A day in the life

Trapped. Queued. Shopping... Looking at a plastic basket full of imported groceries, I find myself contemplating how fast I could escape this situation should I want to. I wonder if the sun is shining outside, and in about five minutes time, when I have paid for my temporary solutions, I will find out if it does.

But then I sat up. I was in bed. Nightmares always make me rather groggy when I wake up, so it takes a short while before I distinguish this moment from the last in the string of conscious experiences. The sun was indeed shining outside, and I feel it now warming my hair ever so gently as I bend down again resting on the elbows. I know what comes next, but the delicate grace of the consuming familiarity has to be overpowered, before I can get up and do what must be done.

Going to the bathroom for a quick leak, and I will have my breakfast afterwards. Some progressively charming people would refer to it as “a cheap golden spa with the doctor”. Reviewing the numbers popping up on the mirror as I wash my hands, I find that my recent diet has been a bit too sugar-heavy, so instead of just leaving, I tab the recommended meal touch pad.

Jumping into a pair of nano-fabric shorts and a t-shirt I feel the short chill, before I venture into the garden outside. The sun shine really is lovely today. Like a never ending and never beginning kiss on the cheek from the love of your life. But after dwelling on such a rather poetic notion for a short while, my stomach lets out a brief growl shoving me back on track. So I sign in with a finger print on the pad next to the hydroponics, and upon recognising that I asked for a recommended meal, lights beneath the artificial soil quickly appear, highlighting the necessary fruits and vegetables for my breakfast. I sheathe my hands into the gardening gloves on the desk and take to gather the components.

I must say I do not care much for the compliments I get from my kitchen, just because I went with the suggested meal to balance my vitamin intake, but I guess some concessions have to be made, if it helps other people be motivated towards a better a diet. I could just tell my kitchen to stop giving me those messages, but I like to be reminded of my own attitude. And of course there is the added bonus that fewer and fewer people have to see doctors now. I reckon medicine will easily transition into a focus on preventative treatment and health maintenance in my life time given where we are now.

Leaving the house I greet the neighbour coming home. She has apparently already been out and about on one of the new city roamers. These vehicles never seize to amaze me. Plated with a photovoltaic shell, just like almost every road is now, they run entirely on sun light, but the interesting part is that this has completely vamped society, and I think this is why people get up so early in the morning now, even though there is no labour left to do. These bikes never stay stationary for longer periods of time, and yet they have a fascinating break down rate of close to zero.

So when she gets out, I jump in and articulate my destination to the receiver. When I get to the university, I quickly traverse the stairs in anticipation of the study group I have been preparing for all week. “Applied Teraforming” has become my new hobby, and I hope to one day become sufficiently knowledgeable on the subject to teach it myself. Although most classes are now taught by the students themselves on a rotation basis, it is suggested that one takes a number of classes on a specific subject, prior to leaving the student roster and entering the the student-teacher roster.

Regarding “Applied Teraforming” I tend to day dream about a production team of developers and programmers working with me to realise my dream of a computer game, that tasks players with cultivating the best possible environment on a given planet, drawing raw data and calculating impacts made by player decisions from the global database. In turn this could become applied teraforming, if the record setting players' designs would be submitted back into the database for engineers and ecologists to review as possible schemes for real space exploration. But that is just my personal goal, and if it is to be, then I am sure I will eventually find the people I need for such a team to start working.

Later this week I did sign up for another study group called “Beyond exchange”, but I am actually considering not going. The people are very nice, but I do sometimes feel that I spent a bit too much time on that subject before Liberation, so I am not sure I would learn much from a thorough analysis into the socialisation process concerned with human interaction and that stuff. It just always seemed like a given to me that it would obviously work out in the end, even if we did not have anything left to threaten each other with.

However, I do see the merit in the course, because we certainly did not evolve past the exchange based culture as soon as we technically could have. And if I do go, it will be to explore how the transition seems to be going based on recent findings. Most of the previous advocates of exchange came around after strife and famine were ended, but some still cling to the idea that humans are categorically egoistical, and the only reason we are currently functional in a cooperative society is because it benefits ourselves the most. I guess they could be right. But then again, the results speak for themselves. All the psychiatrists either chose another education or shipped off to the Americas to work with transitional conflicts over there, simply because the need here fell like never before a few years after Liberation.

What amuses me greatly is when I get back home and do my exercises before dinner. I was always one of those lazy kids who were never properly motivated by the physical socio-dynamics, but now that I can track my progress on a bar that slowly builds towards the next level, I find myself working out almost every day. It is purely recreational though, but I do not see why that would be a bad thing. The results are that my ulcerative colitis is kept in check, and my body has never been healthier. To think I was pretty much addicted to junk food and computer games before Liberation. Now I feel in shape, and not because I have to impress anyone but myself.

So for dinner tonight I believe I will treat myself to a soy burger with a quinoa bun and a relish of kale and pees. Afterwards I try to stay motivated towards a short session of meditation. After training for a while I can tell it helps me stay curious and open minded, but when there is no bar tracking how well I do it just gets a bit too intangible sometimes.

So have a nice evening friends. I will see you in class for “Steady-state patterning”.

Private economy

For a while now I have been drawn to writing another blog post. This time I sought to relate it to why my inspiration had been missing for quite a few months now. Through various issues I discovered that I was suffering from some symptoms of stress. My imagination was stiffled, making it hard to focus on doing what I had to do. Now my life is by no means stressful in comparison to normality, however, I because I have gone through so many different perspectives on how to earn my daily bread, I am beginning to tire. Fear of never finding a commercial passion, or actually just any type of passion, threatens my survival and this is stressful.

Whether good or bad I am extremely poor at subscribing to temporary solutions. If I know that a job or an education will not be relevant or interesting to me at a later point, I feel like quitting and that feeling can sometimes take hold of whatever chance it had of growing. Now I have no doubt that this is somehow related to classical psychological issues of fear causing people to quit. I could most likely read up on it and discover that I am quite similar to other people who have experienced this issue and have solved it somehow. Either on their own or therapeutically, but this is where a major complication arises.

Because I am a firm believer that this capitalistic monetarily based system is unsustainable I instantly discredit such psychological findings as they seem relevant only to the people interested in conforming to this system. I see this as one of many symptoms that the system is trying to do patch work on its short comings rather than self-examining to discover the unrecoverable situation and initiate a proper solution. Personally I have no interest in conforming, which is why it is so hard for me, as it seems to cost bits and pieces of my integrity every time I do. I find myself saying one thing and doing another.

This economic terrorism is so subtle that it seems ridiculous to even call it that. But that is what it is. Perhaps I will return to this issue at a later point. I should.

Horizontal Social Governance

Inspired by the following RSA presentation I have begun a new train of thought this morning. But before I introduce what could become a lengthy introduction I will let you get acquainted with the material yourself.

What I gather from this talk is that Jeremy Rifkin believes that a 3^rd industrial revolution could be on its way. Obviously this is interesting by itself, with all the perspectives on peak oil and what not, but what I find to be even more intriguing is that this perspective that power and management thus far has been vertical – top-down. And as is introduced the internet has more than proved that people are ready for a more horizontally oriented approach. Powerful search engines have made the lack of available information a thing of the past, and this could be interpreted as a sign that people are adjusting to having more influence.

As opposed to Mr. Rifken I see a wealth of possible conflicts with this emerging social paradigm of equality. A horizontally governed direct democracy, as it would be, would feature less individually oriented authority. This would make politics obsolete in a relatively short period of time, and that would be perfectly fine, if it was not for the fact that the powers that be will know this in advance of the majority, and they will try, as they have with the Occupy movement and similar groups, to turn public orientation towards an illusion that they and they alone embody democracy. Because if they do it would become obvious how counterproductive it is to diminish the institutions concerned with politics and law making.

The proof of the above claim? Look at how the media handles the rising discontent with governing institutions. They are attempting to shadow the reality of how big a portion of the globe is currently interested in making changes. While all of them do not share a unified goal for whatever change they seek, they agree on the fact that something must be done. Humans are now on a collision course with reality, as we begin to understand that razing forest after forest to compete in this global game of monopoly is unrealistic.

In closing it should be noted that the reason that we are simultaneously aware of this abyss and still moving towards it, is exactly the vertical governing installation of representative democracy. This makes for a dissonance between what we know and how fast we can make changes accordingly because every discovery in science and later in public understanding has to go through the process of persuading political figures and market shaping forces before it can be integrated properly.

Because we are a top-down species at this point, we are limited from responding optimally to emerging social problems.

Criticism

Most people today are familiar with the idea that it is easier to notice the flaws of others than the flaws of oneself. To my knowledge this is an idea originating from the teachings of Christ, which would make it a lesson from the new testament. Without needing to debate religious subjects to dig deeper, it is perfectly possible to reflect on how this has had an effect on the larger social evolution that has happened since then.

Many people revert to this mantra every time they are called out on making a mistake. Indeed it is a practise we spend considerable amounts of time on disapproving of in public. We disapprove of politicians that spend their valuable time for preaching their own mass appeal on preaching of the lack of mass appeal in their adversaries instead.

So it would be safe to assume that we have made it a cultural phenomenon to express discontent with any one flawed person or group to criticise another person or group. In this respect it becomes somewhat impossible to be honest about oneself and constructive towards others. Because by default we are all useless as critics to one another, as we are all “sinners”.

Since evolution has made us a socially dependant animal I would propose something entirely different to this approach discussed above. It is possible that we have developed in a fashion that made us superior at noticing the mistakes of others simply because we have spent so much time through history on looking outwards. At others and at society. Indeed it compliments us well in social contexts that we can function as coaches for others.

Imagine that from this instance people were better at coaching themselves than others. What would spark our drive towards mutual inspiration? How would we surpass anything previously thought of, if we were only better critics of what we had produced or proposed ourselves, rather than of the common wealth of knowledge and produce of all others?

Is it possible that this natural inclination towards outward criticism is culturally fought because if we accepted this perspective as innate, if not to our entire species then at least to our contemporary culture, we would rise towards our current potential and possibly evolve our social sphere?

Cause is mentioned here as there is conservative inclination in most social contexts to resist any change that could potentially snowball into more changes. “Controlled change” is even a phrase used by modern conservative politicians.

Ownership

What is ownership? In its most basic term it seems to imply the occupation of something by someone. This someone has since the original term was used been expanded to also include organisations and institutions such as corporations and even countries or groups of countries.

What it legally means, however, is simply that this something you have legally bought or acquired is now reserved for you by the enforcing institutions of your community. Is this just a silly overanalytic way to say that the something is yours?

No.

There is a vast difference between the idea of ownership and the actual phenomenon of ownership. You see in the idea of ownership it is possible to say that something is yours. But in the actual world nothing is really yours. It can all be taken away, if not by other people then by external elements operating outside the rule of ownership, such as your dog deciding to eat it or a tsunami washing it all away.

So what you are left with is simply this illusion backed up by real world enforcement that in the event that your something is taken away from you and still desirable for you, then you may call upon these enforcers to bring it back to you or at the very least punish the ones that took it and in some cases recieve a monetary settlement in exchange for your something. It is an illusion that only works because we are all hooked into the same feed of rules, norms and acceptable behaviour.

Just like money it only works as long as everyone operates under the same principles. As soon as someone breaks the norm and becomes a thief, then you need to bend the guiding principles of reality to incorporate enforcing parties, such as the police, to shield you from this asocial behaviour.

And just like money it is only required for society to work properly as long as everyone operates under the same principles. As soon as someone breaks the norm and becomes able to grow their own food and gather their own water from natural sources, they start breaking the need to compromise themselves as individuals to function in this game of monetary exchange.

This clash of topics will most likely raise the issue of what happens to ownership when nothing is bought or sold anymore. When money is no more.

It obviously ceases to exist as the illusion it has survived as for so long. Surely it is a requirement for society to function though?

When you think about it, it should be a perfectly viable model for adults to share rather than own. After all we are not the primates we evolved from, nor are we the child we grew up from. If you connect the reality of sharing rather than owning with the reality that our current means of production could produce an abundance of high quality items for everyone, so long as there is no need for a profit to be generated anywhere, then you will see that this idea of ownership really only serves the salesman. The buyer is left with purchasing illusions.

So this is where the closing question arises. How much do we believe in the modern social sciences proving to us that we are extremely adaptive to the rules of whatever context we apply ourselves to?

Integrity

About a month ago I came up with the idea that I wanted to show my girlfriend a clip from a movie that I would like to discuss with her. In spirit of Black March I completely forgot about it until last night, where I dug up the clip on YouTube. The clip is from the majorly provocative feature called Brüno.

Even if you have watched the movie, you may not remember it as I did. I actually saw the movie in the cinema with my brothers and my cousin. It was quite a movie that we were in no way prepared for, but I suppose that was the idea. What stuck with me, aside from one other very disturbing display of the male body, was this clip of how extremely devoid of integrity the people interviewed seem to be.

I cannot guarantee that they are not actors and this is not a setup, but what I can guarantee is that it would then be very inspired by actual events taking place on an every day basis in the entertainment industry. If you have seen The Greatest Movie Ever Sold you would most likely agree.

But without further ado I bring to you the modern parents with stars in their eyes.

I hope I did not cause any heart problems when the answer ”yes” was given to the question ”can your child handle lit phosphorous?”.

Advertising Revisited

This will most likely not be the last time I visit the topic of advertising. I just thought this picture went so well with our previous discussion on public space used for advertisements.

 

Solace

In this post a link between different ideas and perspectives on social evolution will be attempted. It is my hope that the reader will discover resonance with at least a fraction of this train of thought.

Kicking it off with this profoundly well adjusted comment on the spirit of the age we have Jiddu Krishnamurtis combination of social observation, implication and aspiration. Packed into a single sentence he manages to describe the how invalid the aeon old idea that one should strive to be well adjusted to whatever context one exists in, when the context is indeed "profoundly sick", which also sets up the following aspirations.

1. To end any adjustment to an unsustainable context. As Marthin Luther King Jr. put it: "[...] There are some things in our social system that I'm proud to be maladjusted to, and I call upon you to be maladjusted to." - source
2. To push for a change of the context.

Admitted, the second aspiration is my own addition, and it cannot rhetorically be extracted from the quote in the first picture. If you frequent this blog, however, you will know that I have sourced several scientific studies and findings indicating that we humans are socially dependant beings. Because of this it becomes the internal motivation for survival and personal improvement to improve socially. Either through a betterment of personal standing or through betterment of society, depending on the culture the individual is raised in.

Accepting this it should be obvious that maladjustment is positive only so long as the maladjusted individual nurtures hope that the social context may change for the better. To break away from a norm is to feel isolated until a sense of commonality with others is again obtained. This solace seeking is natural for gregarious animals and, as we can now agree upon, quite needed.

Everyone's favorite inventor Leonardo Da Vinci has even coined a perfect phrase for this darker side of norm-breaking inception.

Imagine being the smartest person in the world. It must be lonely there at the top. A very important realisation to acknowledge is that to be at the very top requires disregard for a wide variety of norms. The conformity to norms is a compromise. Social security in exchange for the ability to grow in whichever direction the personality would otherwise.

So do you try and inspire people to join you at the peak, or do you leave the peak and join into the community of a mountain village at a lower altitude?

This is in no way an implication of any peak position held by myself or any of the people referenced. It is simply an extreme metaphor meant to paint an obvious picture of the dilemma which keeps most people from breaking significant norms, due to the severance from social relevance associated with such a transformation of the identity.

News

Here Jason Read, with a Ph.D. in Philosophy, comments on the conservative notion of face value in society.

Dr. Read seems to think that the book is not to be judged by its cover. That the classes of society are not only what the media portray them as. Please remember that the media, from where you might have had your view on this matter skewed, are institutions that obviously do not act against the interest of their owners or share holders. And it should be obvious to most people that such owners or share holders portray not in the slightest the lower classes of society.

You see the news is not just the news. It is not everything that you need to know about a given situation that is relatively new. It is a perspective. Brought forth by the interest to sell it to you. You have to inspect news and information as you would a car being sold to you. Make sure that the model is not suitable for you because of how the salesman pitches it, but because it is what you need it for. A car is a vehicle for transportation. The news is your way of relating to contemporary society. That makes it vastly more important to inspect thoroughly when it is being sold to you.

For a broader perspective on matters somewhat related to my points, you can take a look at Dr. Read's lecture "The Social Individual" here:

Mass Media

The society of today is very proud of labelling itself the age of information. With this label it somehow draws the parallel that the inhabitants of the modern world are well informed. Why else would it be the age of information?

What it does not label itself as, although that is probably just as fitting is the age of mass neurosis and stress related diseases. Rates of illness are off the chart compared to earlier, and that is not just because fancier methods of diagnosis are now available. No it is because the tomorrow of yesterday is today. And with this leap into the future, with all the proud noise equipment people now find themselves armed with, this species has managed to create an atmosphere of constant attention seeking.

The act of seeking attention was formerly reserved by organic species, but now the more inanimate of our fellow planetary residents have joined in to this game of depriving others of their focus. Dramatic as it may appear when written down like that, is is no further from the truth than the very related fact that humans are now outnumbered by their electronic creations.

The pivotal point to make is if a correlation exists between the boom in electronic devices available and the boom in illnesses, and that has proven more difficult than someone uneducated in this field of sociology such as myself could master. The reason that I bring this up is simply to note this idea and see if it resonates on some level with any of the readers on this blog.

Another reason that I bring this up is the picture that I shared in my last post depicting quite strongly the un-individualization of the modern audience for television.

Take 1 minute and 56 seconds out of your life and prove me wrong in this: Howard Beale can paint this picture quite nicely.

And I can only say that I find myself the victim of this culture he describes. I too am guilty of succumbing to the media available to me. I frequent blogs, watch shows online, listen to podcasts and converse with friends about the newest games available.

All very much to the detriment of my creativity, as the recent lack of consistency in my posting is evidence of. And I do not believe myself to be alone in this situation.

You

Today I stumbled upon the lecture on the perception of the self. To achieve some of the social changes discussed on this blog it could very well be needed to shift more towards this understanding of ourselves.

The idea is to look at ourselves not as entities in and of themselves, but as processes and collections. In this sense we all become interchangable, which is highly relevant to any social change. Indeed, understanding society as interchangable is probably the only thing that ever has changed our societies. The problem then is that we currently understand ourselves as these rigid entities that already have been shaped. We believe we mature into hardened shells. As grown ups we could not start changing our lives too roughly or we might be faced with a loss of identity, something none of us wish for.

We could potentially start bringing about some very needed change, were we to fully grasp this philosophy of chaos. Because it is chaotic, and that is what frightens us. There is no order other than what we introduce to the mess of the universe. But percieving that as either good or bad is up to the individual.

We are what we are shaped as, but unlike the other species on this blue planet of ours, we have been invited to join into the process of this shaping. Disregarding this is as irresponsible as over-feeding half the world while starving the other half.

Meritocracy

A few days ago I was inspired by a quite decent lecture by Alain de Botton on atheism. Due to exams, however, I have not been home a lot and so the past two days I skipped my routine with writing at least a small piece every day.

The lecture I am refering to is the following one.



He does put out some interesting ideas. It is nothing new to be inspired by perspectives that will not be adopted by oneself. It is quite intelligent in fact, to enable further understanding of a subject, which in this case is life and thereby quite substantial, by a way of discovering the insights others might have had on the subject.

The point that struck me the most in this lecture is definitely the one about infantilisation. The idea that many religious texts refer to humans as children of God (or whatever other concept they believe in) is quite profound if you only look at postmodernism. Because we spend just about all our lives trying not to be children. Even when we are. It is simply not a part of life that has any value, since this hyper-individualism we have entered into has taken over.

Everyone has to assume responsibility for their own lives and this is where I will begin talking about the meritocracy. Unlike a democracy a meritocracy is defined as a society where actions speak the loudest. You gain merit for your output and this in turn gives you the ability to choose where you want to be. This means that there are no social boundaries installed at all, and as such any one can achieve anything. 

To the postmodern person this should sound like the apex of democracy. The peak of the mountain. Where we want to be. It is everything we strive for and everything we hope for, because it is just and righteous for everyone to have equal opportunity. By the sweat of our brow and so on.

However, this is where we should allow ourselves some inspiration from the lecture by Mr. Botton. He treats the issue with respect and acknowledges the fact that most religions enter into this infantilisation of human beings because they recognise something very basic about our nature, and this is what faith normally capitalises on. We do not understand everything. And the implications of not understanding everything are quite important when it comes to how we comprehend life and the purpose of it.

In a meritocracy such as we aspire to currently, and somewhat already have achieved (social mobility statistics prove that we are not there yet), there is a rather significant issue of responsibility. Since everything is attributed through merit, everything is your own doing. So sitting in the street begging for money becomes your own doing. You have engineered this situation yourself by not getting and education and a well paid job. On the flip side of this you have the implication that the millionare and the billionaire deserved what they earned. It was won through the merit of their investments or work.

So when we do not fully comprehend the situation and the rules of the great societal chess game, we get bumped into and shoved out of the way by the people who understand enough of it to start making their social climb a reality. This is all very individualising.

This is also the time for the final point, and I will bring back Mr. Botton to make it for me. Two years prior to the talk on atheism he gave another lecture, this time on the cause and value of the meritocracy. He outlines specifically the point about responsibility and sense of self-value as an issue for this social construct. Because after all in a meritocracy you have only yourself to blaim for not being Bill Gates. This is why so many books have been written on just accepting yourself. The merry-go-round of society tells you a completely different story and shoves in your face the demotivating motivational mantra: "Climb, climb, climb!"

Functional Sociology

Marketing 101 will teach you that relating to success can achieve success. So in my moment of weakness I have decided to let myself become rigorously inspired (steal) the name of my new favourite concept: Functional medicine.

Watch this following presentation by Dr. Mark Hyman and then continue with this post to witness my attempt at expanding on his perspective. It is a piece on health care looked at in a refreshing way, because it brings back the scientific method to a field that has long been like a library, as opposed to a vibrant, dynamic art of complimenting health systems through research which medicine should be.



I am no scientist. I hold no degrees and though I may be studying at a university right now, I will hardly have anything professional to say on neither the medicinal matter nor the sociological matter, as I am studying IT which is about as far from health as you can get in the sphere of knowledge. Or well it is not, but you get my point. However, this will not stop me from comparing this piece of science to my own theory of how societies work.

Because I believe that if Mark Hyman was working in the field of sociology rather than medicine, he would be suggesting that we start using a systems approach to how we govern our societies. He would point out that we are currently upholding thoughts and ideas on how to treat societal issues that are centuries old if not millennia.

Hyman says that diseases do not exist. Not in the sense that we understand diseases. They are not bad things that just happen and have to be treated. They are the responses of your own body attempting to deal with an imbalance. What does that mean? It means that diseases are currently understood in a way that does not help us with anything other than categorising the fallout they produce.

From this perspective we can try and understand diseases in a new sense. Diseases are the general categories we deal with when we collectivise symptoms, a package of symptoms that when appearing simultaneously makes up a collection of unwanted physical reactions in a body and we label that a certain title, like cancer or pneumonia, so we can quickly reference how we normally proceed with treatment. 
But perhaps we should start looking at causality instead? Because you can cure as many symptoms as you want, it will make no difference if you load your diet with the wrong food, get no exercise and maintain a stressful position at your job. Conventional methods do attempt this. But they will never succeed because their perspective is based on a per case basis.

A diagnosis will be damn hard to do if you cannot identify the problem, and you mainly do that by looking at symptoms. I do the same when I build web pages or software solutions. I try to recreate the issues brought up to me by a client on my own screen, so I can see the "leakage" and seal it. This is a symptom-oriented treatment and it works only in secluded, primitive systems. 
You could probably relate this to problem solving in your own life as well. Issues are easy to deal with on a per case basis so long as they are kept in a neat and orderly pile. As soon as they are no longer kept in that neat and orderly pile, you will start experiencing a growing sense of stress, whether or not you get the symptoms is irrelevant, because you can no longer manage the entire pile mentally. This is the reason you started using the systems approach that led you to conclude that the neat pile would be optimal in the first place. Even if this happened subconsciously, it did happen none the less.

Attempting to be bold I will now directly attack a major paradigm that is older than I care to try and guess at.

Crime does not exist. Not in the sense that we understand crime. It is not a bad thing that just happens and has to be dealt with. It is a response given by parts of the social community caused by an imbalance in the system. What does that mean? it means that crime is currently understood in a way that does not help us with anything other than categorising the fallout it produces.

From this perspective we can try and understand crime in a new sense. Crime is the general category we deal with when we collectivise incidents of violence, whether material as physical violence or intangible as theft. It is a package of social symptoms that when appearing simultaneously makes up a collection of unwanted social reactions in a community and we label that a certain title, like murder or embezzlement, so we can quickly reference how we normally proceed with treatment.
But perhaps we should start looking at causality instead? Because you can imprison as many people as you like, it will solve no problem if you load society with inequality, bridge no differences and maintain consumption patterns at the price of social capital. Conventional methods do attempt this. But they will never succeed because their perspective is based on a per case basis.

And crime is just one single element on a list of the issues society is attempting to handle in this fashion, with a less than optimal result yielded in almost every case, due to faulty measures believed to be correct. I could draw this same parallel with obesity, teenage birth rates, mental health, child well-being, social mobility, drug abuse etc.
I believe you understand my point by now though, so I see no reason to repeat myself further. If you want you could try doing it yourself and you will start to see an emerging pattern. 

This is the basis of a systems approach. It is the mechanisation of problem solving, the automation of re-indexing, and it frees up your time as a mental librarian and gives you more time to do abstract work on solving new and exciting issues instead.

Wayseer Manifesto

This video and initiative was shared with me yesterday. I had already seen it a few months back, and I thought it was a nice perspective, but left it soon after again because it seemed a little too emotional for me. Normally I like the idea that there are many people who see society as miscalculated and counter-productive, but the way people conduct themselves these days I have a hard time believing that.

What I do like about this perspective though, is that it shines some hope on a spot that needs it. The pocket of society that was later occupied by outraged protesters. They called themselves the 99% and while that is merely a symbol, it does reflect some very interesting ideas, among those the perspective that you can actually fight for rights people do not know or understand.

Very Matrix indeed. If you recall the movie, you will probably think about special effects, corny dialogue and slow-motion fight scenes. But if you understood the plot, if you saw what the Wachowski brothers probably could have meant. Then you will see the metaphor in this video. You will recognise that the plot is what carried this movie. The masses swallowed the movie for what it did visually, but philosophically this movie is relevant to discuss because of how it analyses layers of society.
That it would be possible for the masses to live sheepish lives against their own natural interests because they have been cultivated to accept such norms. Is that not interesting? Is it not brilliant to conceptualise such massive deciet and societal manipulation? They managed to make that movie one of the most remarked action movies of all time.

Like the main character in the movie, and a Wayseer such as the song talks about, you probably have also experienced the time stop scene at some point in your life. You suddenly felt different and alienated from everyone else, because the truth was apparent to you and you alone. It can be as tiny as seeing someone eat something commonly regarded as healthy, when you know that it really is not, that sparks this thought that you have begun to see more truth that other. Or at least percieve the world differently. You have started to think unlike a grain of sand in the desert. Unlike a fish in the sea. Perhaps you are swimming against the current already. But the fact is that this is a new world for you. And new can be scary.

So this is why I like this video, for even through all its cheerful ignorance towards the harsher reality of actual activism and social therapy, it does light a torch and attempts to lead on anyway.

Conformity

Last year I took a psychology course and while most of it was relatively uninteresting and 101, near the end of the course we were introduced to some of the larger concepts in social psychology. There are some very interesting theories out there about what makes the human mind work the way it does.

Just to get you up to speed, you may have heard of the Asch experiments seeking to some extent to prove social dependance in humans. A sort of built in mechanism to ensure conformity and group normalisation. Strategically it makes sense for us to work this way, but it also marks up some very realistical borders to our potential.

In this following 10 minute presentation you are introduced to the basics in the studies of conformity.




It should be obvious that this is the natural part of our ways that ensures survival of the fittest, because in a social context the fittest might just be the leader. We see this in all pockets of nature.

What is interesting is how this should touch on your feeling of self-sufficiancy. Would it upset you to know that 37% of all people would stay in a room filling with smoke past their choking point, if at least 14 other people (actors) were sitting still in that room without reacting? Is this culture or biology?

What the goal is for me, is to upset the idea that people can trust their own decisions, because more often then not we choose to do something that is not in our best interest, simply because of some series of implications leading us to judge a course of action as the best suited one. This can be spurred on by group norms and pressure, but it does not dilute our responsibility for our own integrity on a theoretical level.

If we choose to part take in political, economical and sociological debates, we should be prepared to consider what part of our argumentation comes from others and what part comes from ourselves.

São Paolo

Yesterday I revisited the documentary by Morgan Spurlock called The Greatest Movie Ever Sold. Having already seen the movie, I had spoken to my girlfriend a couple of times about it, and she suggested we would see it together.

The movie itself is by no means a masterpiece. It deals with its message in a similar way as his previous movie Supersize Me, in that it slightly mocks the viewer with his obvious points all along. And even though I label myself an experienced observer especially when it comes to the central issue of the movie, product placement, I did notice a few extra items on my journey through his tale.

One particular issue did stick with me though. About half way through the movie Morgan introduces us to the legal ban in São Paolo on all outdoor advertisements. The returning reader will note that I have mentioned this before.

According to this article São Paolo is the 4th largest metropolis in the world and since 2007 when Mayor Kassab outlawed "visual pollution" the city has been free of billboards, posters and cab-commercials. This is very interesting to me, because it employs a fresh perspective on what pollution should cover as a term. Apparently pollution is not only toxic biproducts of other products. Pollution can then be understood in a broader sense as anything that is physically or mentally harmful towards any recipient. So if advertisement in São Paolo could be derived as harmful towards the recipients, take a look at this image of Times Square and tell me what your immediate impression is.

It might just be about time we ask ourselves just where we stand in the debate on heredity and environment. Do we believe the notion that we are from birth determined to make self-sufficient decisions or do we believe that the environment greatly influences our lives? While I am sure most readers already have a stand point in that debate, primatologist Robert Sopalski has some interesting insights on what comprises a human being.

What the movie, the city and the research seems to show is that human beings are very susceptible to marketing ploys. Indeed it is the only explanation why such an industry exists. The counter-argument always seems to be something about free will and anti-determinism, which makes perfect sense from a controversial stand point. But it should be quite obvious that Times Square would look a lot different if everyone were capable of making independant decisions in particular when it comes to patterns in consumption. It could be viewed as the greatest social experiement ever made ©.

And in its own way São Paolo is contributing to this debate by taking the stand point that a city with less visual clutter is a city with less clutter. Furthermore it is mentioned in an interview with a store clerk in the movie that they have noticed a rise in product quality in the stores, simply because referrals are now the primal force of marketing.
If that is not a hard hitting argument for less advertising I do not know what could be.

Groceries

With New Year's Eve drawing close everyone is starting to reflect on what changes they desire to see in 2012. It probably comes as no surprise that I would like to see quite a few. But I will not be listing all of these today. Instead I will share a few thoughts on how I personally intend to greet this new and blank page in the book of me.

Today I went for some grochery shopping, and I did this with the intention to try and see whether it was possible on my budget to purchase only organic. To my amazement I actually ended up with a shopping bag that costed me about one and a half as much as I normally spend on food for a couple of days, and this was even with a few extra items I would not normally need.

Now the prices where I live are normally a lot higher for organic products, but given that I have a physical condition that requires me to be more healthy in my diet, I did pick up an interest to learn about cooking and food in general. This was a while back, and it probably started before I was diagnosed, but it is quite evident now that I have changed my view on eating.

On my normal budget I never knew I could afford to buy organic and healthy food in the maner I exhibited today. I am not a vegan or vegetarian, but I do not eat a lot of meat and I should stay away from milk in any shape or form, and the meat certainly is the expensive part of any diet in the area where I live.

So this was more or less just a cheerful post about how I tried something different to see if I could make 2012 a year with an improving diet for myself, and the first step proved to be succesful. And now I will be off to the kitchen to make myself a wholesome meal.

I hope you have equally important prospects for this new year. The revolution in you is the most important one.

Motivation

So today I thought I would take some time to write a piece on motivation. A subject I have had to deal with in many various facets of my life. Because what is motivation? Motivation is the drive that makes you productive. It generates the energy and the want to do a certain thing. It is the fuel for your machinery and it is evidently needed throughout the globe to make this and all other races viable for survival. We quite simply rely on constant motivation in some form to keep us going.

Evolutionarily males are hard-wired to try and be accomplished so they would attract the better females and secure healthier offspring. Now I do not know what presumptions you enter into this debate with, but if it comes as a surprise for you that this has residual presence in the society of today, then I am afraid you may be in for more surprises as you progress through this post.

Since man has lived in scarcity for most of our time as a species, it is quite understandable that our brains have evolved into working in a way where we associate resource acquisition with success and thriving. It might be far fetched to say that most of us today look for economic success in a partner, and I assume it would seem derogatory to say that women especially would do this. So what am I saying?
I could be saying that women biologically were driven to look for these things in a partner, but underline the point that no one has to be a slave to any biological drive. We can starve ourselves to death if we put our minds to it, so certainly we are capable of not adhering to all tenants of our human drives.
So perhaps our biology is a bit too conservative and maybe even outdated? It would certainly seem this way, as people are trying to break out of these bonds and claim freedom from any societal influence on their preferences. People do not like being told what they look for, they want to establish that for themselves. At least in our culture.

What we are interested in is to maintain our own motivation. Especially in the consumer culture where we are constantly under attacks from fizzy drinks, junk food, noisy entertainment and informational overload. Our physical blood sugar and our attention levels are jumping up and down all day, and this tires out the brain and body and causes us to lose motivation towards generic drives. It makes people lazy and perhaps it explains why online dating is such a growing phenomenon today. Even the most basic need for physical interaction with the opposite sex has to be sated from the calm and comfortable position of your own chair.

But this is just a symptom. The real enemy is the lack of motivation. The massive increases in anxiety and depression in most if not all of the western countries over the past 50 years, could be explained by the fact that we are the first few generations that have no goals. There is nothing to fight for. Only to shop for. And only having things to shop for leaves the human body and mind in an unhealthy state where we begin to perform a sort of social apoptosis. Depression takes hold of a person when he or she feels useless and unmotivated. A psychiatrist would probably disagree with this and explain it chemically, but there is no denying that the younger generations today are the less motivated generations and they are also the more anxious ones. The correlation could be unrelated, but I doubt it. Multitasking at the level we ask people to do it today quite simply should not lead to anything good. We have not been underachieving as a species so far, so why do we need to go so much faster now? Have you ever tried hyper-motivating an animal? They go crazy and start running around in circles not knowing what to chase, do or act upon. This is more or less the constant state for a normal western person today. Everywhere marketers are trying to get to you, and your solace is broken by the fact that you own a television that will allow the continuing of the mind-invasion you offer to your insurgents. All in the name of getting the carousel to run a little bit faster to allow for a little more growth.

It would seem then that this culture did wish for a greater knowledge of and capacity for empathy this year. We require the managing institutions of this world, the media and the law makers, to start paying attention to the fact that we have to slow down or we drown in our gluttonous intake of rapid social expansion. You will note that it also becomes increasingly difficult to scout a system or construct, social or otherwise, for errors if you constantly add more and more parts and modules. So we never know if sub prime and interest free loans undermine our economical strengths, or if artificial sweeteners act as carcinogenics, or if it destroys a generation to have Kanye West as a role model, before it is too late and the damage has been done by this free flow of seemingly innovative additions to our partly determined, partly ever-adaptive life styles. And the industries do this with a double standard, defending to the best of their lawyers' capability their corporate rights to avoid telling the consumers which products are genetically modified and which are not. Because they do not want to scare the consumers from buying their products, before it is 100% scientific that consumers, formerly known as people, dig their own graves with them. And if you ask me you can disregard the last part of the prior sentence actually.

The intrinsic motivation for all of us beyond water, food and a roof, is that we want to be socially relevant, as we have discussed prior. When it comes to what we get the most out of it is certainly a widening of what is socially capable. If you look at this study showing which nation is the happiest in the world, you will notice that resource acquisition is far from relevant to such happiness.

Luckily we have pills for postponing the solution of this social decline a generation or two.

Gamefication

Not too long ago I saw a video on gamification. Unfortunately I cannot find it anymore, and I would normally have linked to it by now when the reference is this clear. However, I did notice that about a gazillion results came up when I searched for the term, so I'm sure you can look it up if you do not know what it means.

If you want a quick catch up as to what it means and how the more positive perspectives on this idea reinforces their perspectives with arguments, look no further than this guy's presentation:



If you draw anything from this presentation please disregard his ideas on what to draw. You should be weary of this concept. Especially looking at the industry attempting to constantly trying to impress kids and force their parents to buy a product. If you look at this specific part of a documentary about corporations, you should get the bigger picture on why you want to question what industries educate your children.


My idea on how to make gamification useful is to introduce it into the basic learning of children. Much like these business vultures would want to, but ethically of course. How so? Well first of all it should be scientific, meaning the games developer should pick a topic they find interesting to develop a game world on, and then they should confer with the experts on that field.




An interesting way on how to make biology classes more compelling could be to make a game that puts the player into the role of becoming a white blood cell and fighting off infections to the host. These infections could then mutate and evolve, to make room for differing levels of difficulty. In addition the game could easily be transformed into a multiplayer game so a class of students would learn how the system of their bodies work together to keep them as healthy as possible.
Tie this in with specific levels in the game making it harder to work as a white blood cell due to fatigue, because the host body is eating too much fast food or drinking too many soft drinks filled with additives, and you got yourself one educative game.


I have no idea how to market this idea though, and I am quite sure that one way is to remove the aspect of combatting fast food, embracing the idea that the heart of the host body could wear a tag for a fast food chain the kids normally love. Many games will be doing similar things to get on the market in the future. Refer back to my prior post on advertising. 
The competition will be fierce and the corporations want to be a part of it, both so new games do not embrace the ideas I have mentioned that could potentially educate their consumers of their harmful ways, but of course also in order to be a part of sponsoring the games inside the games.


Finally I will simply say this. What the speaker at TEDx is right about specifically is that this trend towards gamification will not go away. It will not only be used on children, it will be utilised on adults as well, to make them compliant ressourceful workers with rising productivity due to the old carrot on a stick routine.


I will leave you with this lecture theorising why that will not work.

Advertising

Yet again I find myself sitting in a train, waiting for it to slowly start grinding the gears, telling me through loud noises of metal at work that I am changing my position towards my destination. I did have a few beers celebrating the end of the semester today. The final project has been handed in, and now there is nothing left to do but read up to the exam and enjoy Christmas with my family.

Normally I am not one for traditions, but I do see the merit in handing out smiles to the people that love me, by masking the repulsion I occasionally feel for this holiday that allows the western world to consume more calories in a day than most African children do in a week, if not a month.

Will the rest of this post be a vile spewing of acidic commentary on the festival of hearts? No. It will not. I left that part in this post instead of deleting it, because I do feel there is some merit to trying to reflect opposition towards a highly cherished ideal. Perhaps that is a general driving mechanic for a lot of the things I write.

Yesterday I spoke shortly of the curse of advertisement that has been brought to normalisation through repetition. Grinding those gears apparently turned the creatures formerly known as humans into these biomechanical beings capable of withstanding this constant noise in our environment. Of these beings only few even stop to consider how harmful this presence of mercantile manipulation affect the offspring of this self-consuming generation of pop star commentary wannabes.

In Sao Paulo, Brazil they actually banned outdoor advertisement. They now inhabit a city with a more cleansed self-image. A city that is closer to being as pure as a modern city can be, from the grips of globalised capitalism. At least visually.

Trust me when I say that these corporations have psychologists working on they can effectively break down your resistance toward their brand, and they care not what they destroy inside or outside of you in this process. That is irrelevant to their share holders and it does not figure on the statistics of their next general assembly slides of the quarterly stock improvements.

Advertisement is not there to inform you. It is not there to educate you. It is there to lure you into connecting a certain brand with a certain reward mechanism for you personally. To do this, they must first obstruct your sense of reality to make you slightly more eager to listen to the rest of their message, even if you already have another element associated with this sense of reward.

You might argue that people make up their own minds about what they wish to purchase and that I am therefore attributing way too much power to this industry of advertising. Considering the studies done on conformity and social pressures, I dare say that you would be wrong though. Ask yourself why more than half the people you know own an Apple product, and why half of those people probably own more than one. You would be kidding yourself if your guess was that its because Apple makes the best products. Obviously that is not the case. Even professional advertising agents have admitted that the logical assumption that a company spending money on advertising does so at the expense of higher prices or lower quality products, and/or to over-shadow a competitor.

So why do we continue to accept living in this litter box of self-promotion, done by conservative remnants of a past economy they consider the present. The time is now to start considering proper alternatives to this devouring beast of a society we chose to remain in out of fear of the unknown future scares us.