Mute

Seven thousand words in, and I realize that I'm overdoing this paper. I might get an A, but it's pointless. The marks don't indicate anything beyond "I was here."

And even then, what's the point of proving knowledge? Two steps away, there is a throng of people, hundreds easily. A good majority of them are arguing inane day-to-day facts, precipitated through a process of profound and enforced ignorance. It's dangerous to be too smart. It's dangerous to be even a little bit smart. But grab just a grain of truth, and tie it to an emotional message, and you have the kernel of a revolutionary idea.

This is a dangerous science, mostly because it doesn't follow the rules of causality. Imagine a scientist in a lab coat, trying very hard to catalyze a reaction. On one morning, his assembled experiment fizzles, and the outcome is failure. The next morning, his ingredients and his assemblage is exactly the same, but this time the experiment takes off, rapidly producing the desired outcome. According to science, there would be a so-called "hidden" or unaccounted-for variable that the scientist missed, and the race would be on for him to try and discover this hidden condition for the experiment to succeed. This is also the approach sociologists and communications experts attempt when dealing with the success or failure of media adoption.

But there's a secret. There is no variable. The scientist's experiment succeeded simply because it was done the next day, and not the first. But even then, the day on which it happened is irrelevant to the experiment - it cannot be accounted to produce the desired result consistently. So it goes with the masses; introduce the ingredients, and its entirely up to the environment to produce the desired results. There is no quantifying it, and it's completely arbitrary. Even a successful introduction, for example, the Kony 2012 campaign, is subject to the whim and conversional nature of the fickle public. It appeared the desired result was achieved, but once the communities got hold of the message, it was torn apart, reassembled, compared and ultimately discarded.

The message went viral, but strangely, the body of the public reacted to it. Became immune to it. This is a new trend, that highly-connected individuals work as mast cells, binding to ideas, comparing them - analyzing them, rather than just blindly passing them on. The results are still highly arbitrary, but this demonstrates a huge change in how viral media works. Now there are elements of fast-acting immunity: skepticism, critical analysis, and a desire to discuss rather than to enforce. The pushback against questioning adoption is huge. Our case with the Kony Campaign illustrated the vehemence with which people defended a campaign which they knew very little about. It was an emotional stake - people want to believe in something, to belong in something. Regardless of the reality imposed by a rational look at the situation, those who supported the Kony 2012 campaign created their own reality, which isn't all that surprising when you consider the lifestyles imposed on North Americans.

Our lives are rife with incongruities and double-standards. Moral and ethical ambiguity isn't just present, it permeates every level of society. We can never really be sure who we are, or that what we are doing is good. The toolkit we're given when we're young is composed largely of enforced indifference, of apathy. Given the chance to join, or create, a good cause, the average person won't balk, and they'll defend to the death the ideal they've created for his or herself.

There's just no reasonable way of predicting or anticipating when, where, or how people will adopt these ideals, en masse. And now, more than ever, we should be wary of this.

Aden

There's a cold war in bed. Fidget and I aren't talking for a bit, and she throws the blankets in frustration. I just curl over and try to sleep, before the allergies kick in again and I have to get up. It's about two hours before air stops reaching my lungs, and I get up to rectify the situation with some pharmaceutical magic.

Her frustration momentarily forgotten, she asks "Are you okay?" The next five minutes will tell me. Thankfully, pseudo-ephedrine hasn't lost it's punch, and within ten minutes, I'm able to breathe again. Senseless cats and burning weed be damned, I needed fresh air. Foggy weather and no moon out, it's just me and the midnight traffic.

I'm small, fading to insignificance, dragging this whole sordid arrangement with me. Politics, social engineering, it's a can of pre-fab contradictions, and I wish I could just put it down. But even if I try, I can always feel the fingers on spine, the whisper in my ear. Like a Rorschach blot, once you see the image, it never goes away no matter how many times to blink or rub your eyes, look away, shake your head.

Fidget's roommate can't sleep, but his obsession is observation, scientific pursuit. He's out on the telescope most nights. Not tonight though, too foggy.

I go back to bed, curl up. Fidget curls up next to me, argument forgotten, the cold war over.

The miracle of technology, it's said, brings people together. If anything, I've seen, it tears us apart. It exposes us, again and again, to our own personal anathemas. People and ideas we'd rather didn't exist, or at the very least, never spoke to us. No firm ground, no rarefied air.

I wonder if you still read this. I know, I've said it before that I'm getting ready to be rid of this thing. This... leftover from my old years, when I was a different person, in a different place, a different time. But that's just it, isn't it? I was still looking back then. I was still trying to figure things out, finding my place in the world one bit at a time. There was something intimately sexual about a person, blind to humanity, fumbling about in the dark. You could just... interpose yourself, and my hands would find you. Because, quite simply, you wanted to be found. Again and again.

I wonder if it's still that way for you. Whereas I was just trying to keep my head above water, you were trying your hardest to stay in the pool. Our ideas for morality had never landed at your shores, and it made everything you did seem strange, almost chaotic, in a beautiful, almost erotic, kind of way.

I wonder if you still read this, because I'm not the seeker I used to be. I'm not blindly groping, but rather traveling with one eye open. I found bits and pieces of myself, spread about from one crises to the next, but you left no footprints. I can close my eyes and catch a half-remember scent or witty comment, but there were no footprints and no paper trails. You were a ghost in the world presented to me. You didn't want to be found here, where you could be judged.

I'm an author now. I was before, but never like this. Completely free to produce whatever I wished. I've finished a story. That's something I never thought I would do - finish what I started. That's destination talk, when you were always more interested in the journey, in the experience. I'm going to publish my first story soon, as my own publisher. It's a pretty mature story, but I think you'd like it. It's believable because it's not the world I grew up in, dictated by morals and rules. It's believable because as I was writing it, I thought about you and the others, how you would all behave in a room together. It's believable because morality isn't something that can be laid out in a sentence, or even a book.

It's difficult being a lover again, not because I don't know what to do, but rather because I know what's going to happen in the future. You told me yourself, being out of it was like freedom, not because you didn't love the person, but because their paths determined where you could, and couldn't go. You taught me to have fun in the present, and I wonder if you still do. So much has changed. I wonder if you've forgotten?

All new low

I'd let it rest on 2008. That was the year when the bottom fell out, and that was also the time when nobody wanted to be told "I told you so."

The gravy train was supposed to keep going forever, and the money was supposed to keep flowing. Nobody wanted to believe that all good things need to come to an end.

Since that time, nobody's been permitted to rock the boat. The social psyche is still fragile, still reeling from a near (or some might say, truly) fatal blow. Before 2008, dissent was tolerated out of lip service, because it was assailing an impregnable fortress of self-righteousness. We were successful, and the economy was proving us right at every turn.

But now? Now those sticks and stones can break bones. The Occupy Wall Street protests were a telling reaction to the iniquities sustained over the last decade. But more telling was the reaction. Police brutality. Open criticism in the media. Protest is a constitutionally sanctioned right - but nobody seems to bring that up when the police make mincemeat of protesters. Or further, when politicians sneer at the audacity of disenfranchised youth.

Now we're facing the jaws of a recession the likes of which the world hasn't seen since the 1930's. What will Fox News say when the US's entire middle class is emptied out into the streets? What will the economy do with no workers and no consumers? This is the world we're going in to, whether we want it or not.

Ready?

Legacy

I had a pretty uncomfortable dream last night. I've since turned it into the start of a new story - one more to add to the heap, I guess.

But it just made me wonder. What would you do if the world was dying, and you were given the choice of dying peacefully with it, or taking a long-odds gamble of survival after a mentally and physically brutal journey?

Dinosaur Bones

I'm sitting in a lecture right now about the issues produced by new media forms, and how new mechanics work.

I suppose it is useful to understand what theorists 60 years out of date think about modern technology (ex. it's interesting, fascinating, magical, bizarre, etc.) I suppose I've been spoiled. I've grown up with technology, and in a sense, it's grown up with me. I see nothing bizarre or magic about the migration of content onto the Internet. It's the product of an iterative process that's been ongoing since humans first decided that the information stored in our heads would be better preserved on a medium like clay or paper.

I'm amused by how badly some theorists want to try and explain technology. There's a huge push to define its relationship to society, and how people drive (or are driven by) it. The truth is, technology is an aspect of society, and society itself a technology that allows humans to exist communally to varying degrees of intimacy.

There. I've just saved you $6,500 and a year of lost time.

Syria's been on my mind a lot of late. I'm studying it for another one of my lectures. If you haven't already, I'd encourage you to read about what's happening over there. It's shaping up to give Rwanda a run for its money, but the UN can't seem to get its permanent seat holders to pull their heads out their asses, so we're likely just going to sit on the sidelines while people are butchered in the streets.

More categorizations.

The world we're set to inherit isn't in very good shape right now. There's going to be another economic collapse, probably starting in Europe. I'm banking that there's another country there that's teetering on default, but they haven't mentioned anything yet because it would cause a global panic. So instead, we're waiting, stacked like nervous dominoes. The arrangements that led to the first collapse in 2008 are still in place, and the guilty parties walked away from that mess scott-free.

Break time. I'll write more later.

Cold Breath

Mandatory update, I guess. You might've noticed the new layout. Honestly, I just don't have time to continue changing the old one, so I just picked the least offensive of the pre-created templates.

The result, I think, is somewhere between modern art-deco and a George Foreman grill. Kind of explains why I always get hungry whenever I come here now. In any event, I suppose I should update. I've had a lot to say, but it's mostly serious stuff. I don't like talking about serious stuff, because either A) People think I'm a serious person and switch off, or B) People take things too seriously and get into a fight. I don't mind debates, but I'm seriously wondering how many people can tell the difference between disagreeing with a point someone makes, and actually believing that person is an idiot.

Most people are just inclined to believe that what they know is right, and anyone who thinks otherwise is a nut.

In any event (see, too serious), the written works are on hold right now. The University has decided to make it their mission to include group projects for every class they can get away with, and this means that almost all of my free time is spent trying to manage or be managed by other people. I guess the U got ragged on because its graduates couldn't work properly as a team, so they're trying to rectify the issue by cramming it down our throats. I can foresee a new complaint next year that U graduates will become homicidal whenever they're forced into a team.

On the topic of games, I've been mostly sucked into Skyrim right now. I hear people describing it as an "off-line" MMO. Idiots. It's a free-roaming role-playing game in the truest sense, and if you're looking for something to sink hours and hours of gameplay into, it's a good bet. I also recently purchased Modern Warfare 3 and Battlefield 3. I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's the same garbage all over again, and anyone who measures their prowess by their success with these games is a fucking idiot. And probably a closet fascist.

I also got SW:TOR for Christmas. As an MMO, it's decent, but the whole addiction right now is group interaction when picking up or turning in quests. Unlike WoW, when you interact with an NPC while in a group, the whole group can take part in the conversation. The NPC will say something, everyone dials in their answers, and then - like a loot-rolling system - everyone rolls a random number and the highest number's answer becomes the group's response.

If you're wondering what the big deal is, it's this: you don't know whether other people are playing light side or dark side, so sometimes your pleasant conversation can instantly turn in to homicide.
Example:
Street Urchin: Please sir, let me out of here! I'm hungry and scared!
Player 1: Who are you? Are you infected?
Street Urchin: I don't know! I'm scared!
Player 1: Hold on, let me find the key.

//insert mandatory scavenger hunt mission

Player 1: I found it. Are you sure you're not infected?
Street Urchin: I don't think so. I'm hungry!

//suddenly, Player 2 wins a dialogue roll
 
Player 2: Vent it into space, it's the only way to be sure!
*beep boop*
Street Urchin: NOOOoooooooo!

Usually followed by lots of laughs and copious amounts of jedi raeg.

Yes, I am playing a morally ambiguous character. Bioware made it really easy to do so.