Friday, January 28, 2011
On Tomorrow
Tomorrow has the potential to be a fantastic place. No one can ever really be certain about what tomorrow will bring, but the possibilities may seem endless. Now it's true that today can be a pretty good indicator of what's going to happen the next day. Sometimes though we have no idea what's in store for us. For some that can be a great source of hope. Tomorrow might be a little bit brighter. Tomorrow could reveal the answers we're looking for. No matter what happens today, tomorrow will come. The promise that the days will continue on regardless can be something of a lifeline for people to hold onto, giving them just enough strength to make it through today.
While it's true that tomorrow can be a promise of better things, it doesn't always deliver or live up to our expectations. Take a look at old movies or books and you can see how people dreamed the world of tomorrow would be. Flying cars, colonies on the moon, or robots doing our chores for us (ok the Roomba is close on that one). Some of these ideas are more fantastical than others, but they all held out hope that by the time we got to this point things would be better. Now I'm not saying that things are disappointing because yesterday's tomorrow doesn't live up to the expectation. It's just that it makes one wonder what stopped us from living the dream. Were those ideas about what could come next so far off because they were based on incomplete information? Did we see what was already a reality and built on it in such a way that it would be impossible to achieve?
Back in the mid-80s people liked to believe that by 2005 we'd have major technological advancements, but if you compare the world of 1985 with today it's really not all that different. At least not in the way that we expected. Computers are faster and smaller. Still the general idea about the computer is relatively the same though. It's a series of circuit boards processing 1s and 0s. Today's computers may have more processors and memory, however, they're still doing the same exact thing, just better. The automobile hasn't managed to get off the ground and still runs on gasoline. It can get miles to the gallon and they're generally safer, but a car from twenty-five years ago could sit next to one that was built today and get the same general results.
Nostalgia is all about looking back fondly on the past. We remember how things used to be and maybe make them out to be greater than they actually were. In the end though the past is just a memory. It's already happened and the only thing we can do is hang onto what was. With the future though it's anyone's guess how things will actually turn out. It's that bit of the unknown that keeps us moving forward. We don't know how things will be so we are only limited by what we can dream up. Now like a lot of dreams, reality may not always get there. At least not on the timetable that we'd like. Someday we may have flying cars, but it's more likely that tomorrow we'll have something completely different. The idea of a flying car will seem antiquated. The holdover from the past's vision of the future. Fifty years from now the things we're dreaming up today may seem like quaint ideas based on the little information we have now. The differences between yesterday and today can seem both small and great at the same time. For some it may seem as though the promise of tomorrow wasn't fulfilled. For others it's just the beginning. Tomorrow isn't so much a destination, but an idea to always be traveled towards.
While it's true that tomorrow can be a promise of better things, it doesn't always deliver or live up to our expectations. Take a look at old movies or books and you can see how people dreamed the world of tomorrow would be. Flying cars, colonies on the moon, or robots doing our chores for us (ok the Roomba is close on that one). Some of these ideas are more fantastical than others, but they all held out hope that by the time we got to this point things would be better. Now I'm not saying that things are disappointing because yesterday's tomorrow doesn't live up to the expectation. It's just that it makes one wonder what stopped us from living the dream. Were those ideas about what could come next so far off because they were based on incomplete information? Did we see what was already a reality and built on it in such a way that it would be impossible to achieve?
Back in the mid-80s people liked to believe that by 2005 we'd have major technological advancements, but if you compare the world of 1985 with today it's really not all that different. At least not in the way that we expected. Computers are faster and smaller. Still the general idea about the computer is relatively the same though. It's a series of circuit boards processing 1s and 0s. Today's computers may have more processors and memory, however, they're still doing the same exact thing, just better. The automobile hasn't managed to get off the ground and still runs on gasoline. It can get miles to the gallon and they're generally safer, but a car from twenty-five years ago could sit next to one that was built today and get the same general results.
Nostalgia is all about looking back fondly on the past. We remember how things used to be and maybe make them out to be greater than they actually were. In the end though the past is just a memory. It's already happened and the only thing we can do is hang onto what was. With the future though it's anyone's guess how things will actually turn out. It's that bit of the unknown that keeps us moving forward. We don't know how things will be so we are only limited by what we can dream up. Now like a lot of dreams, reality may not always get there. At least not on the timetable that we'd like. Someday we may have flying cars, but it's more likely that tomorrow we'll have something completely different. The idea of a flying car will seem antiquated. The holdover from the past's vision of the future. Fifty years from now the things we're dreaming up today may seem like quaint ideas based on the little information we have now. The differences between yesterday and today can seem both small and great at the same time. For some it may seem as though the promise of tomorrow wasn't fulfilled. For others it's just the beginning. Tomorrow isn't so much a destination, but an idea to always be traveled towards.
Monday, January 24, 2011
On Hindsight
Have you ever looked back and something you did and asked yourself what you were thinking? There are times when we glance back at yesterday and have no idea what prompted us to think that was a good idea. I've talked about regret and how it's only after the damage has been done that we learn the lesson from our error in judgement. What is it about hindsight though that brings the clarity of vision? What was clouding our sight before that we didn't see what could go wrong? Maybe it's ego or maybe it's simply a lapse in reason. At the time it may meet the criteria of being a good idea, but afterwards we finally have all the facts and notice that the whole thing was destined to fail from the start. So how do we get the same level of foresight that we have with hindsight? Is it ever possible? I've talked about how life is a constant stream of lessons. Some are more painful than others. Some have to be taught to us multiple times before we really learn.
Sometimes looking back we realize that maybe it wasn't exactly a mistake, but it's hard to find the logic that went into making the decision in the first place. We've all had situations where even with others telling us their opinions, which may run contrary to how we feel, we go off and do whatever we feel is the best course of action. In the end that's really all life is though, doing what we think is best with the information we have at the time. Life is pretty fluid and what works today may not necessarily work tomorrow. I think that has a tendency to change how perception of past events as well. Walking into a situation or decision we believe one thing, and it's very possible that we're right in what we're about to do. Then something changes, even slightly, and what was going to work just fine is now about to jump off the rails. Or it may not even be as drastic as all that. It could instead just have changed enough that it's no longer ideal.
Companies do this all the time. They go off in some bold new direction because the market or research indicates it's the best thing at the time. In some cases they're successful and continue on with their decision because like most people we all tend to stick with something that works for as long as possible. In other cases though the decision is reversed because it simply doesn't work. I wonder if the people in charge of those massive decisions realize that they're wading into a blunder or simply don't see it. In some cases there is a bit of pride involved with those decisions. No one likes to have someone tell them "I told you so" so rather than admit the mistake they just continue on with it. I get this reaction, having done it myself several times, however, there isn't a whole lot of logic to back it up. As I mentioned what works today may not work for tomorrow, but often times a bad decision is bad regardless of the day. Going further with it and not acknowledging the error only makes recovery that much harder in the long run. I think about certain decisions by large companies that merged together, only to never fully realize the vision that they had set out for themselves. Rather than correcting the problem, they plod along in mediocrity for several years until the decision becomes so overwhelming that it's impossible to move forward with it. At that point everything is so clear that one has to wonder what took them so long to finally see it, or at least do something about it.
There is a somewhat disconcerting thought that at any moment we're either in a situation that will have been reversed down the road or we're correcting something that we've already done and feel needs changing. I've heard the phrase "Your first instinct is usually the right one." I think the first time I heard it used was when preparing for a test. If you weren't sure of the answer just go with your first instinct, because second guessing yourself would not only waste time, but often wouldn't get you any closer to the correct answer. Some people live life with that same philosophy. I'm not saying it's wrong to do that. In fact in a lot of cases I've found that over-thinking the situation only causes me more stress. That's not to say that you should jump into something without giving it the proper consideration. There is a difference between being rational regarding the logic of a decision and talking yourself out of something because you've stalled the process with indecision. No matter how many ways you look at something or analyze all the various possibilities it's next to impossible to know all the different ways something is going to turn out. For some the idea of not knowing how it could turn out paralyses them from ever making a decision. Instead they choose to commit to nothing. To essentially do nothing. At least then they know how it's going to turn out, even if they don't like it. Part of the whole Devil you know thing I guess. At least for me, I've gotten tired of the sheer exhaustion I feel after stressing about all the various ways things could turn out. The thing is no matter what happens, things will eventually go one way or another. Whether we're prepared for them or not, we'll be forced to deal with it.
Often times it doesn't go exactly how we had planned anyway so our meticulous planning gets appended or just thrown out the window. So what does that say about all the energy and time we spent preparing for a scenario that never happened? It seems like maybe that energy could be better spent on the doing rather than the preparing. Unfortunately for us, we can't always see the big picture until we step back from the situation and see all the angles. If that's the case then how informed are our decisions at any given moment? We won't have all the information until it's already too late. Now I'm not saying that you should give up planning or stop preparing for things you know that are coming. It's just that even something we think is a good idea right now may down the road become not as good. So we go about changing it, wondering why we did that in the first place. After that we could potentially change that second decision or even go back to the original idea. Every decision we make and idea that we have is open to potential change down the road. Life seems to be a constant series of looking in the rear view mirror and making adjustments on what we just saw, while at the same time correcting our course as we move forward. It makes me wonder though if today will look like a good idea tomorrow.
Sometimes looking back we realize that maybe it wasn't exactly a mistake, but it's hard to find the logic that went into making the decision in the first place. We've all had situations where even with others telling us their opinions, which may run contrary to how we feel, we go off and do whatever we feel is the best course of action. In the end that's really all life is though, doing what we think is best with the information we have at the time. Life is pretty fluid and what works today may not necessarily work tomorrow. I think that has a tendency to change how perception of past events as well. Walking into a situation or decision we believe one thing, and it's very possible that we're right in what we're about to do. Then something changes, even slightly, and what was going to work just fine is now about to jump off the rails. Or it may not even be as drastic as all that. It could instead just have changed enough that it's no longer ideal.
Companies do this all the time. They go off in some bold new direction because the market or research indicates it's the best thing at the time. In some cases they're successful and continue on with their decision because like most people we all tend to stick with something that works for as long as possible. In other cases though the decision is reversed because it simply doesn't work. I wonder if the people in charge of those massive decisions realize that they're wading into a blunder or simply don't see it. In some cases there is a bit of pride involved with those decisions. No one likes to have someone tell them "I told you so" so rather than admit the mistake they just continue on with it. I get this reaction, having done it myself several times, however, there isn't a whole lot of logic to back it up. As I mentioned what works today may not work for tomorrow, but often times a bad decision is bad regardless of the day. Going further with it and not acknowledging the error only makes recovery that much harder in the long run. I think about certain decisions by large companies that merged together, only to never fully realize the vision that they had set out for themselves. Rather than correcting the problem, they plod along in mediocrity for several years until the decision becomes so overwhelming that it's impossible to move forward with it. At that point everything is so clear that one has to wonder what took them so long to finally see it, or at least do something about it.
There is a somewhat disconcerting thought that at any moment we're either in a situation that will have been reversed down the road or we're correcting something that we've already done and feel needs changing. I've heard the phrase "Your first instinct is usually the right one." I think the first time I heard it used was when preparing for a test. If you weren't sure of the answer just go with your first instinct, because second guessing yourself would not only waste time, but often wouldn't get you any closer to the correct answer. Some people live life with that same philosophy. I'm not saying it's wrong to do that. In fact in a lot of cases I've found that over-thinking the situation only causes me more stress. That's not to say that you should jump into something without giving it the proper consideration. There is a difference between being rational regarding the logic of a decision and talking yourself out of something because you've stalled the process with indecision. No matter how many ways you look at something or analyze all the various possibilities it's next to impossible to know all the different ways something is going to turn out. For some the idea of not knowing how it could turn out paralyses them from ever making a decision. Instead they choose to commit to nothing. To essentially do nothing. At least then they know how it's going to turn out, even if they don't like it. Part of the whole Devil you know thing I guess. At least for me, I've gotten tired of the sheer exhaustion I feel after stressing about all the various ways things could turn out. The thing is no matter what happens, things will eventually go one way or another. Whether we're prepared for them or not, we'll be forced to deal with it.
Often times it doesn't go exactly how we had planned anyway so our meticulous planning gets appended or just thrown out the window. So what does that say about all the energy and time we spent preparing for a scenario that never happened? It seems like maybe that energy could be better spent on the doing rather than the preparing. Unfortunately for us, we can't always see the big picture until we step back from the situation and see all the angles. If that's the case then how informed are our decisions at any given moment? We won't have all the information until it's already too late. Now I'm not saying that you should give up planning or stop preparing for things you know that are coming. It's just that even something we think is a good idea right now may down the road become not as good. So we go about changing it, wondering why we did that in the first place. After that we could potentially change that second decision or even go back to the original idea. Every decision we make and idea that we have is open to potential change down the road. Life seems to be a constant series of looking in the rear view mirror and making adjustments on what we just saw, while at the same time correcting our course as we move forward. It makes me wonder though if today will look like a good idea tomorrow.
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Friday, January 21, 2011
On Tape
As I was driving into work today I heard a song being sung by someone who I swear sang for the Garfield Halloween special. Most people may not even remember that cartoon and I'm not sure if they even still play it, but at that moment I wanted to watch it again, even if it wasn't as good as I remembered. That got me thinking about how a long time ago I used to have it on videotape. In some strange way I miss VHS tapes. Now I like DVDs as much as the next person and I haven't totally embraced the whole BluRay format yet, simply because I'm not entirely convinced that it's necessary. It was only about ten years ago that DVDs became the standard and all those VHS tapes became yesterday's technology. Now while I suppose the DVD is better than the VHS, I don't know that it's had the same impact that tapes had. At least not for me.
A long time ago in a frontier far, far away we only had a couple television channels and weirdly enough, HBO. So the only way to watch a movie back then was if it happened to come onto one of the three channels we had. Then one day we heard about this magical invention called the VCR. My parents bought one and were immediately presented with the fact that we owned no movies to actually watch. Our next door neighbor came over and dumped out a box of movies on the couch. It was like movie Christmas. Apparently all those movies that were broadcast at random intervals on the various stations had been captured on video cassette and could be watched whenever you wanted. Also seemingly overnight there were things called video stores just up the road. I remember going with my dad out on a trek to find something to watch. Back then the selection was still somewhat small and guarded. Eventually we found something to watch and headed home to view it. It was an amazing thing. Not only could you watch the movie whenever you wanted, you weren't bound to your seat for the entire thing. You could rewind, fast forward, or even pause the action at any point. For me it was as an huge moment in movies, rivaling what it must have been like when The Beatles arrived in America for music lovers.
The appeal of watching movies whenever you wanted never really wore off, but the video tape uses started to change from simply having a set movie on it. There were blank tapes out there that let you record your own movies. Now camcorders had been around for awhile in different forms. It was never really a technology that my family embraced. We were more of a standard camera crowd and as such I'm fairly certain that there are no home movies of my childhood sitting in a box somewhere. There are a ton of pictures though. Both my mom and I realized fairly quickly that while it was great to watch the latest movie on VHS, there were things still on television that we wanted to watch a second time. Things that weren't always available on tape. Today you can find nearly any television series on DVD. Even those shows that were cancelled usually have enough fans that the studio puts out the entire thing in a nice package so you can enjoy it one more time. So in addition to owning our favorite movies we started buying blank tapes so that we could record whatever we wanted.
I come from a cold, dark place and a majority of the year it's not very fun to be outside. So it was necessary to make your own fun and if you couldn't make fun, then you needed to be entertained. We had a large selection of movies to choose from and an even bigger selection of randomly recorded shows. Looking back I have fond memories of opening up the bottom drawer under the television and scrounging around looking for a tape that had a show I remember recording. Sure they were labeled, but after awhile things got recorded over and mixed up. My mom had nearly every episode of the PBS Sherlock Holmes series and to this day watching it is like comfort food. With time the VCR got to be more complex and allowed you to set timers and pause for commercials, but I still remember watching a television show with my hand on the remote control, just waiting for the commercial to come so I could press pause. Watching those tapes later you could see when someone wasn't quite ready for the show's return and the action came back with a hard cut. Those video tapes were a lot like vinyl records, each one had its own pops and scratches that just added to the music. Today's DVDs are so crisp and detailed that it's great for preserving the actual movie, but often doesn't have the same amount of personality that a recorded VHS tape would have.
As I got older I went to work for the local video store. My first job there was to clean the shelves and rearrange the movies. Most people would think this was tedious work, but it was great for me. I literally touched every single movie in the store. I saw every piece of cover art. Read the back description of even the lowest budget B movie out there. I was in charge of all the movies on the shelf, even if I wasn't the manager. VHS movies were a big deal in my town. As I mentioned, it was cold a lot of the time so people didn't have a whole lot of options when it came to their entertainment. When new movies would come out there would be people waiting at the door so they would be the first to rent them. Come Friday afternoon it was something of a mob scene as people tried to get the new releases before anyone else. On the weekend my primary job was to restock the movies on the shelves. People would return the movies, we'd check them in, and they'd get stacked up behind the counter. It was my job to take that stack of movies and put them back out for people to rent. Imagine carrying about fifteen movies with both hands and having people surround you trying to not only read the titles you're carrying, but also pull from the stack. Many times there would be a waiting list for the most popular movies and those wouldn't even make it back to the shelf until after the weekend.
I love my DVD player. I love my Netflix instant queue even more. As I said before, most everything that's ever been broadcast is on disc somewhere, but there are a few things out there that can't be found, no matter how much you dig. Thankfully the internet can be a wonderful thing and there are people out there who not only recorded things, but managed to keep them all these years. With the help of YouTube those long lost videos are now watchable again. Now I know that there are DVR units that let you record your favorite shows and movies. Most of the time though these are rented or leased from the cable company and when you move you have to return them. So you never really get to keep what you recorded the same way you did with those old VHS tapes. It's only now that they're starting to release hard drives that not only let you record from your DVR, but let's you save it in a way that means it's yours. It's funny that it took them over twenty years to replicate what could be done on VHS from the start.
A long time ago in a frontier far, far away we only had a couple television channels and weirdly enough, HBO. So the only way to watch a movie back then was if it happened to come onto one of the three channels we had. Then one day we heard about this magical invention called the VCR. My parents bought one and were immediately presented with the fact that we owned no movies to actually watch. Our next door neighbor came over and dumped out a box of movies on the couch. It was like movie Christmas. Apparently all those movies that were broadcast at random intervals on the various stations had been captured on video cassette and could be watched whenever you wanted. Also seemingly overnight there were things called video stores just up the road. I remember going with my dad out on a trek to find something to watch. Back then the selection was still somewhat small and guarded. Eventually we found something to watch and headed home to view it. It was an amazing thing. Not only could you watch the movie whenever you wanted, you weren't bound to your seat for the entire thing. You could rewind, fast forward, or even pause the action at any point. For me it was as an huge moment in movies, rivaling what it must have been like when The Beatles arrived in America for music lovers.
The appeal of watching movies whenever you wanted never really wore off, but the video tape uses started to change from simply having a set movie on it. There were blank tapes out there that let you record your own movies. Now camcorders had been around for awhile in different forms. It was never really a technology that my family embraced. We were more of a standard camera crowd and as such I'm fairly certain that there are no home movies of my childhood sitting in a box somewhere. There are a ton of pictures though. Both my mom and I realized fairly quickly that while it was great to watch the latest movie on VHS, there were things still on television that we wanted to watch a second time. Things that weren't always available on tape. Today you can find nearly any television series on DVD. Even those shows that were cancelled usually have enough fans that the studio puts out the entire thing in a nice package so you can enjoy it one more time. So in addition to owning our favorite movies we started buying blank tapes so that we could record whatever we wanted.
I come from a cold, dark place and a majority of the year it's not very fun to be outside. So it was necessary to make your own fun and if you couldn't make fun, then you needed to be entertained. We had a large selection of movies to choose from and an even bigger selection of randomly recorded shows. Looking back I have fond memories of opening up the bottom drawer under the television and scrounging around looking for a tape that had a show I remember recording. Sure they were labeled, but after awhile things got recorded over and mixed up. My mom had nearly every episode of the PBS Sherlock Holmes series and to this day watching it is like comfort food. With time the VCR got to be more complex and allowed you to set timers and pause for commercials, but I still remember watching a television show with my hand on the remote control, just waiting for the commercial to come so I could press pause. Watching those tapes later you could see when someone wasn't quite ready for the show's return and the action came back with a hard cut. Those video tapes were a lot like vinyl records, each one had its own pops and scratches that just added to the music. Today's DVDs are so crisp and detailed that it's great for preserving the actual movie, but often doesn't have the same amount of personality that a recorded VHS tape would have.
As I got older I went to work for the local video store. My first job there was to clean the shelves and rearrange the movies. Most people would think this was tedious work, but it was great for me. I literally touched every single movie in the store. I saw every piece of cover art. Read the back description of even the lowest budget B movie out there. I was in charge of all the movies on the shelf, even if I wasn't the manager. VHS movies were a big deal in my town. As I mentioned, it was cold a lot of the time so people didn't have a whole lot of options when it came to their entertainment. When new movies would come out there would be people waiting at the door so they would be the first to rent them. Come Friday afternoon it was something of a mob scene as people tried to get the new releases before anyone else. On the weekend my primary job was to restock the movies on the shelves. People would return the movies, we'd check them in, and they'd get stacked up behind the counter. It was my job to take that stack of movies and put them back out for people to rent. Imagine carrying about fifteen movies with both hands and having people surround you trying to not only read the titles you're carrying, but also pull from the stack. Many times there would be a waiting list for the most popular movies and those wouldn't even make it back to the shelf until after the weekend.
I love my DVD player. I love my Netflix instant queue even more. As I said before, most everything that's ever been broadcast is on disc somewhere, but there are a few things out there that can't be found, no matter how much you dig. Thankfully the internet can be a wonderful thing and there are people out there who not only recorded things, but managed to keep them all these years. With the help of YouTube those long lost videos are now watchable again. Now I know that there are DVR units that let you record your favorite shows and movies. Most of the time though these are rented or leased from the cable company and when you move you have to return them. So you never really get to keep what you recorded the same way you did with those old VHS tapes. It's only now that they're starting to release hard drives that not only let you record from your DVR, but let's you save it in a way that means it's yours. It's funny that it took them over twenty years to replicate what could be done on VHS from the start.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
On the Way
There is a saying "The universe will always meet you halfway." Another is "God will never give you more than you can handle." Both of those indicate that no matter how bad or tough things get, that you'll find a way to get through them, if you put forth the effort. A cynical person could take those sayings and respond with several examples of how the world is a cruel place and no matter how much effort you put in, you'll just get crushed by life. I'm not going to deny that it happens more than we would like, but I have to wonder though if there are factors at work that we can't always see. Considering we don't fully understand the complexity of our own planet, it's hard to imagine that we would grasp the entirety of what's at work throughout the universe. Now when I say the universe I don't just mean the vast open space that's out there, although it's probably a part of it. Instead I mean more of everything everywhere all the time, which can be kind of mind blowing if you try to think about it too hard. Ultimately it could all come down to the various forms of energy that are out there, each one influencing the other.
Now I'm something of a dreamer, but at the same time I'm torn by practicality. I know there are things out there that I don't understand. They could be classified as paranormal or new age or pseudoscience. Some of it may be so far out there that to most people they'd simply call it magic. As I've said before, magic is just science that we don't yet understand. If you were to show da Vinci a color television he'd have no idea what he was looking at. He wouldn't know anything about electricity or transistors, much less life-like moving images transmitted from somewhere else. At first he wouldn't even know where to start in order to begin to understand what was in front of him. It could take years of study for him to start to comprehend the very idea of television. That's taking one of the most brilliant minds of his time, now imagine showing someone who wasn't nearly as intellectual. Would they simply run away screaming from what appears to be some magical device? I would have to imagine that at every moment in human history we're at that point. No matter how far advanced we think we are, there is always some next step. Some new discovery on the horizon. Something out there is beyond our understanding and could be so far away from our comprehension that we dismiss it. It could be that we do this until we finally reach a point where we're meant to understand it.
It can be very easy to mistake coincidence for fate and the other way around. A practical (or cynical) person could chalk up every experience to just the result of random events colliding with each other. Sometimes things may seem like they were done with some kind of design in mind, but that's only because mathematically it was bound to happen at some point and we shouldn't take it for anything more than happenstance. Others see connections everywhere. No event or detail is too small to fit into some grand plan. Everything potentially means something. Both are extremes and I have a feeling that reality is closer to the middle. There are probably random occurrences that result in happy coincidence. Then there are also series of events that could only exist because of everything surrounding them had to happen a certain way. Those could be seen more as fate rather than just a perfect storm of random events. I guess it all depends on your general outlook of the universe.
Something I've noticed though is that things do tend to happen for a reason, even if that reason is a mystery to us. Christians would say how it's part of God's mysterious plan. They could be right. If things are happening for a reason and there is an overall grand scheme at work then how could be possibly understand what's happening or why? We can only see our portion of it. Us trying to see the big picture from our own perspective would be like trying to determine the plot of a novel from a single letter on a random page. Now don't get me wrong, I still believe there are coincidences. It's bound to happen given all the moving parts. How can we tell which is which though? Just the other day I was trying to remember the name of a field back home. Geese are known to flock to this field at certain times of the year. It wasn't a big deal that I remember it and if I really wanted to it would have taken a few minutes on Google to figure it out. Instead I just left it and went about my life. The next day I was talking to my brother and with no prompting he mentioned the name of the field that I had been trying to remember. One could argue he would have said it regardless of if I needed to know its name. Another could say that I put the question out there and got my answer, even though I had forgotten about asking in the first place. Could it be that's how things work in the universe? That's just a small example of how something could be coincidence or fate. I'm sure there are people out there who have experienced events that could be argued either way. If something as simple as the name of a field is given out in unpredictable ways then what does that say about other aspects of our lives?
Now I'm something of a dreamer, but at the same time I'm torn by practicality. I know there are things out there that I don't understand. They could be classified as paranormal or new age or pseudoscience. Some of it may be so far out there that to most people they'd simply call it magic. As I've said before, magic is just science that we don't yet understand. If you were to show da Vinci a color television he'd have no idea what he was looking at. He wouldn't know anything about electricity or transistors, much less life-like moving images transmitted from somewhere else. At first he wouldn't even know where to start in order to begin to understand what was in front of him. It could take years of study for him to start to comprehend the very idea of television. That's taking one of the most brilliant minds of his time, now imagine showing someone who wasn't nearly as intellectual. Would they simply run away screaming from what appears to be some magical device? I would have to imagine that at every moment in human history we're at that point. No matter how far advanced we think we are, there is always some next step. Some new discovery on the horizon. Something out there is beyond our understanding and could be so far away from our comprehension that we dismiss it. It could be that we do this until we finally reach a point where we're meant to understand it.
It can be very easy to mistake coincidence for fate and the other way around. A practical (or cynical) person could chalk up every experience to just the result of random events colliding with each other. Sometimes things may seem like they were done with some kind of design in mind, but that's only because mathematically it was bound to happen at some point and we shouldn't take it for anything more than happenstance. Others see connections everywhere. No event or detail is too small to fit into some grand plan. Everything potentially means something. Both are extremes and I have a feeling that reality is closer to the middle. There are probably random occurrences that result in happy coincidence. Then there are also series of events that could only exist because of everything surrounding them had to happen a certain way. Those could be seen more as fate rather than just a perfect storm of random events. I guess it all depends on your general outlook of the universe.
Something I've noticed though is that things do tend to happen for a reason, even if that reason is a mystery to us. Christians would say how it's part of God's mysterious plan. They could be right. If things are happening for a reason and there is an overall grand scheme at work then how could be possibly understand what's happening or why? We can only see our portion of it. Us trying to see the big picture from our own perspective would be like trying to determine the plot of a novel from a single letter on a random page. Now don't get me wrong, I still believe there are coincidences. It's bound to happen given all the moving parts. How can we tell which is which though? Just the other day I was trying to remember the name of a field back home. Geese are known to flock to this field at certain times of the year. It wasn't a big deal that I remember it and if I really wanted to it would have taken a few minutes on Google to figure it out. Instead I just left it and went about my life. The next day I was talking to my brother and with no prompting he mentioned the name of the field that I had been trying to remember. One could argue he would have said it regardless of if I needed to know its name. Another could say that I put the question out there and got my answer, even though I had forgotten about asking in the first place. Could it be that's how things work in the universe? That's just a small example of how something could be coincidence or fate. I'm sure there are people out there who have experienced events that could be argued either way. If something as simple as the name of a field is given out in unpredictable ways then what does that say about other aspects of our lives?
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Thursday, January 13, 2011
On Knowing
The one thing about knowledge is that no matter how much you think you know, there is always something out there that you don't. About three years ago I was in a job where I felt like I was finally had it all figured out. There were few surprises and I had become something of an expert in my area. Sure there were things I didn't know, but I was at a point where I knew most everything I needed to in order to do my job effectively. It was very comforting to be in that position. At the same time though it felt like maybe I had peaked and there was nothing else for me learn, or at least nothing else I wanted to learn. It reminded me of what Phil said about God; "Maybe he's not omnipotent. He's just been around so long he knows everything." For some people when they get to that spot in their life or career they feel like they've arrived. It's what a lot of people are working towards. There is some sense that eventually you'll get to a point where your knowledge about a particular thing is complete. There is something known as the Dunning-Kruger effect, which recognizes the fact that the more you learn about a subject, the less likely you are to consider yourself an expert because you have actual knowledge of how much you don't know.
In the technical world one of the last things you want is to have your knowledge plateau. The moment you stop learning new things is when you start becoming irrelevant. It may take a long time before anyone, including yourself, notices this fact, but by the time you do it may be too late to do anything about it because you'll spend so much effort trying to catch up. I guess if you think about it, the same is probably true for other areas outside the technical world. So once I reached the level of what felt like expert I started to look around for something else so that I could keep that eventuality of being out of touch away a little bit longer. In the past three years I returned to college and learned about a whole different area that I had only briefly touched on before. I wasn't exactly out of my element, but it had been nearly ten years since I was last in any kind of formal schooling. After that I had three different jobs, each one forcing me to admit that despite any knowledge or education that I have, I still knew next to nothing regarding the actual work involved. I am now the opposite of an expert.
It can be very frustrating not knowing something. It's even more frustrating to have forgotten something you once knew. Where does all our knowledge go? You know how they say you never really forget how to ride a bike? Your body just remembers because it was such a complex array of movements that your muscles retained the memory of it. So even if you haven't ridden a bicycle in a couple decades you'll still have the ability to hop on and peddle away, maybe a bit wobbly at first, but it would come back to you pretty quickly. It would take something drastic for you to lose that knowledge completely. If that's true for something like riding a bike then would that mean while we may forget something we learned a long time ago our body physically retains the knowledge somehow? If everything I've learned is somehow stored in my cells then is it possible for that knowledge to be passed along to the next generation? If eye color or height can be influenced by our parents then what's preventing our cellular knowledge from being given to our children? Or more importantly, what can we do to access that information? You may have heard the story about the experiment where a flatworm is sent through a maze until it knows its way. That worm is ground up and fed to another flatworm. This new flatworm is able to navigate the maze much easier, indicating that information may have some kind of physical component to it. Granted flatworms are a very simple organism compared to a person, but I have a feeling scientists are looking at the general idea that knowledge and experience is stored inside in ways we don't fully understand.
There is a somewhat scary aspect to what we learn though. Our bodies are fairly fragile when you think about it. While we can take a lot of punishment at times, often it takes only a single event or trauma that could change everything. People with head injuries have had to relearn everything over again, including how to walk. It seems to run contrary to the idea of muscle memory. The way I look at it though is imagine if all the information in your brain where a library and your brain had the index to where everything was stored. That index get damaged and the information doesn't necessarily go away, but you've lost the ability to efficiently access it. Your first kiss is out there somewhere, but you may never find it again. In a sense that type of injury could disconnect our ability to access muscle memory. The idea that something like that could happen makes our knowledge even more precious.
It's entirely possible that everything we've experienced has been recorded by our brain and stored somewhere. It's been said that we only use a fraction of our brain. This isn't entirely true though. We use all of our brain, but we don't all use it as efficiently as we could. Plus we don't fully comprehend how information is stored and retrieved or if there is a limit to our storage capacity for new information. The physical aspect of our bodies break down before we can really test the limits of what our brains could do given enough time. Some day though we may be able to access anything that we've experienced with total recall. If we are able to have that kind of clarity regarding the past, imagine what it would do for our future.
In the technical world one of the last things you want is to have your knowledge plateau. The moment you stop learning new things is when you start becoming irrelevant. It may take a long time before anyone, including yourself, notices this fact, but by the time you do it may be too late to do anything about it because you'll spend so much effort trying to catch up. I guess if you think about it, the same is probably true for other areas outside the technical world. So once I reached the level of what felt like expert I started to look around for something else so that I could keep that eventuality of being out of touch away a little bit longer. In the past three years I returned to college and learned about a whole different area that I had only briefly touched on before. I wasn't exactly out of my element, but it had been nearly ten years since I was last in any kind of formal schooling. After that I had three different jobs, each one forcing me to admit that despite any knowledge or education that I have, I still knew next to nothing regarding the actual work involved. I am now the opposite of an expert.
It can be very frustrating not knowing something. It's even more frustrating to have forgotten something you once knew. Where does all our knowledge go? You know how they say you never really forget how to ride a bike? Your body just remembers because it was such a complex array of movements that your muscles retained the memory of it. So even if you haven't ridden a bicycle in a couple decades you'll still have the ability to hop on and peddle away, maybe a bit wobbly at first, but it would come back to you pretty quickly. It would take something drastic for you to lose that knowledge completely. If that's true for something like riding a bike then would that mean while we may forget something we learned a long time ago our body physically retains the knowledge somehow? If everything I've learned is somehow stored in my cells then is it possible for that knowledge to be passed along to the next generation? If eye color or height can be influenced by our parents then what's preventing our cellular knowledge from being given to our children? Or more importantly, what can we do to access that information? You may have heard the story about the experiment where a flatworm is sent through a maze until it knows its way. That worm is ground up and fed to another flatworm. This new flatworm is able to navigate the maze much easier, indicating that information may have some kind of physical component to it. Granted flatworms are a very simple organism compared to a person, but I have a feeling scientists are looking at the general idea that knowledge and experience is stored inside in ways we don't fully understand.
There is a somewhat scary aspect to what we learn though. Our bodies are fairly fragile when you think about it. While we can take a lot of punishment at times, often it takes only a single event or trauma that could change everything. People with head injuries have had to relearn everything over again, including how to walk. It seems to run contrary to the idea of muscle memory. The way I look at it though is imagine if all the information in your brain where a library and your brain had the index to where everything was stored. That index get damaged and the information doesn't necessarily go away, but you've lost the ability to efficiently access it. Your first kiss is out there somewhere, but you may never find it again. In a sense that type of injury could disconnect our ability to access muscle memory. The idea that something like that could happen makes our knowledge even more precious.
It's entirely possible that everything we've experienced has been recorded by our brain and stored somewhere. It's been said that we only use a fraction of our brain. This isn't entirely true though. We use all of our brain, but we don't all use it as efficiently as we could. Plus we don't fully comprehend how information is stored and retrieved or if there is a limit to our storage capacity for new information. The physical aspect of our bodies break down before we can really test the limits of what our brains could do given enough time. Some day though we may be able to access anything that we've experienced with total recall. If we are able to have that kind of clarity regarding the past, imagine what it would do for our future.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
On The Weight of the World
Everywhere we look it seems as though the world is filled with apathy. It's not exactly a new thing, but more and more people are separating themselves from everyone else because often times the world is just so overwhelming that it's easier to filter everything. I was watching a television show online so the commercials were limited. During the course of two hours though I was shown that people in third world nations desperately need prosthetic limbs, people everywhere are starving, that majority of Africa is unemployed and wants to work, and autism seems to be on the rise. Now granted among those messages there were commercials for turbo boosted sport utility vehicles and upcoming movies. It seems almost ludicrous that you can have a message about an entire continent that's desperately trying to make enough money to feed itself followed by an ad for a luxury car that had a blu-ray player built in. I'm not saying it's wrong for people to have or want luxury cars, but it kind of forces you have some perspective about the world in general. Then again, most people see either and they immediately tune it out.
Remember what it was like as a kid when there were situations that were just so exciting that you couldn't take it? Or if you have kids today there are those moments when you see them getting so wound up that the crash is going to be ugly. There are times when so much is going on that we simply can't process it all. We try to, but more often than not we reach our breaking point before we're ready to admit it. The thing is that same thing can happen to us as adults. It would be easy to allow the world to overwhelm us with all that's going on. Sure there are a seemingly endless stream of negative things coming at us. On the flip side though there are so many good things out there too that we'd use up all our energy if we tried to keep up with them all. In order to protect ourselves from this onslaught we have to close our eyes to most of it, even if it means turning away from things that we could make a difference in.
I think part of the reason politics are so charged is because they often try to find an issue that cause an immediate reaction. That way people will focus on a singular issue with emotion rather than always with reason. A rational person would understand that any issue has more than one side. Also there may be more than one solution to any given problem. Some politicians feel it's easier to gather support for their view by simply pushing that button rather than digging deeper. And they know that certain things are more important than others. Talk to a group of people who are retired or nearing retirement and mention Social Security in order to get their attention. Want to polarize a group of people against another group of people you just have to focus on something they feel strongly about and heighten the differences between them and their opposition. I personally think everyone should be concerned with education in this country. There are people who don't have kids who couldn't care less about what happens with teacher salary, test scores, or arts in the schools. For them they are more concerned with property taxes or what the government is doing about air quality. Those are legitimate concerns, but it's hard to make them realize that education affects them regardless of if they have kids or not. Guess who is going to be running the country in twenty years? Those same people that had underpaid teachers or standards so low that you'd trip over them. On the other side you may have a teacher who can't be bothered to question why her local government doesn't have a recycling station within fifty miles of their home.
In the computer world there is a thing called processing power, which is essentially the amount of information that can be handled by the computer at any given time. It has a limit and you can't exceed it. If you try then something will have to be put aside for something else. Our minds are very similar in that regard. A person can only concern themselves with so much before it all becomes so overwhelming that either they shut down or something has to be removed from the equation. The thing is no matter how good or bad your life is, we all have problems. When compared to another person they may seem massive or trivial, but they are our problems. Add to our own problems those of our loved ones. You could take on the concerns of your significant other or children or siblings. Once you have all that add on those other outside issues that concern you. Millions of chickens are being slaughtered for our consumption and yet the food we eat is becoming so processed that one has to wonder what we're really eating at this point. Gasoline prices are rising rapidly and no one seems to have a clear grasp on a reasonable alternative, meaning that within the next twenty years industry as we know it may either collapse or have to drastically change based on new needs. Medical care in this country is becoming so expensive and depersonalized that it's easy to imagine that no matter how well off you are now, it would only take a prolonged illness to wipe out everything you've worked for so that you could be forced to chose between paying for medication or food. For someone each of those issues is very important and that's only an example of what's out there. So it becomes easy to see how apathy takes hold. As Somerset said "Apathy is the solution. I mean, it's easier to lose yourself in drugs than it is to cope with life. It's easier to steal what you want than it is to earn it. It's easier to beat a child than it is to raise it. Hell, love costs: it takes effort and work."
So how do we not close ourselves to the world and at the same time not open ourselves up so much that we lose ourselves instead? Maybe life is a lot like the salad buffet, where you pick and choose the things that are most important to you and hope that while you're fighting for the cure to cancer that someone else is fighting just as hard for clean air. No single one of us can fix everything and that often leads us to believe that the problems are too big for us to even look at. I know that if I throw away a plastic bottle rather than recycle it, it's not going to make or break the planet. I know that my vote may not decide who the next President is. That doesn't mean I should just throw my hands in the air and say that nothing I do matters because I'm such a small part of a larger world. I may not be able to fix the world's problems on my own, but when we stop trying and only care about ourselves then we've truly failed and given into the weight of the world.
Remember what it was like as a kid when there were situations that were just so exciting that you couldn't take it? Or if you have kids today there are those moments when you see them getting so wound up that the crash is going to be ugly. There are times when so much is going on that we simply can't process it all. We try to, but more often than not we reach our breaking point before we're ready to admit it. The thing is that same thing can happen to us as adults. It would be easy to allow the world to overwhelm us with all that's going on. Sure there are a seemingly endless stream of negative things coming at us. On the flip side though there are so many good things out there too that we'd use up all our energy if we tried to keep up with them all. In order to protect ourselves from this onslaught we have to close our eyes to most of it, even if it means turning away from things that we could make a difference in.
I think part of the reason politics are so charged is because they often try to find an issue that cause an immediate reaction. That way people will focus on a singular issue with emotion rather than always with reason. A rational person would understand that any issue has more than one side. Also there may be more than one solution to any given problem. Some politicians feel it's easier to gather support for their view by simply pushing that button rather than digging deeper. And they know that certain things are more important than others. Talk to a group of people who are retired or nearing retirement and mention Social Security in order to get their attention. Want to polarize a group of people against another group of people you just have to focus on something they feel strongly about and heighten the differences between them and their opposition. I personally think everyone should be concerned with education in this country. There are people who don't have kids who couldn't care less about what happens with teacher salary, test scores, or arts in the schools. For them they are more concerned with property taxes or what the government is doing about air quality. Those are legitimate concerns, but it's hard to make them realize that education affects them regardless of if they have kids or not. Guess who is going to be running the country in twenty years? Those same people that had underpaid teachers or standards so low that you'd trip over them. On the other side you may have a teacher who can't be bothered to question why her local government doesn't have a recycling station within fifty miles of their home.
In the computer world there is a thing called processing power, which is essentially the amount of information that can be handled by the computer at any given time. It has a limit and you can't exceed it. If you try then something will have to be put aside for something else. Our minds are very similar in that regard. A person can only concern themselves with so much before it all becomes so overwhelming that either they shut down or something has to be removed from the equation. The thing is no matter how good or bad your life is, we all have problems. When compared to another person they may seem massive or trivial, but they are our problems. Add to our own problems those of our loved ones. You could take on the concerns of your significant other or children or siblings. Once you have all that add on those other outside issues that concern you. Millions of chickens are being slaughtered for our consumption and yet the food we eat is becoming so processed that one has to wonder what we're really eating at this point. Gasoline prices are rising rapidly and no one seems to have a clear grasp on a reasonable alternative, meaning that within the next twenty years industry as we know it may either collapse or have to drastically change based on new needs. Medical care in this country is becoming so expensive and depersonalized that it's easy to imagine that no matter how well off you are now, it would only take a prolonged illness to wipe out everything you've worked for so that you could be forced to chose between paying for medication or food. For someone each of those issues is very important and that's only an example of what's out there. So it becomes easy to see how apathy takes hold. As Somerset said "Apathy is the solution. I mean, it's easier to lose yourself in drugs than it is to cope with life. It's easier to steal what you want than it is to earn it. It's easier to beat a child than it is to raise it. Hell, love costs: it takes effort and work."
So how do we not close ourselves to the world and at the same time not open ourselves up so much that we lose ourselves instead? Maybe life is a lot like the salad buffet, where you pick and choose the things that are most important to you and hope that while you're fighting for the cure to cancer that someone else is fighting just as hard for clean air. No single one of us can fix everything and that often leads us to believe that the problems are too big for us to even look at. I know that if I throw away a plastic bottle rather than recycle it, it's not going to make or break the planet. I know that my vote may not decide who the next President is. That doesn't mean I should just throw my hands in the air and say that nothing I do matters because I'm such a small part of a larger world. I may not be able to fix the world's problems on my own, but when we stop trying and only care about ourselves then we've truly failed and given into the weight of the world.
Sunday, January 9, 2011
On Quality
There is a saying "If you're going to do something. Do it right", which can be immediately countered with "Never do your best work because they will come to expect it." Quality is an interesting concept. Not everything in the world can be great. In fact it seems as though there are a great many things that only serve as a measure of how good something else is. I was thinking about Fruit Stripe gum the other day and it got me wondering about the whole idea. Did the makers of that cheap gum simply not care that their product was substandard? Maybe they thought it was good enough and stopped at that. I guess either answer just shows that people have different standards on even the smallest things.
The thing is that no one always does their best work all the time. It's an impossible standard to maintain. Sure there will be times when you get it your all and really try to make sure that there is a special quality to whatever you've put your mind to. They say the character of a person is measured by what they do when no one is looking. I believe that most people out there are generally good and if not good then simply not looking to be overtly bad. With that said most of the time though people will do what they think they can get away with. Driving down the road we know what the speed limit is and yet we go over. We do this and justify it in our mind because don't the cops have better things to do than chase us down for going 5-10 mph over the limit? We continue this behavior because we know that most of the time we can get away with it. That's why a car pulled over by a cop car with flashing lights is the strongest deterrent to prevent speeding. That little warning that if you're not careful then maybe it'll be you on the side of the road while people drive by staring at your embarrassment. The effort we put into things tends to be very similar. Now don't get me wrong. I'm not saying everyone out there is doing just the bare minimum, but let's be honest, if everyone put forth their best effort all the time this world may be a very different place.
What's strange about quality is that it's not always the best thing that's the most successful. Look at McDonald's or Starbucks or Coca Cola. Their products aren't superior to what's around them. They just happen to be very successful in being in the top of their class. One could argue about taste for those various companies, but a McDonald's hamburger isn't known for its great quality. While you may enjoy Starbucks coffee, there are several alternatives out there that could be labeled as "better" in price or overall taste. Somehow those companies have taken average products and skipped past quality and gone straight for quantity. They have saturated the market with whatever they're selling in hopes that no one else stands against them. There is a problem with that though. Without competition there is no need to become better. If everyone is already buying your hamburgers or sodas then why change anything for the better? Unfortunately in a lot of cases the only true form of competition comes from those who simply attempt to match the marketing blitz because that's what we as a society have shown we respond to. So it's hard to blame the large companies for glossing over their quality when we've shown that we don't really care one way or another. Sure we say that we what better quality, but the line to the drive-thru is always crowded.
Now I know that with today's modern family it's getting harder to simply take time for really anything. The world always feels like it's blasting forward and if you're not running at top speed you're not just going to get left behind, but you're going to get run over in the process. Mom and dad are both working and by the time they get home from a day in the world there may be very little energy left to do something like cook a full meal for the family. Instead it just becomes easier to pick up our phone and dial for someone to bring us something. Or we stop by that drive-thru on the way home because it's there. We don't always have time or the energy to be concerned with the quality of something. Sometimes we just have to take what's easiest and move on. It would be easy to judge someone when they do this, but we've all been there. We know that the path of least resistance isn't always the best path. There are more and more moments in life where we put away our standards because standing up for them just seems too exhausting.
Maybe part of the whole issue comes from the fact that we as a society have put so much emphasis on everything that eventually something is going to fall through the cracks. There comes a breaking point where we ourselves stop trying as hard as we used to. It could be that the world smacked us around or maybe it simply stopped recognizing the fact that we put forth extra effort. When we look around and see that putting in 100% will get you the same reward as someone who only put in 70% it gets to be disheartening and given enough time one will eventually throttle back. Then that 70% becomes the new standard until it too drops down from overwhelming apathy. So it becomes understandable for those large companies who are successful at putting out a massive amount of low quality goods. They wouldn't keep making money if our own standards were raised. I guess the question is though how do we raise our standards when sometimes it feels like success is measured by the fact that you simply survived to the weekend?
The thing is that no one always does their best work all the time. It's an impossible standard to maintain. Sure there will be times when you get it your all and really try to make sure that there is a special quality to whatever you've put your mind to. They say the character of a person is measured by what they do when no one is looking. I believe that most people out there are generally good and if not good then simply not looking to be overtly bad. With that said most of the time though people will do what they think they can get away with. Driving down the road we know what the speed limit is and yet we go over. We do this and justify it in our mind because don't the cops have better things to do than chase us down for going 5-10 mph over the limit? We continue this behavior because we know that most of the time we can get away with it. That's why a car pulled over by a cop car with flashing lights is the strongest deterrent to prevent speeding. That little warning that if you're not careful then maybe it'll be you on the side of the road while people drive by staring at your embarrassment. The effort we put into things tends to be very similar. Now don't get me wrong. I'm not saying everyone out there is doing just the bare minimum, but let's be honest, if everyone put forth their best effort all the time this world may be a very different place.
What's strange about quality is that it's not always the best thing that's the most successful. Look at McDonald's or Starbucks or Coca Cola. Their products aren't superior to what's around them. They just happen to be very successful in being in the top of their class. One could argue about taste for those various companies, but a McDonald's hamburger isn't known for its great quality. While you may enjoy Starbucks coffee, there are several alternatives out there that could be labeled as "better" in price or overall taste. Somehow those companies have taken average products and skipped past quality and gone straight for quantity. They have saturated the market with whatever they're selling in hopes that no one else stands against them. There is a problem with that though. Without competition there is no need to become better. If everyone is already buying your hamburgers or sodas then why change anything for the better? Unfortunately in a lot of cases the only true form of competition comes from those who simply attempt to match the marketing blitz because that's what we as a society have shown we respond to. So it's hard to blame the large companies for glossing over their quality when we've shown that we don't really care one way or another. Sure we say that we what better quality, but the line to the drive-thru is always crowded.
Now I know that with today's modern family it's getting harder to simply take time for really anything. The world always feels like it's blasting forward and if you're not running at top speed you're not just going to get left behind, but you're going to get run over in the process. Mom and dad are both working and by the time they get home from a day in the world there may be very little energy left to do something like cook a full meal for the family. Instead it just becomes easier to pick up our phone and dial for someone to bring us something. Or we stop by that drive-thru on the way home because it's there. We don't always have time or the energy to be concerned with the quality of something. Sometimes we just have to take what's easiest and move on. It would be easy to judge someone when they do this, but we've all been there. We know that the path of least resistance isn't always the best path. There are more and more moments in life where we put away our standards because standing up for them just seems too exhausting.
Maybe part of the whole issue comes from the fact that we as a society have put so much emphasis on everything that eventually something is going to fall through the cracks. There comes a breaking point where we ourselves stop trying as hard as we used to. It could be that the world smacked us around or maybe it simply stopped recognizing the fact that we put forth extra effort. When we look around and see that putting in 100% will get you the same reward as someone who only put in 70% it gets to be disheartening and given enough time one will eventually throttle back. Then that 70% becomes the new standard until it too drops down from overwhelming apathy. So it becomes understandable for those large companies who are successful at putting out a massive amount of low quality goods. They wouldn't keep making money if our own standards were raised. I guess the question is though how do we raise our standards when sometimes it feels like success is measured by the fact that you simply survived to the weekend?
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
On Movies
I love movies. I love going to the theater to see some new story being told. I love sitting at home watching a familiar movie, knowing all the lines and what comes next and somehow still manage to be entertained. It's hard for me to remember a time when I didn't love movies, if such a time ever existed. My love for movies comes from a long time ago so let's go back to the beginning.
Going to the movies was kind of a special occasion. It also had to do with the fact that the town I lived in only had one theater and that theater only had two screens. So if you wanted to go to the movies then your choices were A or B. Today you can type your address into a website and it will not only tell you all the theaters within a hundred miles, but you can also see all their showtimes. Back then you looked in the newspaper and saw the showtimes for whatever you wanted to see. That was pretty much the only option. Now I can only remember seeing a few different movies at the theater while it had just the two screens. Also there wasn't any form of pre-show entertainment like there is now. You went in and found your seat and sat in a dimly lit theater staring at that golden curtain for what seemed like forever until the movie started.
One of my favorite parts was the previews that came on before the movie started. Today there are few surprises anymore with a movie's release. At least not for me. Unless you're living under a rock, it's hard to escape the barrage of information that's out there. There are already trailers for movies not slated to be released until winter of next year. In that year there will be multiple trailers, each one showing the same stuff, only edited slightly differently to make sure they have our attention. There will be behind the scenes pictures and interviews with the director and cast. While the movie won't exactly be old news by the time it comes out, the market will have been saturated. The marketing people hope that the hype will put us into a frenzy so that we don't mind dropping $10 for a movie ticket about giant robots or a talking dog. Anyway back then a movie preview was how most people got to see what was coming out. There weren't a dozen movie sites that spent their every waking moment trying to gather as much information as possible. So the preview would be something of a surprise because in most cases you didn't see it coming. In some cases the previews for upcoming movies were as exciting as the movie you paid to see.
I honestly don't remember what the first movie I saw in the theater was. I'd like to believe it was The Empire Strikes Back, but I would have been too young to remember any of that. I do remember though my father took me to see The Fox and the Hound. It's hard to remember what prompted the whole thing, but it was just my dad and me that went to see it. For a long time that movie was my favorite Disney movie simply for the fact that my dad took me to see it in the theater. Another one of those back then things. When a movie left the theater it went into some sort of limbo because you couldn't just add it to your Netflix queue or download a copy directly to your computer. Plus with Disney movies they had a tendency to put them in what they called the Vault. I watched that movie one time in probably twenty years so all I had was the memory. A couple years after that my mom and I were riding the bus home and she dropped the bomb that we would be going to see Return of the Jedi. I nearly went out of my mind with excitement and I remember chattering away about how great it was going to be all the way home. For some reason I was told to keep it quiet from my dad. More special torture from the parents. When the time came to actually see the movie I remember being hooked from the start. I really believed that Luke was in serious trouble when he was about to walk the plank. When he flipped over the bad guy and grabbed his lightsaber I think my brain short circuited a little bit. I would be hard pressed to tell you other significant memories from that year, but that time in the theater with my mom has stayed with me for nearly thirty years. Recently I made a point to go watch the live action GI Joe movie with my brother. I knew it would be awful. He knew it would be awful. We knew this and yet we paid ticket price because we wanted to sit in the theater together and revel in its awfulness. I couldn't tell you what the plot was, but I will remember staring at the screen and groaning at the sheer stupidity of it all and enjoying it because my brother was next to me.
For me many movies are a kind of marker for my memories. I remember going to see the live action Flintstones movies with friends in high school. The reason I remember that movie is because before leaving for the theater I had asked a girl that I liked if she wanted to come along. She could meet us there if she wanted and my friends and I headed out. Along the way we changed the movie time and went to a different showing. It didn't even occur to me that I was essentially standing her up. When we finally went on our first date I remember the movie we went to see and bought it on DVD because it reminds me of that moment in time.
Movies are all about imagination. Sure movies are made to make money and hopefully entertain, but if they had to choose, it seems like they'll go with the former rather than the latter. Not every movie can be Citizen Kane. When I was in high school I worked at the local video store and got to see just how many terrible movies were put out on a weekly basis. For a long time I wondered why this was allowed. Why spend millions of dollars on a movie that's going to wind up on the bottom shelf of Action/Adventure section? Then I realized that the people involved in those movies are just like us. They need to work. If you're working in your dream job then count yourself lucky. Most people are willing to accept whatever work helps pays the bills. If you're really fortunate you'll find a job that you can be passionate about. Most of the time though you accept the role in the movie Transmorphers 3: Revenge of the Changebots, just so you can say you're a working actor. They star in those movies in hopes that someone will notice them. It happened on the set of Leprechaun for one actress and she's gotten pretty famous since that terrible low budget movie. So while I still won't watch most of the movies that are released, I at least understand why they're being made.
Right now things are in kind of a transition period for movies. Much like what happened with music, it's becoming easier for people to get things directly rather than having to go out and find them. If you wanted to hear a new song by a band you liked, you listened to the radio or you bought their album. Sure someone could make a tape for you, but that was about it. These days you could ask ten people when they bought their last CD and a good portion of them would probably say they don't remember. That doesn't mean their music listening has gone down in anyway. They're just finding other ways to get to what they want without going the traditional route. Movies are starting to get into that realm as well. Today there are instant queues. There are movies being released to On-Demand services the same day they come out to theaters. Plus if you wanted you could go to your favorite torrent website and search for just about anything. Don't get me wrong, I like that we can watch trailers on our computers. We can get nearly anything on DVD. You don't even need to go to the theater anymore. You can watch everything on your computer, sometimes before it's even left the theater. For me though going to the theater is part of the experience. While I like watching a movie on my computer, it's not even close to the same feeling I get from going to the theater to see something for the first time. For me that's something I don't want to give up for the convenience of staying home.
Going to the movies was kind of a special occasion. It also had to do with the fact that the town I lived in only had one theater and that theater only had two screens. So if you wanted to go to the movies then your choices were A or B. Today you can type your address into a website and it will not only tell you all the theaters within a hundred miles, but you can also see all their showtimes. Back then you looked in the newspaper and saw the showtimes for whatever you wanted to see. That was pretty much the only option. Now I can only remember seeing a few different movies at the theater while it had just the two screens. Also there wasn't any form of pre-show entertainment like there is now. You went in and found your seat and sat in a dimly lit theater staring at that golden curtain for what seemed like forever until the movie started.
One of my favorite parts was the previews that came on before the movie started. Today there are few surprises anymore with a movie's release. At least not for me. Unless you're living under a rock, it's hard to escape the barrage of information that's out there. There are already trailers for movies not slated to be released until winter of next year. In that year there will be multiple trailers, each one showing the same stuff, only edited slightly differently to make sure they have our attention. There will be behind the scenes pictures and interviews with the director and cast. While the movie won't exactly be old news by the time it comes out, the market will have been saturated. The marketing people hope that the hype will put us into a frenzy so that we don't mind dropping $10 for a movie ticket about giant robots or a talking dog. Anyway back then a movie preview was how most people got to see what was coming out. There weren't a dozen movie sites that spent their every waking moment trying to gather as much information as possible. So the preview would be something of a surprise because in most cases you didn't see it coming. In some cases the previews for upcoming movies were as exciting as the movie you paid to see.
I honestly don't remember what the first movie I saw in the theater was. I'd like to believe it was The Empire Strikes Back, but I would have been too young to remember any of that. I do remember though my father took me to see The Fox and the Hound. It's hard to remember what prompted the whole thing, but it was just my dad and me that went to see it. For a long time that movie was my favorite Disney movie simply for the fact that my dad took me to see it in the theater. Another one of those back then things. When a movie left the theater it went into some sort of limbo because you couldn't just add it to your Netflix queue or download a copy directly to your computer. Plus with Disney movies they had a tendency to put them in what they called the Vault. I watched that movie one time in probably twenty years so all I had was the memory. A couple years after that my mom and I were riding the bus home and she dropped the bomb that we would be going to see Return of the Jedi. I nearly went out of my mind with excitement and I remember chattering away about how great it was going to be all the way home. For some reason I was told to keep it quiet from my dad. More special torture from the parents. When the time came to actually see the movie I remember being hooked from the start. I really believed that Luke was in serious trouble when he was about to walk the plank. When he flipped over the bad guy and grabbed his lightsaber I think my brain short circuited a little bit. I would be hard pressed to tell you other significant memories from that year, but that time in the theater with my mom has stayed with me for nearly thirty years. Recently I made a point to go watch the live action GI Joe movie with my brother. I knew it would be awful. He knew it would be awful. We knew this and yet we paid ticket price because we wanted to sit in the theater together and revel in its awfulness. I couldn't tell you what the plot was, but I will remember staring at the screen and groaning at the sheer stupidity of it all and enjoying it because my brother was next to me.
For me many movies are a kind of marker for my memories. I remember going to see the live action Flintstones movies with friends in high school. The reason I remember that movie is because before leaving for the theater I had asked a girl that I liked if she wanted to come along. She could meet us there if she wanted and my friends and I headed out. Along the way we changed the movie time and went to a different showing. It didn't even occur to me that I was essentially standing her up. When we finally went on our first date I remember the movie we went to see and bought it on DVD because it reminds me of that moment in time.
Movies are all about imagination. Sure movies are made to make money and hopefully entertain, but if they had to choose, it seems like they'll go with the former rather than the latter. Not every movie can be Citizen Kane. When I was in high school I worked at the local video store and got to see just how many terrible movies were put out on a weekly basis. For a long time I wondered why this was allowed. Why spend millions of dollars on a movie that's going to wind up on the bottom shelf of Action/Adventure section? Then I realized that the people involved in those movies are just like us. They need to work. If you're working in your dream job then count yourself lucky. Most people are willing to accept whatever work helps pays the bills. If you're really fortunate you'll find a job that you can be passionate about. Most of the time though you accept the role in the movie Transmorphers 3: Revenge of the Changebots, just so you can say you're a working actor. They star in those movies in hopes that someone will notice them. It happened on the set of Leprechaun for one actress and she's gotten pretty famous since that terrible low budget movie. So while I still won't watch most of the movies that are released, I at least understand why they're being made.
Right now things are in kind of a transition period for movies. Much like what happened with music, it's becoming easier for people to get things directly rather than having to go out and find them. If you wanted to hear a new song by a band you liked, you listened to the radio or you bought their album. Sure someone could make a tape for you, but that was about it. These days you could ask ten people when they bought their last CD and a good portion of them would probably say they don't remember. That doesn't mean their music listening has gone down in anyway. They're just finding other ways to get to what they want without going the traditional route. Movies are starting to get into that realm as well. Today there are instant queues. There are movies being released to On-Demand services the same day they come out to theaters. Plus if you wanted you could go to your favorite torrent website and search for just about anything. Don't get me wrong, I like that we can watch trailers on our computers. We can get nearly anything on DVD. You don't even need to go to the theater anymore. You can watch everything on your computer, sometimes before it's even left the theater. For me though going to the theater is part of the experience. While I like watching a movie on my computer, it's not even close to the same feeling I get from going to the theater to see something for the first time. For me that's something I don't want to give up for the convenience of staying home.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)