The Mouse in the Cave (Plato Blog Pt.2)

 Pleasure, the inevitable by-product of our civilization...A new world, whose only preoccupation will be, how to amuse itself. The tragedy of your time, my young friends, is that you may get exactly what you want. ~Inspector Shrink, from Monkees' Head.

Our only preoccupation will be how to amuse ourselves.  That certainly fits, whether we use Huxley's Brave New World or Neil Postman's philosophies.  I think it's quite clear that Inspector Shrink's quote is quite correct.  There are two types of people in this world, people who consume entertainment, and those that support them.  We have lost our ability to produce anything, for the most part.  Some specialization still takes place, the scientists who develop the small microchips in our cell phones, or the antibiotics that cure us from disease.  We make those things.  But put me in front of a rod of molten metal and tell me to make a screw out of it, and I'm dumbfounded.  Certainly, those things are made by robots now anyway.  That way we don't have to get our hands dirty and can spend more time talking about last night's American Idol. I certainly do appreciate the many pieces of machinery that makes my life easier, but I say this with the full knowledge that I am not using that time to forward the progress of man, to payback the makers of society with anything substantial with the time I have saved.  No, I am using it finding things on the Internet, or watching the same reruns on TV over and over again.  I would argue that the vast majority of time American's spend on this Earth is used pursuing ways to amuse ourselves, or working so that we may have the money to  take on that pursuit.

A prime example of this in action, squeezed down to 11 minutes for our inspection, is the Phineas & Ferb episode "Attack of the 50 Foot Sister." Take a moment to watch it on Youtube.  Okay, Candace is obsessed with going to the Midsummer Carnival to enter the auditioning for "Flawless Girl" cosmetics. Along the way she runs into Mr. Odda, who is the host of the Oddball show.  As she realizes, both of these companies make money on taking advantage of the insecurities of today's youth.  One by showing off the aberrant objects of the world to make normal people feel better ("at least I'm not like that,") while the other uses modern communication to project an image of perfection, that which can only be attained by purchasing cosmetics from their company.

On the way, Candace stops to ridicule her brothers, Phineas and Ferb, who are trying to help a friend grow a giant watermelon (at the expense of hanging up the shame curtains).  In this sense, the brothers, using their chemistry lab, are the producers, the makers, as Ayn Rand would put it, of this world, while their older sister ridicules them, until she needs their growth elixir for her own superficial needs.

This seems to be the case in reality, as well.  A recent Facebook status by one of my friends describes complex mathematical calculations he took in order to plant a tree that would provide the correct amount of shade for the house, the garden, etc...  For which he was called a geek, a dork, etc... However, if calculations such as this is not done, the shade can kill gardens, and not enough shade can bring sunlight in on a home and cost hundreds in electricity bills.  The thought processes behind planting a tree, the science behind it, is the antithesis to the people controlling the images in the caves.  For producing, or thinking, saves money, creates time saving efforts that has nothing to do with entertainment.  This is the free man living his own life outside the cave, and for which the self-absorbed inside of it are insanely jealous.

Back to Phineas & Ferb for a minute, the other character in the program who consistently builds machines for himself (usually for superficial reasons, which is a paradox to my theory), is Dr. Doofenshmirtz, the evil scientist. His creations are as awe inspiring as P&F's inventions, but his are supposedly used for world (okay, Tri-State Area) domination. However, the boys' also have a hint of wrongness to them, as Candice is always trying to get them into trouble, as if by them creating a portal to Mars, they are doing something wrong against society, or at least Mom's rules. It's amazing how the inventors and thinkers of the shows on the Disney Channel are ridiculed or stereotyped as wrong or evil.  Stewie is done the same way in Family Guy. Those that think are anti-social, awkward, even evil, and those that are rich are so through no thought of their own.  They are stupid, without morals, and always anti-environmental. It's also interesting that the majority of shows on the Disney Channel, the main characters are head actors(tresses) in bands, on television shows, in fixtures of entertainment for teenagers everywhere. Hannah Montana, for instance. Or Icarly's crew on Nick.

In short, those that create or support entertainment are lauded, and those who produce non-entertaining things, or those that impede entertainment, are ridiculed. All this from children's television. How much of this is internalized and brought into adult culture? Where scientists and thinkers are ridiculed and branded as anti-social or perhaps even evil (or sent off to Iceland as in Brave New World),  while entertainers and those that contribute nothing substantial to mankind are lauded as role-models and heroes.  Would that the construction workers working high upon the Brooklyn bridge get as much praise as Kobe Bryant playing an hour of ball and getting  thousands of dollars. I would rather be the worker, standing on the apex of the bridge, looking out over the ocean and seeing the sun rise upon New York City, and know that below him is a structure that he helped to build, to form with his own hands, than to entertain the masses endless staring at the glowing flames, the images from the screens, the television and the computer, the shadows on the walls.

Plato, The Monkees, and Jumping Dandruff

"The tragedy of your time, my young friends, is that you may get exactly what you want" ~Inspector Shrink, from The Monkees Head

If Bill and Ted ever stop by my house in their phone booth, I need to borrow it and bring Plato back to the present and, given my advanced knowledge of Ancient Greek, the conversations we would have.... He would be amazed, I think, with our houses, with the lights and electricity, air-conditioning, all the comforts we have. But I think, after looking at our lives, he would conclude that we haven't progressed much since his days at the Academy, where he would argue with his students and reveal truths about mankind. Specifically, the passage in The Republic, where he creates the analogy of "The Cave."

Imagine Plato sitting in the town square, trying to engage his students in a conversation. Amongst the idyllic manufactured town park, the planted trees, the statues of the local hero, the ancient philosopher sits unable to carry on a lesson in metaphysics, because someone is sitting in their polished crimson sports car blaring music, the female accountant is talking on her cell phone about plans for tonight, the electronics store is showing the football game on the new 50 inch flat screen in the store window. Then there's the kids walking behind their mother, but who often bump into things because they have their heads buried in the latest Pokemon game on their Nintendo DS. But of course, Plato doesn't know all this... all he sees are lights and sounds and images being projected on the walls. For that's what we have, our own walls, projecting unreal images onto themselves and into our minds. We live, unchained, seeing the images that others wish us to see, on the wall.

What Plato doesn't realize is that the metaphor that he used is correct, but incomplete. Seeing the reality of things, the "forms" outside the cave, the man comes back in, tries to tell his friends about the outside world. And it's not that they don't believe him, they simply find it boring. There's so many other wonderful things going on in the images, who cares about the sunlight and the flower and the perfect chair. It's all about the images. So, the man realizes that he now is free, and that he can now take advantage of his knowledge. He goes up to where the images are made, kills the people controlling the fire, and makes his own images. Further, he allows those watching to determine what images they see, as long as they pay him a monthly fee. In the cave then, there are two kinds of people, those that produce the entertainment, and those that consume it.
***

A break to tie in the quote at the top.  While looking for the exact wording of the quote above, I chanced upon IMDB's page on the Monkees' movie Head, which had a page of quotes.  Among which was the follow up of Peter Tork's conversation with the philosopher in the sauna.  The swami is included on the Head soundtrack, but Peter's communicating this to his fellow band mates (which is overlooked just as the man in the cave's communication was), is left out.  Here that quote is in it's entirety:

We were talking with the Master regarding the nature of conceptual reality. Psychologically speaking, the human mind, or brain or whatever, is almost incapable of distinguishing between the real and the vividly imagined experience. Sound and film and music and radio. Even these manipulative experiences are received more or less directly and uninterpretative by the mind. They are cataloged and recorded and either acted upon directly, or stored in the memory, or both. Now this process, unless we pay it tremendous attention, begins to separate us from the reality of the now. Am I being clear? For we must allow the reality of the now to just happen, as it happens. Observe and act with clarity. For where there is clarity, there is no choice. And were there is choice, there is misery. But then, why should I speak, since I know nothing?

It further solidifies Peter Tork as the wise fool, the Rousseau-ian Noble Savage, as it were. He becomes the free man, the one who has looked outside of the cave, or, as the Monkees have deemed it, the world in which the band was manufactured, created, and manipulated, and has come back into that world to tell his band mates how they may become free. Of course, much as the metaphor ends for Plato, the Monkees realize they can never be free at all. They are trapped as characters, as images on the wall.  And in real life, the characters of Peter Tork, Davy Jones, and others, become those they portrayed on Television.  As Tork said in the boxing ring, "I'm the dummy. I'm always the dummy."  Moving on...

The entire quote from the inspector is:

Pleasure, the inevitable by-product of our civilization (cut scene of a butcher pounding meat)...A new world, whose only preoccupation will be, how to amuse itself. The tragedy of your time, my young friends, is that you may get exactly what you want.

After this, the Monkees are taken into a scene where they are dressed in white, and are encouraged to jump up and down in what looks like hair. They are dandruff you see, for a shampoo commercial. I wonder what Plato's opinions would be on the suppositions made by Aldous Huxley in Brave New World.  A government that not only provides justice and peace, but controls it's subjects through the pleasures it seeks.  Much like baby Robins following a worm dangling from their mother's mouth.  In order to get the entertainment we desire, we would give up our liberties and our freedom and our education all to be happy.  The philosopher kings would be exiled, to Iceland, as Mustapha Mond reveals to Helmholtz Watson at the end, and the commoners will all be perfectly happy never to achieve self-awareness, as long as their free supply of drugs and religion-sex is unabated.  But we were talking about dandruff...

Because the scene where the Monkees become dandruff is as telling as the rest.  Imagine the Three Tenors having to do such exercises just to fulfill a contract.  The Monkees must sacrifice their dignity in order to pursue their music.  Which brings the money they can use for drugs and other entertainment.  They become the amalgamation of society, both consumers and producers of the entertainment they so are addicted to.  As viewers of the images on the cave wall, they become puppets for the image makers, as well as images themselves for others watching on other cave walls.  There is no freedom here.  No sunshine, no perfect forms, only illusion. 
***

I guess I need to split this into two posts, because the making, selling, and consuming of entertainment develops into an economy that is quite interesting, and is best laid out in a Phineas & Ferb  episode. 

The Persistence of Memory of Food

....or what not to get at Arby's.


My family will say that whenever I talk about a vacation I've been on or a place I visited, I will link that memory with food I ate while I'm there. They're quite correct, as there is no other combination of smell, taste, and texture, that will bring up memory responses as quickly as food. If you ask me if I've ever been in an Earthquake, I will happily tell you about the 7.0 Earthquake that hit Bear Lake on the other side of Los Angeles, where we were visiting for the month. Aside from going to Disneyland (which was much more hype and not enough substance, but that's another blog altogether) and seeing the sites of LA and falling asleep on the traffic-clogged interstates (I think it was Jet Lag), I will tell you about the hotel that we stayed in, near the airport, and how, when the Earthquake hit, I saw the pool water move from one side of the pool to the other in unison, as if a teeter-totter were underneath it. And I will tell you about reading C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia, and how much I enjoyed it. But mostly, I will tell you about the exquisite Danishes they had in the Hotel Lobby for breakfast. Cheese, Cherry...I have had no better Danishes before or since, and no that I Think on it, the sleepiness probably had something to do with blood sugar.

And I can tell you about the Nachoes I had at Mustang Valley Elementary school, of which I have never found their equal, or the homemade salad dressing I put on the Fiestadas when we had them. Fiestadas...mmmmmm.... there were times I sat in the middle of my college classes craving a Fiestada with the veracity of a pregnant woman.

I've talked about other foods in blogs in the past, such as the Hot Ham & Cheese sandwich from Hardees', or the Tripledecker Pizza from Pizza Hut. I will leave these to my other writings.

Why I'm writing this... I went to Arby's to try out their Angus Beef, Bacon and Cheese sandwich, as it is similar to the three cheese sandwich they promoted back in the 1990's. I remember the last time I had that sandwich was in Milledgeville, around 1999, and the flavor was exquisite. This time, however, while the beef was good, I had to hunt to find any cheese, I got two bites of bacon, and the sandwich was much smaller than I remembered. Perhaps this is the lesson to be learned from food, that the memory of the sensual aspects of an object is often times inflated and will only cause an anticlimactic feeling afterward. Very rarely is something as good the tenth time as it is the first. We must continuously be looking for new variety, and savor those memories so that when a certain spark of synapse travels through the brain, igniting a smell or taste or other memory, it will be all the more pleasurable. We cannot recreate the past, only create new memories for what is to come.

Music Review: Dar Williams, _Many Great Companions_

Anyone can throw a song together. Even songs that have some semblance of rhythm, theme, meaning. I even like some of those songs, as Gorillaz demonstrated. Look up the lyrics from the Demon Days album, and you'll not be able to make heads or tails of them. They're just words, put together with a dance beat, and they make a song. What makes Demon Days so effective is that the words they use, the images they conjure up in the mind are like paintings, of color and light, images that tell the complete story of a night's sleep, complete with storyline and symbolism. But the songs themselves aren't stories, but fragments of them.

Paul Simon said that on his trek through the countries of Africa, discovering the beats and tunes that would become his Graceland album, that he learned how to not make songs so linear, so symmetrical. This allows him to use imagery in more of an impressionist fashion, where nothing is solid and plot driven as, say, "The Boxer." Story-songs are not inferior, however, just different. Each strand of songlines become a different type of painting, just as a Monet piece is just as valuable as a portrait by Van Gogh, or a landscape by Turner.

So we've looked at some of the masters of songwriting, and in America there are many that have graces our culture with sound and song. I've always said, that if the Earth becomes overcome with everything and we need to depart it like the Robinson's did on Lost in Space, they would have to take a database of the world's finest works with them. But which would you choose? Arthur C. Clarke decided to eliminate anything that dealt with the biases of Earth, which unfortunately meant ridding the colonists and their descendants of all Religious texts and imagery. But what would you include from the genre of the Popular Song? Sinatra? Dylan? Cher? How about songwriters such as James Taylor or Elton John? There are too many to count, and too many "popular" popular songs that probably should be left out. I don't think you would include the Macarena in the mix, or "The Thong Song," even though they were extremely popular at the time. You have to delve into the art form and find those that truly represent the art form.

I would argue that Dar Williams' work, especially those of her greatest his album, Many Great Companions, would qualify to be included. The intimacy of her lyrics, the complexity of the symbolism, her mastery of using words and music together to paint an image is so precise. She is part of a lineage of songwriter that goes back to the folk days of the 1960's, from Joan Baez, Carly Simon, and James Taylor. As long as the songwriters keep writing, the art form of the Popular Song is in good hands. While we groan over the puerile lyrics of Lady Gaga and Justin Beiber, we can appreciate that there are artists like Dar Williams and David Gray, amongst others, that are writing for the intelligent admirers of song and art.



Especially poignant on this album is "February," which uses symbolism to parallel the weather and the settings of the seasons with a fallen relationship. Also, "When I Was A Boy," tells of a woman who, in her youth, lived as a boy, and then grew up to see how image driven the world is, stereotyping men and women into one form or another. Her songs tell of growing up, losing the innocence of childhood and experiencing the changes in spirituality, of the relationship between teenagers and God. Such fine music. If nothing else, pick up the greatest hits album, the second CD, as mp3 files. You won't be disappointed, and maybe the lines of color and light will come through for you, too.

These Dreams...or Rowing Your Boat

Decided to evoke the song lyrics by Heart. For some reason, the song evokes memories of myself sitting in the waiting room of my brother's speech therapist, Dr. Lauren Bradway, with her blocks shaped like letters and the green walls and the radio oozing out contemporary hits. I'm sure it was played during that time, because every time I hear the song, I think of that waiting room. So peaceful..

Songs will do that...just like smells or other sensations. The chemicals in the brain that make memories stay active for some time, as the memory fades back into the subconscious. A few nights back I had a dream, don't remember exactly what it was, but the odd part was that it had Betty White in it. I thought it odd when I woke up, and upon thinking about it, I realized that she had been on the $25,000 Pyramid show on GSN the day before, so the image got transported into one of my dreams.

It's also weird when I have the television on at night, for instance, on Fox News, as my subconscious hears whatever is going on in the world and uses some of it in my dreams. I remember one time I was in a college town, probably supposed to be Milledgeville, but it looked nothing like it, when missle started raining down on the neighborhood. Woke up and sure enough, the Israelis and the Palestinians were exchanging missiles at each other. Or when I have ESPN on I will more often than not be at a baseball game sometime during the night. Perhaps I should sleep with the TV off...

I say all this because my grandmother, Granny, has for years claimed that she helped my former boss's wife with car problems when Granny worked at the Landmark building in Conyers. There's no way this could have happened, as he lived in Maine at the time she worked there. But Granny can go into what type of car it was and everything. I realized that these false memories started about the time that her Macular Degeneration started getting bad. With her being blind, the only clear images she saw was those that developed in her mind.

Last Thanksgiving my grandmother broke her hip and is now in a nursing home, as her mental state has deteriorated to the point where bringing her home just isn't possible with us having to work. She keeps on telling us about different things that happen in the home that make no sense. For instance, she claims she was having soup one day, and it was good soup, but that chickens came in and ate the rest. I think that dementia, especially in her case, results from the memories of the mind's eye. In other words, dreams that are so much clearer than what she experiences every day, that the dreams become her reality. If she dreams that she got up, walked down the hallway and ordered food from the cook, then that's what she did. There's nothing, then, to keep her from thinking that she could get up the next day. Thus, she would never be able to be by herself for any length of time.

It's amazing how clear dreams and memories stay in the mind, even ones that aren't real. How people can believe in a story so vehemently that it becomes their reality. I daresay that the best criminals are ones that can actually delude themselves into thinking that whatever alibi they constructed was their reality. It would easily pass any lie detector. Just ask my grandmother about my boss's wife, and she will tell you without hesitation what happened, even though it was impossible.

It is a remarkable state of being, to live in your dreams, and have them clearer than real life. But also terrifying. That reality is only constructed by our trains of thought. It makes me think that maybe Berkley wasn't so far off in his analysis of metaphysics. Or, as the old nursery rhyme goes:

Row, Row, Row your boat
gently down the stream.
Merrily, Merrily, Merrily, Merrily,
Life is but a dream.

And maybe, for some people, dreams are but life.

Music Review: Dierks Bentley _Up On the Ridge_

I don't like contemporary country music. I get tired of the stereotypes of pickup trucks and beer and the farmer's daughter that always seems to permeate the genre. Especially because those stereotypes  are mostly true.  That's the thing, you constantly decry the applications of stereotypes to ethnic groups or cultural niches, but they wouldn't be considered stereotypes if they weren't somewhat true. A lot of the contemporary country singers just string a bunch of those images together, put a dancing beat on it, and they crank out another hit.  Nothing has been done new in that genre for many years, nothing that you can't go back to the 1960's and hear quality country music by people who probably wrote music the same way as today's artists did. 

This having been said, when Borders played Dierks Bentley's album Up on the Ridge on the overhead, I originally thought, "Oh no, another country album..." And the first song didn't alleviate my fears. Yes, it has lines about his truck and his hound dog and drinking...etc... If you listen to Dierks' other albums, that's what you'll get.  But this album... this album is different.



What Dierks takes Country music back to its roots in Bluegrass and Folk. The songs don't sound like quick hits.  To compare it with other artists... The track "Senior," sounds like Dylan on his Desire album, and the last track, about the Miners in West Virginia comes straight from Woody Guthrie's style of folk. He sings a duet with an aging Kris Kristofferson, as well as putting vocals to various bluegrass and contemporary  country artists. Every song on the album is worth listening to. I didn't omit one when syncing it over to my MP3 player. And it's very rare for me to do that. I was also pleased when I saw he was nominated for three Grammy's this year.  He well deserves it for this album.  If only he was as popular as his contemporaries, so that everyone could hear quality music.

Recess from the Recesses (a response)

[From my Facebook page, J. pointed out that many children still enjoy going outside, and gave examples.  She says that adults still produce playground sets (albeit "safer" ones) and create the memories that children produce for themselves.  In the end, she says, "Each generation must move on to make room for the next, yes?"  This is my response.  I agree with much of what she says, with two exceptions. That, one, I don't hold the same optimism that children will, in the future, be running around in their neighborhoods using sticks as wands or weapons or whatever. And two, that the equipment that we played on is just as good for this generation as today's "safer" replacements.]

I do hope you are correct in your evaluation of today's children. That in the areas where we live there are still kids that yearn to go outside, to play on playgrounds, to wield a stick as a sword or a staff, to find a copse of trees and turn it into a quiet hut,  a mansion of greens.  But I just don't see it happening that way.  Imagination is taken up by video games, by television screens, or transformed into competition in the form of organized sports.  When I was in middle and high school, there were few kids that "came out to play" in the summer, as they were all being bussed off to soccer camps and constant practices for organized sports (soccer in my neighborhood was the most time consuming). If they weren't into sports, they were inside playing with video games or whathaveyou.  And my neighborhood was as barren as most ghost towns. 

When I go back even farther, I look at the playgrounds as one of the few places where I actually half-way interacted with other kids. Not that I did that well, but I did have a few friends and we played our make believe games from the popular TV shows at the time.  The playground equipment became the models for our spaceships, our fortresses...etc. I realize that any brand of equipment could do that, whether it be plastic, or wood, or be it abstract, a mere shape, or constructed to look like a castle.  The importance of the specific rocketships I talk about are because of the memories that we had of those particular playsets. It is a selfish notion, really, that those metal structures could stay rooted into the ground for all eternity, for every child to experience those exact memories.  We are living our lives through them.  But it's precisely that selfish notion that makes us hold on to old things as much as we do. 

Take a look at one of my older blogs, from July of last year, which analyzes a conversation between Lt. Commander Data and Dr. Soong, his maker, from Star Trek: The Next Generation. It's very applicable to this one, as we tend to hold on to old things, the crumbling buildings of southern towns, those like the ones in Milledgeville towering above the old Governor's mansion, with missing roof parts and piles of old psychology files stashed about.  Or to look at it another way, the loft apartments at the Mill in Porterdale. Living there would be an absolute treat, as the old factory walls would still retain the echoes of decades before, mixed in with the waterfalls of the South River.  We hold on to our ties with our pasts, yearning for them to stay eternally on, comforting us, reminding us of our semi-permanence in this world. For looking back to our past gives a sense of continuity, of a chain of humans living from one century to the next.  What if, traveling back to Oklahoma some time, and seeing my old playground at Mustang Valley, with the old rocketship monkey bars shining in the sunlight, and there on it was a child reaching up to the top of the set, and seeing his face as he reached the top.  That would be me in another life, but it would also be me now. It would be joy continuing down through the years.  So yes, it is selfish, but it is perfectly human to wish the old structures of our youth to continue existing, for us or for others, forever.  It gives us a sense of immortality. It's why I write these blogs, or why anyone creates anything, as it provides a link to the future.  After I am gone, there will still be these blogs for people to read, to know about my life.  I had hoped that there would still have been that rocketship for people to play on, to find the same excitement as I did. Let the children make the memories of their own worlds, at least I still have mine.

***
Something I think needs to be added.  When we talk about why Mustang Valley's playground was replaced with brand new sets, we have to look at the potential for lawsuits for "unsafe" playground equipment.  The large monkey bar sets at Mustang Valley were fastened into concrete, as were the teeter totters.  The swing sets were just outside on barren dirt, often which had holes underneath where kids' feet had swung, and when it rained, you got tadpoles swimming about in the holes under the swings.  The rocketship was also in the dirt.  They did not have the recycled tire clippings, or safe rubber ground to keep children from falling and skinning their knees and breaking an arm or whatever.  Truth is, the skinned knees is part of what made those sets fun.  There was danger involved.  Nowadays, if anyone is put in danger, the school system gets sued.  It's the litigious society that we have that keeps children from actually being children.  Would, in the middle ages, children have been allowed to work as apprentices for blacksmiths or become squires for knights if the people thought they might get hurt, and hence, the shop owners would get sued for negligence or something... of course not.  If, as a kid, I burnt my finger while trying to touch a hot iron, to see how hot it was, the pain afterwards was a lesson in life.  In taking away the pain, we take away the lesson involved.  I'd rather have the scars than be blemish free, and have learned nothing.