you're keeping them in business. When they don't, you become an arrogant, swaggering asshole. As an employee, you're underpaid to have to deal with arrogant, swaggering assholes. You become sullen and unhelpful. That causes customers to swagger more. And so on. The corporate oligarchy plays to our baser natures. The corporate oligarchy doesn't have to be nice to us. We'll just keep mindlessly consuming.
It would be tempting for me to sit in my chair and cheerlead a consumer revolution. That's just dumb. It's also unnecessary. One way or another, the consumer palace will eventually collapse under its own weight. It would also be tempting for me to sit in my chair and preach kindness. A guy did that about 2,000 years ago and it still hasn't worked out. Try this, though - If you're a customer, give the employee the benefit of the doubt, even just a little bit. Read this. If you're an employee, take the extra 10 seconds to count the customer's change out to them, or walk them to whatever they're looking for rather than mumbling something about aisle 10. Every employee is not a sullen shithead. Every customer is not a swaggering asshat.
There. Mea culpa for getting pissed off about my change. In my defense, I'll note that I just vented on Facebook rather than on the employee in question. I'll try not to let it happen again.
Don't hand me the #^*!$& receipt with my change, you #^*!$& moron! Put it in the #^*!$& bag! I don't keep my receipts in my wallet, pinhead.I admit, that's harsh. It also blames the wrong person.
Before you say to yourself, "This is more of some old curmudgeon bitching about rude retail workers," read on. It's not. It's some old curmudgeon bitching about corporatism and consumerism.
I'm reading Cloud Atlas. If you saw the movie, the Sonmi~451 segment left out what I think was a salient point. In the corprocratic future, everyone is required consume. If you can't afford it, you still have to consume and go into debt. Debt means lifelong indentured servitude.
Back to the present, the corporate oligarchy wants us to consume and consume. It wants us to buy more stuff, and it wants us to use our credit cards to do it. We buy things from the corporate oligarchy using money we borrowed from the corporate oligarchy. If you have a large balance on a credit card, say $10,000 or more, it can take 15 years or more to pay it off if you stop using it now and make the minimum monthly payment. Now you're indentured to the corporate oligarchy. All of this, and we happily, brainlessly comply.
Customer service has died, partially because we're just not nice to each other any more, but mostly because the corporate oligarchy wants to shove as many of us through the consumer pipeline as possible in as short of a period of time as possible. At the big box stores, have you noticed that you have to chase an employee down to help you navigate the maze? That's not because the employees are hiding, as much as you would like to blame them for it. It's because the corporations want to keep their employee to customer ratios as small as possible. At a WalMart, what used to be called a floor walker (maybe they still are) has to cover an area double the square footage of my house. At Lowe's, there may be a dozen or so floor walkers to cover the entire store. At the cash register, employees are required to keep their lines as short as possible to reduce the number of employees manning them. That means they have to pump you through as quickly as possible.
As a consumer, you expect the corporations to treat you like a king (or a queen). You expect them to require their employees to treat you like a king. After all, you're keeping them in business. When they don't, you become an arrogant, swaggering asshole. As an employee, you're underpaid to have to deal with arrogant, swaggering assholes. You become sullen and unhelpful. That causes customers to swagger more. And so on. The corporate oligarchy plays to our baser natures. The corporate oligarchy doesn't have to be nice to us. We'll just keep mindlessly consuming.
It would be tempting for me to sit in my chair and cheerlead a consumer revolution. That's just dumb. It's also unnecessary. One way or another, the consumer palace will eventually collapse under its own weight. It would also be tempting for me to sit in my chair and preach kindness. A guy did that about 2,000 years ago and it still hasn't worked out. Try this, though - If you're a customer, give the employee the benefit of the doubt, even just a little bit. Read this. If you're an employee, take the extra 10 seconds to count the customer's change out to them, or walk them to whatever they're looking for rather than mumbling something about aisle 10. Every employee is not a sullen shithead. Every customer is not a swaggering asshat.
There. Mea culpa for getting pissed off about my change. In my defense, I'll note that I just vented on Facebook rather than on the employee in question. I'll try not to let it happen again.
Sunday, January 5, 2014
I'm invisible
I work for a telecom company that shall remain nameless. I work in IT. I've been doing all things computer since 1974. I actually wrote my first program in 1969. It was a very different world. That's for another post some day. Maybe. Anyway, I've been doing this for a long time. I'm good at it.
My title is Principal Technical Architect. Remember the second and third Matrix movies? That's me, except I don't talk to the programs (that would be silly). I talk to the people who write the programs, the people who manage the projects to create the programs, and the people who cough up the money to pay for all of it. Pretty impressive title, huh? It should be. I'm responsible for systems that cost tens of millions of dollars. In the last ten years, I have been directly responsible for saving the company $20 million or more.
Enough tooting my own horn.
In my group, there are two of us. I'll call my peer Bob. Not his real name, obviously. Bob is a good architect. Almost as good as I am. We have a lot of mutual respect and a friendly relationship. Our manager is very easy to work with. His policy for us is to leave us alone as much as possible. As long as our clients are happy and his boss is (reasonably) happy, life is good. Carry on. We are known as "Senior Technical Leadership."
Here comes the invisible part.
Bob gets noticed on every project with which he is even remotely connected. I get, "Steve Brenneis. I don't know who that is." I can work on a project for six months, and then Bob shows up for the last two meetings and suddenly he becomes the go-to guy. I can say something during a meeting and it gets passing notice. Then, on the next meeting, Bob says it, and suddenly it is gospel handed down from on high. It's annoying.
I'm not really whining about this (well, maybe just a little). It is actually an ideal situation for me. I don't really have to do anything, my boss still reports that I walk on water, and everyone in our group thinks that Bob and I are co-equal gods of all systems architecture. I should also be clear that there is no malice on Bob's part. He goes out of his way to make sure I get a share of the credit. He's a good guy.
It's just that no one likes being invisible.
Here's the thing. Bob generates a fair amount of FUD. I blame it on living in close proximity to Microsoft, but I digress. So, he starts a shit storm and then rides in like a white knight to pour soothing oil on the waters of turmoil. Instant hero. Once again, there is no malice. It doesn't detract from his competency even a little bit. It's just how he came up in the world of IT. Very adversarial. But, it gets him noticed. Now, you would think that smart people making six figure salaries with centuries of combined technical expertise between them would see right through this. You would be wrong. They fall for it every time. Maybe he's just that good at it. If so, props to you, Bob.
My problem is that I can't make myself generate FUD. I'm allergic to it. Ever since I first encountered it years ago when Microsoft used it to convince us that everything that wasn't them was unrepentant evil, it makes me feel icky. Can't do it. In a very large organization, it is axiomatic that the signal to noise ratio is very low. That means that you almost have to generate FUD to get noticed. Raw competence won't do it.
Anyway, I'm way too far down this path to spend a lot of time worrying about it. So, I'll watch and see if a new tactic for getting noticed (in a good way) comes along that I can get along with, I'll take it. Or not. Maybe I'll just direct my energies toward something better.
My title is Principal Technical Architect. Remember the second and third Matrix movies? That's me, except I don't talk to the programs (that would be silly). I talk to the people who write the programs, the people who manage the projects to create the programs, and the people who cough up the money to pay for all of it. Pretty impressive title, huh? It should be. I'm responsible for systems that cost tens of millions of dollars. In the last ten years, I have been directly responsible for saving the company $20 million or more.
Enough tooting my own horn.
In my group, there are two of us. I'll call my peer Bob. Not his real name, obviously. Bob is a good architect. Almost as good as I am. We have a lot of mutual respect and a friendly relationship. Our manager is very easy to work with. His policy for us is to leave us alone as much as possible. As long as our clients are happy and his boss is (reasonably) happy, life is good. Carry on. We are known as "Senior Technical Leadership."
Here comes the invisible part.
Bob gets noticed on every project with which he is even remotely connected. I get, "Steve Brenneis. I don't know who that is." I can work on a project for six months, and then Bob shows up for the last two meetings and suddenly he becomes the go-to guy. I can say something during a meeting and it gets passing notice. Then, on the next meeting, Bob says it, and suddenly it is gospel handed down from on high. It's annoying.
I'm not really whining about this (well, maybe just a little). It is actually an ideal situation for me. I don't really have to do anything, my boss still reports that I walk on water, and everyone in our group thinks that Bob and I are co-equal gods of all systems architecture. I should also be clear that there is no malice on Bob's part. He goes out of his way to make sure I get a share of the credit. He's a good guy.
It's just that no one likes being invisible.
Here's the thing. Bob generates a fair amount of FUD. I blame it on living in close proximity to Microsoft, but I digress. So, he starts a shit storm and then rides in like a white knight to pour soothing oil on the waters of turmoil. Instant hero. Once again, there is no malice. It doesn't detract from his competency even a little bit. It's just how he came up in the world of IT. Very adversarial. But, it gets him noticed. Now, you would think that smart people making six figure salaries with centuries of combined technical expertise between them would see right through this. You would be wrong. They fall for it every time. Maybe he's just that good at it. If so, props to you, Bob.
My problem is that I can't make myself generate FUD. I'm allergic to it. Ever since I first encountered it years ago when Microsoft used it to convince us that everything that wasn't them was unrepentant evil, it makes me feel icky. Can't do it. In a very large organization, it is axiomatic that the signal to noise ratio is very low. That means that you almost have to generate FUD to get noticed. Raw competence won't do it.
Anyway, I'm way too far down this path to spend a lot of time worrying about it. So, I'll watch and see if a new tactic for getting noticed (in a good way) comes along that I can get along with, I'll take it. Or not. Maybe I'll just direct my energies toward something better.
Geotagging? No need to panic, but...
There is a news video floating around about photo geotagging on smartphones. It's typical of what passes for journalism these days. It creates an overblown crisis. It relies on the fact that most people are unaware of what the technology they are playing with does.
The news report goes on to say that people trolling social media websites can find out all sorts of things about you that you may not want them to know, including your kids' daycare center and other panic-inducing information. It implies that all of this information can be found in your photos. That's bullshit taken literally, but there is enough weasel wording in the report to let them slip by an accusation of creating false alarms.
However...
With every picture you take on your smartphone, there is a block of information about the photo called EXIF data. Smartphones can use their built-in location function to add your location to the EXIF data. This location can be very accurate, sometimes to less than a hundred feet. That means that anyone who knows how to read the EXIF data can get a precise location where the photo was taken. Depending on how you feel about your privacy, that can be pretty bad news, all by itself.
Here is where the news report crosses over into FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt, usually used to panic someone unnecessarily). All sorts of detailed information about your life can't be found in a single photograph, or even in several photographs. Remember, the news report mentions social media. Where the nefarious detectives can get this information is in the EXIF data, along with what you post publicly. They can use it to figure out all sorts of things you don't want them to know. For example, if you take a picture of your second grader in the school play and then post it publicly on Facebook, the bad guys now know where your kid goes to school. Don't panic and throw away your phone and delete your Facebook. It's a combination of bits of information that you can easily fix.
First and foremost, never post anything on Facebook publicly. Always set your privacy to friends only. Think about it. When you post that darling picture of your kids in their Halloween costumes publicly, the creepy, basement-dwelling perverts can see them. What they are doing with them is at least disgusting, and potentially scary. Facebook seems to like to change the way you change your privacy settings from time to time, but as of January 5th, 2014, here is how you do it:
Click the little icon thingy that looks like a gear in the upper right hand corner of the page. Then click on "Privacy Settings." You will get a new page.
At the top, there is a section labeled, "Who can see my stuff?" On the line where is says, "Who can see your future posts?", it should say "Friends." If it says "Everyone" or "Friends of friends", click on the "Edit" link and change it. If you had to change it, you need to have Facebook go back through your old posts and change the privacy settings. A couple of lines down, there is a link labeled, "Limit Past Posts." Click on it. There is some information on what you are about to do and a help link. Basically, it comes down to whether or not you want Facebook to go back through your old posts and make sure that only your friends can see them. If you want do do this (and you probably do), click the "Limit Old Posts" button. Please note that "Friends of friends" is essentially public. You have no idea who the friends of your friends are, or their friends, and so on.
The next section is about who can send you friend requests and messages. You have probably already set these, if needed, so we'll move on.
The last section is labeled "Who Can Look Me Up?" This one is just as important as limiting who can see your posts. Maybe more so. Make sure the lines about people using your email address and phone number to look you up are set to "Friends." If they aren't, click the "Edit" link and change them. The next one is really important. The line that is labeled "Do you want other search engines to link to your timeline?" should say, "Off." This keeps search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing from pointing to your timeline. That makes it much more difficult for the bad guys to find you.
I don't use Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter, or any of the other social media that allow photos, so for the rest of this, I will assume that all of what you post there is public.
Now you want to disable geotagging on your phone.
On an iOS device (iPhone, iPad, iPod), open the Settings app and tap "Privacy." Tap "Location Services," and make sure that the slide for "Camera" is off. That's it. The photos you take from now on will not have your location.
I don't own an Android device, but I got this from a website. It applies to Android 4.2 devices, so it is probably out of date. It may still work, though. Someone who knows more about this can comment on it. Open the Camera app and tap "Settings." Find the "GPS Tag" option and turn it off.
Keep in mind that the photos you took before you changed this are still geotagged. If you want to fix them, you will have to download all of them to a computer and use special software, like Photoshop, to edit the EXIF data. Once you do that, you will have to delete them from your phone and upload the edited photos (if you want to). You will also have to delete them and repost them (if you want to) on Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, etc.
There, your life is now a little more private. Keep in mind that if you are not actively trying to hide, like changing your name and moving to a different country, someone who is determined to find you, will. This just makes it harder for someone to casually run across you and get into your business.
The news report goes on to say that people trolling social media websites can find out all sorts of things about you that you may not want them to know, including your kids' daycare center and other panic-inducing information. It implies that all of this information can be found in your photos. That's bullshit taken literally, but there is enough weasel wording in the report to let them slip by an accusation of creating false alarms.
However...
With every picture you take on your smartphone, there is a block of information about the photo called EXIF data. Smartphones can use their built-in location function to add your location to the EXIF data. This location can be very accurate, sometimes to less than a hundred feet. That means that anyone who knows how to read the EXIF data can get a precise location where the photo was taken. Depending on how you feel about your privacy, that can be pretty bad news, all by itself.
Here is where the news report crosses over into FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt, usually used to panic someone unnecessarily). All sorts of detailed information about your life can't be found in a single photograph, or even in several photographs. Remember, the news report mentions social media. Where the nefarious detectives can get this information is in the EXIF data, along with what you post publicly. They can use it to figure out all sorts of things you don't want them to know. For example, if you take a picture of your second grader in the school play and then post it publicly on Facebook, the bad guys now know where your kid goes to school. Don't panic and throw away your phone and delete your Facebook. It's a combination of bits of information that you can easily fix.
First and foremost, never post anything on Facebook publicly. Always set your privacy to friends only. Think about it. When you post that darling picture of your kids in their Halloween costumes publicly, the creepy, basement-dwelling perverts can see them. What they are doing with them is at least disgusting, and potentially scary. Facebook seems to like to change the way you change your privacy settings from time to time, but as of January 5th, 2014, here is how you do it:
Click the little icon thingy that looks like a gear in the upper right hand corner of the page. Then click on "Privacy Settings." You will get a new page.
At the top, there is a section labeled, "Who can see my stuff?" On the line where is says, "Who can see your future posts?", it should say "Friends." If it says "Everyone" or "Friends of friends", click on the "Edit" link and change it. If you had to change it, you need to have Facebook go back through your old posts and change the privacy settings. A couple of lines down, there is a link labeled, "Limit Past Posts." Click on it. There is some information on what you are about to do and a help link. Basically, it comes down to whether or not you want Facebook to go back through your old posts and make sure that only your friends can see them. If you want do do this (and you probably do), click the "Limit Old Posts" button. Please note that "Friends of friends" is essentially public. You have no idea who the friends of your friends are, or their friends, and so on.
The next section is about who can send you friend requests and messages. You have probably already set these, if needed, so we'll move on.
The last section is labeled "Who Can Look Me Up?" This one is just as important as limiting who can see your posts. Maybe more so. Make sure the lines about people using your email address and phone number to look you up are set to "Friends." If they aren't, click the "Edit" link and change them. The next one is really important. The line that is labeled "Do you want other search engines to link to your timeline?" should say, "Off." This keeps search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing from pointing to your timeline. That makes it much more difficult for the bad guys to find you.
I don't use Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter, or any of the other social media that allow photos, so for the rest of this, I will assume that all of what you post there is public.
Now you want to disable geotagging on your phone.
On an iOS device (iPhone, iPad, iPod), open the Settings app and tap "Privacy." Tap "Location Services," and make sure that the slide for "Camera" is off. That's it. The photos you take from now on will not have your location.
I don't own an Android device, but I got this from a website. It applies to Android 4.2 devices, so it is probably out of date. It may still work, though. Someone who knows more about this can comment on it. Open the Camera app and tap "Settings." Find the "GPS Tag" option and turn it off.
Keep in mind that the photos you took before you changed this are still geotagged. If you want to fix them, you will have to download all of them to a computer and use special software, like Photoshop, to edit the EXIF data. Once you do that, you will have to delete them from your phone and upload the edited photos (if you want to). You will also have to delete them and repost them (if you want to) on Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, etc.
There, your life is now a little more private. Keep in mind that if you are not actively trying to hide, like changing your name and moving to a different country, someone who is determined to find you, will. This just makes it harder for someone to casually run across you and get into your business.
Thursday, January 2, 2014
Creativity
So...
I think that the Twilight series is the most insipid drivel to ever blight popular culture. I read one paragraph from the first book and had to go take a shower.
However...
The lady who wrote them did it right. They were read by a gazillion people, mostly teenage girls, but whatever. She raked in container ship loads of money, and that was even before the movies came out. She knows her audience, and in the end, that's really what creativity is about.
I can take what I think are the most gorgeous photographs in the history of mankind, but if there is no audience for them, I was wasting time. If you believe you are creating your art for no other reason than art itself, resign yourself to a life of dejection and jealousy. Do you really want to be the next Van Gogh? Seriously, think about it. If you're creating art solely for the purpose of being considered great by posterity, you're either an idiot or a liar, or both. It would be great if posterity made you a grand master, but no one sane with a triple digit IQ strives for that as a sole purpose. At the same time, realize that those outside of your audience may not appreciate your art. That's OK. Obviously, the Twilight lady didn't write her books for middle-aged nerd smartasses. I guarantee that, even if she read this blog, she wouldn't give a shit about my opinion of her work. In fact, she might wave and laugh at me on her way past me to the bank.
There is nothing mercenary about producing art for money. If you think so, get back to me when you crawl down off of your high horse. Frank Lloyd Wright didn't work for free. Neither did Pavarotti, Andy Warhol, or Ernest Hemingway. Even Mozart created for profit. Granted, he was a drunk, had piss poor marketing skills, and died penniless, but everything he wrote was for a commission or a prospective commission. Musical "artistes" will tell you that dying penniless was part of what made his work great. Bullshit. He wrote music for money because he was good at it and he didn't know how to make shoes or build houses, and because patrons of music were generally filthy rich. I'm not saying you should always try to make money with your art, but don't look down on someone who does.
So, I reiterate. The lady who wrote the Twilight series did it right.
I'll bet the Twilight fans didn't make it this far.
I think that the Twilight series is the most insipid drivel to ever blight popular culture. I read one paragraph from the first book and had to go take a shower.
However...
The lady who wrote them did it right. They were read by a gazillion people, mostly teenage girls, but whatever. She raked in container ship loads of money, and that was even before the movies came out. She knows her audience, and in the end, that's really what creativity is about.
I can take what I think are the most gorgeous photographs in the history of mankind, but if there is no audience for them, I was wasting time. If you believe you are creating your art for no other reason than art itself, resign yourself to a life of dejection and jealousy. Do you really want to be the next Van Gogh? Seriously, think about it. If you're creating art solely for the purpose of being considered great by posterity, you're either an idiot or a liar, or both. It would be great if posterity made you a grand master, but no one sane with a triple digit IQ strives for that as a sole purpose. At the same time, realize that those outside of your audience may not appreciate your art. That's OK. Obviously, the Twilight lady didn't write her books for middle-aged nerd smartasses. I guarantee that, even if she read this blog, she wouldn't give a shit about my opinion of her work. In fact, she might wave and laugh at me on her way past me to the bank.
There is nothing mercenary about producing art for money. If you think so, get back to me when you crawl down off of your high horse. Frank Lloyd Wright didn't work for free. Neither did Pavarotti, Andy Warhol, or Ernest Hemingway. Even Mozart created for profit. Granted, he was a drunk, had piss poor marketing skills, and died penniless, but everything he wrote was for a commission or a prospective commission. Musical "artistes" will tell you that dying penniless was part of what made his work great. Bullshit. He wrote music for money because he was good at it and he didn't know how to make shoes or build houses, and because patrons of music were generally filthy rich. I'm not saying you should always try to make money with your art, but don't look down on someone who does.
So, I reiterate. The lady who wrote the Twilight series did it right.
I'll bet the Twilight fans didn't make it this far.
Start decaying
I started this blog mostly because I have things to say, and I can't fully develop a thought in a Facebook status. Most of you will not read half of what is posted here. I wish you would, but that is just human nature. For those of you who do read all of it, cool! Thanks. If you have a blog you want me to read, let me know. I will do my best to at least read some of it. I can't guarantee I will read all of it, but I'm only human.
Be forewarned. There is likely going to be content that really pisses you off. Good. At least it made you think. Also, I tend to use bad language sometimes. I try to stay away from the really serious stuff, but sometimes I need it to get emotional emphasis across. Yeah, yeah, I know. Profanity is a crutch for weak minds. Suck my ass.
P.S. I've had other blogs, and I tend to lose interest in them and quit posting. I'm going to try to make this a place for the rants that pop up in my brain on a regular basis. I'll try to post them here as soon as I think of them. All of that means that I may make six posts in one day, and then I won't post again for a week. If that's aggravating for you, I am truly sorry about that.
P.S.S. All spelling and grammatical errors are mine. Feel free to Grammar Nazi me. I would do the same to you.
P.P.S. I don't intend to moderate the comments unless dickheads and/or spammers (who are dickheads by definition) force me to do it. I reserve the right to define what a dickhead is, but it is my blog, after all.
Be forewarned. There is likely going to be content that really pisses you off. Good. At least it made you think. Also, I tend to use bad language sometimes. I try to stay away from the really serious stuff, but sometimes I need it to get emotional emphasis across. Yeah, yeah, I know. Profanity is a crutch for weak minds. Suck my ass.
P.S. I've had other blogs, and I tend to lose interest in them and quit posting. I'm going to try to make this a place for the rants that pop up in my brain on a regular basis. I'll try to post them here as soon as I think of them. All of that means that I may make six posts in one day, and then I won't post again for a week. If that's aggravating for you, I am truly sorry about that.
P.S.S. All spelling and grammatical errors are mine. Feel free to Grammar Nazi me. I would do the same to you.
P.P.S. I don't intend to moderate the comments unless dickheads and/or spammers (who are dickheads by definition) force me to do it. I reserve the right to define what a dickhead is, but it is my blog, after all.
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