Here I am, posting from work, like the good employee that I am. I'm sort of at a loss as to what to write about, and it occurs to me that my best writing (and I've mentioned this before) tends to come about at points in my life where I am unhappy. Maybe "best" isn't the best word for it, but I think it is related to why people who write music tend to write a lot about tragedy in their lives, or some other stuff that no one truly particularly cares about.
Perhaps it's a stereotype, but it seems that if you're not suffering, you can't create something great, in the literary sense. Probably that's because drama and tragedy are the fuel for the creative fire. I don't really know. I could just be talking out of my ass, but I think the idea has some merit. No one wants to hear about a person's life that's just going great. We like to see falls from grace, reckless amounts of hubris, suriviving by the skin of your teeth, car crashes, and trips to the hospital. Frankly, if only good or neutral things happen to a person, them talking about it is likely incredibly boring.
I suppose it would be mildly more exciting if they won the lottery or something, but things like, "I drove home from work, stopped to pick up dinner, chatted with the waiter/waitress/cashier/monkey, ate dinner, watched TV, and went to bed," then I really could go without knowing that. That is not to say no one cares, but in all actuality, they probably don't. Of course, typing this all out probably amounts to nothing more than mental masturbation on my part, but everyone needs a hobby, right?
Because I'm too lazy to actually think up something that has proper flow to it, I present you with some links. None of these are important in any way, but that really doesn't matter. First, a very random piece of, hm,
animation. I don't really know what to say about it, but I thought it was pretty cool.
Next, we have a cute little flash thing titled
Where do clams come from. It's definitely interesting, if nothing else. A bit weird, though.
Last, an impressive use of the the capabilities of the Half-life 2 engine - recreating a scene from
A Few Good Men. I haven't actually watched it yet as I post this, but I'm downloading it.
These all should have sound, so you may not want to look at them at work.
So, do you feel the touch of His
Noodly Appendage? Answer now, heretic!
Media, which I wrote about in such a flattering way in my previous post is not all bad, I suppose, upon further reflection. It all depends on how you look at it. What is a nation? How do you define borders which in all reality exist only on a map? Is a nation defined by its language? It is more likely that the existence of a nation-state defines its language, so that's pretty much out.
What about morphological similarities? That is, in spite of its actual nonexistence, race. The United States fairly well debunks that idea, as do a number of other countries, which hold a host of different "races." Oh, but you say, "American," as an idea, points solidly towards those of Caucasian descent. Even if we concede that (and it is fairly likely that we will), you only have to look to, say, Germany, and note that a "race" is not constrained to a single country. So much for that idea.
How about simple force? Can a nation-state as an entity be held together by the force alone? China, for example, claims that Taiwan is part of China, and barring intervention by the US, is ultimately likely to prevail in a direct confrontation. If we go even farther back, China's political system, which partially defines the nation-state, was decided by force - simply put, the Communists won. What was left of the their opposition is now Taiwan.
What makes this very problematic to think about is the idea of colonies. If we accept the idea that colonies (which don't exist in the same form in today's world) are part of the nation, then not only can force create a nation, geographic continuity is of no consequence. We can accept the second conclusion based upon entities such as island nations with more than one island (quite common). However, the first conclusion is perhaps a bit premature, if we notice that no country has succeeded in holding onto much more than a small sliver of their conquests over time. The United States, as everyone knows, is at the heart of it, a breakaway British colony.
One of the few ideas we have left is the idea that culture is the glue that holds a nation together, and with the invention of things like the radio and television, we can spread that glue over large distances, ignoring geographical separation. This is why information control is so important to countries like China, to use it again as an example. China is a truly massive country, but it has largely been held together by force due to the widely disparate cultures that exist within its borders. Information is the true bane of countries that need to control their populace, for information allow organization, and organization allows reisistance, and that simply cannot be allowed.
Culture meshes easily with the idea of shared experience, which is what the media does. We are comfortable with the familiar, and if the person next to us is different from us in every way except that they've watched the same show as us yesterday, it will be that much easier to deal with them. This is, of course, a
vast oversimplification, but the basic idea is there. So while the media is a massive social conditioning apparatus, which dovetails nicely with our system of mandatory schooling, it also binds us together in a sort of shared experience. Whether that's a good thing or not, though, is not a question I'm qualified to answer. Coming up, musings on balance and karma, if I don't forget or get lazy. Don't hold your breath.
I just finished watching the movie Harold and Kumar go to Whitecastle, and aside from the fact that it was funny and all that good stuff, it struck me how the two leads, who were Korean and Indian, were portrayed as normal people. This disturbs me, because we've been conditioned to expect rampant stereotypes out of any characters that aren't caucasian and now to a lesser degree, black. I hesitated over the use of that term, but african-american isn't necessarily correct, so I didn't want to use that. That isn't the point, however. The point is that this movie, which isn't exactly high comedy, if you catch my meaning, I think gives the most accurate portrayal of second or third generation immigrants that I've seen yet.
There is much ado made in leftist social science circles about asians being the "model minority," which basically boils down to marginalizing asians by praising them for being "good." This may not seem like a necessarily bad thing, and it certainly beats getting pulled over for driving black, but it is no less damaging to success. It doesn't get any press, but asians do not tend to attain executive positions in companies. The reason for this is anyone's guess, but it likely has something to do with latent racism and/or the general view of asians as good technicians and engineers, but not as good managers.
Why this perception exists is largely due to the media, as with most stereotypes. The largest influence is one's parents, but the second largest is probably media - meaning TV, radio, movies, whatever. It likely exists partially because of most asian parents' focus on education, but that does not mean that asians are some kind of homogenous population, especially when there are so many countries even in just east asia.
I don't want to complain, as it could be a lot worse, but I would hope that one day this country, which prides itself on inclusion and the melting pot and all that jazz will actually live up to that promise. I may never see it in my lifetime, and the country may collapse like the Soviet Union did, but we can only hope.
