Monday, January 28, 2008
Ideas are viral
Ideas are viral. Good ones, bad ones, and the vast multitude of useless ones interspersed between, all have the potential to spread like influenza. A good idea can supplant centuries of bad ones, atomic energy, for example, and ultimately become a bad idea all its own. Sometimes bad ideas come good in time, Xerox giving away its GUI based operating system to Apple, who subsequently let Gill Gates and Microsoft have a look. For better or worse, Microsoft and Apple fueled the proliferation of personal computing, which made things like interweb access possible and navigating your computer via a GUI beats the living shit out of typing run, go, and change directory commands, believe me!
Ideas spread like diseases. I'm not the first to suggest it, not the first he think it, and certainly not the first to have the idea to write about it, but here I am, writing about it anyway. Going to the moon was an idea, just as entering ancient Greece through the pass at Thermopylae was an idea. The slave trade was an idea, just as all men being created equal was an idea. Ideas can be immensely powerful, even when their authors or credited orginators are intrinsically flawed.
When a slave owner writes, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness", one is moved to wonder what the fuck is wrong with our species, but the author's failing of character do nothing to diminish the power of his ascribed ideas. In this way, ideas are bigger than their creators, often times becoming something more massive and potentially dangerous than the original authors might have ever imagined. Eugenics seemed like a grand idea to its creators. Little did they know that the Third Reich would use such ideas as the basis of their extermination agenda during World War II. Money, the only tangible god modern Man knows, is nothing more than an idea.
Ideas can expand our minds, and send a chill down our spines. Ideas compel us, direct us, and ultimately control us. In a very real way, our physical selves are nothing more than ideas we conjure within our active awareness from moment to moment. We are little more than internalized abstractions floating somewhere between who we think we are, who others think we are, and who we want to be. Natalie Portman's character Evey Hammond in V for Vendetta ponders the power of ideas thusly, "We are told to remember the idea, not the man. Because a man can fail. He can be caught. He can be killed and forgotten. I've witnessed firsthand the power of ideas. I've seen people kill in the name of them; and die defending them."
Unfortunately, I have no idea why I felt the need to write this little blurb about ideas, but I feel better having recorded it. I have an idea for a self-portrait in graphite that I am waiting for some reference to start, so I had a little time to burn.
----------------
Now playing: Alice In Chains - Angry Chair
http://foxytunes.com/artist/alice+in+chains/track/angry+chair
Labels: nonsensical rambling
Friday, January 25, 2008
Hopeless romanticism? Bleh...
One thing I have not ever had much skill with has been inserting myself into a female's awareness, i.e. introducing myself to a strange girl I'm interesting in. It's not that I'm shy, it's just a skill I did not ever fully hone. The crux of the problem is in that moment when the decision is made to force yourself into a girl's attention. I am not capable of using lines, but I always wanted to avoid coming off as "just another guy hitting on a girl". Unfortunately, I haven't ever been able to come up with a more clever way of making a first impression. On extremely rare occasions, it is as simple as walking up and introducing myself, but normally there are problems with time and place and circumstance. Labels: nonsensical rambling
For instance, a new face appeared around the office recently; cute girl, 20-something, no obvious signs of marriage. We crossed paths a couple of times, she smiled, I smiled, that sort of thing, but I just feel no motivation to stop her on her travels and start a conversation. Maybe it's just that I am getting old, but something tells me the real issue lies within my perceptions and attitude. I have not ever been an aggressive pursuer of women, so I haven't ever done those things our elders talk about...like repeatedly asking a girl out who keeps refusing or stopping into somewhere I don't have to be, just to see a girl. That sort of thing just doesn't fit into my sense of reality. On top of all that, there is a pronounced scarcity of women I would want to pursue, so you have a recipe for lots of shoulder shrugging and social retardation. I am finding that, as I grow older, I am becoming more and more comfortable being alone and the very idea of the chase is becoming completely unappealing.
So making an introduction almost seems pointless at this stage. I'm confident enough to believe that getting past the initial "hello my name is" with a single girl means I will almost certainly get her number, with a better than average chance of getting a first date, but then what? Another date, learn some more about her..another date, learn more…then another, learn some things I probably don't want to know and here's where things usually start to derail. On one hand, most girls seem to be expecting at least a kiss and/or grope attempt by date 3. By date 4 or 5 or 6, I'm still trying to figure out if this is someone I want to spend more time with. In this enlightened age of Wal-Mart sex where the most sacred of physical acts is cheap and getting cheaper
At some point people decide they are boyfriend and girlfriend, thus beginning what more often than not seems to become an endless string of drama, fucking, fighting, complacency, splitting, getting back together, and so on and so forth. Very rarely do two people come together, gel, and stay together in what I understand to be a happy, healthy relationship, which is to say, a relationship where both people are equals enjoying each other's mental, physical, and spiritual company. No cheesy "happily ever after" nonsense, I'm talking about two people connected on those three fundamental levels who are simply enjoying each other. That seems like a happy outcome to me, but it so rarely happens(never?) that most people seem to have dismissed the possibility of experiencing it outright.
At some point, I started to look at the situation and think to myself, "what the fuck is wrong here". It was hard to see waiting and getting to know someone as a bad idea, so I became pretty confident that I wasn't the primary antagonist in these particular life dramas. Once I crossed that Delaware, it was only a matter of time before I started questioning the value of the whole process in general.
I suck at Photoshop, but I'm learning:
Thursday, November 29, 2007
A pep talk for the mirror
Life, time, circumstance, and our fellow humans take so much away from us, why then do we willingly surrender so much more? Why aren't we fighting tooth and nail for the dreams and visions that fill our lives with possibility? We settle, learn to accept, live in denial, all in an effort to make stifling ourselves and our dreams somehow acceptable. It is in no way acceptable. By convincing ourselves that average is OK, that enough really is enough, we cripple our potential and resign ourselves to living life with a perpetual limp.
We dream of who we could be, but find a way to accept less than who we are. We dream something impossible, accept it as such, and without so much as trying, dismiss the idea. What we fail to see is that the pursuit is the thing. The journey - really living is embracing the journey! The physical, emotional, cerebral, and spiritual miles are brush strokes that shape us. These are the things that add layers of richness to our lives. The smiles, the struggles, the crushing defeats, and magnificent victories all conspire to create a deeper, more textured personality. Without these things we are hollow, two-dimensional cutouts only good for consumption and reproduction.
Nothing ventured nothing gained is about more than taking risks in hopes of attaining rewards, it is about the multi-layered evolution we undergo as we pass through the experiences which constantly tint, shade, and color our lives. We are the sum whole of an infinite number of physical, emotional, and spiritual parts. Every day, every breath, forces outside and within us are working to cease that summary progression. Every force in life works to restrain and confine us, from gravity to social precepts of normalcy, we are lashed by countless leashes, all feeding on our fears and insecurities.
The world is little more than a container seeking to restrain and encapsulate our dreams. Why would we ever betray ourselves by helping reinforce that confinement? Have no illusions, that is exactly what we do every time we succumb to the negative conceptualizations of our cognitive perception. When we give in to fear, when we allow our questions to tighten life's noose of limitations around our necks, we are lost.
We are lost, but in becoming lost, we open another avenue for discovery. Whether we are discovering new aspects of our internal world, or the world outside our skin, we are never so ready for exploration as when we are lost. Off the beaten path, out where the wild things play, there are new understandings and unknown possibilities to be had. If we forever constrain ourselves to the road most traveled, we only give ourselves the chance to go where everyone else has been. As far as I am concerned, that is truly being Lost.
I am lost, but not Lost. I am seeking and very slowly, almost imperceptibly, I am finding. The journey is the thing, and I am doing my best to keep journeying.
I want to run
I want to hide
I want to tear down the walls
That hold me inside
I want to reach out
And touch the flame
Where the streets have no name
I want to feel sunlight on my face
I see the dust cloud disappear
Without a trace
I want to take shelter from the poison rain
Where the streets have no name
U2 - Where the streets have no name
----------------
Now playing: U2 - Where The Streets Have No Name
via FoxyTunes
Labels: nonsensical rambling