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merry christmas – kill a tree

The modern tradition of bringing a cut tree into the house (which began in the 16th century) is a perversion of a much older and more benign multicultural tradition of celebrating nature (or God/gods) by decorating living trees and/or bringing pieces of greenery (small cuttings which do not harm the tree) into the house (ancient Egyptians, Romans and, most notably, Druids).

Wanton killing for vanity’s sake is abhorrent, even if it’s only a tree. I’m a vegetarian and I can understand killing animals for food, but to kill simply to possess (for antlers, christmas trees or other decorative objects) is incredibly selfish. I wish people could connect a little more to the underlying life force and then they would have a little more compassion and that would change a lot of things for the better.

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the dubious appeal of a “dive”

I guess maybe this is synonymous with the rise of the “hipster,” but I’ve noticed that relatively affluent young people have recently developed some bizarre fascination with what they call a “dive” bar. A number of my friends have expressed such an interest and whenever I look on socialization websites (like craigslist), it’s one of the most common interests mentioned. When I hit my 21st birthday in the ’90s, I went to a dive bar with a friend, because it was in walking distance and the only other choice was a crowded college bar. It was boring and a bit depressing.

The way I understand it, a “dive” is a very nondescript and particularly shabby neighborhood-type bar, populated mainly with run-down locals, most of whom are “regulars” (i.e., hopeless alcoholics). Granted that in such a place, the drinks are cheap, but if you’re not one of the locals (who I guarantee do not call their second home a “dive”), why would you want to go there? The only appeal I can see is that of “slumming it,” which is a sort of condescending thrill that affluent people seem to get from “seeing how the other half live,” stroking a charge from encountering people and situations unlike their everyday lives (in which they know are superior).

Clarification: by “affluent,” I meant anyone who comes from a solidly middle-class (or upper-class) background and has either {a} a trust fund, {b} parents who can or do help pay for bills or {c} a white-collar job that pays decent money. Essentially, think of the song “Common People” by Pulp – this is what the “dive bar” likers are like. Because if they seriously liked some run-down neighborhood bar, would they really refer to it as a “dive”?

On the bright side, at least this latest “irony” debacle isn’t as much of a fashion disaster as the trucker hat fad. I still don’t like its disingenuousness though; I think I’ll go listen to some Pulp.

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seduction of the masses

A friend of mine recently lent me a book called, “The Art of Seduction” by Robert Green. This is not really about sex, but about the ability to induce strong emotional ties and to “lead astray” (the word seduce comes from se- “aside, away” + ducere “to lead”). While it is interesting overall, what I found most interesting (so far) are the chapters on the Charismatic and Star archetypes. They both elucidate how our cultural obsessions with hollywood celebrities and with politicians work. While I already had some awareness of this, I’d never be able to so clearly articulate it. For the Charismatic type, a fierce energy (particularly expressed with the eyes) and belief in some cause (particularly in voicing something that many feel but are afraid to voice) are what seduce the masses. For the Star type, an unknowable quality that allows us to project our own desires and a mythic aspect are what seduce the masses. Both types exude constant self-confidence and they express their power indirectly, especially in terms of body language and insinuation, rather than overtly.

The book talks explicitly about John F. Kennedy as the Mythic Star archetype and it’s pretty interesting stuff that relates to the modern age of political activity, in which television is pivotal. The mythic aspect comes partially from the overall physical presentation (look/clothes/pose) but also from the ability to unite by appealing to fundamental emotions, such as fear and a desire for success/family. This aspect can defeat anyone who gets wrapped up in nitty-gritty details and thus inevitably divides his/her following. And like all seductive archetypes, it can be consciously enhanced, with attention to such details (for instance, JFK grew up around Hollywood as his dad was a producer and he himself spent time in Hollywood trying to figure out what made people stars), although it works best if there’s some natural ability at base (self-confidence, for example, cannot be easily faked and any exposure of insecurity would ruin the effect). This explains why many politicians are so adept at avoiding committal to any detailed issues and why they talk in very vague terms. Also, it explains why a self-styled “cowboy” (a Connecticut-born Ivy league brat who bought himself a ranch in Texas with family money and now has a Texas accent) was able to win the presidency, two terms in a row, despite having less than stellar credentials. The keys to this kind of seduction seems to be: never apologizing, bridging the gap between dreams and reality (not too realistic nor too unrealistic), being distinctive from the competition, never being afraid to go too far and never displaying self-doubt. And most of our recent presidents have had these qualities in abundance.

On a related note, although most of the power-grabbing described in the book is antiquated and doesn’t appeal much to me (I don’t see the point of working so hard to win the affections of those who will fall for such tricks while the seducer is unlikely to get get emotional satisfaction from the “victim” – i.e., I’m not looking for something to gain like money or power), I can see some value to the basic principals, especially the art of insinuation. If you can appeal to people subconsciously, it is much easier to open their minds. As the book says, we’re so inured to overt appeals and manipulations, that we’ve grown cynical, but subconscious demonstrations (of elements that draw us to people) can be highly effective. I may have to stop this blog, though, if I want to practice insinuating instead of just being controversial. 😉

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secret of happiness – exercise?

I’ve always known that exercise has the quality of making you feel good, releasing endorphins during a good workout and making your body look and feel better afterwards. Recently, though, I’ve been coming to the conclusion that exercise is necessary not only for your body/muscles, but also for other aspects of self: intelligence, creativity and emotions. Getting proper amounts of exercise in all areas can bring about a kind of joyful existence that most people would term “happiness” and doing without even one of these things will draw a shadow on your general mood that you may not clearly see, but will nonetheless dampen your experiences and prevent you from being complete.

For intelligence, I think standardized schooling sets a very bad example. Aside from focusing too much on rote memorization (rather than critical thinking), it is considered to be a structured part of childhood, that is, you learn while you’re at school as a child/young adult and otherwise (outside of school and after “graduation”), learning is not considered. Not so, my friends. Learning is something that we can and should be doing nearly all the time. This means that new experiences are desirable, such as meeting different kinds of people and surmounting different kinds of challenges. Sometimes you can learn the most from your mistakes (if you truly reevaluate things). There is danger in intellectual inactivity – when I feel myself starting to repeat, going through the days step by step without ever considering things, without approaching the world of ideas, without interacting, conversing, debating on that world of ideas, then I stagnate. My mind grows numb and my mood sinks. Just like when I haven’t been getting enough physical exercise. Continue reading “secret of happiness – exercise?”

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Radiohead unheard on radio

For those who aren’t in the know, the music group Radiohead became very popular in the mid-1990s and has remained extremely popular to this day. Thom Yorke (their lead singer) released a solo album last year which was on heavy rotation for months on the “modern rock” stations. However, when Radiohead the full group recently released their latest album, they decided to offer it for download on their website for “whatever you want to pay.” You can pay as little as nothing or as much as you want and get the full download (all songs in a zip file). They are planning to release some disc sets, but only as a custom job (and a bit pricey at 40£), but they are not doing a regular album release through the recording industry.

Now, this is a very interesting idea in and of itself, but one very interesting sidenote is that I haven’t heard any songs from it or even a mention of the new album on the ClearChannel-owned local “modern rock” station. I have heard one of the tracks on one of the college stations, but considering the group’s level of popularity and the heavy rotation of Thom Yorke’s similarly sounding solo album (called “The Eraser”), it’s a reasonable expectation that the new album would get some mainstream airplay. But it’s not – which is a good example of how mainstream radio functions (which is not to bring the listeners what they want to hear, but to actually sell the songs it is playing – if there’s no profit to be made for RIAA, then the song gets no airplay). This is counter to the common belief that commercial radio is only commercial because it has commercials (i.e. advertisements) played in between songs, when in fact the songs themselves are also advertisements.

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the thorny issue of astrology

Astrology is a thorny issue for me because so many of my otherwise like-minded friends and acquaintances have believed in it, while I have been a skeptic for many years. In some areas of thought, this might be a non-issue, but I feel that astrology, at least popular astrology vis-à-vis “signs,” is a way of prejudging people based on a singular arbitrary characteristic (in this case by birth-date, but similar to prejudices based on [perception of] gender, race or age). Although I cannot fully articulate it, I see a pattern of how shortcuts like this stifle the ability for humans to communicate and connect (i.e., rather than judging individuals based on their merits as learned through getting to know them, there is a readymade category to pop them into before deciding whether to get to know them). Of course, I am a staunch individualist, owing from many years of being mis-categorized by other people’s presumptions.

First I should clarify what I mean by the term astrology. From Wikipedia: “Astrology (Greek: study on the stars) is a group of systems, traditions, and beliefs in which knowledge of the relative positions of celestial bodies and related details is held to be useful in understanding, interpreting, and organizing information about personality, human affairs, and other terrestrial matters.” There are three main kinds of astrology: Western, Indian and Chinese. Also from Wikipedia: “In Western and Indian astrology, the emphasis is on space, and the movement of the sun, moon and planets in the sky through each of the zodiac signs. In Chinese astrology, by contrast, the emphasis is on time, with the zodiac operating on cycles of years, months, and hours of the day.”

Although I don’t ascribe much validity to it, I don’t have much of an issue with the complex study of astrology as it’s not at all an easy way of prejudging people (because you’d have to spend painstaking hours/days of research to figure out any individual’s chart and “read” their personality/destiny), but I take particular exception to “popular astrology.” This is a modern form of Western astrology that relies primarily or solely on the “sun sign” (i.e., the location of the sun on a person’s date of birth in the zodiac [which is a division of the celestial sphere based on “signs” of 30 degrees, roughly pertaining to certain well-known constellations, such as Aries]); this form of astrology is what you’ll see in the backs of numerous newspapers and magazines and is what most believers use to make spot judgments (i.e., so-and-so is a Scorpio, they tend to be control-freaks, watch out). That said, I will enumerate my points (some of which pertain only to Western or popular astrology): Continue reading “the thorny issue of astrology”

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forget name recognition, try resumes

This is a very simple concept, but one that has not so far been incorporated into the ballot process: voting for a politician is in theory like hiring a person for a job – by group consensus. Anyone who’s ever done interviews (given them, I mean) at a medium or large company knows how this works. Although the Hiring Manager has the final say, it’s basically to a consensus decision as everyone discusses and weighs the pros and cons together and this heavily weighs the outcome. Of course, hiring a person for a regular job is a different proposition than voting on a representative lawmaker because a regular job is a much simpler thing. And yet, the hiring process for a regular job is, in many ways, a much more convoluted affair. Although politicians spend a lot of time campaigning, it seems they’re mostly going for name recognition. They give some speeches, say some vague things, but where are the facts and who is doing the background checking for us? Where are the resumes for us to review?

I know politicians for election give speeches and stuff, but what I really want is a concise summary of where they stand on different issues. Something they’ll commit to on paper. And also, how have they voted in the past on those issues? And what life experience do they have – what companies have they worked for and in what positions? And would someone please call those places for references? Conflicts of interest (current holdings in companies tied to political lobbies)? What is their military record? Yeah, I know I could probably find out some, perhaps most of this information on my own (with painstaking research), but it’s not feasible for any regular voter to do for all the candidates on ballot. This should be a requirement for candidates to provide the resume and government non-partisan workers should compile voting records and perform background checks.

When you look at a ballot, all you see is a name and a political party – what good is that? Continue reading “forget name recognition, try resumes”

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The Game

I just finished reading Neil Strauss’s “The Game,” which is a non-fiction account of his rise and fall as a MPUA [master pick-up artist]. It’s very interesting in-and-of itself (not quite what you’d expect), but what I found most interesting was comparing myself to the pickup artist mentality. Before reading this, I would have said that I have nothing at all in common with any pickup artist, but now I know that I have some behaviors that are standard pickup strategies, just not the same intentions.

I’m not the kind of person who easily approaches women or tries to seduce them, however, I do have several features that the pick-up artists aspire to. 1. peacockery (dressing flamboyantly is a good way to get noticed, contrary to what many men think) and 2. what they call “negs” (which are mildly negative or non-complimentary comments made to the object of interest to make her think that you’re not interested, such as “Those are nice nails, are they real?” [example from the book]). Those two alone have gained me some success in getting positive attention from women. Only I’m not trying to seduce, just being myself and not buying into the usual game where men fawn all over beautiful women, showering them with compliments (even when they have boyfriends). Why should I bother?

On the other hand, there are some marked differences between myself and the pick-up artists: I don’t have any lines, nor the kind of confidence needed to strike up conversations with random strangers (I’m terrible at small talk and even hellos can be a challenge), but I do have the kind of deeper self-confidence (in myself, rather than in my “routine”) that keeps most people who get to know me interested. Somewhat surprisingly (not so much when you really think about it, but different from my first thoughts anyhow), the book reveals the pick-up artists as deeply insecure. Although they gain confidence in their abilities to seduce, they start training in seduction tactics because of deep initial insecurities, which then get painted over with a kind of validation by women’s attention which then becomes its own kind of neediness.

Wow. So, although it’s pretty amazing the tricks they master and ability to quickly engage strangers (I must admit, I am a bit envious – they seem to be able to get any group of men and women to like them), I realized that I’m actually a lot better off than they are. I don’t have to be fake and I actually like myself (and I didn’t need to go to pickup school to figure out basic grooming and style), but then again, I never really qualified as an “AFC” [average frustrated chump] anyhow. I do think it’s a good reminder though that I could actually conquer my shyness around strangers and I think I’d like to work on that (if I can just get around the boring typical conversations about work, how do you know so-and-so and where do you live – maybe I do need to invent some of my own lines).

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jargonized

Does anyone else get the sense that maybe we’re over-complicating things? Or maybe the opposite: grossly oversimplifying complex things? Or maybe, we’re just intentionally obfuscating our meanings. Despite strong cultural pressure to “fit in,” it seems like we all like to distinguish ourselves in some way. Many people seem to feel that being privy to specialized language is a good way to be distinguished and appear intelligent. Thus, we invent dialects where words get all tangled up and only those others in the same subculture or profession have a hope of understanding.

There is a strange drive to initialize/acronymize any phrase that gets significant usage. What’s funny about this is that these abbreviated phrases sometimes lose so much meaning that part of the origin of the abbreviation later gets added back on. For instance, I’ve heard the phrase “ATM machine” on a number of occasions and recently heard “ATS system” in professional context (where ATS = Applicant Tracking System).

Artificial redundancy is a good way to make ourselves sound more complicated because everyone knows that the longer it takes to say/spell something, the more complex the meaning. Computer-wise, I’ve heard the phrase “login in” and more recently, corp-speak about the “going-forward approach” and also “directionally where we’re going.” It’s especially amusing when you can adequately condense a 5 minute speech into a 10 second sentence. Continue reading “jargonized”

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no such thing as a good stereotype

There’s nothing so insidious as the concept of a benign stereotype. It may seem harmless to say something relatively positive about a bunch of people sharing some superficial characteristic, but it does indeed cause harm in several ways. First, it has the effect of binding those persons up with a neat little bow so that other stereotypes (most negative) will more easily stick to them. Secondly, it places an unrealistic expectations on members of that group to uphold that positive stereotype when it may not be in their nature to (which opens them to more insults than they otherwise would be exposed to). Thirdly, most all “positive” statements about one group imply the reverse about other groups, therefore throwing an implicit negative stereotype coupled with the “positive” stereotype.

For example: gay men are snazzy dressers, women are sensitive, black people are good dancers. The implications being that straight men are bad dressers, men are insensitive and that white people cannot dance well. You may even know some people who meet these stereotypes, however, as sweeping generalizations, they are simply not true. It’s not even that there are only a few exceptions – there are lots and you’re doing a disservice to everyone by keeping these alive.

One of my least favorite “benign stereotypes” are those of astrological signs (a la pop astrology). Being categorically judged by your birth month, i.e., sifting billions of people into 12 groups, is asinine. Supposedly, it’s linked to the stars, but pop astrology is not at all linked to the stars because the exact time, date and year of your birth is significant to the position of the stars (a little astronomy could tell you this) and in fact, starwise, there’s little similarity between a single month across different years – the rest of the universe is not synchronized with the orbit of the earth around the sun. And since there are 13 lunar phases in a given year, but only 12 months, the date itself shifts slightly in terms of the regular lunar phases (the closest and likely the most influential of the celestial bodies).

I’m not sure why this lowbrow astrology is so popular these days, except maybe that it gives people something easy to believe in (like lottery gambling) without having to think too much. I’ve heard arguments that astrology is a very complex science which takes years of study, but that’s certainly not the kind of astrology filling up the newspapers, fashion magazines or the people’s heads who pay attention to those things, with their little charts of compatibility among star signs and ultra-vague “predictions.” Haven’t these people ever met someone with their same birth month who has a totally different personality archetype? Of course, critical thinking is a lesson that most culture does its best to avoid (owing that some traditions don’t hold up well to intelligent critique, neither does advertising, for that matter).

I have to admit that even the idea of my exact birth time/date determining my life’s destiny is disturbing (ironic, considering that I have give some credit to chaos theory [i.e., “random” events being deterministic in large, nonlinear systems], though I think it has to do with more than the alignment of the stars), but the idea of my birth month, irrespective of time or year having some strong influence over my personality is simply maddening. I understand that life is complicated and it’s difficult to navigate the world, especially social interactions with those bewildering homo sapiens, but do we have to oversimplify things so much? Does one characteristic ever completely define any single person? No, it doesn’t. Wake up and smell the complexity, people – let go of these stereotypes.