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.

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.