To me, the debate about government is often about the wrong things. We love to bicker about partisan this, bi-partisan that, government standstill, ineffective leaders, long-standing incumbents and all that, but we often ignore the most basic tenet of good governing, the overall welfare of the people. To me the central debate within government should be what we define as the welfare of the people, and to what ends the government should be involved in helping those things come about.
I think it's pretty clear that republicans and democrats agree on a lot of the same principles, but the methodology for fixing them is different. For instance, both want the general population to be healthy and to have access to healthcare, both want the nation to be secure from outside threats, both want americans to be able to find work, get education and a litany of other things. I'm not here to debate about what is and isn't the right methodology for these things. As an Economics Major, I have a tendency to view things from a fiscal point of view and also leaning towards the liberal viewpoint. What I do want to do is talk about the ideology of the people making the big decisions.
Which brings me to the main point, the thing I look for in a politician. The character trait of looking at a problem and trying to fix it in a way that hasn't been tried before. Far too often, government is stuck in a loop of trying new things, a new regime is in office, congress changes control, the new regime undoes the old changes and redoes their same old solution. This is true for both parties to at least a certain extent, but I'm tired of that cycle.
Give me someone trying to try something new everyday. Obviously, it still has to be rooted in realism, have the backing research and due diligence, but give me a break with the undoing and redoing of tax breaks and tax raises. Gov't spending and Go'vt cutbacks, the worst possible outcome for a government is when the people feel that it can never enact true change and stop believing in it. And in my opinion, we are heading there, there's a deep distrust of the things we don't know, and an equally deep cynicism for the things we do know.
So from now on, my vote is going to the person whose viewpoints and agendas are the most different from the person in office. I'm not even joking, thats the sad part.
Not 1000 words, but i'm tired. Also, this post made little sense and only covers about 10% of my thoughts about government.
Til Tomorrow
-A
Tomorrow: Social Media Personality Disorder
Wednesday, March 4, 2015
Monday, March 2, 2015
The Least Valued Opinion in the World is any Type of Religious Opinion
I'm back, after a weekend away from writing due to some travel, lets get back to the groove of this, and I'm just gonna jump right in to today's topic.
Religion in the workplace is basically just a microcosm of religion in the modern world. "I'm okay with you believing in whatever, just as long as you don't evangelize to me". I've basically heard this on a few different occasions from a few different coworkers, and in a sense it's almost offensive. We put religion on this different plane than we put other topics, like if I've heard a good new song or been to a cool new restaurant, I'm definitely gonna tell my friends and co-workers, so why am I not allowed to be as enthusiastic about a thing that is central to life itself? Because it breaks some modern moral code of the business world? Because it makes people feel uncomfortable?
This is just one part of the issue that I see with how religion is thought of in today's world. I've heard far too many christians say that "If you work hard and work as if God is watching, then people will say, 'Wow, that person is hard-working, it totally must be their christianity thing that is the reason for that'" Obviously, that hypothetical reaction is a bit sarcastic, but I swear to you I've heard multiple christians (and yes pastors too) say that first part. I couldn't disagree more, we've become afraid to speak about our beliefs to the people around us and the only way we're willing to speak is through our actions with the hope that people notice, how backwards is that way of thinking?
Christians as a whole have become too careful of being politically correct and far too cautious in how we talk to non-believing friends. We treat non-believing friends as if they are this precious cargo that needs to be hand delivered to the non-threatening parts of our religion. The religion we believe in is pretty radical folks, it denounces many things that the world accepts, it fights every bit of post-modern thinking that the world has fundamentally shifted towards for decades. Sooner or later, the people we know will have to see those parts of Christianity, and if they can't face them now in a conversation with their friends, what better is it for them to face them in 6 months or ten years when a person they don't know says something in a non-loving way in a public forum. Even worse, what happens when they see a 'christian' say something that doesn't represent what God is (think Rob bell and Oprah).
Who better to hear these inconvenient truths from than the people they're close to? I value my friends views on arts and society and relationships and lots of other facets of life. Why shouldn't my religious opinions and views be just as influential in my friends lives as my other opinions? (Although, this must go both ways, you MUST be willing and engaging in listening to their religious beliefs and/or non-beliefs.)
It's just interesting to me, the thought that a religious opinion is less valued in today's society than just about any other opinion a person could have. Somehow we need to get that to shift in the modern world, and just like most other things, that starts with you and me.
Today's writing veered from religion in the workplace, to just, religion in the modern world, which I think is fine, because for many people, the workplace is where they spend more time than any other. The added hurdle when you throw in the business setting is the idea that you're wasting company time if you talk about religion when there is work to do. And yes, I get that, and that is a legitimate concern, but there's still more to be done than is currently being done.
Also, I find myself reasoning in this way "well, my co-workers know I'm christian, so if they ever have any questions, they can come to me". Sound familiar? I'm kind of disgusted by the thought of that as if that's enough to fulfill God's calling for all christians to evangelize. I'm out of thoughts on the subject for now though, so that's it for today.
'Til Tomorrow
-A
Tomorrow: My highest governmental values
Religion in the workplace is basically just a microcosm of religion in the modern world. "I'm okay with you believing in whatever, just as long as you don't evangelize to me". I've basically heard this on a few different occasions from a few different coworkers, and in a sense it's almost offensive. We put religion on this different plane than we put other topics, like if I've heard a good new song or been to a cool new restaurant, I'm definitely gonna tell my friends and co-workers, so why am I not allowed to be as enthusiastic about a thing that is central to life itself? Because it breaks some modern moral code of the business world? Because it makes people feel uncomfortable?
This is just one part of the issue that I see with how religion is thought of in today's world. I've heard far too many christians say that "If you work hard and work as if God is watching, then people will say, 'Wow, that person is hard-working, it totally must be their christianity thing that is the reason for that'" Obviously, that hypothetical reaction is a bit sarcastic, but I swear to you I've heard multiple christians (and yes pastors too) say that first part. I couldn't disagree more, we've become afraid to speak about our beliefs to the people around us and the only way we're willing to speak is through our actions with the hope that people notice, how backwards is that way of thinking?
Christians as a whole have become too careful of being politically correct and far too cautious in how we talk to non-believing friends. We treat non-believing friends as if they are this precious cargo that needs to be hand delivered to the non-threatening parts of our religion. The religion we believe in is pretty radical folks, it denounces many things that the world accepts, it fights every bit of post-modern thinking that the world has fundamentally shifted towards for decades. Sooner or later, the people we know will have to see those parts of Christianity, and if they can't face them now in a conversation with their friends, what better is it for them to face them in 6 months or ten years when a person they don't know says something in a non-loving way in a public forum. Even worse, what happens when they see a 'christian' say something that doesn't represent what God is (think Rob bell and Oprah).
Who better to hear these inconvenient truths from than the people they're close to? I value my friends views on arts and society and relationships and lots of other facets of life. Why shouldn't my religious opinions and views be just as influential in my friends lives as my other opinions? (Although, this must go both ways, you MUST be willing and engaging in listening to their religious beliefs and/or non-beliefs.)
It's just interesting to me, the thought that a religious opinion is less valued in today's society than just about any other opinion a person could have. Somehow we need to get that to shift in the modern world, and just like most other things, that starts with you and me.
Today's writing veered from religion in the workplace, to just, religion in the modern world, which I think is fine, because for many people, the workplace is where they spend more time than any other. The added hurdle when you throw in the business setting is the idea that you're wasting company time if you talk about religion when there is work to do. And yes, I get that, and that is a legitimate concern, but there's still more to be done than is currently being done.
Also, I find myself reasoning in this way "well, my co-workers know I'm christian, so if they ever have any questions, they can come to me". Sound familiar? I'm kind of disgusted by the thought of that as if that's enough to fulfill God's calling for all christians to evangelize. I'm out of thoughts on the subject for now though, so that's it for today.
'Til Tomorrow
-A
Tomorrow: My highest governmental values
Thursday, February 26, 2015
Give the People What They Need, Not What They Want
I want to start this post by saying that the media and individual celebrities and artists owe us (and therefore, me) absolutely nothing. They have their own lives to lead, their own families and friends to love, their own paths and dreams to follow and should not inherently be worried about me or you. The fact that they're entertaining us for little to no cost is already doing more than they're indebted to do for us. If you're sensing a big however coming up, you're right, cause here it is. HOWEVER, I do think that it is surprising that the media at large and more celebrities and culture-makers aren't concerned with the greater good of people and how their actions and their professional work affects the worldview of those who consume their creative output.
In order to understand where I'm coming from on this, allow me to elaborate a bit about what I mean when I say greater good. When I say greater good, I'm not talking about charities and humanitarian efforts, plenty of celebrities/artists give a lot of their money towards those efforts and I'm not here to praise/deride those who do/don't. What I mean when I say 'greater good' is more of an abstract good, the good that happens when people have a realistic view of the world, the crap that goes on in it, the fact that not everything goes right in life but thats okay, and the fact that through that all, we still need to find ways to enjoy life, enjoy family, enjoy simple pleasures and all that.
I say this because a trend that I've noticed is the tendency of most tv shows and movies to basically sedate the viewer. I watched Parks and Recreation all the way through and was onboard for the whole run of the series, for a sitcom that didn't shy away from some tough issues (feminism, gay marriage, etc.) the way the show ended left me ultimately unsatisfied. A bunch of friends all splitting paths and heading in different directions SUCKS, it's not fun, no amount of montages and memories makes it a fun enjoyable thing to go through. I do understand that sitcoms traditionally act as escape, and I'm not saying that sitcoms all need to try to hit us over the head with the fact that life can be rough, because we all need a place we can go 30 minutes a week and not think about tough issues. That's just one example though, I also think of Breaking Bad, a show that more than any other popular show in the last few years had a dark subject matter. For a show whose main characters were a bunch of lying, betraying, overall bad people, why was everybody okay with the show ending in a way where every single people got exactly what they wanted out of life? Even the people who died, died in a happy fulfilling way (minus maybe Gus), why is this acceptable out of the things that shape people's worldview in a huge way?
Americans spend hours a day in front of televisions, absorbing the programming that culture makers put on the various channels. Whether knowingly or not, these things shape the way we think about the world and what we expect out of life (especially so in an age where many kids are raised by TV). So many of these shows don't even try to deal with the issues that should be dealt with in society. Where are the characters in a TV drama who volunteer at homeless shelters in addition to having a 9-to-5? Protest unjust laws in addition to raising a family? By and large characters are absorbed with their own problems in TV shows, the characters we love (and in a weird way admire) are ultimately self-absorbed, so is it really a surprise that the majority of Americans are too?
So yes, maybe Americans shouldn't take so many cues from TV, but I think the onus is more on those who produce TV to make a higher level of show, more multi-dimensional characters who are concerned with bigger social issues on top of their personal ones and scripts that aren't afraid to end in a way which leaves characters confused, scared and not sure of the answers to life's big questions. Ask yourself a question, wouldn't that show be the most realistic show on TV? Instead, we get an escape from the real world when we watch TV, which is fine in small doses, the problem is that we are escaping the real world for 6 hours a day, which leaves no time to actually participate in the real world.
'Til Tomorrow
-A
Tomorrow: Religion in the Workplace
In order to understand where I'm coming from on this, allow me to elaborate a bit about what I mean when I say greater good. When I say greater good, I'm not talking about charities and humanitarian efforts, plenty of celebrities/artists give a lot of their money towards those efforts and I'm not here to praise/deride those who do/don't. What I mean when I say 'greater good' is more of an abstract good, the good that happens when people have a realistic view of the world, the crap that goes on in it, the fact that not everything goes right in life but thats okay, and the fact that through that all, we still need to find ways to enjoy life, enjoy family, enjoy simple pleasures and all that.
I say this because a trend that I've noticed is the tendency of most tv shows and movies to basically sedate the viewer. I watched Parks and Recreation all the way through and was onboard for the whole run of the series, for a sitcom that didn't shy away from some tough issues (feminism, gay marriage, etc.) the way the show ended left me ultimately unsatisfied. A bunch of friends all splitting paths and heading in different directions SUCKS, it's not fun, no amount of montages and memories makes it a fun enjoyable thing to go through. I do understand that sitcoms traditionally act as escape, and I'm not saying that sitcoms all need to try to hit us over the head with the fact that life can be rough, because we all need a place we can go 30 minutes a week and not think about tough issues. That's just one example though, I also think of Breaking Bad, a show that more than any other popular show in the last few years had a dark subject matter. For a show whose main characters were a bunch of lying, betraying, overall bad people, why was everybody okay with the show ending in a way where every single people got exactly what they wanted out of life? Even the people who died, died in a happy fulfilling way (minus maybe Gus), why is this acceptable out of the things that shape people's worldview in a huge way?
Americans spend hours a day in front of televisions, absorbing the programming that culture makers put on the various channels. Whether knowingly or not, these things shape the way we think about the world and what we expect out of life (especially so in an age where many kids are raised by TV). So many of these shows don't even try to deal with the issues that should be dealt with in society. Where are the characters in a TV drama who volunteer at homeless shelters in addition to having a 9-to-5? Protest unjust laws in addition to raising a family? By and large characters are absorbed with their own problems in TV shows, the characters we love (and in a weird way admire) are ultimately self-absorbed, so is it really a surprise that the majority of Americans are too?
So yes, maybe Americans shouldn't take so many cues from TV, but I think the onus is more on those who produce TV to make a higher level of show, more multi-dimensional characters who are concerned with bigger social issues on top of their personal ones and scripts that aren't afraid to end in a way which leaves characters confused, scared and not sure of the answers to life's big questions. Ask yourself a question, wouldn't that show be the most realistic show on TV? Instead, we get an escape from the real world when we watch TV, which is fine in small doses, the problem is that we are escaping the real world for 6 hours a day, which leaves no time to actually participate in the real world.
'Til Tomorrow
-A
Tomorrow: Religion in the Workplace
Wednesday, February 25, 2015
So You've Thought a Thought, Now What?
cog·ni·tive dis·so·nance
noun
PSYCHOLOGY
- the state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes, especially as relating to behavioral decisions and attitude change.
I've been pondering the idea of cognitive dissonance as it relates to me and society as a whole. In the course of writing these posts I make a lot of claims about the way I think or the way I view things. The problem being is that when I take a step back and think about how those thought process and viewpoints affect the way I act on a daily basis, I really begin to question how much conviction I really have in those thoughts and viewpoints.
The two ways that I see of attacking this issue are as follows:
Firstly, at the thought level, where the solution would end up being something along the lines of me being more honest with myself and the thoughts I have and putting a more restrictive on the ways I let myself think and share those thoughts with others (I think presenting yourself in a dishonest way with others is pretty dejectable.)
Secondly, at the action level, basically continue to let myself think the way I think but do more on the action level to back those thoughts up. In essence, if I have a thought that I consider to be crucial, I would force myself (with the hope that eventually it would be less forceful, and more habitual) to back that thought up with some sort of tangible action.
Basically, when I go back and reread some of my posts (take for instance the one on mental health), I don't want to have the conclusion be so wishy-washy. I don't want to have myself be the type of person who has strong thoughts on a subject but doesn't do anything about it, and the reverse is also true, I don't want to just do things without taking the time to evaluate my motivations and reasoning for doing so.
Even writing this post has the massive potential in my life to further exacerbate the problem of cognitive dissonance. It's like it reaches a meta-level when somebody writes about their hatred for their own cognitive dissonance and then continues to be cognitively dissonant.
Now, I don't think that I'm alone in the world in not having my thoughts reinforced by the actions that I take on a daily basis. There's definitely a a certain overarching detachment in my generation of Americans from a lot of social problems. I look around my office and I see a lot of me-first thinking while being very willing to acknowledge a lot of socio-cultural problems that exist in the world. This fact alone doesn't excuse me more than it kind of points out a trend, we're so insulated that we don't see the problems and therefore don't feel obligated to do anything about them.
Put yourself in this situation: you're walking down the street and a 12-year old girl is abducted and thrown into sex slavery halfway around the world. Would you do something? Chase the attacker down? Get his license plate and inform police? This is an act that happens hundreds if not thousands of times a day around the world, but we don't see it, so we do nothing. In fact, somebody in your city is the person on the receiving end of that 'business transaction'. It's a growing epidemic in America, but we don't see it.
This to me is very similar to cognitive dissonance, your actions in some circumstances back up a thought process but aren't the same as your actions in other circumstances even given the same thought process.
Like a lot of things in life, I think the answer lies somewhere in the middle of all this, but it definitely warrants some more thought on my part, but it's almost midnight so I'm gonna sleep on it.
'Til Tomorrow
-A
Tomorrow: The role and responsibility of media
Tuesday, February 24, 2015
A Bunch of Sentences about Competitiveness with no Conclusion (CLICKBAIT ENOUGH FOR YOU??)
One thing I've noticed as I go through this writing process on a daily basis is that my routine tends to be to open up a new blank post on blogspot, then stare at it for a few minutes while thinking about how to write about that day's topic. Already, in a week and a half I've noticed that I'm no longer intimidated by a blank page, as I was staring at it just now I thought of it more as an empty canvas than as some type of video game boss that I had to figure out how to conquer. It's interesting how writing for enjoyment rather than on assignment has so quickly changed my view on the process.
As for the day's chosen topic competitiveness, I want to start by saying that I've lived the majority of of my life under the impression that every human has a basic human instinct of competitiveness (although to some varying degree depending on the person), and that people who describe themselves as not being competitive are for whatever reason, holding back their instincts to be competitive. Now there's a few assumptions that I'm operating under so I should probably go back and define those so as to not seem like a complete ass on the internet.
First off, competitiveness is defined in my head as if you're in a situation where there is a clear winner and a clear loser, you would rather be the winner than the loser and when the outcome is decided you will be happier for having won than lost. Secondly, when I say that competitiveness is instinctual, I think of it on an almost evolutional level, where men are striving to prove themselves as more manly to attract females and potentially vis-a-versa. Lastly, this doesn't mean that in the case of victory, the winner has the right to degrade other people or make fun of the losers, and it also doesn't mean that the loser can give excuses or blame his teammates or whatever. The basic rule is, gracious in victory, gracious in defeat.
Now, maybe I'm mistaken in my assumption that everyone is competitive, I've certainly met a few people and even call a few of those people my friends that say they aren't competitive (although, in my experience, get them in the right circumstances and they are, in fact, very competitive), but I should probably leave room for them to exist in this universe.
What I really want to get at with today's writing is the question of, what causes a person to be more competitive than others? Why does society seem to frown on those who are competitive?
I've been told more than a few times that I was overly competitive, and from my viewpoint I always thought "either be in a competition and give 100% effort or don't be in it at all", now my viewpoint was and is maybe too simplistic, but is that viewpoint really too much to ask? I think I might be coming off as being whiney about this all and I'm totally okay with that, sometimes we as a society value feelings too much. Get beat by too much and your feelings might be hurt, try too hard and people label you as 'that kid' in gym class. Why do we treat getting beat as a bad thing? Shouldn't we turn that into motivation to become better? Isn't an honest realization of our shortcomings and then turning that shortcoming into a strength through hardwork and perseverance one of the greatest things a human can do?
I don't know, I'm a tryhard at heart and I always try to excel at the things I do. If there's one thing that I know about myself, it's that I sometimes lack motivation to work at things, but one thing that's motivated me as always been a competitive spirit, is that so bad?
In the words of Forrest Gump, "And that's about all I've got to say about that." It's interesting that a thing like writing that has no competitive aspect about it, I still manage a way to make it competitive. I catch myself watching my view counter to see if people are liking my writing, when the whole point of this project was to do a thing for myself not in the view of anyone else. Sometimes I love my own competitiveness and sometimes I hate it. Sometimes I do both in the same paragraph.
No big conclusions today, just some drawn out thoughts on a subject. Oh well, not every day has a conclusion.
'Til Tomorrow
-A
Tomorrow: Cognitive Dissonance (at least I think that's the term for what I'm thinking about)
As for the day's chosen topic competitiveness, I want to start by saying that I've lived the majority of of my life under the impression that every human has a basic human instinct of competitiveness (although to some varying degree depending on the person), and that people who describe themselves as not being competitive are for whatever reason, holding back their instincts to be competitive. Now there's a few assumptions that I'm operating under so I should probably go back and define those so as to not seem like a complete ass on the internet.
First off, competitiveness is defined in my head as if you're in a situation where there is a clear winner and a clear loser, you would rather be the winner than the loser and when the outcome is decided you will be happier for having won than lost. Secondly, when I say that competitiveness is instinctual, I think of it on an almost evolutional level, where men are striving to prove themselves as more manly to attract females and potentially vis-a-versa. Lastly, this doesn't mean that in the case of victory, the winner has the right to degrade other people or make fun of the losers, and it also doesn't mean that the loser can give excuses or blame his teammates or whatever. The basic rule is, gracious in victory, gracious in defeat.
Now, maybe I'm mistaken in my assumption that everyone is competitive, I've certainly met a few people and even call a few of those people my friends that say they aren't competitive (although, in my experience, get them in the right circumstances and they are, in fact, very competitive), but I should probably leave room for them to exist in this universe.
What I really want to get at with today's writing is the question of, what causes a person to be more competitive than others? Why does society seem to frown on those who are competitive?
I've been told more than a few times that I was overly competitive, and from my viewpoint I always thought "either be in a competition and give 100% effort or don't be in it at all", now my viewpoint was and is maybe too simplistic, but is that viewpoint really too much to ask? I think I might be coming off as being whiney about this all and I'm totally okay with that, sometimes we as a society value feelings too much. Get beat by too much and your feelings might be hurt, try too hard and people label you as 'that kid' in gym class. Why do we treat getting beat as a bad thing? Shouldn't we turn that into motivation to become better? Isn't an honest realization of our shortcomings and then turning that shortcoming into a strength through hardwork and perseverance one of the greatest things a human can do?
I don't know, I'm a tryhard at heart and I always try to excel at the things I do. If there's one thing that I know about myself, it's that I sometimes lack motivation to work at things, but one thing that's motivated me as always been a competitive spirit, is that so bad?
In the words of Forrest Gump, "And that's about all I've got to say about that." It's interesting that a thing like writing that has no competitive aspect about it, I still manage a way to make it competitive. I catch myself watching my view counter to see if people are liking my writing, when the whole point of this project was to do a thing for myself not in the view of anyone else. Sometimes I love my own competitiveness and sometimes I hate it. Sometimes I do both in the same paragraph.
No big conclusions today, just some drawn out thoughts on a subject. Oh well, not every day has a conclusion.
'Til Tomorrow
-A
Tomorrow: Cognitive Dissonance (at least I think that's the term for what I'm thinking about)
Monday, February 23, 2015
Grappling with the Idea of Mental Health Problems
It seems like the cyclical nature of the world thrusts topics into our lives once in a while. And while we enjoy not thinking about them when they're not in the news, and we don't know what to really do about them when they are in the news, they exist the whole time even as much as the world at large would love to forget about them. This could apply to a lot of different things, but specifically I'm thinking of mental health as one of those issues. The most common way that mental health comes to the forefront of the collective American mind is when something goes terribly wrong (the kind of events that leap into my mind are mass shootings), and we tend to talk about mental health in America in terms like, "Oh, we really should do more as a country to help those with mental illnesses" or "Mental health professionals and research is so underpaid and underfunded".
Doesn't an issue this large and complex deserve a lot more than our occasional pity? Isn't it offensive that the only things that bring it into the spotlight are tragedies? Why don't we hear about the daily triumphs that mental health professionals make? Why do we only think of mental health in terms of the psychopaths that occasionally turn violent?
The last thing I want to do here is blame the media for not showing us a lot of the real issues that go on in America (although they aren't innocent in this matter), for a large part I think that the media gives Americans what we want to see and hear whether we realize we want to see and hear it or not. I think largely we like to hear news about stuff that we can't control and can't do anything about in our daily lives because we don't to feel obligated to do something, to feel empathy and to participate in the system as part of the cure for a societal ailment.
I don't know where I'm ultimately going with this thought train, and I don't have any sort of proposal to do something about it. It's just one of those things that a person points out and doesn't personally pitch in to do anything about it themselves and then points the finger at society as a whole for not doing that thing either. It's interesting how I can write these things that try to point out societal woes and ways that the world is unjust and ultimately be hypocritical myself and not do anything about the thing I'm pointing out.
One of the things I want to work on is picking a few battles/causes that I believe in and want to volunteer my time/effort/money towards. Maybe mental health can be one of them, I've always been shaken to the core by thinking about the effects of myself coming down with a sort of mental illness, recently the movie, 'Still Alice' stressed me out so much with it's depiction of early onset alzheimer's that I couldn't even bear to watch it. I get even further stressed out when I think of the possibility of a child of mine having any sort of mental handicap, not only for their quality of life, but for my quality of life as that kid's parent (how crazily selfish is that?). And while I know that just about no parent ever thinks of them as being capable of knowing how to handle that situation and the majority of them deal with that and in a lot of cases flourish with it, it still stresses me out to think of it.
So much of my life depends on the fact that I feel like a very rational, intuitive person. The idea that a person's brain could betray them, or that my own brain could betray me is one of the scariest thoughts. You wouldn't even know that anything is going wrong! That's part of the illness! I think as admittedly a very minimal first step, I want to be thankful for the rational, intuitive, fully-functioning brain I have as I still have it. Be more wary of and thoughtful towards those less fortunate than myself and perhaps keep my eyes open for an opportunity to help out (and the courage to take that opportunity).
'Til tomorrow
-A
Tomorrow: Competitive Nature
Doesn't an issue this large and complex deserve a lot more than our occasional pity? Isn't it offensive that the only things that bring it into the spotlight are tragedies? Why don't we hear about the daily triumphs that mental health professionals make? Why do we only think of mental health in terms of the psychopaths that occasionally turn violent?
The last thing I want to do here is blame the media for not showing us a lot of the real issues that go on in America (although they aren't innocent in this matter), for a large part I think that the media gives Americans what we want to see and hear whether we realize we want to see and hear it or not. I think largely we like to hear news about stuff that we can't control and can't do anything about in our daily lives because we don't to feel obligated to do something, to feel empathy and to participate in the system as part of the cure for a societal ailment.
I don't know where I'm ultimately going with this thought train, and I don't have any sort of proposal to do something about it. It's just one of those things that a person points out and doesn't personally pitch in to do anything about it themselves and then points the finger at society as a whole for not doing that thing either. It's interesting how I can write these things that try to point out societal woes and ways that the world is unjust and ultimately be hypocritical myself and not do anything about the thing I'm pointing out.
One of the things I want to work on is picking a few battles/causes that I believe in and want to volunteer my time/effort/money towards. Maybe mental health can be one of them, I've always been shaken to the core by thinking about the effects of myself coming down with a sort of mental illness, recently the movie, 'Still Alice' stressed me out so much with it's depiction of early onset alzheimer's that I couldn't even bear to watch it. I get even further stressed out when I think of the possibility of a child of mine having any sort of mental handicap, not only for their quality of life, but for my quality of life as that kid's parent (how crazily selfish is that?). And while I know that just about no parent ever thinks of them as being capable of knowing how to handle that situation and the majority of them deal with that and in a lot of cases flourish with it, it still stresses me out to think of it.
So much of my life depends on the fact that I feel like a very rational, intuitive person. The idea that a person's brain could betray them, or that my own brain could betray me is one of the scariest thoughts. You wouldn't even know that anything is going wrong! That's part of the illness! I think as admittedly a very minimal first step, I want to be thankful for the rational, intuitive, fully-functioning brain I have as I still have it. Be more wary of and thoughtful towards those less fortunate than myself and perhaps keep my eyes open for an opportunity to help out (and the courage to take that opportunity).
'Til tomorrow
-A
Tomorrow: Competitive Nature
Sunday, February 22, 2015
Movies as the Highest Form of Art?
It's time for a culturally relevant post! It's time for a post about movies! On Oscar Sunday!
There's a part of me that tends to think that a great movie can be the highest form of artistic expression that we have in the modern age. This is a bold statement (at least in my mind), so I'll take a couple minutes to try to back that up with at least some semblance of reasoning.
By definition, I think that art has to be culturally relevant, in the world we live in, if you make a great painting that is considered by critics and viewers alike to be a masterpiece but 1,000 people see it. How does that compare to a movie that is thought of as a masterpiece by critics and viewers but 50 million people see it? If the goal of art is to lift society to a place that it wouldn't have gotten on its own, a place of higher knowledge, a greater sense of self, of being in more in tune with our emotions, wouldn't a movie that does those things that reaches a wider audience mean more than a symphony? or a modern masterpiece painting?
Granted, the movies that are most likely to be considered artistic masterpieces generally aren't the same movies that are being seen by 50 million people, but I think the point remains the same even if you scale back the numbers from one thousand versus 50 million to 1 million versus 5 million.
So that's one way of reasoning my bold statement, here's another. A great movie can combine so many different artistic elements when other forms of art are limited to one element. Think about it this way, a great movie tends to have a great soundtrack or score. It has great actors, it might feature dancing or other highly choreographed routines (think fighting or other). All together there are so many elements that each seperately can be considered a form of high art, that when combined in a great manner it is much more powerful than one piece. It's like going to a museum full of art as opposed to looking at one piece in a person's private collection.
Even when you think of the all the effort that goes into making each scene visually stunning (think of the lighting, the angles, the sound and more), it just makes it so that when a movie pulls that "woah" moment off even more special. Plus, in my mind at least, the dynamic moving images of a movie usually means more and hits harder than the static image that a painting shows.
So yeah, that's my argument and I'm sticking to it, and that's coming from a self-proclaimed musician.
As for tonight's picks.... this is my picks, not who I think is going to win
Best Movie: Birdman. Just narrowly edges out Whiplash as my favorite movie this year. While Whiplash is the closest thing I've ever seen to a depiction of what it is truly like to connect with an instrument and with another person in a musical sense, Birdman has a lot more elements going on in my mind and I think Keaton and Norton kill it slightly harder than Teller and Simmons. Plus the whole movie being one continuous shot is in my mind a little more impressive than the 5 minute drum solo that Whiplash finished with.
My other favorite movies this year: Gone Girl, Nightcrawler. These 4 were in the top tier and a decent distance before you get to the Boyhood, Interstellar, Grand Budapest tier of movies.
Best Director: Linklater. Takes a lot of fine tuning for the story of the movie to outshine the gag of the way the movie was shot. I think the emotional connecting in this movie was top notch and it's not easy to do that with child actors.
Best Actor: Of the nominees: Keaton. Of all movies: Gyllenhall. Maybe I'm the only one who loved Nightcrawler so much but Gyllenhall is becoming one of my favorite actors.
Best Actress: Julianne Moore, I had to literally stop watching this movie because her portrayal of alzheimers had me so stressed out. Rosamund Pike was great in Gone Girl, but damn, I still stress out about Julianne Moore's character in that movie (which was just an okay movie overall).
Supporting Actor: JK Simmons
Supporting Actress: Patricia Arquette
Whiplash and Nightcrawler for their respective writing genres.
That's it for week one of this project.
'Til Tomorrow
-A
Tomorrow: Something to do with Mental Health (I'll try to figure out my angle later)
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