Niches

Quickie from OMW, then onto more post:

So, a new television network... I'm in debate with myself as to what it would be.  Like the book I'm working on, my taste is eclectic.  Would it be anime, simply good shows with fantastic stories (things like Firefly come to mind), Pagan-related, history, science...?   Our world is so diverse; it is a difficult thing to settle on only one niche.

This segues neatly into some of the thoughts I've been having recently.  The Internet is currently doing to television what television did to radio.  Beyond that however, are the cultural impacts.  Conflict - especially war - requires a Self/Other binary opposition; essentially, there has to be an Us or Them mentality.  Among the younger generations, at least in my observations from a western first-world country (certainly a limited viewpoint), this is changing.  There are still Self/Other mindsets, but, they seem to be divided along different lines than has ever come before.  People are categorizing themselves now, not on a larger national basis, but more on an individual interests basis.

To pre-counter some arguments, allow me to clarify.  Yes, people still think of themselves strongly according to their nation.  Come a national crisis, this is obvious.  The point I am making is that nation as a defining characteristic is becoming secondary.  We are, instead, hoards of individuals belonging to many, many, different groups.  

It is an obvious jump to say that this is due to technology, specifically that of interconnecting.  The Internet is the behemoth of this but one cannot discount also cell phones, world broadcast media, and widespread publishing in all forms.  Like movable type, the long-term cultural ramificaitons are worth a life-time of study and just as fogged to us as to those in the 15th century.  We are in many ways in an information Renaissance.

Writing, technology, and relevance - Part 1

I write this initially with pen and paper; the greatest technology used being a clipboard. There is something joyous and almost spiritual in writing by hand. The words take on a personality beyond their definition and context; the traits of the markings themselves convey and infer further connotations. Here, the cursive speeds up, becoming less defined and more of a straight line as thought straightens. Here, there is a mixture of styles as thoughts spatter about. Here, a 't' is not crossed, an 'i' left undotted. Misspellings, scribbles, annotations and illegibility. Handwriting can quickly become a chaotic creative cauldron we word-witches brew letters and symbols in to produce a potion of manifested, tangible, thought.

Though I know as I write this that it will be posted on-line, I find myself in a different mindset than occurs while typing and looking at a screen. There is less distraction, less extraneous tools. I feel more free to just write, knowing I'll be able to edit later as I type.

Two nights ago I had a conversation with my software engineer boyfriend about the relevance of technology to certain fields. The obvious field to come into question and under discussion was mine - writing, literature, and so forth. The technology needed for the actual work I do is minimal. Humankind has long been writing in one form or another. What was eventually brought up was less technology's relevance to the actual work and more its impact on the sharing and distribution of the work.

Faces and Feelings

Most have heard some version of the phrase "Hiding one's feelings behind one's face" - meaning to hide what is truly being felt behind a facade, a (usually) fake exterior. I am more interested in the reverse of this idea - that of hiding one's face behind one's feelings.

One's face is more than what one presents to the world. You can, as said in Bye, Bye Birdie, "put on a happy face" but our culture recognizes that a face put on is not the real person. There are phrases such as "he showed his true face" or the obvious "two-faced" insult that implies that neither face is real. One's face, one's true face, is, simply, who one is.

In this era of personal webpages, instant fame with youtube, and, of course, Facebook, there are snippets of identity available at every click. (On a side note, don't ask if I'm on Facebook - I'm not. This is as close as I get.) Employers, co-workers, that blind date on Saturday night - people are using these technological resources to, in theory, find out who the person they are interested in 'really' is. The frightful aspect of all this is the idea that one's "face-value," that is, the face presented online, is becoming the basis for judgements made about the reality and identity of one's self by others. The false or incomplete face is being seen as real.

So, there's the scary set-up. Now, how does this relate to hiding one's face behind one's feelings? (For that matter, what exactly do I mean by that phrase?)

Who one is, the core self, is a deeper thing than can be explored in one entry. However, I will say this - I do not think that we are defined by our feelings. Not our emotions, not our passions, not our regrets. Our experiences, yes, our reactions, yes, our self-spirit, yes but there is a difference between these things and our feelings. For example, I have a passion for writing. I love it, I love every aspect of it - even the hair-pulling, banging-head-on-desk ones. But, does this passion define me? No, or at least, only on the surface. Deeper than, and driving, the passion for writing is the need to express myself, to create and react to all that is around me. This need does not have the burning of a passion or the fluidity of a feeling - it is simply a part of me, like the need to breathe or the ability to think. However, this core part of my self is in a way hidden by my passion for writing - in this way, I am hiding my face behind my feelings. In this same manner we cannot define others simply by what we see - and thusly may never be able to define another person. The person who gets angry at a mess left for them to clean up is not defined by that anger (even if it happens constantly.) Rather, perhaps hir is defined by the deeper sense of a need for order and organization. The way the mind works, the structured or chaotic or twisted thinking within it, seems to be what defines a person far more than feelings. People who feel the need for order will show that in more than just anger or exasperation at a mess. It will come through in their habits, their hobbies, their work choice, and so forth. In this way, their "tidiness" etc cannot define them because the root of that tidiness (or anger or whatever) is something else entirely.

In this, we find that we can only judge or know people empirically, by the symptoms they show of who they are.

Elusive and Lasting

It's July 4th and I cannot help but reflecting on life's elusivity and lastingness. As an American, I recognize the sacrifices that went into and still go into keeping the right of choice for citizens. Each human life - from those given in 1776 to those in 2008 both lost and still in the fight - is but cosmically inconsequential. Yet, to use a slightly cliched but ever-apt metaphor, we are all the cause of ripples in the pond.

The war in Iraq is a topic that is unique. It has been overly-discussed and yet still has the ability to generate discussion and strife. People are asking questions such as: "What are we really fighting for anyway?" "How did this happen?" and "What is this doing to us - as people, as a nation?" We are all too close to the situation and time to answer these questions. Perhaps one day, in my children's or my grandchildren's history books, the answers will emerge. Or maybe, more likely, there will be many answers - some conflicting - depending on who is writing the history books.

It is said that one person can make a difference in this world, despite being one of billions. Certainly there have been figures in history that seem to validate this idea - Socrates, Descartes, Einstein, Jefferson, Franklin, Tesla, and so on. Yet I have to wonder if, due to the sheer volume of minds that have existed, there is not a kind of inevitably to progress. Study the history of science or literature and you see that breakthroughs in thought and technology tend to come in waves, often with many reaching - individually - the same or similar conclusions around the same time period.

This is not to say that there is no point to individual human lives or to promote a sort of fatalism. We are all our own universes, each of us a unique culmination of our time and experiences that will never happen again. Every life is one of a kind - amusingly, it is difference that creates the only universal sameness across culture and time. We all influence each other - short and long term - and we all contribute to what will influence those that come after us. In this we are all both, invariably, immortal and brief.