The Modern Renaissance Man

We live in an interesting period of time where common sense is not that common, seemingly because of the existence of really stupid people, but also because common sense now encompasses a lot more than it ever has.

Most people around you know how to use a computer and access the internet. Those that really know how to work the search engine and information highway have access to a limitless source of knowledge that can enable them to do so much more than anyone has in the past.

As humankind's collective knowledge expands, it is natural to expect that people will specialize, afterall there is too much for a single person to know. Every community will be able to sustain itself, having different people specializing in various essential areas covering each other's backs.

However, somewhere along the way in our pursuit of knowledge, we went offtrack. Instead of specializing, we instead became jack-of-all-trades and began acquiring knowledge and experience in a multitude of areas. Think about people you know: most individuals today are proficient in several sports, at least one instrument and another language, have several hobbies, and are utter geeks about quite a few things.

In many ways we modern people are like the enlightened of the Renaissance. A true renaissance man was a philosopher, artist, scientist, inventor, poet, etc. Think of Leonardo da Vinci and the vast number of accomplishments and trials he attempted. Many motivated people, especially late adolescents and young adults, are motivated to take up personal side projects and the ilk.

The internet helps in many ways, providing a compedium of knowledge that can support that of which we already know while filling in any gaps. The internet can turn us into make-shift doctors, plumbers, even (especially?) IT techies.

It is the blessing of the modern age that we have enough time to seek and gather so much knowledge and skill, in the past, aspiring renaissance men had to seek out patron to sponsor them. Beyond that, we have to thank the global village that is the internet. Its existence alleviates the need for most of us to specialize in anything as there is always someone covering some topic. There are, of course, still people who are hyper-specialized in certain topics, and we as a global community benefit from that.

Deeper Motifs in Pixar's WALL-E

Life's complicated right now and I'm not really in the mood to do this but for the sake of keeping week to week updates I'll leave something of a placeholder here. Maybe next week I'll have a musing piece for you guys, since I've done a lot of rants recently.

Here's a list of things that I noticed in WALL-E that deserve some further discussion:
-Background storytelling, getting around a silent protagonist
-Problems of over consumption, pollution unchecked
-Problems of over reliance on machines and SEP (somebody elses problem) mindset
-Problems of over privatization, advertising is everywhere
-Definition of the soul, do robots dream (think EVE's coma security cam)
-Can individualism be misinterpreted? Is it what separates humans and machines or simply those with a "soul"?
-The Argos problem and WALL-E
-Balance of love and labour
-A new kind of dystopia, advancing so far that we severely regress as a society and culture
-What is main thematic message presented? Think: Pixar and Disney's audience and track record. Which are jokes and which carries serious overtones?

Entertaining ourselves to death

There is a book on my shelf by the late Neil Postman entitled, Amusing Ourselves to Death. In the book, Mr. Postman attacks society's love affair with technology, reasoning that it would inevitably lead to our ruination. Mind you, I personally have only read excerpts of Postman's writings. His book sits on my shelf with at least two years worth of dust on it. In the articles that I have read, I've only found a hint of the technophobia that Postman is accused of spreading. And while some of his ideas are rightly laughable given our knowledge today, there are some sound arguments that should be brought into light.

We need not look further than pollution to see that the world is going to hell in a hand basket because of our technology and our attitude towards technology. It is said that the next generation is the last chance humankind will get to clean up their mess. To some, that's a scary thought, to others, it means that they don't have to worry about it. Unfortunately, the actions of the next generation are partially determined by nurture and a pedagogy dictated by "do as I say and not as I do" has rarely encountered success. We love our cars, electricity and consumption too much to even slow down and try to make a minimal difference. Not to point any fingers, but I'm sure that everyone is guilty of being unwilling to give up something that would have benefited the future of the Earth.

This mindset is our irrational love affair with technology. Even though we know better, we make excuses for ourselves to get out of them. Naturally there are many people doing a lot for the good cause, but there are still more things that even they can do. Again, this is say without the intent to offend. Cynicism is a theme of this blog after all.

So I was sick last week. I ended up playing a lot of video games while I was bed-ridden. While I can understand the need for modern day conveniences like fast transportation and illumination after sunset, I still don't know why there is so much investment in entertainment. This is not directly technology related, but is something that has been on mind every since the Playstation 2 was announced.

The PS2 is apparently so powerful that it can be used to direct a warhead. To use such technology and other resource to entertain children seems to me to be equivalent to harnessing the nuclear power of the sun to make a single lollipop for a 3 year old. Economy and "market opportunities" are a subsidiary nuance born from our love affair with technology, stemming from the industrial revolution and onwards. While I do love my video games (ask anyone), it still boggles my mind that there are people out there who can do incredible work to forward the significant progress of mankind and they are, instead, working on the next Mario game.

It is strange to think that we are dooming ourselves in entertainment and convenience, but I suppose of the motives for such actions are escapism and laziness, then it is merited. I still have more to say on this topic, but this is a suitable introduction.

Jung at Heart (part two)

There are many arguments for and against the stereotypes portrayed on television. It seems that, no matter how you argue, television does have a role to play in influencing youths. Mr. Carl Jung had an idea about the human psyche that involved stereotypes, or archetypes, that people inherently knew from birth. These preconceptions guided people's behaviours in their day to day interactions with other people.

Inherent knowledge aside, I feel that television plays a vital role in helping people encode and decipher identities. That is, television presents stereotypes that become subconsciously ingrained into modern culture and people draw from those images to mold themselves into an easily recognizable stereotype. Television, in other words, act as the "key" in this code: people who identify themselves in a particular way want others to identify them in the same way and so they assume qualities that have been associated with that identity, regardless of whether that quality defines them as a person. These stereotypes that people learn from television and other pop culture media also helps them in identifying other people. People are quick to judge, not because of bias, but because there is a need to rectify the uncomfortable feeling of not knowing how to interact with someone.

Here's an example. My girlfriend got her Bachelors last year in June, but she went back to school in order to become a high school teacher. Before her practicum, she expressed a dire need to go out and buy some "teacher" clothes and a "teacher" bag. These are items that would allow her to show that she wasn't a student, but a teacher. By acquiring and using these items, she is hoping that other people will identify her as a teacher and not as something else.

This is not a bad thing. Rather, it is a necessary thing. People do not walk around with a large version of their business card pinned to their shirt to help you identify them. There is a reason why the police and other important people have uniforms. It is because there is a need for people to recognize and correctly identify each other. Television is a huge factor in this communication process, however, as I mentioned last week, some of the "stereotypes" that it portrays is dangerously wrong and is being picked up and assimilated by the wrong demographic.

So, while we can't and we shouldn't stop television from stereotyping people, there are some things that we have to be careful about. Along with the images of "adulthood" being shown to the tweens, there are still some unfair and malicious portrayals of the homosexual demographic on television as well, which can cause some serious harm to people trying to encode their identity and to people trying to decode it.

As human beings, our mind works at a million miles a second. It is important that we learn to understand where our feelings and behaviours come from. Doing so will allow us to improve ourselves and the way we interact with others. If for nothing else, it will help us to hone our encoding/decoding ability.

Jung at heart: The media's role in identification

This is going to be a two-part discussion. This first part takes a look at the negative aspects of identification being influenced by the media. The next part will look at the "positives", which are not really positives, but more like inevitable and necessary elements in society. If possible, I'll try to link some ideas back to Jung and his ideas about stereotypes, but if I fail to, you should go and do some worthwhile research.
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Stereotypes is not an uncommon topic in discussions revolving around the media. In particular, much concern is raised about the images portrayed and how impressionable youngsters mimic and mirror them. Just yesterday, my girlfriend showed me some music videos from the newly established group, Girlicious. Everything about the video, and I do mean everything, screamed skanky and only worked to degenerate females. I mean, the song was called "Stupid Shit" and it features the barely legal girls strutting their stuff in school girl uniforms before a whole bunch of other girls join them and they all strip to their skivvies.

From this, it is easy to see why people are voicing so much concern. It's easy for me and maybe older teens, say those 16 and older, to recognize that the entire Girlicious thing makes no real sense and is silly and stupid overall. When the group was still a reality TV show, I recall the producer eliminating girls for being too trashy and saying that they're looking for something classy. Honestly, I can't really tell the difference.

When the Spice Girls was initially formed, their target market was girls 14 and older. However, they failed to hit their target market, namely for the same reasons that Girlicious is looking so terrible to me right now. Instead, Spice Girls were popular with a new demographic, the Tweens. The Tweens represent those beTWEEN the stages of childhood and adolescence (aka teenagers). Typically the age group would be 10-12 and, strangely or not so strangely, this group is prominent and easy to identify with girls but not boys. While boys stay immature well into their twentys (some say), girls do go through various stages that marketers have found to have pronounced differences in consumer behaviour.

As I mentioned before, those already in their teens are old enough to recognize the absurdity in these commercial images. However, those in their tweens are not. Instead, they desire to move quickly out of childhood and into adulthood and look at the Spice Girls and Girlicious as a model that they can copy. The biggest issue surrounding this, is that behaviour affected eventually becomes behaviour rationalized. That is, even if one is just acting out a behaviour without a reason behind it, eventually they will develop a mindset to rationalize that behaviour, formally and permanently adopting that behaviour as their own. This is the biggest concern because it means that the teens of tomorrow will actually be like what we see in the Spice Girls and Girlicious. In fact, the reason why the level of skankiness has stepped up to where it is today is because the level had been breached and adopted in the past. Without the adoption, the level would have just been maintained and re-packaged for the same age group year after year.