I've been intentionally inexpressive about the recent loss of a friend, because I knew anything I could have said or done would have been insufficient, and even as I type, I find these words destitute of the situation's deserved earnestness. I didn't want to change my display picture to an image of both of us, or quote a lyric from one of his compositions, or cite hollow gone-but-still-here platitudes, because I felt that those gestures could not, do not, do the emotion justice. Saying anything is an uphill battle for me. But I guess Sisyphus continuously pushed his boulder upwards not because it was functional, but because the alternative would have been to let it crush him.
What I remember most vividly of our interactions were the candid talks after our shows, during drives, and verse writing. He wasn't only a peer musically, he was a brother in private times of intuition and contemplation; in shared righteous indignation at plutocracy masquerading as equal opportunity. He was a deep dude both in verse and in thought, and I hope he knew how much I learned from him.
I was never under the assumption that the world was a fair place, but this cements that sentiment in cold granite. The revelation that I'm still here though, motivates me to continue to try to do what he did every day that I've known him: try to change it for the better.
Friday, July 5, 2013
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
the city: a (de)construction
Written originally for the TUPF.
You could make the argument that photography is humble. It’s an art-form where the artist takes a backseat to the subject. The “subject” is the draw. The photographer sets a stage to prop the subject up and distills it through personal contexts and connotations (though even this is brought into contention elsewhere: see Death of the Photographer). Be that as it may, the subject is still the proprietor of our attention. And it can of course come in many forms, but for the purpose of this writing, let us turn our attention outwards to examine the oft-glossed over subject of urban/street photography: the city itself.
In 2008, a joint project by Marc Barthélemy of the French Atomic Energy Commission in Bruyères-le-Châtel and Alessandro Flammini of Indiana University in the U.S. took data of street patterns from roughly 300 cities as diverse as Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Venice and found that cities’ road patterns have much in common. In fact, not only mathematically was this similarity apparent, but also visually. This was interesting for two reasons: the first being that the similarity between the cities in the data was unplanned and unintentional. Street patterns in New Delhi and Venice were markedly similar, even when they were built continents and even centuries apart. The second reason this is of interest is that these models of road networks create patterns and imagery very similar to those in biological systems, like the veins or petiole on a leaf. It seems that there is an unconscious imperative, as we approach more and more complexity, for manmade systems to mimic natural biological systems. Kevin Kelly of WIRED Magazine calls this “up-creation.” That is, complexity increases as we move “upwards”. Author Steven Johnson talks about this as well: that slime mould cultures, even neurons in the brain mirror city streets and interconnections, and similarities occur serendipitously across different scales of reality.
You could make the argument that photography is humble. It’s an art-form where the artist takes a backseat to the subject. The “subject” is the draw. The photographer sets a stage to prop the subject up and distills it through personal contexts and connotations (though even this is brought into contention elsewhere: see Death of the Photographer). Be that as it may, the subject is still the proprietor of our attention. And it can of course come in many forms, but for the purpose of this writing, let us turn our attention outwards to examine the oft-glossed over subject of urban/street photography: the city itself.
More than half of the world’s population currently live in cities and that number is growing. According to sustainability and environmentalist pioneer Stewart Brand, “cities are the drivers of history if we look at history.” Put another way, cities are where stuff happens. And this stuff, this history, is still happening. Street photography in a way captures this history all around us, the photographers acting as sort of unsung micro-historians. The “Global Village” analogy, oft romanticized, probably needs a touch-up to something more along the lines of “The Global City.” 1.3 million new people a week come to town, and this trend continues week after week, month after month, year after year. The villages of the world are drying up along with subsistence farming. As Stewart Brand says, “I used to have a very romantic idea about villages, mainly because I never lived in one.” There are continuously more opportunities in bustling metropolises. The fact of the matter is, city life is less physically grueling, better paid, private, safer, and well, more exciting and dynamic.
This dynamism is perhaps something that makes the idea of urban/street photography so interesting. Over a million different stories are happening at any given time, all and everywhere at once. The city is temporal. It is ever-changing and impermanent. Buildings are draped in graffiti that wasn’t there a week ago. A week later they may have transformed yet again or may have even disappeared entirely. City skylines are as dynamic as its people (Cliff once told me that there are only two seasons in Toronto: winter and construction). Our cities both shape us and are a natural extension, shaped by us. The relationship is reciprocal and symbiotic. And this allusion to biology doesn’t stop there.
In 2008, a joint project by Marc Barthélemy of the French Atomic Energy Commission in Bruyères-le-Châtel and Alessandro Flammini of Indiana University in the U.S. took data of street patterns from roughly 300 cities as diverse as Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Venice and found that cities’ road patterns have much in common. In fact, not only mathematically was this similarity apparent, but also visually. This was interesting for two reasons: the first being that the similarity between the cities in the data was unplanned and unintentional. Street patterns in New Delhi and Venice were markedly similar, even when they were built continents and even centuries apart. The second reason this is of interest is that these models of road networks create patterns and imagery very similar to those in biological systems, like the veins or petiole on a leaf. It seems that there is an unconscious imperative, as we approach more and more complexity, for manmade systems to mimic natural biological systems. Kevin Kelly of WIRED Magazine calls this “up-creation.” That is, complexity increases as we move “upwards”. Author Steven Johnson talks about this as well: that slime mould cultures, even neurons in the brain mirror city streets and interconnections, and similarities occur serendipitously across different scales of reality.
Scaled down from aerial shots to street shots, we begin to see movement along these makeshift veins and petioles. As Coriolanus III of Rome said, “What is a city, but the people; true the people are the city.” It isn’t a stretch of the imagination to extend this comparison of winding interconnected city road networks to neuronal axon-dendrite connections in our brain or even capillaries in our circulatory system. And drawing from Peter Ackroyd and Cliff Davidson, if roads, walkways, and rails are the veins and arteries of the city, they only exist to direct the flow of blood/people. The people are a city’s life blood. In fact, without people, along with their movement and circulation, a city would die. Continuing with the body analogy, the blood is pumped to the ever-beating heart. And what else could the heart be but the place where industry and commerce reside and are centralized? It’s where stuff happens the most. This may be the reason why the majority of street photography focuses on busy downtown. Just spend an afternoon walking around Toronto’s Dundas Square and you’ll never have a shortage of photo opportunities; of stories to tell and histories to capture.
But in this gravitation towards the heart, there are things that get lost in the shuffle. The organism of the city does create a sort of schism, but I would argue that this in itself is a driver of one of its most endearing qualities. As if shunting occurred, with blood being brought from the extremities to the vital organs, so do people rush towards ‘progress’ and away from the suburban and culture specific outer-limbs. People cluster in this way, like specialized cells forming organs, they form pocket cultures. However, each one of these brings something novel to to the aggregate whole. Ali Madanipour, author of “Public and Private Spaces of the City” comments on the “inner city” and its epitomizing social exclusion (and subsequent inclusion), with urban ghettos or enclaves of like-natured people “spatializing” together, often around the same religion, culture, careers or socio-economic status. It’s inevitable that at least in some capacity these subcultures will interact in daily life, blend with and influence one another. It’s a phenomenon of constant breaking up of and building up of new patch-work communities whether in schools, work or play. This fraying and blending effect perhaps accounts for the boundless variability and identity in cities. You will never find so many people as eclectic and different from one another in such close proximity as you will in the hustle and bustle of city-life (and it seems that some of these differences, juxtaposed, can be very striking, and maybe even not so different).
Let’s return to the analogy of city roads as capillaries in our circulatory system. As previously denoted, these same pattern correlations are repeatedly found in many biological systems. The city “organism” in this light, even with its granite buildings and paved roads, seems very humane. So much so that certain urban planning think-tanks (like the Inria/INSA Lyon team ‘Urbanet’) who are continuously investigating potentialities for cities of the future, are directly noticing these similarities and basing their suggestions on our natural anatomy. Maybe this serendipitous similarity, this “up-creation,” has to do with the fact that cities are all human creations. The city then is paradoxically both very foreign and very personal – both separate and simultaneously “us.” This idea is what physicist Geoffrey West has been recently consumed with: the fact that cities are just a physical manifestation of your interaction, our interactions, and the clustering and grouping of individuals. Stated another way, the city is just a symbolic representation of us. We’re interested in it because it’s our continually unfolding story. Stripped of every formal textbook and city planning definition, maybe the crux of the city organism is… well, humanity.
And in that case, perhaps I was a little too quick in the beginning of this article to praise photography as humble. The city is many things: a home, a canvas, a playground, a workplace, a storybook. However, macroscopically, with all just described, is it that much of a stretch to add “mirror” to that list? And in this day and age, as evidenced by social networking, what mirror would be complete without a camera naturally poised against it to vainly capture a self shot?
Sunday, July 22, 2012
death of the photographer
Written originally for the TUPF.
The French literary critic Roland Barthes wrote the essay “Death of the Author” in 1967 in which he proposed that the original intent of the author in his or her writings did not matter, and that the reader’s interpretation was the only thing that ever gave writing meaning. The implication is perspective changing. Although Barthes focused on literature, the underlying philosophy can be (and arguably has been) adapted to anything man made. Photography as an art form has not escaped this fate. The last decade has perhaps been the most cataclysmic in terms of changes in the medium. This is particularly noticeable in the consumerist hodgepodge that is the city. And although the proliferation of increasingly cheaper and more accessible cameras is nothing new (as evidenced as far back as the Kodak Brownie), I would argue that there has not been a point in history when photography has been more accessible, cheap and ubiquitous as it is today. It is so simple, so portable, and ultimately, now embedded in such a necessary device. Equipped with a camera phone, everybody is a photographer. The urban landscape has become flooded with amateur shutter-bugs who snap and click at every inclination simply because they can. This has created a common repeated criticism I have heard within photography circles: that technology, having become cheap and commonplace, has created art that is also cheap and commonplace. Browse almost any Twitter feed and you see an accompanying Instagram account flooded with pictures that seemingly lack rhyme, reason or any premeditation. The idea of ‘saying something’ has apparently become co-opted by the idea of ‘showing anything,’ as snapshots of things as arbitrary as a hamburger and fries are posted, but with a sepia filter to assume the look of something non-trivial and deep. As Barthes would argue however, who’s to say what has meaning and what doesn’t?
The French literary critic Roland Barthes wrote the essay “Death of the Author” in 1967 in which he proposed that the original intent of the author in his or her writings did not matter, and that the reader’s interpretation was the only thing that ever gave writing meaning. The implication is perspective changing. Although Barthes focused on literature, the underlying philosophy can be (and arguably has been) adapted to anything man made. Photography as an art form has not escaped this fate. The last decade has perhaps been the most cataclysmic in terms of changes in the medium. This is particularly noticeable in the consumerist hodgepodge that is the city. And although the proliferation of increasingly cheaper and more accessible cameras is nothing new (as evidenced as far back as the Kodak Brownie), I would argue that there has not been a point in history when photography has been more accessible, cheap and ubiquitous as it is today. It is so simple, so portable, and ultimately, now embedded in such a necessary device. Equipped with a camera phone, everybody is a photographer. The urban landscape has become flooded with amateur shutter-bugs who snap and click at every inclination simply because they can. This has created a common repeated criticism I have heard within photography circles: that technology, having become cheap and commonplace, has created art that is also cheap and commonplace. Browse almost any Twitter feed and you see an accompanying Instagram account flooded with pictures that seemingly lack rhyme, reason or any premeditation. The idea of ‘saying something’ has apparently become co-opted by the idea of ‘showing anything,’ as snapshots of things as arbitrary as a hamburger and fries are posted, but with a sepia filter to assume the look of something non-trivial and deep. As Barthes would argue however, who’s to say what has meaning and what doesn’t?
I love the city. Having lived in it all my life, in all its kinetic energy, to see that chaos captured perfectly still in a photograph is the oddest, most visually striking thing to me. I took the above photo downtown in some park, exact location forgotten and irrelevant. I wanted to capture a sense of that aforementioned frenetic “motion.” Passing a playground with children and parents and animals bustling about, it occurred to me that this little playground ecosystem was like a microcosm of the city energy that I wanted to capture. I set a relatively high shutter speed, threw a stick in the direction of some pigeons, waited for some motion, and clicked the shutter. I was quite pleased with the result and showed a few friends. Their interpretations of the shot surprised me to say the least. There were notions of nostalgia. There were interpretations involving the simplicity of childhood, and the loss of that serendipitous joy in the park. There was an interpretation that focused on the haphazard ordering of structures and subjects in the picture, claiming an endearing “symmetrical asymmetry” was present. Some loved the birds in mid motion, while some found the black-and-white in a scene that was typically portrayed very colourfully to be unsettling. Still, some found absolutely no meaning in the photograph at all. Having gotten the interpretations of close to twenty-some people, it occurred to me that similar themes kept reoccurring: that of nostalgia and simple joys of youth. These were things that resonated with people the most across the board and it is noteworthy that these elements were completely absent from my original intent. In that same token however, they’re also much more profound, and upon personal re-evaluation of the photograph, oddly, I found them to be much more fitting as well. What does this say about the actual proprietors of a photograph’s meaning?
The urban landscape is synonymous with multiple interpretations and dualities. The lights of a city street corner for example may represent warmth in an otherwise cold world, or indifferent man-made artificiality eclipsing the natural starry sky. The above photograph is of a dreary street corner on Toronto’s east end. It was taken on an evening testing out my newly handed-down flash-bulb and more specifically, it was the last photograph taken that night, when the battery of the bulb had already burnt out and all that was left to illuminate the otherwise all black canvas were the street lights. Truthfully it was an accident (though one I particularly like). Friends’ perceptions of the photograph range from it being the unfocused P.O.V. of a drunkard, to it raising a feeling of fear, unease, and/or nihilism. And once again, there were central themes throughout: coldness, isolation and loneliness. Like with the first picture, it is interesting that across many interpretations, several key feelings resonated even without the photographer’s cueing or hinting at them. It is as if my original intent (or admitted lack of it) could not stop the picture from becoming what it was ultimately meant to be. Perhaps there is something in the aesthetic formation of a good image that captures specific feelings that escape any presupposition and planning.
In the age of Instagram picture saturation, perhaps the photographer’s lack of purpose in taking a picture isn’t a problem. Perhaps the conclusive message of a photograph is something that can be completely detached from whatever the photographer’s intentions (or lack of intentions) happen to be. And as a habitat of mostly man-made structure in itself, the very city to me is Barthes’ idea actualized: edifices and objects that offer themselves to a multitude of perspectives and comprehensions. With every new picture I now take in it, I pause to consider whether I unknowingly pulled things unexpected from that floating ether of meaning, birthing the formation of ideas that I didn’t even know existed.
Thursday, March 15, 2012
star gazing
The universe is a thoroughly stupefying place. Two nights ago, a friend and I took time off from our regularly scheduled nothingness in exchange for a more elevated form of nothingness. She and I escaped the urban sprawl, lied down amidst the shadowy blanket that surrounding brush provided, and looked up at the night sky. For the first time in almost a decade, sky-watchers that night were able to see all five naked-eye planets together. That is, the classical naked-eye planets - Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn - would be appearing together during a single night; a phenomenon that hadn't occurred since 2004. As Geza Gyuk, an astronomer with the Adler Planetarium in Chicago describes, "it's a bit like looking at an astronomy class in a nutshell."
It was both a humbling and elating experience. To think our ancient ancestors had looked up in wonder at the same sparkle laden quilt and since then have derived everything from stories of both grandeur and superstition, to Eratosthenes' calculation of the Earth's circumference, to the models to explain the approach and reproach of the ocean's tides (yes, you CAN explain that), to the Galilean grand revelation of Heliocentrism - all from the acknowledgement of celestial bodies. And to think that with the same evolutionarily derived pair of eyes, homosapiens of yestercenturies saw the same sights, but thought very different, very untrue things. That perhaps the moon was some heavenly godly beacon, or perhaps, akin to the Greek's Selene, a godly entity in itself. That the darkness all around us that night was due to Ra's defeat by the atramentous Set. Perhaps they thought that our own lives up to and including that night were simply a soul's dream, a passing test by some indifferent 'greater-than-us,' and not, as much neuroscience now shows, a very real and beautiful corporeal reality, and one that we had both felt and shared in, not because of any calling or binding destinies, but just because we could.
Our ancestors, in their first clumsy attempts to describe the truth of nature, created stories to (erringly) explain away the mysteries. They were wonderful stories, but only that. And when others searched and found with greater precision more approximate truths, instead of accepting or rejecting them based on the merit of evidence, we xenophobically shut them up. And why wouldn't we have? It is something of great fear and apprehension to have your whole planet destroyed. Every time a new theory enters into the aggregate social mind and an old one is thrown out, the Earth is reinvented. And humanity, in its macroscopic infancy, reacted with all the harshness, confusion and trepidation that a child would when told Santa Claus didn't exist... and I shudder at the thought of what this scorned child has done with armies at its disposal. What a display of ego and ignorance is the presumption that "I know everything." What an ugly, yet necessary, stage of growth it was to believe in things without any substantiation.
In the 18th century, a period called the age of enlightenment occurred, one that accompanied the scientific revolution. It was characterized by the intellectual movement that advocated and encouraged reason rather than blind faith. Philosophers such as Nietzsche felt that the relatively new scientific method explained natural phenomena without supernatural intervention, thereby denying the need for a god. In one of his later works, 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra,' the titular character in the fable proclaims almost psychotically, "God is dead, and it is we who have killed him." With the admittedly relieving but ultimately limiting psychological distortion of 'faith' poetically downed, a new resolve began to emerge - one that still fearlessly searched for answers but did so with an honest gait; with a love for truth. In the words of John Locke, "one mark of the love of truth is not entertaining any proposition with greater assurance than the proofs it is built upon will warrant." In this way, humanity had begun to shed its childlike phobia and ego, and instead had vulnerably accepted its ignorance. And though undoubtedly with some uneasiness and dissonance, had begun the long path to maturity and actualization of potential.
Still, embers of bronze-age barbarism and cowardice are left to be snuffed out. Today, just as the belief of Iraqi nuclear weapons prompted the United States to go to war, the belief in a god (perhaps fear of such a being) is the sole reason many people do many things (at best unnecessary and at worst fatal). Like current pop culture icons, the Christian god and his all time best seller have been the fuel for an entire multi-billion dollar industry (for centuries). The rich, poor, and the marginally insane all benefit by catering to the faithful legions. Hollywood churns out a ceaseless series of biblical “reenactments”. All of them are instant box office hits that fatten the already obese wallets of the wealthy. In the troubled corners of the world, millions of statuettes are fashioned from mud, then painted by feeble hands in the likeness of a virgin mother and her son. They are then sold off to rich tourists by many poor laborers of the third-world. Some people just sell grilled cheese Jesus sandwiches for $ 28,000 on eBay, to help other people feel like they are in touch with the eternal one. Not to mention the so-called "pro-life" activists bombing doctors' clinics, and countless deaths over essentially variations of the argument of who's deity is more peaceful.
When my friend and I looked up at the stars two nights ago, I saw them not as heavenly personages imbuing cosmic "luck" depending on the arbitrary day of my birth, but rather as the light remnants of gravity-held luminous, tremendous spheres of plasma, originally lightyears away, and thousands of years gone... probably. I posit that it is only in that great admission that "we do not know for sure" that relevant answers will be found, and I revel in our slowly emerging admitted collective ignorance.
As the night progressed and we watched on, I wondered what star gazers in a thousand years time would be thinking of as they watch those twinkling specks that, both poetically and technically, maybe existed only yesterday.
It was both a humbling and elating experience. To think our ancient ancestors had looked up in wonder at the same sparkle laden quilt and since then have derived everything from stories of both grandeur and superstition, to Eratosthenes' calculation of the Earth's circumference, to the models to explain the approach and reproach of the ocean's tides (yes, you CAN explain that), to the Galilean grand revelation of Heliocentrism - all from the acknowledgement of celestial bodies. And to think that with the same evolutionarily derived pair of eyes, homosapiens of yestercenturies saw the same sights, but thought very different, very untrue things. That perhaps the moon was some heavenly godly beacon, or perhaps, akin to the Greek's Selene, a godly entity in itself. That the darkness all around us that night was due to Ra's defeat by the atramentous Set. Perhaps they thought that our own lives up to and including that night were simply a soul's dream, a passing test by some indifferent 'greater-than-us,' and not, as much neuroscience now shows, a very real and beautiful corporeal reality, and one that we had both felt and shared in, not because of any calling or binding destinies, but just because we could.
Our ancestors, in their first clumsy attempts to describe the truth of nature, created stories to (erringly) explain away the mysteries. They were wonderful stories, but only that. And when others searched and found with greater precision more approximate truths, instead of accepting or rejecting them based on the merit of evidence, we xenophobically shut them up. And why wouldn't we have? It is something of great fear and apprehension to have your whole planet destroyed. Every time a new theory enters into the aggregate social mind and an old one is thrown out, the Earth is reinvented. And humanity, in its macroscopic infancy, reacted with all the harshness, confusion and trepidation that a child would when told Santa Claus didn't exist... and I shudder at the thought of what this scorned child has done with armies at its disposal. What a display of ego and ignorance is the presumption that "I know everything." What an ugly, yet necessary, stage of growth it was to believe in things without any substantiation.
In the 18th century, a period called the age of enlightenment occurred, one that accompanied the scientific revolution. It was characterized by the intellectual movement that advocated and encouraged reason rather than blind faith. Philosophers such as Nietzsche felt that the relatively new scientific method explained natural phenomena without supernatural intervention, thereby denying the need for a god. In one of his later works, 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra,' the titular character in the fable proclaims almost psychotically, "God is dead, and it is we who have killed him." With the admittedly relieving but ultimately limiting psychological distortion of 'faith' poetically downed, a new resolve began to emerge - one that still fearlessly searched for answers but did so with an honest gait; with a love for truth. In the words of John Locke, "one mark of the love of truth is not entertaining any proposition with greater assurance than the proofs it is built upon will warrant." In this way, humanity had begun to shed its childlike phobia and ego, and instead had vulnerably accepted its ignorance. And though undoubtedly with some uneasiness and dissonance, had begun the long path to maturity and actualization of potential.
Still, embers of bronze-age barbarism and cowardice are left to be snuffed out. Today, just as the belief of Iraqi nuclear weapons prompted the United States to go to war, the belief in a god (perhaps fear of such a being) is the sole reason many people do many things (at best unnecessary and at worst fatal). Like current pop culture icons, the Christian god and his all time best seller have been the fuel for an entire multi-billion dollar industry (for centuries). The rich, poor, and the marginally insane all benefit by catering to the faithful legions. Hollywood churns out a ceaseless series of biblical “reenactments”. All of them are instant box office hits that fatten the already obese wallets of the wealthy. In the troubled corners of the world, millions of statuettes are fashioned from mud, then painted by feeble hands in the likeness of a virgin mother and her son. They are then sold off to rich tourists by many poor laborers of the third-world. Some people just sell grilled cheese Jesus sandwiches for $ 28,000 on eBay, to help other people feel like they are in touch with the eternal one. Not to mention the so-called "pro-life" activists bombing doctors' clinics, and countless deaths over essentially variations of the argument of who's deity is more peaceful.
When my friend and I looked up at the stars two nights ago, I saw them not as heavenly personages imbuing cosmic "luck" depending on the arbitrary day of my birth, but rather as the light remnants of gravity-held luminous, tremendous spheres of plasma, originally lightyears away, and thousands of years gone... probably. I posit that it is only in that great admission that "we do not know for sure" that relevant answers will be found, and I revel in our slowly emerging admitted collective ignorance.
As the night progressed and we watched on, I wondered what star gazers in a thousand years time would be thinking of as they watch those twinkling specks that, both poetically and technically, maybe existed only yesterday.
Sunday, October 16, 2011
post-protest post: the false dichotomy of the 99 and 1% (or "don't hate the player, hate the game")
The Occupy movement is at the cusp of something truly contemporary, in the sense that I do not think a phenomenon like this has been seen before. Has there ever been a movement in history that actually went against the financial and corporate powers on a GLOBAL unified scale? As far as I know, there hasn't been. As Paul Mason of the BBC succinctly puts it, "Their mere existence shows that people are determined to "think globally" about routes out of this crisis at a time when economics is driving politicians down the route of national solutions... in 1931, as the remnants of Globalisation 1.0 collapsed, there were no mass international protests against austerity. There were only plenty of national, and indeed nationalist ones." This is certainly telling of the world's current aggregate social mind-state and temperament. A quick survey of world news articles demonstrates the global village effect and the holistic ramifications of this crisis. For instance, although Canada has a more firm economic footing than our southern neighbour, the income gap between the rich and the poor is widening at a speed faster than the U.S., and the entirety of the middle class is deteriorating. Every nation, from the superpowers, to the powers, to the subpowers, to the vassal states, are suffering "economically" in an increasingly global marketplace. It seems there's nowhere to hide and the fact that no country can stand as an island in a fundamentally, pragmatically interrelated planet is making itself known. Now, in the global economic paradigm where 1% of the world's population controls 40% of its wealth, it is to be expected that eventually, people would get pissed the fuck off.
It was troubling however, that although unified in their acrimony (and rightfully so), how scattered and directionless the masses were at St. James Park Toronto in terms of who to blame for, and how to rectify, these social inequities. There were chants denouncing the evil bankers and government lobbyists. Some demanded more government interference, while others demanded less of it. Still, some simply declared the solution as the ambiguously defined ideal of going back to, as if we ever really had one, "a real democracy" (which, as an aside, without some benchmark of "constitutional rights" that sets agreed upon limits, is in its purest form, forty white men hanging a black man). Scattered ubiquitously throughout the park were also tarps and signs painted with comforting yet inconsequential slogans like "all we need is love" and "sharing is caring," which, although are all very admirable in a gestural sense, are devoid of any real methodical solutions related to any sort of tangible plans or suggestions. These cornucopia of differing viewpoints were all of course unified under one singular consolidating blaming imperative: "We are the 99%." In that inherently divisive statement, an invisible line has been drawn and a target has thoroughly been pointed out. The antagonist, the ones to blame, the de facto "villains" in this stage of history, are apparently the 1%. There were calls to impeach C.E.O. this or President That. There were flyers handed out providing histories of the polluting and environmentally negligent behaviour of corporations. Quite almost instantaneously, several mental images are impulsively evoked: the Wall Street trader, the hedgefund manager, the government lobbyist, the amoral corporation, etc. And the unsaid assumption is that if all of these bad, extremely greedy and malevolent people were taken care of, then the problems would simply go away. However, this begs the question: if these abhorrent personalities are indeed the determinants of the problem, what were the determinants of the determinants?
It is somewhat ironic as I walked amongst them, as indeed one of them, to see the crowd's oblivious support for the same corporations and financial powers that they apparently so vilify and abhor. People were toting Nikon cameras, Ipads, Sony headphones, and the like. They were wearing brand named clothing, unobservant of the fact that even as they waved signposts against "corporate fat cats," they were effectively signposts themselves for Nike and Adidas. These "evil corporations" are actually (perhaps uncomfortably to some of these protesters) the circumstantial backbone of modern Western society. They are the providers of the products we are now seemingly irreversibly tied to. They are the providers of services and amenities. And ironically, they are the ones themselves that have enabled the worldwide Occupy movement via the provision of social networking services, computers and cellphone technology.
It is in that same breath however, that for as much as they have provided, they have consequentially taken away. Individuality has been relegated to the variety of different brands you can buy. Freedom of choice is reduced to the essential question: "Coke or Pepsi?" But of course, this isn't avoidable (in our economic paradigm). Not because of some fixed human nature, but because the free-market capitalist system needs, and therefore, systematically propagates, the behaviour. Paul Mazur, a Wall Street banker was quoted in the Harvard Business Review of 1927 stating precisely this: "We must shift America from a needs to a desires culture. People must be trained to desire. To want new things even before the old have been entirely consumed. We must shape a new mentality in America." Our economy's success is based on growth, turn-over and profit, and thus necessitates a need for constant consumption (buying of goods). People need to want-to-buy-things in order for G.N.P. to increase, and thus, "grow" the economy. This is no secret. As a student of psychology, it is obvious to me that these needed artificial 'wants' can be manufactured by employing conditioning techniques. Operant conditioning (through reinforcement) for example, via advertisements, create a social reinforcing agent of perceived inequity depending on such arbitrary variables such as the type of bag you use or the type of hat you wear, creating neuroses and longing that would not have existed otherwise. Consequently, we all want stuff. So why is it such an outrage and surprise that those who can GET said stuff, hoard as much of it as possible? It seems to me that "greed" is simply this shared (manufactured) desire acted upon. It is the reinforced mentality.
And of course, when talking about greed, the topic of profit is not far behind. It's no secret that the modus operandi of the free-market capitalism paradigm is the profit motive. For all the relative progress that it has created, the sole imperative of this economic system (as denoted freely in any economic textbook) is completely devoid of any forethought of DIRECT equity and equality consideration, instead built on the goal of self maximization, assuming that this will somehow bring equality and fairness ("The Invisible Hand" concept). There is very little to nothing else considered. After all, by and large, the standardized indicator of a nation's progress and well being is not any statistic on mortality rate, psychological measure of contentment or public health. Instead, it is the measure of a country's G.N.P./G.D.P. or "economic growth." Everything else is an assumed correlation.
Keeping this in mind, are the "1%" really at fault? If one thinks about it, the Wall Street investor who deals in derivatives doesn't do it to intentionally collapse the economy in a bubble of fraud. That wasn't his goal, it was simply a side effect brought about by the initial imperative to increase income. Continuing with this thought exercise, the car manufacturing plant that lays off thousands of factory workers to replace them with automated manufacturing systems doesn't do this to maliciously lower the standard of living for thousands of people. By automating, it is simply lowering building costs, thus offering a more affordable product to consumers, and by extension increasing their gains in profit and reducing costs. Similarly, when a corporation lobbies for certain legislation that would benefit them and not the public, they're not doing so with an intent to torment the middle and lower class while twirling their mustaches menacingly and rubbing their hands together. They're simply doing what they can do, and what the economic system absolutely allows for, to maximize profits and minimize costs in some way. If you think about it, the 1% are simply the best players in the game. Similarly, if the protesters at St. James Park were in similar positions of fiscal prominence as the "villainous" 1%, one wonders if they could say with certainty that they would not do the exact same things.
It was troubling however, that although unified in their acrimony (and rightfully so), how scattered and directionless the masses were at St. James Park Toronto in terms of who to blame for, and how to rectify, these social inequities. There were chants denouncing the evil bankers and government lobbyists. Some demanded more government interference, while others demanded less of it. Still, some simply declared the solution as the ambiguously defined ideal of going back to, as if we ever really had one, "a real democracy" (which, as an aside, without some benchmark of "constitutional rights" that sets agreed upon limits, is in its purest form, forty white men hanging a black man). Scattered ubiquitously throughout the park were also tarps and signs painted with comforting yet inconsequential slogans like "all we need is love" and "sharing is caring," which, although are all very admirable in a gestural sense, are devoid of any real methodical solutions related to any sort of tangible plans or suggestions. These cornucopia of differing viewpoints were all of course unified under one singular consolidating blaming imperative: "We are the 99%." In that inherently divisive statement, an invisible line has been drawn and a target has thoroughly been pointed out. The antagonist, the ones to blame, the de facto "villains" in this stage of history, are apparently the 1%. There were calls to impeach C.E.O. this or President That. There were flyers handed out providing histories of the polluting and environmentally negligent behaviour of corporations. Quite almost instantaneously, several mental images are impulsively evoked: the Wall Street trader, the hedgefund manager, the government lobbyist, the amoral corporation, etc. And the unsaid assumption is that if all of these bad, extremely greedy and malevolent people were taken care of, then the problems would simply go away. However, this begs the question: if these abhorrent personalities are indeed the determinants of the problem, what were the determinants of the determinants?
It is somewhat ironic as I walked amongst them, as indeed one of them, to see the crowd's oblivious support for the same corporations and financial powers that they apparently so vilify and abhor. People were toting Nikon cameras, Ipads, Sony headphones, and the like. They were wearing brand named clothing, unobservant of the fact that even as they waved signposts against "corporate fat cats," they were effectively signposts themselves for Nike and Adidas. These "evil corporations" are actually (perhaps uncomfortably to some of these protesters) the circumstantial backbone of modern Western society. They are the providers of the products we are now seemingly irreversibly tied to. They are the providers of services and amenities. And ironically, they are the ones themselves that have enabled the worldwide Occupy movement via the provision of social networking services, computers and cellphone technology.
It is in that same breath however, that for as much as they have provided, they have consequentially taken away. Individuality has been relegated to the variety of different brands you can buy. Freedom of choice is reduced to the essential question: "Coke or Pepsi?" But of course, this isn't avoidable (in our economic paradigm). Not because of some fixed human nature, but because the free-market capitalist system needs, and therefore, systematically propagates, the behaviour. Paul Mazur, a Wall Street banker was quoted in the Harvard Business Review of 1927 stating precisely this: "We must shift America from a needs to a desires culture. People must be trained to desire. To want new things even before the old have been entirely consumed. We must shape a new mentality in America." Our economy's success is based on growth, turn-over and profit, and thus necessitates a need for constant consumption (buying of goods). People need to want-to-buy-things in order for G.N.P. to increase, and thus, "grow" the economy. This is no secret. As a student of psychology, it is obvious to me that these needed artificial 'wants' can be manufactured by employing conditioning techniques. Operant conditioning (through reinforcement) for example, via advertisements, create a social reinforcing agent of perceived inequity depending on such arbitrary variables such as the type of bag you use or the type of hat you wear, creating neuroses and longing that would not have existed otherwise. Consequently, we all want stuff. So why is it such an outrage and surprise that those who can GET said stuff, hoard as much of it as possible? It seems to me that "greed" is simply this shared (manufactured) desire acted upon. It is the reinforced mentality.
And of course, when talking about greed, the topic of profit is not far behind. It's no secret that the modus operandi of the free-market capitalism paradigm is the profit motive. For all the relative progress that it has created, the sole imperative of this economic system (as denoted freely in any economic textbook) is completely devoid of any forethought of DIRECT equity and equality consideration, instead built on the goal of self maximization, assuming that this will somehow bring equality and fairness ("The Invisible Hand" concept). There is very little to nothing else considered. After all, by and large, the standardized indicator of a nation's progress and well being is not any statistic on mortality rate, psychological measure of contentment or public health. Instead, it is the measure of a country's G.N.P./G.D.P. or "economic growth." Everything else is an assumed correlation.
Keeping this in mind, are the "1%" really at fault? If one thinks about it, the Wall Street investor who deals in derivatives doesn't do it to intentionally collapse the economy in a bubble of fraud. That wasn't his goal, it was simply a side effect brought about by the initial imperative to increase income. Continuing with this thought exercise, the car manufacturing plant that lays off thousands of factory workers to replace them with automated manufacturing systems doesn't do this to maliciously lower the standard of living for thousands of people. By automating, it is simply lowering building costs, thus offering a more affordable product to consumers, and by extension increasing their gains in profit and reducing costs. Similarly, when a corporation lobbies for certain legislation that would benefit them and not the public, they're not doing so with an intent to torment the middle and lower class while twirling their mustaches menacingly and rubbing their hands together. They're simply doing what they can do, and what the economic system absolutely allows for, to maximize profits and minimize costs in some way. If you think about it, the 1% are simply the best players in the game. Similarly, if the protesters at St. James Park were in similar positions of fiscal prominence as the "villainous" 1%, one wonders if they could say with certainty that they would not do the exact same things.
Saturday, October 15, 2011
writing because i can't sleep
The rain poured thick that night; as if to remind anybody down below that their existence was marginal at best. Pitter-patter-pitter-patter. It was a gloomy sky above a gloomy Earth. A sky that was crying out; uncaring as to whom its tears would drown.
Pitter-patter-pitter-patter.
Pitter-patter-pitter-patter.
The pelting at his windshield was enough to jolt the sleeping driver. The difference between his a moment ago restless half-sleep (that somewhat rejuvenating but-never-quite-enough-anymore kind of sleep) to his present state of wakefulness was almost indistinguishable. He looked around, eyes burning with every saccade movement, temples feeling pinched from the inside out. By now this was normality. Inhaling deep, his hand groggily reached for the lever to raise his reclined car-seat back upright. He now faced the dashboard, staring blankly straight ahead.
Past the protective barrier of his windshield, still the rain poured down all around him, sounding like a hail of bullets against the body of the beat-up, half dilapidated car he now called home.
“Well...” he murmured as he stared out into the baron, empty stretch of land that spread out into all foreseeable directions.
“Some fucking vacation.”
Sunday, September 12, 2010
man's sickness
The moment a man begins to question the meaning and value of life, he is sick, since objectively, neither exist. Questions imply the presence of an underlying problem. However, the act of questioning in itself is merely symptomatic, not problematic. The questioning of nonexistent things points to an even more troubling condition: life is inherently valueless and meaningless. To question the empiricism of these nonexistent aspects of one’s life is a symptom of a deeper underlying disease.
Questioning is not a sickness in itself. It is a symptom of the sickness, and somewhat paradoxically, part of the cure. When someone develops a common illness such as the flu, it is common to have a fever. The fever itself is not the illness. Rather it indicates that the body is malfunctioning, and tries to combat the sickness by raising the temperature. To question what one has never before questioned, is to become aware of a flaw. Questioning reveals the flaw in its entirety and allows for a proper solution to be administered. During Kierkegaard’s transitions, the aesthetic begins to question his lifestyle because he no longer derives any pleasure from it. Through the process of systematic questioning, the aesthetic reasons that his lack of pleasure stems from his lack of ethics, and so becomes an ethical person. Symptoms do not arise without an underlying cause, similarly, healthy men do not question what does not exist.
'Value,' defined by the North American Encarta Dictionary, is “the worth, importance, or usefulness of something to somebody.” This cannot be ascribed to life since it is exhaustible and non-transferable. Value exists only in things that are permanent, and if temporary, can be exchanged for something of equal or greater value. Diamonds are forever; their permanence renders them their value since they can be transported through time and space without diminishing. Individual lives are born, grow, shrink, and then die. It cannot sustain itself without damage as it moves through space and time. Oil renders its value from the energy released when it is consumed. When life is consumed, it ceases to exist. All value exists because of a valuer who attributes value to an object. Value does not exist independently of those who value it. Although the consumption of life can be of value to one man, the consumption of his own life is without value to him. The living person assigns value to many objects, actions, and situations. These things are only valuable within the lifespan of a valuer. A life in its entirety has no objective value (assuming that the valuer and the possessor of the life in question are one and the same). It is neither everlasting, nor can it be exchanged for something else, since it would rob the valuer of his life. If the valuer has no life, there is no one to assign the object in question value. Therefore life is lacking in value. Consequently questioning the value of life is like questioning a ghost: insane.
Life is also devoid of meaning. “The meaning of life” is a mere nonsensical string of words. Meaning exists in those things that have a message to convey. Since life is a result of natural processes, there is no one trying to communicate, depriving life of meaning. Even if life is indeed a result of a god(s): life could have any one of an infinite number of meanings. Trying to decipher that meaning would be like a pixel trying to imagine the image to which it belongs. Furthermore, by nature, every message is bound to be interpreted differently by every observer and every perspective. Living is a passive act where a person performs actions in reaction to his environment, never unstimulated. Actions have no objective meaning, only transient idiosyncratic "purposes," given by individual interpretation. The meaning of an action, even an active purposeful action, is completely relative. By nature, every message is bound to be interpreted differently by every observer and every perspective. As a result, the meaning of life, or anything for that matter, is entirely subjective. For these reasons, questioning the meaning of life is questioning something which either does not exist or is relative, which in each case, is clearly irrational.
Notwithstanding the non-existence of meaning and the relativity of the value of life, questioning it is still cause for concern. When an object is working properly, that is, fulfilling its purpose without flaw, it is not self aware. Consciousness becomes aware of itself by questioning the ideas it operates on. According to Alan Watts, “when the eye is fulfilling its purpose, it is not aware of itself, it does not see itself. When the eye sees itself, it is faulty; it has developed cataracts or glaucoma. When the ear hears itself, [the] ringing, it is defective.” Similarly, the mind becomes aware of its operations when they are not being carried out properly. “When someone thinks, the stream of thought flows”, but “when you begin to think about thinking, it gets in the way [of thinking]”. One only begins to think about thinking if the stream of thought is not fulfilling its purpose. Watts calls this a “blocking mechanism”. When a man is healthy, he lives without noticing. When he begins to question, “[he] gets in the way of living” since the questions block the normal 'flow' of life. When a lifestyle works, its possessor has no reason to question. Most people’s lifestyles and worldviews are based on a philosophy which incorporates some implicit unobjective meaning and value to life. These theories of life, however intangible, allow people to exist without difficulty. One only begins to question life if it ceases to work. One will only begin to question the value and meaning of life if his implicit existing notions of value and meaning no longer fit his desires. When one is no longer fulfilling his desires, he is no longer being reinforced, and in turn, becomes depressed. This depression is the real sickness.
A sickness is the abnormal operation of a normal function. Normally, humans do not question the basic ideals on which they operate. Questioning, although not a sickness, is a symptom of one, especially when nonexistent things are being questioned. Through the process of thought, the thinker becomes aware of all that has been said above and stops questioning.
Questioning is not a sickness in itself. It is a symptom of the sickness, and somewhat paradoxically, part of the cure. When someone develops a common illness such as the flu, it is common to have a fever. The fever itself is not the illness. Rather it indicates that the body is malfunctioning, and tries to combat the sickness by raising the temperature. To question what one has never before questioned, is to become aware of a flaw. Questioning reveals the flaw in its entirety and allows for a proper solution to be administered. During Kierkegaard’s transitions, the aesthetic begins to question his lifestyle because he no longer derives any pleasure from it. Through the process of systematic questioning, the aesthetic reasons that his lack of pleasure stems from his lack of ethics, and so becomes an ethical person. Symptoms do not arise without an underlying cause, similarly, healthy men do not question what does not exist.
'Value,' defined by the North American Encarta Dictionary, is “the worth, importance, or usefulness of something to somebody.” This cannot be ascribed to life since it is exhaustible and non-transferable. Value exists only in things that are permanent, and if temporary, can be exchanged for something of equal or greater value. Diamonds are forever; their permanence renders them their value since they can be transported through time and space without diminishing. Individual lives are born, grow, shrink, and then die. It cannot sustain itself without damage as it moves through space and time. Oil renders its value from the energy released when it is consumed. When life is consumed, it ceases to exist. All value exists because of a valuer who attributes value to an object. Value does not exist independently of those who value it. Although the consumption of life can be of value to one man, the consumption of his own life is without value to him. The living person assigns value to many objects, actions, and situations. These things are only valuable within the lifespan of a valuer. A life in its entirety has no objective value (assuming that the valuer and the possessor of the life in question are one and the same). It is neither everlasting, nor can it be exchanged for something else, since it would rob the valuer of his life. If the valuer has no life, there is no one to assign the object in question value. Therefore life is lacking in value. Consequently questioning the value of life is like questioning a ghost: insane.
Life is also devoid of meaning. “The meaning of life” is a mere nonsensical string of words. Meaning exists in those things that have a message to convey. Since life is a result of natural processes, there is no one trying to communicate, depriving life of meaning. Even if life is indeed a result of a god(s): life could have any one of an infinite number of meanings. Trying to decipher that meaning would be like a pixel trying to imagine the image to which it belongs. Furthermore, by nature, every message is bound to be interpreted differently by every observer and every perspective. Living is a passive act where a person performs actions in reaction to his environment, never unstimulated. Actions have no objective meaning, only transient idiosyncratic "purposes," given by individual interpretation. The meaning of an action, even an active purposeful action, is completely relative. By nature, every message is bound to be interpreted differently by every observer and every perspective. As a result, the meaning of life, or anything for that matter, is entirely subjective. For these reasons, questioning the meaning of life is questioning something which either does not exist or is relative, which in each case, is clearly irrational.
Notwithstanding the non-existence of meaning and the relativity of the value of life, questioning it is still cause for concern. When an object is working properly, that is, fulfilling its purpose without flaw, it is not self aware. Consciousness becomes aware of itself by questioning the ideas it operates on. According to Alan Watts, “when the eye is fulfilling its purpose, it is not aware of itself, it does not see itself. When the eye sees itself, it is faulty; it has developed cataracts or glaucoma. When the ear hears itself, [the] ringing, it is defective.” Similarly, the mind becomes aware of its operations when they are not being carried out properly. “When someone thinks, the stream of thought flows”, but “when you begin to think about thinking, it gets in the way [of thinking]”. One only begins to think about thinking if the stream of thought is not fulfilling its purpose. Watts calls this a “blocking mechanism”. When a man is healthy, he lives without noticing. When he begins to question, “[he] gets in the way of living” since the questions block the normal 'flow' of life. When a lifestyle works, its possessor has no reason to question. Most people’s lifestyles and worldviews are based on a philosophy which incorporates some implicit unobjective meaning and value to life. These theories of life, however intangible, allow people to exist without difficulty. One only begins to question life if it ceases to work. One will only begin to question the value and meaning of life if his implicit existing notions of value and meaning no longer fit his desires. When one is no longer fulfilling his desires, he is no longer being reinforced, and in turn, becomes depressed. This depression is the real sickness.
A sickness is the abnormal operation of a normal function. Normally, humans do not question the basic ideals on which they operate. Questioning, although not a sickness, is a symptom of one, especially when nonexistent things are being questioned. Through the process of thought, the thinker becomes aware of all that has been said above and stops questioning.
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