The Journey of a Thousand Steps

Wearing something on my wrist to tell me how far I walk is absurd, for me at least. Why should I let a number dictate to me how I live my life? And yes, I realize that you'll say "how about your Blood Pressure, or Cholesterol, or Weight?" Or how about even the years I've lived? How do pure facts, empirical data, control my every move? 

I see commercials telling me that my cholesterol is too high, but with this new medication, Xenatoleratrapine, or something, it'll be lower, but just watch out for all these disastrous side-effects that will probably make that number feel much less important.  And "feel" is the key word here.  Do you go about living your life, filled with medication, hoping that it would do you some good, and then spend that same amount of time wallowing in misery because of what the treatment is doing to you? What have you gained? 

But let's look at why this is the way it is.  I found it very interesting in Weber's Safehold series that one of the main keys that the lead scientists banned from the culture was Arabic Numerals. The anti-technological society created didn't know about the decimal for 800 years.  That, of course, was exactly the point.  With numbers comes technology, because there's a way to measure things, to take data and analyze and utilize and mold and shape it into man's own image.  At some point, however, numbers become the master, and human beings become controlled. 

Neil Postman called this phenomenon Technopoly. Quoting Neil Postman (and since my copy is buried under a mountain of books right now, I'll quote from Wiki, and assume that their quote is right):

Postman defines “Technopoly” as a society which believes “the primary, if not the only, goal of human labor and thought is efficiency, that technical calculation is in all respects superior to human judgment ... and that the affairs of citizens are best guided and conducted by experts.” (p. 51 of Technopoly)

We live our lives based on cold equations.  Everything we analyze becomes quagmired in numbers... and the start of the baseball season is a prime example.  For each team could be digitized and computerized into it's basic parts, and each players could become a strain of numbers called "VORP" and "WAR" and hundreds of other values that it takes specialized experts to determine and say "You have Chosen Wisely" to those about to start their seasons.  And more often than not, the numbers are wrong.  The Braves were widely panned this year as being mediocre at best. Then they started out 4-0 and suddenly those same analysts were trying to say, "well, we were right, but we didn't take into account this..." When the numbers turn on the analyst, one must use the numbers to lie, leaving us to wonder if those same numbers were being truthful to begin with. In fact, the veracity of numbers in any subject is crucial, as it is vitally important to the rulers of this world that they be able to control the data coming into our minds.  The data must be right.  The Number Is God...

So when we put on our Athletic Apple App, and slap it on our wrist like some handcuff chaining us to the chair in a holding cell, we are essentially telling the controllers of the data harbinged inside the computers that we will abide by anything they say, no matter how accurate, because whatever it is, it is the truth.

I am not saying that whenever I take my blood pressure with this cuff device that my brother got for my mom prior to her dying by having blood pressure over 200/whatever it was, that I don't take those numbers seriously.  Truthfully, I am thrilled when my efforts, and medication, have resulted in a normal number here.  I just think that it shouldn't be the king of our world.

One of my friends on facebook (actually, several of them) have decided that taking 10,000 steps a day is a goal for fitness and healthiness. And who am I to think they're wrong.... except... when that number forces them to doing whatever it is they do to fulfill that number, no matter how torturous and mind-numbing it might be, then it's not worth doing.  Because the number, in my opinion, isn't important, it's how those steps are achieved. Playing hopscotch with your kids? Definitely! Walking down the local nature trail, hearing the birds, and watching the squirrels eat without concern on the

trail beside you? Absolutely! Walking on a treadmill or around a circle someplace with a whole bunch of people like cattle? I'd rather drink Lysol.  It's the feeling of doing it that makes whatever it is you're doing worth it.  I will not stand to be miserable for one minute of my life trying to obtain a goal from a doctor who says "This is where you should be," or some Health Care Insurance Carrier says, "You scored X on your Health Questionnaire."  I won't do it.  But walking for miles on a path less traveled, or eating healthy foods, either through my kitchen or from a restaurant like Sweet Tomatoes (which I'm going to in a day or so), I will do it in a second, and I will rejoice all the way.

Is it enough? To deny the power of the doctors and their numbers, and enjoy instead the journey down a road without speed limits, without deadlines and measurements? Do I ensure myself a life as long or longer than with obtaining those same goals through the numbers reported to me on Fitbit? I don't know, nor do I care.  This is the point where the doctors and I differ.  How long do you want to live? Is that important, to live the quantity of life as the sole achievement? That a person turned 90 or 100 living in a nursing home without any knowledge of who or where or why? Is that the apex of our civilization?  Or is it the better knowing that, given the balance of happiness, fullness of life, and the enjoyment of the life that, we would just as soon live to be 70 and die, then turn 90 and be miserable? Or 60? Only a half-century?  You see, there is a balance, one that, frankly, I don't know the answer to.  God knows... and, with the life that God gave us, is He expecting us to have a long and miserable life, or a somewhat shorter one, and live it with all the joy that is around us?  It is certainly still possible to enjoy life and still be in step with the journey God has in store for us.

I am probably the most conservative Epicurean to walk the planet, as the joy that I get from this world has nothing to do with drinking, or smoking, or sex, (maybe a little gluttony of food, as everyone has weaknesses, but that's for another time) but if it makes me happy, and it's worth it, then I'll do it, or won't do it, as the case may be.

Since we're talking about eating... an example.  We sell protein bars at the college bookstore.  Truly foul things that, to me, tastes exactly like chocolate mixed cardboard.  However, they are extremely popular with those of the athletic mindset, and they pay $3.50 a bar for them, and go off and work out or run or whatever. And while I realize that, given the ideal circumstances, they could potentially go play professional sports and make millions of dollars a year to make themselves as happy (or not) as they desire, I think that if you're going to eat something, even to get protein or energy or whatever, that it should at least taste good.  But it's something they can wolf down and forget about, portable, as forgettable as the seconds it took to eat it.  Then multiply that by the number of forgettable minutes, hours, days, and then ask yourself, "Have you really lived your life?" 

Sleep the days away, but if you dream, then those hours have not gone in vain.  It's one of the things I found the most sad about how my mom lived her life, with chemicals directing her physical life.  Her headaches and stresses caused her to take what is generally a tranquilizer to get herself to sleep (and that's another story, one I won't go into here.) But the sad part about it was, she went into deep sleep, and then instantly awake.  She never had REM sleep.  She never dreamed.  What good is sleeping if not for the dreams? Aye, there's the rub.  Give me 4 hours of sleep, but a good flying dream, over rivers and cities like Atreyu on his Luck Dragon, and that's better than 8 with a "late for school" dream thrown in.

But I've gotten off topic.  The point is... I want to "feel" my way through life, even if it's shorter, than analyze and compare and follow a set of numbers blindly.  I want to say that my life counted, not that I counted life.  And if all I can claim about my day is that I've walked 10,000 steps, but can't remember a single one, then there's no point in getting out of bed.  To duplicate that last great ending line,  I'd rather make my steps count, than to count my steps.

 

MegaUpload to Holodeck

So one of my friends, S., posted this picture on Facebook, which is the going thing these days.  As if creating a picture will explain the whole world.  It's amazing, the way that people choose to communicate with each other.  Facebook was supposed to be a method for people across the world to talk to each other, but more and more I've seen just these pictures posted, without discussion or even thought about what they mean, how they impact the processes of the mind, how things are connected to others through synapses, often incorrectly so.

It seems to me that someone in the Occupy Wall Street crowd was downloading something on MegaUpload and all of a sudden {blink}, it's gone.  No more downloads of music, movies, software.  And let's not kid ourselves about this, it has nothing to do with all that for the normal computer user.  It's all about the Porn.  We just gave the Porn industry such a boost, because once you get rid of all possible places where pornography can be downloaded for free, the people who view such things will be forced, once again, to buy it.  But I got off track...  And so they think, it has to be the greedy bastards sitting at the top of their skyscrapers making money from all us poor people.  It's just not fair. Wall Street must be responsible for all this.  And in a very small way, that's part of it.  But the larger issue, one that is beyond this pictures ability to communicate, is that the Justice department was the one that implemented the raid and closed down the site.  That, along with the suspended SOPA bill, is giving the government full power to regulate the stuff that's on the Internet. Now, if that were the whole of it, I would go off on a tangent about how we should be able to download all the stuff we want, and haven't the RIAA and MPAA made enough money and blah blah blah.... except that's not it either.  There is no way that this issue (not SOPA, but just MegaUpload) can just be summarized in a picture. It is an argument of intellectual rights, free market issues; ideological, philosophical, and asethetic issues; so many issues. It could easily take up a book. We could produce arguments for and against MU, and be both right and wrong.  This issue brings together all the opinions of Free Market Capitalism, intellectual property, freedom of distribution of information, everything that the current generation feels about the way the world works.  The internet is a cacophony of information, stimuli, communities, vices, mind-numbing wastes of time, and we have ti pumped into our heads continuously throughout the day.  I go into most workplaces nowadays, and the workers have their iphones on and tuned into Spotify or their MP3s, and they're texting and checking their Facebooks, even watching videos when no one is watching.  It's an epidemic that is probably costing businesses tons of money.  And outside of absconding everyone's gadgets when they first come in, there's little anyone can do about it.  Everyone must have their fix of bytes and bits and kilos of data.   And that, too, is just a small part of it, and not what I was really focusing on.

I've gotten episodes of Disney shows from MegaUpload, they are free* on the Disney channel, so... was that wrong? Maybe. Is it illegal? Maybe. Should the government regulate such things. I don't think so, but the Libertarian paradox applies here. In the end, MU's shutdown won't matter much, as technology will change, methods will change, people will still get their copies of intellectual property. They'd have to shut down the internet entirely to stop it.  That would be the quickest way to start a revolution. Reminds me of the Pendragon Series, book 4, The Reality Bug, by DJ Machale. The Internet, and the things we download from it, are the fantasies by which we escape our own lives. To take that away would be akin to taking drugs away from the user. The withdrawl would be too much to bear. For the government to become that of Brave New World, they have to realize that the easiest way to control the people is through happiness, and whether our SOMA comes from a pill or through fiberglass cables, they have to keep the escapism alive.

I think that it's up to the providers of movies, games, etc... to come up with viable alternatives to free* downloading of their product. Spotify, for instance, is an amazing method, and would be more effective than any regulation or lawsuit. Hulu, Gamefly, Netflix, Redbox, also, are viable alternatives.  Another option would be the current companies that distribute intellectual property to vastly expand their "On Demand" line-ups, encompassing the entire line-up of TV shows and Movies that are available.  To do so would take an incredible amount of server upgrading, but would certainly doable, since the storage companies like MegaUpload basically have it already.  And there would need to be some way for the artists and producers to be compensated for their work. Basically, that would be Comcast or Cox or Charter hosting something like itunes or whatever, which would work. It's a viable option, something they should think about if SOPA actually passes with the vitrol it had in it previously. It would keep them from being liable while providing users with legal ways of obtaining their fixes. And if we can think this up, surely they can as well. Wouldn't be surprised if it's already in the works.  Comcast would have to increase their charges (or make it as a separate service) in order to do this, much as iTunes does now. And the public would have to accept that as a method better to get their fixes than downloading media online without compensation. It's a mental thing, a change in the minds of society's consciousness. That paying artists is actually a good thing, that the idea of the artists being just another part of the 1% is wrong, that they actually produce work for society and should be compensated as such, just as a worker laying the beams for a new skyscraper or the person making your Subway Sandwich. Changing the beliefs of Western Civilization is hard. It is done through technology or religion, and "Thou Shalt Not Steal" isn't working, so a change in technology is the best method. Thus the idea of Spotify and the iPod or like technology to provide all music everywhere with commercials. Although I think at some point it'll be a paid service (beyond the Premium service they already have).

I think that's the main issue here, when you get down to it.  The overwhelming idea that the Internet is free (totally and utterly free, without the * on it), and anything and everything that can be transmitted through the internet should also be free.  This ties in with the idea that artists and authors and directors are paid by these megacorporations that make millions (by other people besides me) and so they don't need the money from one measly download.  Because we're all broke, and we need our fix, and that fix is stronger than any legality or moral beliefs that would keep us from obtaining it.  It would be like speeding down the highway.  The desire to get to our location as quickly as possible is more overwhelming than the consequence of a speeding ticket, even if the ticket would equate to a whole week's worth of work.  The subsequent consequence for downloading a song or a video would be much more than that, even jail time, but most people don't even think of such things, so overwhelming is the desire to have music, film, games, and porn, all at our fingertips, and all free.  It's the thought process which is key here.

Once again I bring up two books which must be read to understand the idea behind changing the philosophies of Western Civilization.  If you can find, or download, these two books, they will be well worth the time to read them.  They are Clifford D. Simak's Ring Around the Sun and Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter's The Light of Other Days.  Both are amazing books which show how, through technology, the entire mindset of the world can be changed, much quicker than through a religion or through the machinations of corporations or governments to control the activities of the people under them.  It simply won't work.  However, changing the technology to adapt to the citizens' mindsets will work, just as the invention of the Internet changed the way the world thought and worked some years ago.  It's simply an adjustment, from one mindset to the next as the world speeds along forward, from book to radio, TV, Internet, Ipad, to Holodeck.  One day, we'll get there.

To Think or not to Think.

[Reason] is a faculty that man has to exercise by choice. Thinking is not an automatic function. In any hour and issue of his life, man is free to think or to evade that effort.
Ayn Rand “The Objectivist Ethics,” The Virtue of Selfishness, pg. 20.

I've come to believe that metacognition is what keeps me going.  In other words, thinking on how we think.  Working retail is not so bad when you are seeing in every selection and deselection the thoughts behind each customer. For instance, the squalling kids who just want their parents to buy them something, not out of hunger or desire for the object, but merely for the attention that they get as their parents' hand them the trinket.  Materialism is actually a sign of love.  Or perhaps the children who open up the box or the toy in the middle of the floor and start playing with it, as if it were their own, without realization that what they have isn't theirs to begin with.  Of course, that has nothing to do with ownership, but frankly because they could care less about the object they have in their hands.  It's the idea of material inflation.  The more we have, the less we care about what we have. 

Then there's the customer who must decide what they want by eliminating everything else from sight first hand.  I found a couple of interesting examples one day while working in the kids' section.  The parent kept asking the child, "What do you want? Make up your mind."  The obvious answer to this is, she wants everything.  And when she kept changing her mind, much to the consternation of her mom, she realized it was upsetting her mom, so she kept at it, playing a game of ambivalence just to see if she could.  Pressing her mom's buttons.  Because she truly did want everything.  The only way to ask the question is, "What do you not want?  Because then she is forced to eliminate everything she truly doesn't want and then pick from those remaining.  It sounds really hard, but it's not.... trust me.   Because I see it everyday.  At the grocery store, I would have customers come up to the register with 100's of dollars of groceries, but only have $30.  Therefore they would then decide, having eliminated the rest of the store, what they don'twant from the rest, and keep on filtering out the "No's" until they have reached their financial goal.  It's often the duality of thought that makes the little decisions of life interesting, because what you are really thinking is the exact opposite of what you think you are thinking. 

So when I realized the "duality" of thought is actually quite wonderful to think about, I ran across the Ayn Rand quote above.  Sometimes, in thinking things through, we are actually not thinking at all.  Letting our inhibitions and self-control go.  This can easily be seen in the riots after sporting events, (which I've talked about before), where what they are thinking, what they are truly thinking, and the fact that they are basically not thinking at all, are different.  Take the past riots in London.  They started because of a racial issue in one of London's suburbs, but soon, it became more about the class structure in Great Britain brought about by entitlement spending and a Progressive government that has felt the strain on its budget much like the rest of the world.  In other words, the riots were about the cuts in government hand-outs, although they were supposed to be about police brutality and race.  What actually happened was that the youth of Great Britain wanted to be seen rioting and have fun while getting on YouTube, all the while stealing and taking advantage of lawlessness to attain material things that they would have had to pay money for.  In other words, they weren't thinking at all.  It all went to the subconscious "monster" that Jung talked about, that below the rational thoughts of the human mind there is the base desires of an animal that decrees those desires are above all else.  And those who cannot control their subconscious demons are doomed to act in those manners, and will generally end up in jail, or worse.  

So it came to pass, that after I saw this quote, two stories popped up online to illustrate my point.  I am all for putting media in my blogs when it supports my ideas, and these work wonders.  First, the story in Australia, where a teenager decides to run out in front of a train.  He didn't have anyone with a camera, so being on YouTube wasn't his motive.  He wasn't suicidal, cause he wouldn't have dodged the locomotive. He simply wanted to see if he could do it.  And that isn't thinking at all!  That's not to say that we all haven't done stupid things without thinking (or perhaps with thinking, as he had to time his rush across the tracks to the point where he would almost but not quite get hit by it), and I've done a couple of insane things.   I remember one time I had done something or another, and my dad got really mad and was coming down the hallway.  So I decided to see what would happen if I tripped him.  So I stuck my leg out...and he tripped.  There was no thinking involved in the act, just pure stupidity.... much like touching the base of an iron, or sticking your finger in the car cigarette lighter (both of which I've done).  It's an infantile move, just to experience something, the rush of adrenaline, the heat of the flame, the cold on the tongue as you lick a metal pole ("I double dog dare ya!").  It's what we do.  And as we get older, the desire to do something just to satisfy the curiosity of the subconscious mind, it is replaced by the discipline of conscious thought.  Except..... sometimes that doesn't work.  We go skydiving, or bungee jumping, or we walk across the Oconee River train track bridge just to see if we can do it.



Does the human mind have the ability to think at all?  Are we simply holding back the battering ram of the subconscious mind as it attempts to break down the barriers we've put in it's way?  And when we speak of today's youth, languishing in public schools or in universities, are they just as apt to study for their PhD as visit the bars every night and get themselves killed in car wrecks or wind up vomiting in the public bathrooms in their dorms? Is there any hope for the human race when thinking is not considered "cool?" Public opinion thinking people has probably not been as low as it has today, unless we count the Medieval times when the Lords or the Church kept people under their stern watch. Those that are famous have become stupid on purpose, and those that are intelligent are made fun of.  Look at the sit-coms of today's television.  Those that are intelligent are naturally nerds, probably gay, and social outcasts.  Those that are dumb are so often rich and usually wind up getting their way despite any lack of "smarticals." 

The answer is, I think, "yes."  There are some people in this world who will overcome the outside world and use their minds to become producers and masters.  Makers and Philosophers.  And they will sit atop the towers of the cities and look down on us in pity, perhaps humorously, as Mustapha did in Brave New World, while the primitives are easily manipulated, controlled, by those who would keep them enslaved by contentment in mediocrity.  Take, for instance, the next story below, about a boy who, being only 12, has read books and educated himself about medicine and the like.  As he was watching TV at 2 in the morning, a show about showgirls (probably Real Sex on HBO,) he heard his mom, 9 months pregnant, call for him.  She was giving birth.  I would have froze, called 911, and panicked, but this particular child delivered the baby there in his home, using the information he had read in his studies.  So there is hope, after all, that today's world will not slip into the mindless, unthinking, audience of the flickering TVs that shine lights in strobe effects out the windows. 

There might be a few men or women that will use the mind to progress past the conveniences they have been given and venture forth, and the thoughts will not be of desires alone, but to apply knowledge towards a goal, permanent, miraculous, that will satiate the needs of both conscious and subconscious minds. 

Civil Disobedience in a Bath Towel

[This one's a little rough, needs more polishing, I think.]

It was one of those moments when the Tetris pieces fell into place. Honestly, I didn't realize it until just recently, when I was looking at my beliefs and trying to figure out when they started.

I had been a member of the College Republicans for the first couple of years. It was a natural fit, for various and asundering reasons, and I needed that group at the time.

I looked at the Democratic side, to the Progressives and the liberals, and I saw that their beliefs were totally contradictory to mine. To them, men are evil, and only government can regulate sanity and legality (Locke, not Hume). To the Democrats, there is no reason to assume that people can live responsibly according to what is right in the universe, because Greed and other vices will always corrupt. So the government steps in and provides the boundaries for them. This was clearly not what I wanted to believe at all.

At the time I was in college, it seemed that the Republicans could think ideally, that optimism and faith in human nature makes it unnecessary to regulate much beyond the essentials of government (defense, safety, some finances...etc..) . If the individual is good, and society bad, (Hume) then the individual, knowing what is right and wrong, should be able to live out his or her life without interference from society.

Assuredly, the conservative ideals that govern the Republican party are much more pro-individual than those of the Democrats. So therefore, shouldn't Thoreau, whose book Walden preached more on simple living, on individual freedoms, on speaking your mind no matter what (and Thoreau spent a night in jail for not paying his taxes in protest of the Mexican-American war) be a conservative philosopher? Isn't Romanticism a conservative movement?
***
But let me go back a few years. There are Eureka moments, as I said, when you leap out of the bath water and go running down the street, elated, that some revelatory thought had turned a light bulb on. Much like Jessica Fletcher did at 52 past the hour, or House does most episodes that saves a life.

I remember back in my college days, sitting in the classrooms, listening to professors and soaking up knowledge like a sponge. I felt sometimes like...like that river of knowledge was high above me. I could only hope to reach up and find a nugget to grasp onto, hold it next to me, and not let it go. Unfortunately, time and memory has a terrible effect on this, and most of what I learned in Art History has slipped away from me. Doesn't help in Jeopardy!, I'm afraid.
There was a core of professors that I would sit anamored with the knowledge that they contained, and the skill in which they could weave the words and music and pictures into something amazing. To me, there is no trio of teachers in this world better or more suited to take those willing minds and throw them up into the air, if only to catch those few nuggets and bring them back into ourselves. I'm talking about Geogia College & State Univ.'s liberal arts programs. Dr. Viau, English, Dr. Yarborough, Art, and Dr. Pepetone, Music.
***
Now, back to the questions above. I had started to think of the individual as a being who, knowing right from wrong, and desiring good, could live out a virtuous life without the need of a government to back it up. At the end of "Civil Disobedience," Thoreau talks about an ideal society, where the best government is one who governs least (and then goes on to talk about governments who govern not at all). Isn't one of the core planks of the Republican party a government that governs as little as possible? Therefore, Thoreau's beliefs would be essentially conservative.

So I went to Dr. Pepetone and asked him this question. Isn't Romanticism essentially a conservative movement? He suggested that we go to Brewers (which is not there anymore, alas) and talk about it over coffee (I think I had tea.) I honestly don't remember what we talked about there. It's now a blur. But I remember thinking that, I'm right, and there's something important about this thought, but I didn't understand it at the time.

One of the parallels Dr. Pepetone made in his lectures was that the Romantic movement of the 1860's was almost identical to the "Hippie" movement of the 1960's. Both were a time of exploration, an expansion of music, art, both abstract and extreme, usage of drugs, sex, open and uninhibited. And it's obvious that both time periods are very much alike. It's easy to see why both periods were both liberal in thought. So obviously, there's a disconnect here. And it makes sense.

The philosopher Hegel believed that all ideas begin with coming together of two polar opposites: the Thesis and the Antithesis. Merging together, there comes a new thought: the Synthesis. The idea that Romanticism is a Conservative one is correct, but not if you think of it in terms of the current two-party system, Republicans and Democrats. Because the individual must be able to govern himself, without the moral code placed upon him by Republican control*, and he must be able to exist without all of the other Government regulations brought on by the Democrats. Thus the true Romantic is a Libertarian, the Synthesis of the two parties that have fought in this country for so long.

*(Republicans are very willing to let individuals speak their minds, own guns, practice religion, etc... But, when it comes to matters of ethics, in matters society believes are wrong, Republicans step in and use the power of the government to regulate and control. Why couldn't the government just stay out of people's private lives? Let us travel down the paths we believe are morally right, according to our own beliefs.)

That coffee "lunch" with Dr. Pepetone was the first time I realized that the Republicans didn't necessarily have everything right, and now, seeing how they have acted recently, throwing free enterprise out the window, I certainly see the benefits of having a Libertarian government over the other two. The problem is, however, that such idealism is almost impossible to continue, especially with the uneducated, the unstable, and with people who don't necessarily see right from wrong. This is where the government must step in. We will never have a pure Libertarian government, because no matter how ideal it is, that government, as Thoreau pointed out, is far beyond our current understanding.

But that is our goal. It's what keeps me coming back to faith in human beings, even after the Ponsi schemes, the deception, the greed. Because if we don't believe in the goodness of humans, there's nothing to work for. There's no sense in bettering our lives. We should not let the politicians or the preachers sail our ships for us. We should sail ourselves, ever striving, and never yielding.

Romantic thoughts from an Ice Cream Truck

There are Eureka moments in your life, the one's where something pops, synapses fire, neurons open up a whole new highway to someplace new. We're all far removed from the days when we were 8, and we spent each day wanting to get toys and what crack not to step on outside. And it's not those moments after you've painted your mailbox gray, or cut the leaves off of your mother's favorite plant, and your dad comes home furious. It's those times when the knowledge of something far more than what you knew suddenly opens up.

***
Summers in Georgia are filled with hot, sweaty, humid days, and there is nothing like hearing the tones of a ringing bell driving down the street in either a rhythm, or in short, staccato notes that toll of a break from July and a moment of December (in your mouth, at least) as the Ice Cream truck meanders down the road. And on the side of the road, are children, crumbling up the dollar bills placed in their hands by parents who want either a moments peace, or know that if one dollar can give their children a little happiness, then it's much more important than the dollar that goes to pay the light bills. Maybe there's a tinge of nostalgia in those dollars, as if the parents would be out there as well, shouting out "esta esta" while pointing at the colorful images of fudge bars and banana popscicles.

The ice cream truck business is, for the driver, not a very pleasurable experience. The trucks here in Georgia are ones bought from the brink of extinction, with no hint of an Air Conditioner ever having been installed. The motors may run...may not. And the coolers inside the trucks are the same way...bought from some dying grandmother's estate sale and coached back to life by some duct tape and some freon. So it is expected that successful, eager businessmen are not going to choose "ice cream truck driver" as their first profession. Instead*, this falls to the people who are down on their luck, swept aside by society, forced into such a job because there's nothing much more they can do, with drugs or mental conditions slowing their thinking capacities down so that it may be hard to make change for the tykes with the dollar bills. But that is not to say that ice cream truck drivers are reprobates and criminals. The ones I met are usually very normal, kind people, with the conditions that have brought them to that state being their only vices.

And so it was that my stepdad, now retired and looking for a way to contribute to the family budget, got in contact with the local ice cream truck service and became one of their best drivers. And while I never understood why he would rather put the dry ice into the coolers (which never did quite keep the ice cream cool enough) with his bare hands, I understood (or think I do, now) why he took the job.

The ice cream, you see, was not just high caloried milk and sugar, but rather bars of short-term happiness. We were bringing treats into neighborhoods that normally would never have gotten such things. For in the time that he drove the ice cream trucks, the best neighborhoods to sell from were the poorest socio-economically. But the parents were always willing to give a dollar, or 50 cents, to the kids to get something from the truck each day.

I went with my stepdad a couple of times, and marveled at the joy we could bring kids just by traveling down the street and selling ice cream. Didn't they know they could get more for a fraction of the cost just by going to the grocery store? But that would be ruining the experience.

So I remember sitting in the passenger seat of the ice cream truck on some hot Spring day, reading a book that my 12th grade English teacher (Mr. Nunes, a professor at Dekalb College, now Ga Perimeter), had assigned to us. And there, in that ice cream truck, I had what I call a Eureka moment (my second to that point, but that's another story.)

[*These statements are opinions based on experience only and are not endorsed by the Ice Cream Truck Drivers of America.]

***
Most people have no problem living without thinking deep thoughts. The most serious conversations might cover the attributes of the latest American Idol contestant or the Defensive strategies of the Chicago Bears (which is usually Urlacher, all the time). And for some reason, teachers hold out the really important stuff till you get to High School. I remember in 11th grade, Mrs. Cook teaching us American Literature. In doing so, I was introduced for the first time to the ways that people thought about the world. By the time we got to Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men, I was awash in being able to think about literature in ways of symbolism, in the ways that people think about life. Earlier that year, she introduced a way of thinking called Romanticism. As she explained it, it was talking about things that were of Nature, thinking emotionally about the world, and dealing with the unknown in ways that accepted the irrationality of human existence. And that was okay, I guess. I read Thoreau and really enjoyed his writings, but never really quite got past that. All those meanings and thoughts meant nothing to me, not really.

But the next year, Mr. Nunes really got into the processes in which philosophers thought about the world during each period of literature. How that the unknown was looked at either with scientific assuredness that one day mankind would know everything, or in the supernatural wonder that there were things that we could never know, and only could grasp through the heights of mental thought. He showed us how Nature could be the trim, properly cared for gardens of Wordsworth's poetry, or the wild foreboding mountaintops of Coleridge, or the cold, uncaring Nature of Stephen Crane's "The Open Boat."

And so it was, I sat in the back of my stepdad's Ice Cream truck, reading a copy of Goethe's Sorrows of Young Werther, a tale of forbidden love and the throes of emotional outburst and melancholy. The love interest of Werther being an already married woman, and the love that he felt he could only return as friendship, as society would not let him go further. And as the emotions welled up inside him, he delved into philosophical thought about life, about nature, about the world as Goethe would have seen it (through the beliefs of Immanuel Kant.)

It came to me, as I was reading, that the ideas of Romanticism, the yearning, the emotions that are brought back in times of quiet solitude (Wordsworth), that pain and pleasure are usually the same thing, and things that are not always obtainable, be it paradise, or love, or simply a warm touch, are things we must keep striving for, even if it drives us insane. We must keep pushing further towards those heights of feelings, and not live in the microcosm that is our own boring lives. I had on my front Myspace Page (and will again) a quote from the band Engima, "Open your Heart, and Push the Limits." This is the feeling I got in that Ice cream truck. It's the Eureka moment that said, "There's more out there than just video games and ice cream. The world is filled with experiences and knowledge that are just waiting to be slurped up. If only you would climb up to the cliffs of this world and look out over to the far reaches, to experiences and emotions still unknown to us in this world." My only regret is that I have not always striven to do this, as fear of those heights are as real as those a acrophobe has. We have to live according to society's rules, for the most part, and unfortunately, the laws are there to keep us safe, ere we fall.

One day, I will return to Goethe's masterpiece, and will refresh those feelings I had that warm spring day. And perhaps living in the Phenomenal world (as Kant would call it) is for the best, as there are few times in our lives when we can climb up to the apex. In the valleys, there is happiness and contentment, even if there is paradise on the mountain.

Cathode Cacophonous Stimuli

Woke up this morning, and since it was Saturday, and it was 10am (I slept in), I turned on College Gameday on ESPN, who were at Atlanta for the SEC Championship game (which Florida won, like I thought they would.) So I had to go to the restroom (follow me on this), and while I was sitting there, I noticed that I had stereo voices going on all around me. My mom was asleep and had HSN on (as she usually does at night), coupled with ESPN in my room, and it was a cacophony of sounds all around me.

I thought to myself, there's never a time in our house when a TV is not on, or something is filling the house with information (audio stimuli). Are we really to the point where our bodies need a constant feed of audio stimuli to be satisfied? My brother always has the TV on, and my grandmother listens to her can opener in bed at night (it's a radio as well). There's no point in the entire day when something isn't talking about the news or sports or some entertainment. And it's not like I watch it all the time. I could have Sportscenter on and have it repeating itself for the 4th time, and I just keep it on. Cause there's nothing else on, and I guess I need background noise.

I wonder why we have the TV on all the time? Why is it that we have to have the light blinking and the sound droning on, even in the dead of night, when we're all asleep. It reminds me so much of Ray Bradbury's "The Pedestrian," where the main character walks along the empty futuristic streets and sees all the windows with their blinds drawn, but with the flickering lights of TV screens easily seen. As if there's no reality but that reality. Outside means nothing to people anymore, only what they see through the electronic windows that pipe fantasy dreamlands and paradises into our homes and our minds.

I think it also goes along with the need that our brains have for constant audio stimuli. During a concert, when the music stops, or when there's even a break in sound, the audience starts screaming, or whatever, as if there had to be something to fill that void. People might actually be afraid of silence. (I think I did that blog earlier. I can't remember.) I think it even comes down to, for instance, during church or at a funeral, someone will start coughing. It might be someone having to clear their sinuses, but I also think it just might be that there's this need to hear something, to make sure you're alive, that this whole thing is real. You can never have a time of complete silence, especially with more than one person around.

I think everyone needs a little quiet time every once in a while. I'm not talking about meditation or prayer or the like, although that's a perfectly wonderful thing to do with quietness. Sometimes, though, just existing is enough. Practice "being" with nothing but yourself. Let your mind wander and see where it goes, but make sure there's no audio stimuli to distract it. There might be something amazing in that silence. Like an old friend...maybe yourself.

Fat Guys are Always so Animated

"Are you struggling with body fat?" I hear this all the time on commercials, with miracle cures and potent pills that might lose me some weight, but it'll be because I'm spending all my time in the restrooms, not the restaurants. So I got to thinking. What are the reasons one diets and exercises to lose weight.

Valid Reason: The immediate health of the person. Sure, my ankles hurt, especially when I go up stairs and climb a bunch of ladders...etc... And I don't expect to be running miles, or trying to outrun a bear (and lets face it, in olden times, one reason why being fit was important was so if you did meet up with said bear, you might live). So if immediate discomfort was enough to make me lose weight, I'd do it.

Invalid reasons:

You'll look better, you'll be able to date, you'll be able to get a better job...etc... cosmetically, for some reason, the more muscle and the leaner you are, the more attractive you seem to be. This is a biological trait, probably going back to pre-historic times, that the ones that were strongest, could outrun said bears, and could run miles, would be the ones that ended up copulating with the women. But if you look at it now, being successful doesn't mean running miles or lifting hundreds of pounds every day (although it might help.) The saying "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder," certainly applies to this. There are cultures that have existed where fat was considered a label of royalty and luxury, where people who could get fat were admired as people with money (thus to get food) and happiness (quoth Julius Caesar, "I would have about me men that are fat, for they are happy. Lean men have a dangerous look" (paraphrased from my memory)). And certainly, if those cultures existed today, they would look upon the USA as a land of luxury and royalty, because we are all* chubby.

And the aliens that pick up our broadcasts will see that the fat, lazy father is truly head of the household. Especially when it comes to animated TV shows. Homer Simpson, Peter Griffin, and in real TV, Rosanne's husband, each were very lovable characters, loved by their wives, and able to be drawn naked (well, except for on Rosanne) because their stomachs hid certain private parts. :) So the aliens will interpret that those who are overweight are masters of their universes. And so they should be. It is the attitude taken up by my cat (who is female), who is big in stature, smug in outlook, and master of her domain.

"But you want to live a long time, right?" Well, it depends on how long you think a long time is. How old is old? 60? 70? 50? Is living half a century enough time to do what you need to do? Would it be better, living a long time, being disciplined about diet and constantly worrying about health, and generally unhappy, or is it better to live an Epicurean life, shorter, but happier? To taste the cheese, the chocolate, and the wine (except I don't drink). As Mark Lowry said, "There are two ways to go, cholesterol and worry, and cholesterol's so much more fun." I agree with him. So, for me, it's not a matter how long I live, but how much enjoyment I get out of the years I do live.

I've seen old people, living with no heat or air conditioning, drinking powdered milk and crusts of bread. And not because they can't afford the food, but for some reason they insist on living that way. I can't do that. Give me the heater (which will one day catch my house on fire, but it makes my feet nice and toasty), and my air conditioner (which is why I have the heater on), and my Hot Pockets, and I shall spend my money to make me comfortable, cause I'm not going to take it with me, and I don't think there will be anyone to leave it to.

It's not a depressing or pessimistic attitude, it's just looking realistically about life. And if you look at TV shows, it's very obvious that fat guys are happy. I would much rather be fat and happy than lean and miserable. Give me the cheesecake, and the ice cream, and the pizza, and I will laugh at the people running in the park when it's 20 degrees outside. And they, with all their muscles, can lift my coffin. They're going to need them.

Faust, Picard, and the Pursuit of Knowledge

What a paradoxical world we live in today. And I say this because the airways above us are filled with whizzing streams of wireless information. Aside the highways are lined cables where voices and rivers of data are flowing endlessly from one corner of the world to another. Our bookstores are filled with novels and volumes of endless trivia enough to fill our minds many times over. The books contradict themselves and each other, but yet we still have the time and patience to peruse through them. The internet and the media tell us what we want to hear, and what they want us to hear, although it is largely one and the same. We have become a society that is saturated with knowledge. One could even come close to say that we are drowning in an ocean of information.

Yet with all the news, sports, media coverage of X baby missing or Y being pregnant and Z bombing A because they don't like how they worship...etc..., I find myself wondering... are we really drowning, or are we simply searching for the information that we need... are we simply parched, adrift on some ocean where there is enough information to fill up the ocean, and yet none to satisfy us.

We spend the first 18 years of our lives going to school (and some of us considerably longer, in college), and learning from teachers and reading books made by the world's most renown thinkers, and then we graduate and go to our workplaces and learn very little more. The information that we receive outside of the academic world is little more than commercial nonsense, or information we need to carry on our jobs, forwarding the causes of society, earning our monies and paying our bills. But there should be something more to it than that. Recently there have been quite a few books come out dealing with general knowledge, and they have been big sellers. Perhaps it is because the publishers realize that common citizens see the few people that continue their educations, and still retain the knowledge in their heads, and then are shown in public on shows like Jeopardy!, and they yearn for that same knowledge. Perhaps they see people much like themselves on shows like Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader? and they find themselves ashamed, deep down, and try to regain that learning that has sunken into their unconscious filing cabinets.

Perhaps this is a nostalgic yearning back to the times when academic learning was the primary goal of my life, back to the college days when the philosopher kings gave of their knowledge and I soaked it up like a sponge. I start to feel this way whenever I listen to college lectures that I've downloaded onto my computer and burned them onto CDs. Philosophy, history, literature... and the connections that link thought and reason and emotions together, like neurons firing in the brain... I guess the river metaphor is still applicable here, because neurons form river like systems in the brain that transfer electric currents that contain information, and with continuing education, those neurons form new connections, fire signals from one end of the pathways to another, ceaselessly learning and processing and connecting... it's all quite amazing, and absolutely satisfying.

So how do we get that education throughout our lives? Certainly, in this society, it is impossible to go to college the whole time. Because in this capitalist world, education costs money. Everything costs money. Lots of it. It would be more pleasing to the people who yearn for academic growth to have the philosophers and thinkers be able to give us their knowledge without the hassle of renumeration. Shouldn't the world endevor to give every man, woman, and child on Earth the education that they need to benefit the world, forward the progress of the human race, and make it a better place to live? What would happen if that ability to have a free education, all our lives, were to become a reality? What diseases would be cured? What marvelous works of literature and poetry would come out of the minds of the now uneducated? But maybe this illusion is more meant for the world of Star Trek than real life, for the reality is that an advantage like this is given only to those who can afford it. That the repressed are uneducated and poor because they have nothing to offer the free and rich in the way of recompense when it comes to getting an education.

But is it possible to get a free college education anyway? Certainly there must be a way to learn the knowledge of all humanity without spending lots of money to listen to professors that may or may not know what they are talking about. Thoreau's answer to this was to spend many hours at the public library, providing himself with the education he desired. There was no need to go to Harvard just to get an education, and for those that did, the rows of books at the library housed more knowledge than in the professors tiny brains. So indeed, it is possible to get a college education, through the public and college libraries, without the time and money of going directly to college.

There is, however, one problem. Often the time that it takes to go to the library (especially if it's a college one, the closest good college library is close to an hour away), and actually read the books and do the research is much more than what we have, living in the hectic world that we live in. If you looked at the life that Thoreau lived, he didn't have that problem. Sure there was work to be done, but there wasn't the hectic break-neck speed lifestyle that is so often experienced today. Don't get me wrong, I would do the full educational process with any subject given the resources and the time, but often I have neither. The one point in my daily activities in which I have time to devote to learning something is in my car driving to and from work. This only works with people who are audio learners, and only for people who don't take notes (which is very few people, actually.), but it is the best way I have found to process educational material in my daily routine. And this is done through the miracles of modern technology.

Plato's heirarchy in The Republic gives the highest position to philosopher-kings, whose job it was to rule and to teach, to not own property or marry, but rather to devote their time to both ruling and learning. Now while I'm not saying that is the best way for teachers to be, I do think that now, with the miracles of technology of the 21st century, it is time for college professors and teachers to begin making the plethora of knowledge that they have so painstakingly amassed available to the masses. The Internet is the most democratic device to have ever existed. Not since the days of the Academy in ancient Greece have professors been able to freely discuss ideas with students, educating the masses, and giving the individual the ability to learn and explore his or her own world. The current education system in America, where everyone is supposed to receive the same education, is obsolete and must be redone. Through the technology of today, professors can provide material on any subject at all to anyone in the world that is willing to take the time to understand it. Online assignments, quizzes, and tests, make the grading processes easy, at least as far as the understanding of the knowledge. And when it comes to applying that knowledge by writing essays or contributing to forums or chat rooms, this is when the Internet truly shines. I was fortunate enough to get into the developing stages of the WebCT program at GC&SU, and I can see such potential in the future development of this.

Also at GC&SU, Dr. Viau is among the first professors to use ipods and iTunes to provide material to his interdisciplinary courses. The use of MP3 technology to provide lectures instantly to anyone in the world is the main component of what I think would be a grand university that would rival Wikipedia in scope and stature. An "Open Source University" where professors and teachers would provide lessons and courses on every subject imaginable. It could be done while having normal classes, provided it was prepared well enough. The lectures could then be stored on University servers and linked to the Web. Modern broadband technology makes this possible.

As amazing as this sounds, I have serious doubts about it's implementation. There are already some colleges and programs that have started some of this. I can provide links at a later time, as I explore them. But the old regimes of universities, textbook companies, and state based schools would balk at the loss of revenue from tuition and the total annihilation of the educational system as we know it. Professors would at first resist, wanting to know where their paychecks would come from. But universities would still exist, and be just as wonderful a place as they always have been. They could still charge tuition and have brick and mortar buildings. But the main source of pay for professors would come from the state, whose job it would be to insure the intellectual property of the professors be upheld, as well as see that the needs of those professors be tended to. They should be some of the highest paid employees, much like that of entertainers. Because the results of free education for all citizens world wide would outweigh all investments that were put into revamping and maintaining such an amazing program. There is no reason, given the technology that we now have, why Moon landings should not have already happened. There is no reason why diseases should still linger when the potential knowledge of all the human beings on Earth could be used toward solving the problems that exist currently. And this is done by giving each and every person on this globe the chance to have a free education, to strengthen the natural talents and abilities that every person has, and to become the best individual that any one person could be. You see how idealistic this sounds. And yet how wonderful the rewards would be if it could actually happen.

What it would take now, for starters, is just a few professors starting a web site, much like Wikipedia, to store lectures and courses online for free. It could start in Milledgeville, with the wonderful professors that I miss hearing and talking to on a daily basis. GC&SU has the forward thinking and the ability to start something like this, and has the professors with the knowledge to give every person on this Earth a drink of knowledge. And once people have tasted that, it will become a need for people to expand their horizons.

I can already hear the people exclaiming that I have either proclaimed knowledge much as Faust would have done before making a deal with Mephistopheles, or Manfred, who was warned that the Tree of Knowledge is not the Tree of Life. Some would even warn that I should be careful, that knowledge is a sin that Eve partook of, and that is should be some religious undertaking I should be writing about. And it's true that moderation and balance is key to living any person's life. If we are all parched for knowledge, and our brains have grown weak from disuse, shouldn't we exercise our brains daily by giving it knowledge to process. And what better way to exercise our minds than to use that small portion of dormant time while driving to enhance and better our lives? Our body is our temple, so should not be our minds a temple as well? We cannot focus on exercise and diet and bettering ourselves physically without the exercise of our minds. And if personal growth is the core of living life, bettering one self, one's community, one's world, than isn't what I'm suggesting the best way to start this?

So until the time of Starfleet arrives, until the main goal of life is to better your own life and that of the world around you, rather than just making money, it is enough just to learn a little each day. To use time as wisely as possible to better you own self, mentally, physically...whatever. I'm not the best person to say this, but at least, if my physical life isn't the best in the world, I will still be able to learn and to process information. I hope I am not too egotistic to believe that, in the end, my writings, such as this blog, will allow me to pass on whatever I have learned and thought of to the people out there, so that they might benefit from my learning, from my thoughts and feelings. If that is all I can do, then that is enough.