I just read this wonderful article: http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2011/04/21/135508305/the-sad-beautiful-fact-that-were-all-going-to-miss-almost-everything
To give a brief summary of the article, it essentially talks about the idea of being "well-read" and how a person must choose between culling and surrendering the vast amount of culture that they will never be able to reach. Culling involves deciding not to do things because you deem them either unworthy or uninteresting, for example, "I do not like rap so I will not listen to rap" or more specifically "I did not like one Stephen King book, so I will never read another one of his books." Surrender involves realizing that you lack the time to find the good things, so you do not bother. You end up in the same situation with surrender as with culling, not listening to rap and not reading Stephen King, but there is a recognition that perhaps there are good parts to those that would take you too much time to find. The article makes a credible case that surrender is the preferable mindset to culling, but that culling is easier emotionally/psychologically.
Personally, I do not really care either way. Culling and surrender both amount to the same problem: lack of time. The article makes the point that it is a great thing that one person cannot consume all of creativity and intellectual efforts of humanity, otherwise we would not have accomplished much. I agree with that sentiment, but that doesn't mean that I am not angry and sad about it. I want to consume it all. I want to taste every food, read every book, watch every movie, listen to every combination of sounds. But I cannot, so where does that leave me?
It leaves me feeling the way I have felt on and off again for years now, in that I just do not care to waste my time. I have so little time with which to live my life (an unknowable amount of time for that matter, which just makes it worse), and I am angry that I have to waste some of it unnecessary things. I do not want to be nice to people I do not like, and I do not want to hold back from telling pretty girls I think they are pretty, just so I can hold true to social mores that make society function better. I understand the principle of society functioning, and I understand that lying and being nice help people coexist better, but I find it all a huge waste of time. It reminds me of another article sent to me by a friend that feels the same way I do, this one by the onion: http://www.theonion.com/articles/openminded-man-grimly-realizes-how-much-life-hes-w,19273/
Time and time again I find myself doing what is better for everyone rather than what is better for me. I understand that it might be better for me in the long run to be nice to people I do not like, but the long run is an unknowable sacrifice, similar in principle to an unknowable afterlife. Must I sacrifice my short term time (or life?) on a vague set of future circumstances that I have no logical way of approximating? It seems that that is what is expected of me (and everyone).
I do it, but I worry because I feel like I am getting increasingly bitter and angry towards people that waste my time, and towards myself for letting them waste my time. It actively makes me unhappy by making me angry, and then I feel guilty that I may not be being nice enough. And the few times when I tell someone off, I rarely feel better since I realize that I ruined their day for no little total benefit of my own, as I will just have to deal with someone else's bullshit.
I feel trapped by time. This has had positive benefits for me at times, as I find myself having romantic and passionate tendencies, since those usually involve the importance of the now, of today. To be trapped by time, means to constantly focus on maximizing your time now, whether it be in pleasure or work, whether it be procrastinating or finishing something as soon as possible, it always has an urgency to it. I want to see this episode now!, or I will lose it to time. I want to kiss you now!, or I will lose you to time. It has had its positive effects.
But I still feel trapped.
Monday, May 9, 2011
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Musical Nostalgia and Why It Is Stupid
I am getting really sick and tired of nostalgia over the past, especially in relation to music. All the time online on forums and youtube comments, and sometimes in real life as well, I hear kids and older people talking about how much better music was in the 90s or the 80s or the 70s. They then go on to trash music of today, and talk about how all of it sucks and they wish they were back in the past.
That is a stupid and illogical position and I will prove it. First of all, I will assume that these people are correct. All music after the 90s (you can insert your own decade here) sucks. Every single song after 1999 is terrible and does not deserve to be listened. So what does that leave us with? It leaves us with a bunch of terrible new songs, and all of the old songs that people still enjoy. It's not like musicians in the 2000s are going around burning old songs so that no one can listen to them ever again. You can still listen to all of the old songs, no one is stopping you. So to point out that new songs suck right now is pointless since you do not have to listen to them. So even if these people are 100% correct, their position is illogical since old music has not stopped existing.
But they are not 100% correct. They are completely ignoring the fact that they only remember the songs that they like. It's not like only their 5 favorite bands and 100 favorite songs existed in the 90s. There were many, many bands in the past that just plain sucked, and many songs that were terrible, and many people complaining about those songs. Nothing has changed in that regard. Of course in the present you are going to be noticing more bad songs; when you go to listen to songs from the past, you are not being bombarded by random songs. You go to search for past songs that you liked, thus giving you an inherent bias when considering the past.
I don't even believe that these people hate all modern music. I have yet to meet a person that hates every single song in the last decade. In today's internet driven world, we have access to more bands than anyone has ever had access to in history. There might not be more bands than there were in the past, but the internet allows you to listen to a small, local indie band from a different country that you would never have been able to listen to before. I highly doubt that you cannot find something you like today that is new if you take the time to look rather than just listening to the radio. The real issue here is that most people are lazy and it is easier for them to listen to the top40 and complain, rather than take an hour out of their day to look for music they like. Never mind that is insanely easy to hook up an ipod to your car so you never have to even listen to the radio.
The issue is not even one of "you don't have to listen to what you don't like" although it is true to an extent (it is sometimes difficult to avoid bad music in say grocery stores). It is an issue of "your position is illogical because you have not been prevented from listening to music you do like."
That is a stupid and illogical position and I will prove it. First of all, I will assume that these people are correct. All music after the 90s (you can insert your own decade here) sucks. Every single song after 1999 is terrible and does not deserve to be listened. So what does that leave us with? It leaves us with a bunch of terrible new songs, and all of the old songs that people still enjoy. It's not like musicians in the 2000s are going around burning old songs so that no one can listen to them ever again. You can still listen to all of the old songs, no one is stopping you. So to point out that new songs suck right now is pointless since you do not have to listen to them. So even if these people are 100% correct, their position is illogical since old music has not stopped existing.
But they are not 100% correct. They are completely ignoring the fact that they only remember the songs that they like. It's not like only their 5 favorite bands and 100 favorite songs existed in the 90s. There were many, many bands in the past that just plain sucked, and many songs that were terrible, and many people complaining about those songs. Nothing has changed in that regard. Of course in the present you are going to be noticing more bad songs; when you go to listen to songs from the past, you are not being bombarded by random songs. You go to search for past songs that you liked, thus giving you an inherent bias when considering the past.
I don't even believe that these people hate all modern music. I have yet to meet a person that hates every single song in the last decade. In today's internet driven world, we have access to more bands than anyone has ever had access to in history. There might not be more bands than there were in the past, but the internet allows you to listen to a small, local indie band from a different country that you would never have been able to listen to before. I highly doubt that you cannot find something you like today that is new if you take the time to look rather than just listening to the radio. The real issue here is that most people are lazy and it is easier for them to listen to the top40 and complain, rather than take an hour out of their day to look for music they like. Never mind that is insanely easy to hook up an ipod to your car so you never have to even listen to the radio.
The issue is not even one of "you don't have to listen to what you don't like" although it is true to an extent (it is sometimes difficult to avoid bad music in say grocery stores). It is an issue of "your position is illogical because you have not been prevented from listening to music you do like."
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Happiness is Boring
I find myself preferring Tragedies to Comedies. I find the latter unsatisfying and unrealistic. This isn't to say that happy endings do not happen in real life, but rather that they lack the grander of Comedies. Happy endings are boring and happy people are boring, as they should be. I would go so far as to say that to be boring may be a blessing since you will probably be happy. This relates back to the reason that I hate Comedies: there has been a purposeful attempt to make happiness seem exciting and I find it distasteful. I also find it damaging. I am sure many a happiness has been ruined by people asking themselves why their happiness is not exciting, when the simple answer is that happiness itself is unexciting. You won't find that message common in a lot of popular culture.
There are, of course, exceptions and the reverse is also not true. Tragedies often are interesting and they show the negative side of that. It should be noted that a lot of popular culture attempts to tell an exciting story so that they were bound to get one of the two right and one of the two wrong. This does not mean I find the excuse valid or any less damaging.
The major exception I have in mind is Tolstoy's Anna Karenina: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Although this can be interpreted in many ways, the way I choose to interpret it is that unhappy families are fascinating because of their differences while happy families are boring because of their similarities. It would also be possible to say that the nature of being happy means being boring, and thus being similar. While the nature of being unhappy means being interesting, and interesting things are often new and different. The casual relationship is of secondary importance to the more important facet, that of the inherent boringness of happiness.
Happiness is not fighting a dragon to save a princess. Happiness is the 30 years of living with a princess and taking care of cows and peasants. The fight with the dragon is tough, dirty, interesting, and possibly tragic. The dragon might have killed the princess, or she might be in another castle, or you could even die fighting it. The elements of the tragedy are so varied that I could come up with something even more ridiculous such as the dragon was protecting the prince from the evil princess, and the slaying of the dragon will spell doom for the naive prince. That is interesting. That is a twist worth reading about.
What is there to know or learn or excite once the prince and the princess are safe? Nothing. Boring, boring happiness. The goal of pop culture should be to tell fascinating stories, and I just find the happy ones to be incredibly boring. I would rather have real life be boring and happy, while the fantasy world should be exciting and tragic. Isn't that a more noble and awesome (in the sense of awe inspiring) goal than to try to sanitize the boringness of happiness? At the very least it seems more honest.
There are, of course, exceptions and the reverse is also not true. Tragedies often are interesting and they show the negative side of that. It should be noted that a lot of popular culture attempts to tell an exciting story so that they were bound to get one of the two right and one of the two wrong. This does not mean I find the excuse valid or any less damaging.
The major exception I have in mind is Tolstoy's Anna Karenina: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Although this can be interpreted in many ways, the way I choose to interpret it is that unhappy families are fascinating because of their differences while happy families are boring because of their similarities. It would also be possible to say that the nature of being happy means being boring, and thus being similar. While the nature of being unhappy means being interesting, and interesting things are often new and different. The casual relationship is of secondary importance to the more important facet, that of the inherent boringness of happiness.
Happiness is not fighting a dragon to save a princess. Happiness is the 30 years of living with a princess and taking care of cows and peasants. The fight with the dragon is tough, dirty, interesting, and possibly tragic. The dragon might have killed the princess, or she might be in another castle, or you could even die fighting it. The elements of the tragedy are so varied that I could come up with something even more ridiculous such as the dragon was protecting the prince from the evil princess, and the slaying of the dragon will spell doom for the naive prince. That is interesting. That is a twist worth reading about.
What is there to know or learn or excite once the prince and the princess are safe? Nothing. Boring, boring happiness. The goal of pop culture should be to tell fascinating stories, and I just find the happy ones to be incredibly boring. I would rather have real life be boring and happy, while the fantasy world should be exciting and tragic. Isn't that a more noble and awesome (in the sense of awe inspiring) goal than to try to sanitize the boringness of happiness? At the very least it seems more honest.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
The King's Speech Unsatisfying Oscar Win
This is not going to be a review of the King’s Speech. It has been out for a while and I just did not care about enough when I saw it to review it. And that really is the problem that I see with it winning the Oscar for Best Movie.
I cannot say that I particularly care about the Oscars, and more eloquent people than I have spoken before about why the Oscars really mean very little (http://www.cracked.com/article_18460_5-reasons-oscars-matter-even-less-than-you-thought.html) but it still bothers me. Why pick the King’s Speech?
From a technical standpoint the movie was fine, the acting was fine, I assume they portrayed the period realistically; it was a serious, emotional movie but it had touches of humor here and there which is important in keeping these slow, period pieces balanced and not feel like they are dragging on. Still, I just could not get myself to care about anything that was happening on screen.
To give a good comparison, I have watched a lot of anime, and anime arguably ran out of credible stories a decade ago (they didn’t but follow me here) which is why they keep on coming out with the most ridiculous ideas like having action style (shounen) shows that follow board games like Go or Mahjong. To pull this off the show has to really invest the audience in the characters. It really does not matter if you are interested in the board game, the show can still work as long as you the characters and their trials draw you in.
The King’s Speech did none of this for me. I understand it was not an action movie of the anime type, but on some level it had the same basic idea going for it: I have to watch a person fight through a speech impediment, a mental task in order to succeed at something. The only way to get me to really care about the movie was to get me to care about the main character, and I really did not. There was very little personality in the movie. He is a prince, who became a king, and his father preferred his brother over him. So what? I mean by itself, one could argue, that alone is character development enough and it is a matter of correct execution (which the movie then fails at), but I think the film actually executes it splendidly. The problem is that it is not enough; it is too thin.
I do not believe that a well crafted character should have only one defining trait, and maybe through my poor memory I actually just cannot remember this, but do we know what King George VI’s favorite song is? Favorite color, or book, or soup? Perhaps there is one point in the movie where they elaborate on that, but for the life of me I cannot remember it. I think that is a serious problem with the film. I did not at any point feel like I knew any of these characters, except for maybe the speech therapist a little bit. They all acted as they should have, but the movie is just so thin that it does not matter.
What this amounts to is that I could not particularly care about the movie by the time the credits rolled, and I just felt sort of unsatisfied. I felt like I had watched a 2 hour version of a 3 minute trailer, since the trailer went over everything in the movie (speech impediment, quirky speech therapist, triumphant moment) and there was nothing else to color in the edges of these black and white characters.
As a final note, while I was thinking about just how unsatisfied this left me feeling, I was trying to compare this with another movie that I felt moved very slowly but that I thoroughly enjoyed: Meet Joe Black. In both movies, there are an ample amount of quiet scenes, scenes of little talking (or at least this is how the King’s Speech felt to me because no one said anything of substance), and yet I feel so much character from the blank personality of Death in Meet Joe Black if only because of one scene: the peanut butter scene. In this brilliant segment that is for haters of the movie probably an excruciating 5 minutes, Death learns that he enjoys the taste of peanut butter. In different parts of the movie later on he can be seen eating peanut butter or mentioning it casually, and it is not important to the plot in any way or significant in any of these other scenes. All it serves to do is bring us closer to the character of Death and help us to get to know him. There was none of this in the King’s Speech, which is why a few years from now I will have utterly forgotten the movie. I am so unsatisfied with the King’s Speech winning because an award for the Best anything of a year should not go to something that will be forgotten quickly. As much as I hate Avatar, and I hate it so, if it had come out this year I would have preferred Avatar to have won because at least that movie I know I will be unable to forget ever because it is goddamn everywhere. Until the Oscars, I had pretty much forgotten the King’s Speech as I left the theater.
I cannot say that I particularly care about the Oscars, and more eloquent people than I have spoken before about why the Oscars really mean very little (http://www.cracked.com/article_18460_5-reasons-oscars-matter-even-less-than-you-thought.html) but it still bothers me. Why pick the King’s Speech?
From a technical standpoint the movie was fine, the acting was fine, I assume they portrayed the period realistically; it was a serious, emotional movie but it had touches of humor here and there which is important in keeping these slow, period pieces balanced and not feel like they are dragging on. Still, I just could not get myself to care about anything that was happening on screen.
To give a good comparison, I have watched a lot of anime, and anime arguably ran out of credible stories a decade ago (they didn’t but follow me here) which is why they keep on coming out with the most ridiculous ideas like having action style (shounen) shows that follow board games like Go or Mahjong. To pull this off the show has to really invest the audience in the characters. It really does not matter if you are interested in the board game, the show can still work as long as you the characters and their trials draw you in.
The King’s Speech did none of this for me. I understand it was not an action movie of the anime type, but on some level it had the same basic idea going for it: I have to watch a person fight through a speech impediment, a mental task in order to succeed at something. The only way to get me to really care about the movie was to get me to care about the main character, and I really did not. There was very little personality in the movie. He is a prince, who became a king, and his father preferred his brother over him. So what? I mean by itself, one could argue, that alone is character development enough and it is a matter of correct execution (which the movie then fails at), but I think the film actually executes it splendidly. The problem is that it is not enough; it is too thin.
I do not believe that a well crafted character should have only one defining trait, and maybe through my poor memory I actually just cannot remember this, but do we know what King George VI’s favorite song is? Favorite color, or book, or soup? Perhaps there is one point in the movie where they elaborate on that, but for the life of me I cannot remember it. I think that is a serious problem with the film. I did not at any point feel like I knew any of these characters, except for maybe the speech therapist a little bit. They all acted as they should have, but the movie is just so thin that it does not matter.
What this amounts to is that I could not particularly care about the movie by the time the credits rolled, and I just felt sort of unsatisfied. I felt like I had watched a 2 hour version of a 3 minute trailer, since the trailer went over everything in the movie (speech impediment, quirky speech therapist, triumphant moment) and there was nothing else to color in the edges of these black and white characters.
As a final note, while I was thinking about just how unsatisfied this left me feeling, I was trying to compare this with another movie that I felt moved very slowly but that I thoroughly enjoyed: Meet Joe Black. In both movies, there are an ample amount of quiet scenes, scenes of little talking (or at least this is how the King’s Speech felt to me because no one said anything of substance), and yet I feel so much character from the blank personality of Death in Meet Joe Black if only because of one scene: the peanut butter scene. In this brilliant segment that is for haters of the movie probably an excruciating 5 minutes, Death learns that he enjoys the taste of peanut butter. In different parts of the movie later on he can be seen eating peanut butter or mentioning it casually, and it is not important to the plot in any way or significant in any of these other scenes. All it serves to do is bring us closer to the character of Death and help us to get to know him. There was none of this in the King’s Speech, which is why a few years from now I will have utterly forgotten the movie. I am so unsatisfied with the King’s Speech winning because an award for the Best anything of a year should not go to something that will be forgotten quickly. As much as I hate Avatar, and I hate it so, if it had come out this year I would have preferred Avatar to have won because at least that movie I know I will be unable to forget ever because it is goddamn everywhere. Until the Oscars, I had pretty much forgotten the King’s Speech as I left the theater.
Saturday, February 12, 2011
File Sharing
Free Distribution
This article pissed me off. Not only does it not work, it also does not make sense. The argument is that because we cannot control people from stealing, we should not try? And I guess going along with that is the idea that it is not really stealing at all. Never mind that the article ignores the difference between all of these creative works and those other productive works is that they are not material objects. Or that people being paid by the hour depend on consumers making purchases later on (as in people making chairs are only getting paid because consumers are buying chairs).
Let's not kid ourselves. Just because many people are doing something, does not mean it is the right thing to do. If everyone stole, stealing would still be bad.
Also, those people making money off of the stock market are not just parasites, but are people who are making sure some of these companies exist and can create new products. The stock market does not exist to make rich people richer, but to allow private individuals to invest in businesses. Investing is indirectly productive, not directly parasitic.
I say this not from my high horse imagining that I am somehow better than this person, because I am not. I have a stolen, I have file shared. What I am not doing though is pretending that what I did was great and was bringing about a new revolution in the way business is done. And even if the conclusions of the article were correct and copyright is dead (which they are not and it is not), the article is still basically telling you that it is morally justified to steal things as long as they are creative works. It completely ignores the legality of the act and makes a dubious moral claim on unstable economic grounds for why it is ok that this person has stolen and other people stolen. That is the definition of shameless and that is why I am pissed off.
This article pissed me off. Not only does it not work, it also does not make sense. The argument is that because we cannot control people from stealing, we should not try? And I guess going along with that is the idea that it is not really stealing at all. Never mind that the article ignores the difference between all of these creative works and those other productive works is that they are not material objects. Or that people being paid by the hour depend on consumers making purchases later on (as in people making chairs are only getting paid because consumers are buying chairs).
Let's not kid ourselves. Just because many people are doing something, does not mean it is the right thing to do. If everyone stole, stealing would still be bad.
Also, those people making money off of the stock market are not just parasites, but are people who are making sure some of these companies exist and can create new products. The stock market does not exist to make rich people richer, but to allow private individuals to invest in businesses. Investing is indirectly productive, not directly parasitic.
I say this not from my high horse imagining that I am somehow better than this person, because I am not. I have a stolen, I have file shared. What I am not doing though is pretending that what I did was great and was bringing about a new revolution in the way business is done. And even if the conclusions of the article were correct and copyright is dead (which they are not and it is not), the article is still basically telling you that it is morally justified to steal things as long as they are creative works. It completely ignores the legality of the act and makes a dubious moral claim on unstable economic grounds for why it is ok that this person has stolen and other people stolen. That is the definition of shameless and that is why I am pissed off.
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