THE GADGET FILES

The Agnostic

2011-06-01T19:27:00.001-07:00

Ironically, it is the agnostic that is of the greatest faith. He is able to thoughtfully suspend his fear of eternal damnation amidst a sea of appeals to it and trust that the universe will assist him in his spiritual welfare rather than force him to blindly back a horse (ie dogmatically follow a set of religious practices) for fear of retribution. As a consequence, he is forced to remain open to all members of the human family and to weigh out the matters of the heart. Only an agnostic will see blindness where others see devotion. The greater the doubt, the greater the faith.

Property Rights and the Contemplative Life

2010-08-18T02:52:00.000-07:00

(UPDATED: 5/10/11)

Along with the American constitutional guarantee of natural rights, prior to them in fact, came the exported concept of property rights. This is an immensely important concept which is the foundation to which we dedicate the whole of our working lives; that is, acquiring property, of which currency is the medium of exchange for things like food, shelter, transportation, etc. It is also the basis of almost any law imaginable. A sex crime is a violation of consent to give to another the property of one’s own body. Murder and violence are also violations toward the property of another’s body. Theft is obvious. It starts with the foundation of “I own myself”; that is, I exercise sole control over my own body. I then have the power to make contracts, which means, by extension, I exercise sole control over things contractually obligated to me.

In this distinction, however, property rights mocks or declares irrelevant any pure unitary process of the soul. This is because in the statement “I own my body” we are henceforth manifesting an unbridgeable separation between us and everybody and everything else in this world. Anybody who despairs in the search for equality, or even fraternity and community, should have to look no further than property and its ensuing rights systems as the plank in everybody's eyes.

For what did our forefathers, or should I say Jefferson, include the phrase in the Declaration, “all men are created equal”? Certainly men are not equal in property, they are not equal in social stature, they are not equal in size, strength, or even mind.

Perhaps it was that we are all equal in our ability to assume control over our lives, our property, our mind, and our person. But this still leaves out of consideration the many pitfalls of the concept of property. Forgiveness please extend me if I don’t address all of them, as there are many.

(It should be noted that the phrase “...endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights: that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” almost read “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Property”)

The concept of Property has carved the world into trillions of trillions of pieces. It is beginning to carve celestial bodies. It has carved into our minds certain distinctions of the innumerable Objects of our daily existence. We carve ourselves away from each other. Freedom begins to mean “freedom from one another”, “freedom of privacy”, and true freedom begins to extend only to that which is on his property, or with that which he owns. Other constitutionally mandated freedoms begin to pale in comparison with property rights. Freedom of speech, of assembly, of religion, etc becomes tied to private property and what the owner of that property will allow on his property. Senator Rand Paul even argued that one should be free to discriminate on one’s private property, a sentiment I emphatically disagree with. (This is perhaps a discussion related to the true meaning and conditional nature of a “social contract”)

Does man have an inalienable right to all that surrounds him which is not his body to make as an extension of himself?

Consider for once the alternatives. Can a mob of men come and destroy the house which you inhabit as the house you inhabit belongs to everybody equally? No, I would say. Can a mob of men come and steal one’s food, the entirety of one’s possessions because they belong equally to all? No, I would say.

So here we get to a very difficult problem caused by that of property. Is there any other way to insure the integrity of one’s own labors and his personhood which doesn’t cause bitter division and an overly alienated populace? I cannot reasonably put forth a call to abolish Property Rights.

Perhaps the Founders meant equality to mean the equality in each man’s ability to engage each other as men (to be overly PC about it: humans to engage humans, I mean ‘men’ is merely a matter of speech). That is, the boundaries of collective dialogue are not bound to title, to class, to any other artificial distinction amongst people and that the merit of one’s personhood must be evaluated at face value, not an artificially entitled one.

Americans have a tendency to view the acquisition as a measure of a man’s righteousness, shrewdness being the penultimate concern of the early settlers. Might = Right is a much malignant mantra in the vernaculars of our people, one that leads us straight back to the entitlements and the lack of candor our people fought so hard to escape from the Old World.

Does our value depend on the content of our character, or the things that we own? I propose that through the ultimacy of the value of Property Rights, our extremely expedient democracy has created a new system of class barriers and of character evaluation, which is the ownership society. It is one of the greatest dangers to our natural feeling amongst each other, it makes materialism, greed, and envy commonplace character traits amongst our citizens, it destroys our natural bonds vividly alluded to in the early Republic. Do we still have standards about what constitutes “content of character”? For the sake of us all, I certainly hope that this is so.

What I’m proposing here is that Property Rights should only be taken as an expedient value which preserves the material order of a society. A society’s moral order is the imperative to which the natural rights granted in the constitution are its protectorate. Property is never the whole of the contemplative life, and if it ever is, it is a full-on plunge into nihilism, of which ruin is the only consequence.

-Rex

Why the "Hipster" is a Deeply Troubling Phenomenon

2010-04-30T23:21:00.000-07:00

I recently came across a forum that asked, "why is the word "hipster" usually used with a negative connotation?" A lot of people defended the word, saying it's "all right to be fashionable" and that we're "catching up with Europe and Britain and Japan" in terms of not being afraid to be fashionable.

The problem is that the buck doesn't stop at "being fashionable". Here are some ways the "hipster" goes far beyond just that:

1. The Hipster demonstrates a deep insecurity and self-consciousness. There is no real sense of communal feeling, there is a general feeling of discomfiture. Everybody sizes each other up. This is because every person in the room is a threat to every other person's self-worth. Essentially, the hipster movement is an "exclusive", not an "inclusive" movement. It puts one's self-esteem or self-worth on the auction block of people's very particular tastes.

2. Hipsters demonstrate this insecurity and self-consciousness by only associating with what they feel to be close friends. This puts Hipsterdom somewhat in the category of tribalism, in that Hipsters generally close ranks to protect themselves.

3. Hipsters generally only concern themselves with entertainment and have very particular tastes which means that to get to know a Hipster means you have to exist in an extremely narrow framework. If you don't "know your shit" (which could be anything, at any time) than you are the subject of ridicule.

It's a bit like a group of people who all want to be know-it-alls, and ridicule those who don't "know" at the moment. Knowing is indeed half the battle. They may learn something along the way, but the entire time, they are sticking to their guns. It is not a gentle or open, accepting environment, but a very hostile one.

4. Hipsters take their own satisfaction with the utmost seriousness, thus filling themselves up with dissatisfaction, and thus depriving themselves of the tools to be able to honestly enjoy any given moment. Try getting into a meaningful conversation that is not dominated by name-dropping and taste-comparing that actually GETS somewhere and that displays somewhat of a real emotional connection, and you're pretty hard pressed to do so. It should also be noted that the things that hipsters seem to care about are all self-serving and facile (ENTERTAINMENT generally, at the most political or philosophical whims that go nowhere and have no degree of sincerity behind them or are used as a status symbol).

5. It is impossible for any hipster to be either authentic or honest, for to do either of these things requires one to let go of one's self-contempt. Instead, they mock their own suffering by taking on a kind of victim mentality (of society, of consumerism, of whatever they can make of it) and either cut others off point blank or try to consume their entertainment value for what they can get out of it. It is a crassness with which one treats their own life.

I'm sure some people are just really into fashion, and that's fine, but it shouldn't skew the fact that this isn't the main, or even majority, part of a hipster's ethos. It's a conscious decision, and the hipster movement is essentially people deciding to be contemptuous and to not have an inclusive or forgiving attitude, no matter how unconscious the decision is. This is why it's almost universally used in a negative connotation.

The Musician and the Audience

2010-01-25T23:30:00.000-08:00

The exchange between a musician and the audience member is a mystery to me. It is a question of utmost importance to me as a musician. It is something I can never quite pin down, never quantify, never delineate, never assume things about, and never come to a conclusion to. Partly that is because every audience is different, just like every individual is different. Every time we play is different, along with every place we play when we play it.

(.....)

I have some hard feelings on this subject. The musician and the audience both commit egregious errors on this delicate point. I will separate these comments into the musician and the audience.

AUDIENCE

You are essentially of more importance than we are in this process; that is, when the musician is trying to make a living on his art, and we must pay attention to you, but we ask for the chance to earn your respect.

That being said, we are not your whores. We are not your gigolos, we are not your pimps, we are not your jokers, or harlots, or monkeys, or home decor, or your status symbol. We are not your golden calf.

Please listen to us before you discard us. We are supposed to sound good. If it sounds good, there will be something to listen to. If it does not, then we are somewhat at fault, but try to keep an open mind.

You have the right to be unhappy with us, but try not to draw us or everybody around you into your web of discontent.

MUSICIAN

If you are trying to be a completely uncompromising artist, and you shun your audience or purposely try to put them in a difficult position, then you are setting somewhat of a difficult president for what people think about the music that people are trying to make a living off of performing.

If you continually sound sub-par, and you play in public frequently, people are going to think that the music in undesirable, or take refuge in the idea that they don't understand the music. Basically, oftentimes you might not just be turning off a potential fan of your music, but a potential fan of music, period, and this is why one must always put one's best effort forward.

The audience is your best friend until they are your worst enemy. Not the other way around.

If your audience is unhappy or unresponsive to your playing, you have to consider the possibility that you've done something wrong (you most likely have). Some places are harder than others, however. Maybe consider what kind of a position the person that hired you put you in. It might have been compromised at some point.

A bubble of energy literally can exist between musicians. Expand the bubble to include everybody in the audience as well. Don't set up a bubble where only musicians are allowed in.

You are right that audiences demand too much from you sometimes, especially when they have no attention span and they are full of contempt and boredom. Take pity on this fact when you observe it. Be careful not to take pity when you should get angry. You'll hurt yourself.

Examine seriously what the merits are of being self-righteous and elitist for yourself and don't take the positions unconsciously.

Please be professional. Old school musicians were good at that, and it made the music both extremely popular and sound very good.

The "New Nomads"

2009-05-14T08:13:00.000-07:00

quoted from Alvin Toffler's "Future Shock", published in 1970:

"Between March 1967 and March 1968 - in a single year - 36,600,000 million Americans (not counting children less than one year old) changed their place of residence. This is more than the total population of Cambodia, Ghana, Guatemala, Honduras, Iraq, Israel, Mongolia, Nicaragua, and Tunisia combined. It is as if the entire population of all these countries had suddenly been relocated. And movement on this massive scale occurs every year in the United States... Even the great migrations in history, the Mongol hordes, the westward movement of Europeans in the nineteenth century, seem puny by statistical comparison."

Barry Schwartz on the Paradox of Choice

2009-05-07T11:30:00.000-07:00

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice.html

This is a very interesting lecture that just got sent to me, I had heard about it in passing, but watching it was a real pleasure and clarified some things.

Barry's lecture is on the explosion of choice in our Western, industrialized, wealthy society. His asserted unquestioned dogma of our society is that to expand human welfare, we need greater freedom so that one can be better suited to expand their individual welfare. Therefore, a greater amount of choices available dictate a more thoroughly autonomous, and therefore "happier", society.

To spare a summation of Schwartz's point (check out his 20 minute lecture) suffice it to say that the explosion of the average Westerner's ability to choose anything from a salad dressing (he found an average of 180 salad dressings to choose from at the average supermarket!), to jeans, to gender, to sexual habits, to career choice, to a God has these very negative consequences:

1: A greater degree of expectation of satisfaction with one's choice. Because there are so many things to choose from, we expect satisfaction to a greater degree; thus, the highest degree of engagement with one's experience being the satisfaction of one's own expectations means that there is hardly any room for a "pleasant surprise". Worse still, many times (if not most of the time) things fall short of our expectations, leaving us further fundamentally dissatisfied with life. Because our own choices are our own responsibility, we can start to come down on ourselves and reinforce a negative self-image. Although this might seem trivial in respect to the choice of salad dressing, the myriad choices in life (and things to choose from) reinforce this mentality of expectation and, its twin counterpart, disappointment.

2: Intrusion of brain space. The short answer is that these constant choices start to take up larger and larger parts of your mind space. This is brilliantly (and humorously) illustrated in a cartoon in Schwartz's presentation. Three men, one at a computer, one at the golf course, and a man sleeping are all pictured. However, their thoughts are different: the man playing golf has sex on the brain, the man at the desk has golf on the brain, and the man sleeping has his computer on the brain. Our choices end up separating us from the actual present that could be experienced, rendering our real experiences meaningless. Another cartoon illustrates a New Yorker on vacation on the beach, thinking to himself "Wow with all of the New Yorkers on vacation right now, we could probably park in front of our building on Madison Avenue!"

Nothing illustrates this intrusion of choice more than the iPhone. Added to our normal choices one would have to make in your average life situation is added "I can check my email" or "I can watch TV" or "I can check my facebook" or "I can play Super Monkey Ball". These choices are like a constant tug away from the present moment. I've seen far too many times the economy with which one decides to tune out by bringing out the iPhone. Another consequence is that one's work life is constantly attached to oneself, meaning that even if the laptop, the iPhone and/or Blackberry are all turned off, the pull of the availability or need to check one's status is constant (indeed, to make yourself unavailable is actually putting you at a business risk).

3: Sacrifice of freedom. The ultimate irony is that the greater degree of freedom through the exponential expansion of choice ends up infringing upon it. Our life becomes an endless series of false dilemmas. What is freedom except the ability to think freely? If our thought space be so consumed by meaningless choices and a newly omnipresent work life, when do we get a chance to simply breathe and experience freely and completely? If we expect so much from life that we cannot appreciate the many joys and truths of its constant revelation, than for what are we living?

In the midst of Schwartz's mostly humorous anecdotes and illustrations, some sobering facts are presented. Clinical depression is at its highest its ever been, along with suicide. If "life is for the choosing" then one's life is held accountable by its choices. This means all of the unfulfilled expectations, the blowback, the loss of freedom is often taken as one's own responsibility. How can we escape it though, if we live in a world that demands that we choose one's own path, from the salad dressing all the way up to one's own God?

The good news is he's written a book by the same name on how to cope with a world that demands this much from us. Also, simply recognizing these facts can help one to come up with one's own defenses or lifestyle changes. After all, we can choose to keep our healthy spirits!

FRONTLINE, FAIR, and the Broken American Health Care System in the Lurch

2009-04-10T00:56:00.000-07:00

see http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundamerica/view/

also, see http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3757

PBS's FRONTLINE recently put out a program called Sick in America detailing just how broken the current American health care system is (mainly through personal stories of struggle through the system). FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) responded with accusations of ignoring the "single-payer system" (what most developed countries use, with a NON-PROFIT system that aims to cut administrative costs to get the lowest costs while still subsidizing the poor). This it effectively did, with the single line mention that the US is the only system that bases its coverage on a FOR-PROFIT system.

FAIR also accused FRONTLINE of silently advocating a universal FOR-PROFIT system of basic care by distorting the facts, particularly in the case of the head lobbyist for health insurance trade group America's Health Insurance Plans who stated that it would be possible for coverage to exist if all Americans were mandated to buy insurance plans, which, the narrator states, "[is what] other developed countries d0." The problem is that NONE of them mandate a FOR-PROFIT coverage system, and the film doesn't make mention of that until a single line at the end of the film. This would have been a great moment to examine what other developed countries actually DO do.

I do not think that there was any intent to distort the facts in the case of the lobbyist; however, there are some things in the documentary that were not clearly presented and / or could have contained a greater degree of perceptive commentary.

It is apparent to me that this documentary's aim was to focus on the ins and outs of the US system alone. On a personal note, it was appalling to me how unsatisfying the insurance industry's answers were to the questions put forth contrasted with the portrayal of the appalling suffering endured by those picked to tell their stories.

UNASKED QUESTIONS OF THE UNANSWERED QUESTION OF A MANDATORY, MAINLY FOR-PROFIT, COVERAGE SYSTEM

One of the main questions about a universal for-profit system is "How much coverage would be given under these mandated plans?" It seems to me that much of the documentary pointed out that actual coverage of medical costs ALWAYS appears as a LOSS on the balance sheets of for-profit insurance companies. This is why they take every pain to AVOID either paying actual costs for care or not covering potential LIABILITIES. (This also means that a human being who is sick and needs care is not a real person in crisis that needs care, but a LIABILITY on the spreadsheet of a capitalist venture; or, in the case of medical underwriting, liars who deserve to have their coverage denied, aka left for dead). The story was, in fact, largely about those who were "covered" somehow slipping through the cracks and / or the pain and uncertainty involved in making sure that you are covered in a crisis. There is simply no guarantee that a mandated plan would actually cover you, in short.

If competing for profits under a mandatory compliance system of insurance means getting a greater number of insured under the registry, that means that greater amounts of coverage would be attractive for those looking for a mandated plan (along with a mandate that the insurance company accept them). Another question is "How can a company leverage it's market-share by covering a greater number of liabilities?" Do health insurance plans that actually COVER its citizens attract too many liabilities and go under? Do they get bailouts? Aren't we rolling the dice and hoping that they also get large numbers of healthy insured to subsidize the others who need care? Wouldn't a single-payer system solve this problem of spreading the risk, and isn't it the ultimate goal of a capitalist venture to find what works best?

Clearly, there are very difficult contradictions in a for-profit insurance system with the patchwork quality of the American one. We run the danger of being mandated to participate in a system that wants simply to reap more profits rather than do their jobs, which is to provide care to Americans when they need it in times of crisis. I think that it would be more than fair to include more than one passing remark that America is the only system that relies on a for-profit system for health coverage and to explore a: the amounts of profits private insurance companies actually reap while MOST if not ALL of our citizens are under-covered, b: the amounts of lobbying to congress conducted to keep a system as broken as it is still plowing, and c: the non-profit alternatives that actually bring efficient and low-cost health coverage to its citizens without the question of whether it is either possible or necessary. This gets us closer to at least diversifying the solution pool to the massive problem of healthcare costs in America.

Perhaps there is room for a third installment of FRONTLINE's foray into the health care question that starts to frame an answer and not just present a problem without clearly making available all of the facts. Although it is widely assumed that it is journalism's job to merely "report the facts," they must realize that the way they package those facts is going to have an effect on the body of its audience. At some end point, objectivity disintegrates, and it is the amount of attention placed on diminishing that end point is which determines the objectivity of the piece.

History

2009-01-13T11:19:00.000-08:00

Attention must be paid to detail in the study of history. The challenge of history is attaining a real human, empathetic understanding and / or a greater degree of clarity in what would otherwise be a contradictory or confusing world. History encompasses far more than the socio-economic sphere because the individual who makes it always encompasses far more than that.

History is never separate from you because it belongs to you.

Thanksgiving, by Federico Garcia Lorca

2008-11-19T09:15:00.000-08:00

Thank thee dear distant
God & Father of mine
who gives me unimagined
lessons in poesis.

Oh holy, holy, holy
who does show the godly
hour of death,
unveiled, unto my soul!

Give me the dignity
this dear bird had, the rhythm
of its open wings
before the dark.

Oh holy, holy, holy
whom I ask this night to grant me
water for my eyes, & oh
thy shadow for my cry.

An African Defense for Reparations

2008-10-29T08:44:00.000-07:00

"Recalling the establishment by the Organization of African Unity of a machinery for appraising the issue of reparations in relation to the damage done to Africa and to the Diaspora by enslavement, colonialism and neo-colonialism; convinced that the issue of reparations is an important question requiring the united action of Africa and its Diaspora and worthy of the active support of the rest of the international community;

"Fully persuaded that the damage sustained by the African people is not a theory of the past but is painfully manifested from Harage to Harlem and in the damaged economies of Africa and the black world from Guinea to Guyana, from Somalia to Surinam;

"Aware of historic precedents in reparations varying from German payments of restitution to the Jews, to the question of compensating Japanese-Americans for the injustice of internment by the Roosevelt administration in the United States during World War II;

"Cognizant of the fact that compensation for injustice need not necessarily be paid entirely in capital transfer by could include service to the victims or other forms of restitution and re-adjustment of the relationship agreeable to both parties;

"Emphasizing that an admission of guilt is a necessary step to reverse this situation;

"Emphatically convinced that what matters is not the guilt but the responsibility of those states whose economic evolution once depended on slave labour and colonialism and whose forebears participated either in selling and buying Africans, or in owning them, or in colonizing them;

"Convinced that the pursuit of reparations by the African peoples on the Continent and in the Diaspora will be a learning experience in self-discovery and in uniting political and psychological experiences;

"Calls upon the international community to recognize that there is a unique and unprecedented moral debt owed to the African peoples which has yet to be paid - the debt of compensation to the Africans as the most humiliated and exploited people of the last four centuries of modern history."

-quoted from a Declaration for Restitution of African Peoples by the Organization of African Unity, April 27th, 1993, universally adopted by virtually all heads of African states

African Art in European and American Museums

2008-10-22T08:42:00.001-07:00

about a month and a half ago, i went to the menil collection in houston, tx during my evacuation for hurricane gustav. there was a very good exhibit called "neo-hoodoo" which demonstrated old colonial religious themes in modern art, specifically the survival of african religious expression through the horrors of colonialism. the exhibit, among other things, had a mock totem pole made out of nike golf bags, two very good basquiat paintings, a giant spiral made up of gin bottles, and a giant bronze ring, which was impeccably crafted. many of the artists were haitian. hoodoo is a haitian religion, along with voodoo. the word 'voodoo' comes from french, "vieux Dieux", or old Gods, among other etymologies (vodun, a dahomey God of worship, voudou cajun french). there was a spanish catholic who did video works of extreme forms of self-flagellation.

overall the exhibit had a chilling effect, enhanced by the fact (for me at least) that all of the exhibit staffers were minorities. they would wordlessly watch us, or cling to their iphones or blackberries to pitifully pass the time. they would be standing in a legacy that was directly pertinent to them; yet, they had this very conspicuous non-interest. it's as if the exhibit, without their knowledge or consent, had drawn them in to being a part of its central message.

much of the art that i've seen recently has been "protest art". there was an exhibit also at the contemporary arts museum in houston that dealt with neo-american themes called "the old, weird america" that used our colonial, racist, and folk history in a very insider, contemporary way. for example, there was a piece called "17 lincolns" where a guy photographed a lincoln society in the south where its members would all put themselves into a likeness of abraham lincoln. the guy was not a particularly good artist, i think he generally tried to depict the lincoln society as "paying tribute to their american heritage". the effect, then, was ironic. the men who were portraying lincoln all betrayed a southern aristocratic heritage (at least in terms of appearances; indeed, they all looked like people i would play for at a debutante ball in baton rouge). in the john adams post comments, we learned all about what kind of a character lincoln was and the deification of american history that distorted him. there was a blind teenager who depicted lincoln, which eerily reminded me southern gentility, incest, and "sins of the father visited on the son" (honestly, i feel sorry for the young man who's appearance unwillingly portrayed that historical reality). this irony could have also be due to the protest nature of the surrounding pieces. in a different context, the piece might have still been tributary.

the nike bag totem pole in particular was very difficult to even look at. i think many artists come to the conclusion that art cannot meaningfully exist in a world that has no dignity. what are the eyes watching your art? promoting it? there are certain legacies that the world has to face before we can move into future perspectives meaningfully. the chickens, eventually, must come home to roost.

i have been pretty long winded in getting to my main point of discussion. in the menil, as i suspect in every museum, there was a token section of a collection of african art. these included masks, totem poles, figurines, wood carvings, etc. initially, i had this instinctual feeling of revulsion, but i couldn't explain why. the rest of the day, i had quite a troublesome disposition for my peers, as i get when i don't have the means to articulate what troubles me. since then i've had a lot of thought on the subject.

now first of all, the means to which pieces of that nature find its way into art collectors hands are dubious. african countries have been looted for centuries through slavery, poaching, european travelers and governments who slaughtered everybody in their quest for resources and land, etc. it is the only continent, an entire continent, that has had its history brutally maligned (if not completely denied) in its mythical reinvention to support the economically profitable slavery machine, has had its people so routinely and consistently brutalized for economic gain, and is left to stand on its own with no recognition of the heinous crimes done or even a passing breath of mention for those crimes (the jews, in contrast, got reparations, a home state, and still get $1 billion a year annually from germany, while the crimes against africa lasted over 400 years longer and claimed scores of millions more casualties). it amounts to shooting somebody in the foot (or ripping their legs off, rather) and telling them to "get to steppin".

even if african art was willingly sold by its hosts, what does that say about what the hosts' opinions of themselves have come to be through our treatment of them? how pernicious our treatment of them has been if they would be willing participants in the exportation and exploitation of their own heritage. would we sell the mona lisa to china for meager profits? under what conditions were negotiations with these hosts made? was it outright stolen decades or centuries ago and merely passed through the hands of europeans?

outside of those questions of dubious origin, what place does it confer in the european-american museum except has a token acknowledgment to the fact that they even made art? there are hardly explanations of the art that is on display, a non-representation the different countries and purposes of the art. it merely exists. if anything, african art exists in the european museum as a juxtaposition to the european, "superior", "insider" art (to my knowledge, african art is without exception "outsider", a premise i obtained from the fact that basquiat was seen as the first black artist that approached the level of the "insider").

beyond even that, masks were considered to be a living entity, a literal manifestation of the spirits that held sway over their mortality. to even state this as a fact betrays our non-belief in it. how much further, then, does it demonstrate a lack of respect for the spirits and the people that made them to display these works as a dead art piece, lacking all explanation?

it is perhaps for the scores of reasons like these that protest art, like the neo-hoodoo exhibit (which was right next to the little token african art exhibit) will continue to be made. an artist cannot make a rapturous portrait of reality if his experience of that reality is a broken one, if he is surrounded by lies.

that perhaps explains our obsession with irony, because it takes a negative and transmogrifies it into a positive. however, a glut of irony and sarcasm with no honest, spiritual truths makes the soul caustic and coarse.

regrettably, most museums' token african art sections are permanent fixtures, an apt metaphor for the ossified nature of race relations and our view of africa.

-Rex

Old Tibetan Saying

2008-10-13T21:02:00.000-07:00

if the student is not better than the teacher, then the teacher has failed

Extreme Pluralism and Its Effect On Our Cognition

2008-10-13T09:59:00.000-07:00

I read a statistic once that said that the average American teenager, by the time he is 18, has processed over 10 million advertisements in his short lifetime. This study was conducted perhaps 2 or 3 years ago; no doubt, the children that grow up as "digital natives", to borrow an expression from a book that is titled by that same name, will have processed millions more than those of us who still can recall an "analog" existence where advertisements would have to find us.

I've also heard that we process, on average, around 2-3 thousand advertisements every day.

An advertisement can be a label on a coke can, a chiquita banana sticker, a bag of chips, just about everything that is sold acts also as a built in advertisement advertisement (and hence, strategy built in for your attention), not withstanding the thousands of billboards, logos, TV and internet advertisements we process.

For those who are wondering why we are growing increasingly disconnected, why logic and reason are rapidly disintegrating, why it is so hard to think clearly, why we are fragmenting socially at such alarming levels, you need look no further than that. This is partially because built into every single advertisement is a subconscious appeal, and eventually the screams of the subconscious start to overwhelm the conscious mind.

Beyond that, I think that a larger and larger portion of our brain space is becoming devoted to simple recognition, and to get past the state of simple recognition takes a greater leap precisely because there is so much to recognize. There is more clutter, mental and physical. Take a look around your room and try to account for every single thing that you see, and everything that is in those things (books, cabinets, chests, etc.). Then notice the amount to which they have logos or advertisements (the apple logo, for example). The effect should be pretty overwhelming (it was for me).

What about what is out of your control? You can't control a billboard. The external world bombards on your peace, either intentionally (advertisements placed deliberately as a provocation to one's consciousness) or by default (dilapidated homes after hurricane Katrina, for example, broken signs, litter, etc.).

This springs from our society's extreme pluralism. Pluralism is "a condition or system in which two or more states, groups, principles, sources of authority, etc. coexist." Philosophical pluralism is "a theory or system that recognizes more than one ultimate principle." Pluralism in our democratic society has usually been understood as an incidental external truth that is part of the process of reaching for an absolute. However, pluralism has become the absolute, transforming the world into a jungle of competing appeals, and it is the loudness of the appeal which gives its force. Disunity is the standard, here.

How can we even engage each other in the first place if our information processes are so disparate, and our brainspace is so overconsumed? Extreme pluralism means that oftentimes we have absolutely no standard with which to share with one another.

Luckily, all it takes is a desire to engage others and reach some kind of better understanding in mind, examine ourselves in a holistic fashion, and attempt to reduce mental clutter that can alleviate this process. Here are some tips to reduce clutter, mental and physical:

1: Turn the TV off! the TV is the most pernicious culprit of brain clutter that exists. the executives and the advertisers that are warring over your brain space have no other interest than your attention, pure and simple. TV advertisers have used every tool (focus groups, Freudian psychology, etc) to shape your own ideas about family, ethics, fashion, what have you into complete agreement, and worse, identification, with their product.

2: Take the labels off of everything you buy. The label has served its purpose and you have bought whatever brand of rice, toothpaste, shampoo, etc that you've decided to buy. You need not view it in your home anymore. Create jars for rice or beans, shampoo dispensers, tape all around your toothpaste until you don't see the logos. Paste your own images onto things that you wish to see. You'll be surprised at how therapeutic this can be.

3: Meditate. Study yourself in a quite, unobstructed space. It will reduce the amount in which the external world "triggers" you. Hence, advertisements don't assume your mental space as much, because they don't trigger larger, undealt with experiences.

4: Reduce clutter! Clutter in conversation, clutter in thought, clutter in physical space. You can say more with less. You can save money by being a thoughtful consumer and respecting the things that you already have.

-Rex

On John Adams: the HBO Series

2008-10-03T21:54:00.000-07:00

I wanted to talk about the new HBO series recently put out about the life of John Adams (called simply, "John Adams"). The integrity and insight of its directors have produced a portrayal that is very engaging and inspiring. In many cases, the dialogue of the characters has come straight out of primary source material, i.e. letters, addresses to the nation, and biographies. The portrayal of the 18th century is also very remarkable in its attention to detail, from depicting 18th century surgery methods, to life by lamp-oil, the extent to which a person's reputation determined the course of that person's life, manners of dress, manners of carrying oneself and speech, etc.

What made this series so successful is that there was no attempt to "dumb down" the dialogue. It was straight 18th century style prose and speech modeled on that very prose. Through that, the characters of our great Actors that both produced and were products of that very style of prose and speech, shined through. Characters are unabashedly elocutionary. The series demonstrates that the prose was a reflection of their very real concerns with dignity of character and action. That very power of self-expression bespeaks of a very deep philosophy of life, a heightened sense of the virtues in one's living it and the wisdom necessary to carry one through a world that was much more dangerous and challenging than the one we find ourselves in today (in some aspects, anyway). The language that we use is the barometer of our thoughts, and also of our age.

The series is based on the writings of David Mccullough, who wrote a biography of John Adams and also a book on the American Revolution entitled 1776, considered a companion to his biography. He has a very personal take on history, reflective of the position that "history is life". In short, he attempts to write history that could stand as great literature; although, he is careful to say that he loves to tell a "true" story. In short, also, he breaks the pallid and gray historical rendering put forth by so many academics and breathes vivid personal relationship into his portrayals.

It seems obvious, when one examines it, that real people with real emotions and flesh and blood and who reacted to a very real world of hearing, touch, smell, and taste were the Actors that created this history we talk about. The personal dimension in a historical understanding helps one ascertain the depth of meaning in their reasoning and one sees more clearly the figures in question (for example, to ignore the very real personal piety and inner conflict of a figure like Neitzche is to misunderstand his writings entirely).

I highly recommend the series to anybody, any American, especially in this intense time of election, of political discourse. In our time of great division, it is helpful to point to the Founding, and recognize the passionate discord of the age which shaped all others.

-Rex