Monday, July 8, 2019
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Wednesday, June 19, 2019
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The Art of Writing Well: Why Thanos Is A Much Better Villain Than The Night...: From the very first scene of Game of Thrones, we the audience are introduced to a malicious, powerful force in the snowy, forested north....
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Sunday, November 11, 2018
Why Does The Nintendo Switch Matter?
I finally did it. After nearly two years of resisting the urge to buy the Nintendo Switch, I inevitably caved and picked one up. Breath of the Wild, Super Mario Odyssey, Splatoon 2, plenty of ports from the under-performing Wii U, and a new Super Smash Bros. arriving in less than a month, the Switch is a powerhouse, with sales surpassing even the PS4 and original Wii at this point in their lifecycle. For me, it’s been love at first touch, and I suspect we’re going to have hundreds of hours of good times together over the next handful of years. Nintendo is riding high once again, yet the company has seen plenty of highs and lows over the course of its multi-decade run.
The first console I ever owned was an original NES, and I still have it, carefully packed away in my closet for my children to marvel in pitying awe at on some future date. Yet, back in the early nineties, it was amazing to me. I poured hundreds of hours into Super Mario Bros., Duck Hunt, The Legend of Zelda, Pac-Man, Metroid and other games before gleefully catching up with my peers in the era of the Super Nintendo. While Sega consoles and both the Playstation and Xbox brands have all had plenty of love from me over the years, there is still nothing quite like the joy of picking up a handful of Nintendo’s best first-party titles on a brand-spanking new console.
And that feeling of pure joy, escapism at its most refined, is exactly why Nintendo has the fanbase it does. Due to a glut of console options and poor-quality games leading into the early eighties, the home console industry in the United States and other developed countries collapsed almost overnight. The field once pioneered by American companies the likes of Atari and Magnavox, generating billions in revenue through arcade and home console hits for more than a decade, simply ceased to exist during the Video Game Crash of 1983. Many believed the concept of home video-gaming as a whole was dead and gone, a fad as quick to pass as the arcade craze years earlier. Then, a little-known company from Japan decided to release their Family Computer, rebranded as an entertainment system, in North America just before the holiday season of 1985.
This company, of course, was Nintendo, and we’re still living in the world it helped build. By guaranteeing quality standards for games and restricting how many titles were released over the course of a year to prevent over-saturation of the market, the company remade an industry, brought it back it life, and gave us a legacy many are still enjoying today. As gigantic as the Playstation and Xbox user-bases are, they exist in large-part because Nintendo showed them how to build a true and lasting fanbase in the first place. Even when facing a financial failure, such as the lackluster run of the Wii U, Nintendo has shown time and again it can innovate, remain at the top of its creative game and give us experiences the likes of the versatile Switch, innovative DS, quirky original Wii and sublime Gameboy with a confidence few companies possess.
That said, Nintendo has made plenty of mistakes along the way. While the original and Super Nintendo consoles were incredibly successful, the popularity of the Sega Genesis cut into the sales of the latter system. By the time the Nintendo 64 rolled out, Sony had already effectively dominated the market and crushed the Sega Saturn with its first Playstation console. In deciding to use cartridges instead of CDs for its game storage, and retaining stricter quality policies than Sony held, Nintendo effectively ensured its rival won over a majority of third-party support and maintained sales far above that of its own system. This trend has been largely upheld in the console generations since.
At the turn of the century, Nintendo and Sony, alongside newcomer Microsoft, launched fresh consoles into the multi-billion dollar a year industry. Competition was fiercer than ever, yet by making several of the same mistakes with outside developers and lacking meaningful online support, the Nintendo Gamecube wound up being the lowest-selling console of the three, despite having an amazing first-party lineup. Fortunately, Nintendo learned several valuable lessons from this, deciding to innovate and connect with fans on their own terms with their next effort. While still lacking the online features of its rivals, the Wii and its motion-tracking technology proved a breakout success for Nintendo, being the first home console from the company to move over 100 million units and outsell its Sony counterpart.
Towards the end of its life, however, the Wii suffered from a lack of support and innovation, while the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 were picking up and maintaining momentum. In terms of hardware, the Wii was a glorified Gamecube, so its internals couldn’t keep up with the graphic and performance fidelity of its fellow consoles. So, while it technically won the sales contest for the generation, the Wii left its successor hanging while Sony was busy making sure the Playstation 4 avoided the early mistakes of its predecessor.
Next, enter the Wii U. The poorest-selling console in Nintendo’s history by a notable margin, the successor to the mighty Wii was an exercise in how to develop and release a successor console the wrong way. Launched too late, with a needless primary accessory alongside an ineffective marketing campaign while once again failing to boast the online features, third-party support and processing power of its rivals, the system was pretty much doomed from the start. In the age of huge Switch success, its easy to forget Nintendo was bleeding money just a couple of years ago. The one bright spot for the company during this time was its 3DS handheld console, the most reliable business niche for the company.
Since the original Gameboy launched in 1989, Nintendo has been effectively untouchable in the handheld console space. Many challengers have come and gone, from Sega’s Neo Geo to Sony’s Playstation Portable, yet none have truly destabilized the Big N’s dominance of this market. The Gameboy Advance, Nintendo DS and 3DS have all been massive success stories, and this is where the Switch finds itself positioned perfectly. The 3DS is a seven year old system, and has seen several iterations. The Playstation 4 and Xbox One are well established and unlikely to be displaced this far into the console cycle, so Nintendo took a page from the Wii U gamepad’s playbook and pushed the concept further, to huge success.
Giving us the best of both worlds, you can now take your beautiful home-console with you, while Nintendo combines its preeminence in handhelds with innovation in it’s home console space. We are now given the first true hybrid console, where core Pokemon titles exist alongside full Zelda titles you can take with you on the go. If you want to play your games on the TV, pop it on the dock, if you’re leaving and know you have a wait, click the joy cons on and be on your merry way. This is Nintendo at its best: simple, flexible, fun. And better yet, they don’t need to split development time and resources between two different systems. It’s all under one roof now.
I was playing my NES classic with my wife the other day, and it hit me just how much of my gaming life has been guided by the expectations laid down when I was barely able to speak or walk. Whether a given Nintendo console was successful or not, they have always, every single time, released amazing games for their systems. Quality is their standard, pure entertainment is their calling card, and it has been from the beginning. Whatever the future holds for our beloved Japanese friends, one thing is all but guaranteed: we should have years, even decades more, of quality games, systems and experiences ahead of us. That is a future worth buying into.
The first console I ever owned was an original NES, and I still have it, carefully packed away in my closet for my children to marvel in pitying awe at on some future date. Yet, back in the early nineties, it was amazing to me. I poured hundreds of hours into Super Mario Bros., Duck Hunt, The Legend of Zelda, Pac-Man, Metroid and other games before gleefully catching up with my peers in the era of the Super Nintendo. While Sega consoles and both the Playstation and Xbox brands have all had plenty of love from me over the years, there is still nothing quite like the joy of picking up a handful of Nintendo’s best first-party titles on a brand-spanking new console.
And that feeling of pure joy, escapism at its most refined, is exactly why Nintendo has the fanbase it does. Due to a glut of console options and poor-quality games leading into the early eighties, the home console industry in the United States and other developed countries collapsed almost overnight. The field once pioneered by American companies the likes of Atari and Magnavox, generating billions in revenue through arcade and home console hits for more than a decade, simply ceased to exist during the Video Game Crash of 1983. Many believed the concept of home video-gaming as a whole was dead and gone, a fad as quick to pass as the arcade craze years earlier. Then, a little-known company from Japan decided to release their Family Computer, rebranded as an entertainment system, in North America just before the holiday season of 1985.
This company, of course, was Nintendo, and we’re still living in the world it helped build. By guaranteeing quality standards for games and restricting how many titles were released over the course of a year to prevent over-saturation of the market, the company remade an industry, brought it back it life, and gave us a legacy many are still enjoying today. As gigantic as the Playstation and Xbox user-bases are, they exist in large-part because Nintendo showed them how to build a true and lasting fanbase in the first place. Even when facing a financial failure, such as the lackluster run of the Wii U, Nintendo has shown time and again it can innovate, remain at the top of its creative game and give us experiences the likes of the versatile Switch, innovative DS, quirky original Wii and sublime Gameboy with a confidence few companies possess.
That said, Nintendo has made plenty of mistakes along the way. While the original and Super Nintendo consoles were incredibly successful, the popularity of the Sega Genesis cut into the sales of the latter system. By the time the Nintendo 64 rolled out, Sony had already effectively dominated the market and crushed the Sega Saturn with its first Playstation console. In deciding to use cartridges instead of CDs for its game storage, and retaining stricter quality policies than Sony held, Nintendo effectively ensured its rival won over a majority of third-party support and maintained sales far above that of its own system. This trend has been largely upheld in the console generations since.
At the turn of the century, Nintendo and Sony, alongside newcomer Microsoft, launched fresh consoles into the multi-billion dollar a year industry. Competition was fiercer than ever, yet by making several of the same mistakes with outside developers and lacking meaningful online support, the Nintendo Gamecube wound up being the lowest-selling console of the three, despite having an amazing first-party lineup. Fortunately, Nintendo learned several valuable lessons from this, deciding to innovate and connect with fans on their own terms with their next effort. While still lacking the online features of its rivals, the Wii and its motion-tracking technology proved a breakout success for Nintendo, being the first home console from the company to move over 100 million units and outsell its Sony counterpart.
Towards the end of its life, however, the Wii suffered from a lack of support and innovation, while the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 were picking up and maintaining momentum. In terms of hardware, the Wii was a glorified Gamecube, so its internals couldn’t keep up with the graphic and performance fidelity of its fellow consoles. So, while it technically won the sales contest for the generation, the Wii left its successor hanging while Sony was busy making sure the Playstation 4 avoided the early mistakes of its predecessor.
Next, enter the Wii U. The poorest-selling console in Nintendo’s history by a notable margin, the successor to the mighty Wii was an exercise in how to develop and release a successor console the wrong way. Launched too late, with a needless primary accessory alongside an ineffective marketing campaign while once again failing to boast the online features, third-party support and processing power of its rivals, the system was pretty much doomed from the start. In the age of huge Switch success, its easy to forget Nintendo was bleeding money just a couple of years ago. The one bright spot for the company during this time was its 3DS handheld console, the most reliable business niche for the company.
Since the original Gameboy launched in 1989, Nintendo has been effectively untouchable in the handheld console space. Many challengers have come and gone, from Sega’s Neo Geo to Sony’s Playstation Portable, yet none have truly destabilized the Big N’s dominance of this market. The Gameboy Advance, Nintendo DS and 3DS have all been massive success stories, and this is where the Switch finds itself positioned perfectly. The 3DS is a seven year old system, and has seen several iterations. The Playstation 4 and Xbox One are well established and unlikely to be displaced this far into the console cycle, so Nintendo took a page from the Wii U gamepad’s playbook and pushed the concept further, to huge success.
Giving us the best of both worlds, you can now take your beautiful home-console with you, while Nintendo combines its preeminence in handhelds with innovation in it’s home console space. We are now given the first true hybrid console, where core Pokemon titles exist alongside full Zelda titles you can take with you on the go. If you want to play your games on the TV, pop it on the dock, if you’re leaving and know you have a wait, click the joy cons on and be on your merry way. This is Nintendo at its best: simple, flexible, fun. And better yet, they don’t need to split development time and resources between two different systems. It’s all under one roof now.
I was playing my NES classic with my wife the other day, and it hit me just how much of my gaming life has been guided by the expectations laid down when I was barely able to speak or walk. Whether a given Nintendo console was successful or not, they have always, every single time, released amazing games for their systems. Quality is their standard, pure entertainment is their calling card, and it has been from the beginning. Whatever the future holds for our beloved Japanese friends, one thing is all but guaranteed: we should have years, even decades more, of quality games, systems and experiences ahead of us. That is a future worth buying into.
Thanks for reading! This blog works in tandem with my YouTube channel of the same name. Feel free to check it out if you enjoy my content here. Come back often for regular updates, and see you next time...
YouTube channel here.
Wednesday, May 9, 2018
What Is Humanity's Greatest Strength?
Long ago, our ancestors hunted in groups with spears of wood tipped with stone. They wore the furs of beasts they had claimed themselves, and survived by moving fairly regularly while hunting for and gathering food. Foraging together, conserving and sharing resources, innovation and cooperation were all keys to survival for our kind, and it led us to where we are today. Our innately social qualities, the level of which distinguishes humans from all other known species, have led us from small families and tribes slowly spreading across the earth to mighty empires and modern nation-states.
We are so successful because of our innovation and cooperation in large groups, and it’s a legacy we can’t ignore. Humans aren’t overly capable individually, there are many other predatory species larger, stronger and faster, with sharp claws, plenty of teeth and nocturnal vision to assist them. We’re simple primates, among the great apes, and not even the largest or strongest of them. We’ve required groups of us: tribes, clans, kingdoms and nations, to survive and thrive, and we’ve carried this trend with us into the modern day. While fundamental to our humanity, our nature hasn’t kept pace with technology and our lifestyles in the modern West, and this has led to some interesting discrepancies which need to be addressed, if we are to truly grapple with the issues of our time.
In this age of cars, phones, the internet, suburbs, large and growing urban centers, mass transit, passenger flight, constitutional nation-states dominated by democratic republics and Western-led globalism, it’s incredibly easy to forget where we came from. The vast majority of human history was nothing like what we experience today. The story of the entirety of human civilization is but a cliff note in the tale of our species, most of which was spent in relatively small groups of hunter-gatherers, like the tribes, clans and confederations of Native American nations before European colonization. Writing didn’t even exist until a handful of thousands of years ago, a mere blip on the radar of our already very recent existence.
Believed to have emerged in eastern Africa somewhere around two hundred thousand years ago, at least in our more-or-less anatomically modern form, humans did not easily nor quickly colonize the landmass of the earth. We struggled to adapt at times, ran into predators or geography which slowed our progress, while disease, conflict with other humans, childbirth complications and infant death kept our population from growing very quickly. We constantly walked on a blade’s edge between having what we needed and death for ourselves and those we love.
As primates, we humans tend to give birth to only one newborn at a time, and have a higher chance of complications during labor than many other mammalian species. We also each require decades to fully develop as adults, notably longer than most other species, even other mammals. So, even though groups of adult humans have proven extremely effective at surviving and thriving on this planet, we require a large investment of time, energy and resources to get to this state. The result was we saw a very slow growth curve in our population until much more recently in our history, a level of gradual growth that is very easy to forget in our age of more than seven and a half billion living people more concerned with overpopulation and climate change than survival of the species.
Even when humans finally began founding permanent settlements and forming culturally and linguistically distinct groups, such as those in the Nile River Basin in modern Egypt, Mesopotamia in modern Iraq, the Indus River Valley in modern Pakistan and India, or along the Yellow River in modern China, technological progress, population growth, and social development took place slowly compared to today. Nonetheless, the greater density of people, increased job specialization, and reliance on agriculture resulted in a huge change of lifestyle. This required a central focus on family, honor, martial skill, defined social and gender roles, and survival.
While there is strong evidence many tribes, before our transition to permanent settlements, were led by counsels of elders, often including or dominated by women, this and other trends faded away in favor of patriarchal rule. Even today, surviving hunter-gatherer societies show an impressive degree of egalitarianism and cooperation among members and leaders, while early civilizations thrived on creating hierarchies.
Yet, in times of crisis, we humans tend to rally around a central figure, typically an adult male who inspires confidence in his abilities and skills, giving us perceived answers to our problems. This manifests even today, as politicians thrive on exaggerating our challenges and over-simplifying solutions to them, all the while telling us they are the best person to lead. This reactionary tendency is present in all humans, a hardwired response we all share. While often more damaging than productive in modern times, this proved invaluable to our day-to-day survival throughout most of our history.
We have developed to be a territorial species, to ensure our ability to obtain the resources we require, and thus have presented a warrior strain, genetically and culturally, to protect our imagined or needed span of control. Throughout our history, this role has been performed almost exclusively by males. In fact, intergroup conflict characterized by violence, injury or death has been historically perpetuated nearly universally by men. Research suggests men's tendency to engage in coalitional aggression is manifest in all cultures, modern and traditional, and is therefore considered a human universal.
Whether it be to protect against attack from predators, fellow humans of an opposing tribe, or to attack others in an attempt to gain resources or territory, our inclination towards violence developed early on. The realities of our environment and requirements for survival shaped our development as a species, leading to our banding together into groups, differentiated roles and professions, collective cooperation and coordination, strong leadership structures, and defined gender roles. And we humans are not alone, as species ranging from hyaenas to wolves, lions and most social primates demonstrate intergroup conflict, yet our species clearly shows a much greater scale of fighting and complexity of social structure.
We are so tribalistic today because it was required of us then. We arrange ourselves into groups and see others, even members of our own species, as potentially hostile outsiders due to the necessity of our past. Many of our childrearing traditions, religious dogma, stereotypical gender roles, criminal justice mores, and social and cultural customs are relics of an age when such things were required for our continued existence. From spirituality to trade, making war to suing for peace, family structure to nation-building, our sociality and instincts regarding interaction with other people define us as humans. Human psychology has been shaped by our collective past, and we are still benefitting from and struggling with this legacy today.
While there are many universals of human psychology and culture, such as spirituality, love, kinship, hatred, peace-making, marriage, political alliances, rituals, and war, how we express these quintessentially human traits varies greatly over time, place and culture. For example, our modern, Western view of romantic love is not shared by many surviving African hunter-gatherer tribes. While love between a husband and wife may indeed exist in these settings, it’s not the goal nor center of the family and tribe, kinship is. Marriage is seen as a practical tradition, and the associated love a delightful yet unnecessary byproduct. So, while marriage and the family are present in all known cultures, the centrality of the nuclear family , and the importance of a romantic connection, varies.
Spirituality and religion are another nearly-universal human experience. From the early days of sun, ancestor, or animal-spirit worship, which still carries through to today in several cultures, to god-kings and powerful priest-driven polytheistic beliefs during early civilizations, to the emergence of monotheistic religions over the last several thousand years, to something of a rediscovery of our more simplistic, natural, and honest spirituality in modern times, some form of supernatural expression has permeated every known human culture. While instinctually drawn to connect with fellow humans, we are also profoundly driven to connect with and understand the world and universe around us. At its best, this spirituality leads us to be superior versions of ourselves, and at its worst, it has led to some of the greatest tragedies known to mankind.
And that dichotomy, between the best and worst aspects of humanity, permeates nearly every aspect of human individuals and civilization. We are at once an incredibly innovative, dynamic, intelligent, social, empathetic, nurturing, and resourceful species, while also being remarkably selfish, hurtful, cut-throat, murderous, hateful, hypocritical and closed-minded all at once. We see these traits just as often today as in ages past, humans truly haven’t changed much over the last several tens of thousands of years. Yet, we have a greater understanding of ourselves and each other than ever before. We have technology and a surplus of resources that allow us to connect and enjoy a standard of living unattainable for even the wealthiest rulers in days past. We have improved so much in our lives, at least in the West, yet we still have so far to go to truly maximize our collective human potential.
One can see our tendencies all too clearly in the modern world. On the one hand, our tribalism has been crucial to modern nation-states, democratic republics, industrial capitalism and so many of the positive things the human collective has to offer. On the other hand, there is still much poverty in the world, corruption runs rampant in all societies at all levels, and globalization has not equally benefitted everyone, by a long-shot. While our modern world often carries the promise of inclusion and connection, this is far too often not the case.
And this reality echoes a trait which is and has always been inherent to humanity: insular thinking. We tend to fear and push away what we don’t understand, while also being explorers and dreamers at heart. We have a need to feel safe, which is entirely understandable, yet is often pursued at the expense of what is objectively correct, or truly beneficial. Take the proposed border wall between the U.S. and Mexico, or so called “Muslim ban,” executive order. Both demonstrate what is ideally intended to protect Americans and safeguard our interests, but falls into the trap of being an oversimplified answer to a far more complex problem.
All of this brings us to the point of how best to hone and channel our innate protectionist, reactionary and tribalistic instincts. There is nothing inherently wrong with wanting to protect your people, keep your community safe for your family, or desire and work for a better life for yourself and loved ones. Yet, there are right and wrong ways to do so. Finding the correct balance is tricky, and there are always unintended side-effects. Yet, we can learn some important lessons from our most successful ancestors, and maximize our chance of success.
Technology and globalization has left many in the West feeling less connected and purpose-driven than our hunter-gatherer or even early agrarian ancestors could have achieved if they’d wanted to. In a pre-agrarian nomadic tribe, every member was needed and useful, everyone had a role, and (most) everyone contributed. You were around your kin constantly, protected your territory and people aggressively, provided for or nurtured your family, and they fulfilled the same roles for you. Purpose and connection was built into their lives, for better or worse, and the world around them was full of both constant danger and adventure.
This is the sort of world our bodies and minds are best adapted for. We need purpose, challenge and connection. Love, camaraderie, and kinship are crucial elements for a healthy life both then and now. Our lives are far more efficient and easy, personal freedom and expression has never been easier to achieve, but in exchange, many of us have forgotten how to fulfill some of our most basic of human needs. And, it shows in our society.
There is absolutely no reason why we cannot reclaim our connectivity and purpose, yet we need to intentionally pursue this end. Despite many of the complaints about the Millennial generation, of which I am a part, we have a tendency to refuse to settle for the status quo. Perhaps a result of reaching adulthood during the Great Recession, or because we were raised to believe we can accomplish nearly anything we set our mind to, yet have since been slowed down by economic reality, we’ve collectively had to embrace more grounded expectations in our lives. This has led to many of us choosing to focus on family, friends, education and work-life balance as our world shifts around us.
Such choices speak to a greater longing on the part of all humanity. A certain resurgent tribalism: connected, empathetic, and geared for the twenty-first century, seems poised for rapid acceptance among many. But in this age of hyper-partisanship and ‘fake news,’ both actually fake and just distasteful to some, there are some key concepts to remember and employ.
We must refuse to accept simple slogans in place of thoughtful analysis. We must demand of our media coverage meaning and context of the issues. We must talk to our friends and neighbors conscientiously about the consequences of sudden and extreme action in the service of an inflammatory single issue. And, we must let no single-issue demagogue dominate our thinking. Tribalism isn’t inherently bad for humanity, it’s our primal selves longing for connection and belonging in the service of survival and fulfillment. Yet we must remain careful and conscientious, refusing to give in to fear and easy answers, for the sake of ourselves and future generations.
Thanks for reading! This blog works in tandem with my YouTube channel of the same name. Feel free to check it out if you enjoy my content here. Come back often for regular updates, and see you next time...
YouTube channel here.
We are so successful because of our innovation and cooperation in large groups, and it’s a legacy we can’t ignore. Humans aren’t overly capable individually, there are many other predatory species larger, stronger and faster, with sharp claws, plenty of teeth and nocturnal vision to assist them. We’re simple primates, among the great apes, and not even the largest or strongest of them. We’ve required groups of us: tribes, clans, kingdoms and nations, to survive and thrive, and we’ve carried this trend with us into the modern day. While fundamental to our humanity, our nature hasn’t kept pace with technology and our lifestyles in the modern West, and this has led to some interesting discrepancies which need to be addressed, if we are to truly grapple with the issues of our time.
In this age of cars, phones, the internet, suburbs, large and growing urban centers, mass transit, passenger flight, constitutional nation-states dominated by democratic republics and Western-led globalism, it’s incredibly easy to forget where we came from. The vast majority of human history was nothing like what we experience today. The story of the entirety of human civilization is but a cliff note in the tale of our species, most of which was spent in relatively small groups of hunter-gatherers, like the tribes, clans and confederations of Native American nations before European colonization. Writing didn’t even exist until a handful of thousands of years ago, a mere blip on the radar of our already very recent existence.
Believed to have emerged in eastern Africa somewhere around two hundred thousand years ago, at least in our more-or-less anatomically modern form, humans did not easily nor quickly colonize the landmass of the earth. We struggled to adapt at times, ran into predators or geography which slowed our progress, while disease, conflict with other humans, childbirth complications and infant death kept our population from growing very quickly. We constantly walked on a blade’s edge between having what we needed and death for ourselves and those we love.
As primates, we humans tend to give birth to only one newborn at a time, and have a higher chance of complications during labor than many other mammalian species. We also each require decades to fully develop as adults, notably longer than most other species, even other mammals. So, even though groups of adult humans have proven extremely effective at surviving and thriving on this planet, we require a large investment of time, energy and resources to get to this state. The result was we saw a very slow growth curve in our population until much more recently in our history, a level of gradual growth that is very easy to forget in our age of more than seven and a half billion living people more concerned with overpopulation and climate change than survival of the species.
Even when humans finally began founding permanent settlements and forming culturally and linguistically distinct groups, such as those in the Nile River Basin in modern Egypt, Mesopotamia in modern Iraq, the Indus River Valley in modern Pakistan and India, or along the Yellow River in modern China, technological progress, population growth, and social development took place slowly compared to today. Nonetheless, the greater density of people, increased job specialization, and reliance on agriculture resulted in a huge change of lifestyle. This required a central focus on family, honor, martial skill, defined social and gender roles, and survival.
While there is strong evidence many tribes, before our transition to permanent settlements, were led by counsels of elders, often including or dominated by women, this and other trends faded away in favor of patriarchal rule. Even today, surviving hunter-gatherer societies show an impressive degree of egalitarianism and cooperation among members and leaders, while early civilizations thrived on creating hierarchies.
Yet, in times of crisis, we humans tend to rally around a central figure, typically an adult male who inspires confidence in his abilities and skills, giving us perceived answers to our problems. This manifests even today, as politicians thrive on exaggerating our challenges and over-simplifying solutions to them, all the while telling us they are the best person to lead. This reactionary tendency is present in all humans, a hardwired response we all share. While often more damaging than productive in modern times, this proved invaluable to our day-to-day survival throughout most of our history.
We have developed to be a territorial species, to ensure our ability to obtain the resources we require, and thus have presented a warrior strain, genetically and culturally, to protect our imagined or needed span of control. Throughout our history, this role has been performed almost exclusively by males. In fact, intergroup conflict characterized by violence, injury or death has been historically perpetuated nearly universally by men. Research suggests men's tendency to engage in coalitional aggression is manifest in all cultures, modern and traditional, and is therefore considered a human universal.
Whether it be to protect against attack from predators, fellow humans of an opposing tribe, or to attack others in an attempt to gain resources or territory, our inclination towards violence developed early on. The realities of our environment and requirements for survival shaped our development as a species, leading to our banding together into groups, differentiated roles and professions, collective cooperation and coordination, strong leadership structures, and defined gender roles. And we humans are not alone, as species ranging from hyaenas to wolves, lions and most social primates demonstrate intergroup conflict, yet our species clearly shows a much greater scale of fighting and complexity of social structure.
We are so tribalistic today because it was required of us then. We arrange ourselves into groups and see others, even members of our own species, as potentially hostile outsiders due to the necessity of our past. Many of our childrearing traditions, religious dogma, stereotypical gender roles, criminal justice mores, and social and cultural customs are relics of an age when such things were required for our continued existence. From spirituality to trade, making war to suing for peace, family structure to nation-building, our sociality and instincts regarding interaction with other people define us as humans. Human psychology has been shaped by our collective past, and we are still benefitting from and struggling with this legacy today.
While there are many universals of human psychology and culture, such as spirituality, love, kinship, hatred, peace-making, marriage, political alliances, rituals, and war, how we express these quintessentially human traits varies greatly over time, place and culture. For example, our modern, Western view of romantic love is not shared by many surviving African hunter-gatherer tribes. While love between a husband and wife may indeed exist in these settings, it’s not the goal nor center of the family and tribe, kinship is. Marriage is seen as a practical tradition, and the associated love a delightful yet unnecessary byproduct. So, while marriage and the family are present in all known cultures, the centrality of the nuclear family , and the importance of a romantic connection, varies.
Spirituality and religion are another nearly-universal human experience. From the early days of sun, ancestor, or animal-spirit worship, which still carries through to today in several cultures, to god-kings and powerful priest-driven polytheistic beliefs during early civilizations, to the emergence of monotheistic religions over the last several thousand years, to something of a rediscovery of our more simplistic, natural, and honest spirituality in modern times, some form of supernatural expression has permeated every known human culture. While instinctually drawn to connect with fellow humans, we are also profoundly driven to connect with and understand the world and universe around us. At its best, this spirituality leads us to be superior versions of ourselves, and at its worst, it has led to some of the greatest tragedies known to mankind.
And that dichotomy, between the best and worst aspects of humanity, permeates nearly every aspect of human individuals and civilization. We are at once an incredibly innovative, dynamic, intelligent, social, empathetic, nurturing, and resourceful species, while also being remarkably selfish, hurtful, cut-throat, murderous, hateful, hypocritical and closed-minded all at once. We see these traits just as often today as in ages past, humans truly haven’t changed much over the last several tens of thousands of years. Yet, we have a greater understanding of ourselves and each other than ever before. We have technology and a surplus of resources that allow us to connect and enjoy a standard of living unattainable for even the wealthiest rulers in days past. We have improved so much in our lives, at least in the West, yet we still have so far to go to truly maximize our collective human potential.
One can see our tendencies all too clearly in the modern world. On the one hand, our tribalism has been crucial to modern nation-states, democratic republics, industrial capitalism and so many of the positive things the human collective has to offer. On the other hand, there is still much poverty in the world, corruption runs rampant in all societies at all levels, and globalization has not equally benefitted everyone, by a long-shot. While our modern world often carries the promise of inclusion and connection, this is far too often not the case.
And this reality echoes a trait which is and has always been inherent to humanity: insular thinking. We tend to fear and push away what we don’t understand, while also being explorers and dreamers at heart. We have a need to feel safe, which is entirely understandable, yet is often pursued at the expense of what is objectively correct, or truly beneficial. Take the proposed border wall between the U.S. and Mexico, or so called “Muslim ban,” executive order. Both demonstrate what is ideally intended to protect Americans and safeguard our interests, but falls into the trap of being an oversimplified answer to a far more complex problem.
All of this brings us to the point of how best to hone and channel our innate protectionist, reactionary and tribalistic instincts. There is nothing inherently wrong with wanting to protect your people, keep your community safe for your family, or desire and work for a better life for yourself and loved ones. Yet, there are right and wrong ways to do so. Finding the correct balance is tricky, and there are always unintended side-effects. Yet, we can learn some important lessons from our most successful ancestors, and maximize our chance of success.
Technology and globalization has left many in the West feeling less connected and purpose-driven than our hunter-gatherer or even early agrarian ancestors could have achieved if they’d wanted to. In a pre-agrarian nomadic tribe, every member was needed and useful, everyone had a role, and (most) everyone contributed. You were around your kin constantly, protected your territory and people aggressively, provided for or nurtured your family, and they fulfilled the same roles for you. Purpose and connection was built into their lives, for better or worse, and the world around them was full of both constant danger and adventure.
This is the sort of world our bodies and minds are best adapted for. We need purpose, challenge and connection. Love, camaraderie, and kinship are crucial elements for a healthy life both then and now. Our lives are far more efficient and easy, personal freedom and expression has never been easier to achieve, but in exchange, many of us have forgotten how to fulfill some of our most basic of human needs. And, it shows in our society.
There is absolutely no reason why we cannot reclaim our connectivity and purpose, yet we need to intentionally pursue this end. Despite many of the complaints about the Millennial generation, of which I am a part, we have a tendency to refuse to settle for the status quo. Perhaps a result of reaching adulthood during the Great Recession, or because we were raised to believe we can accomplish nearly anything we set our mind to, yet have since been slowed down by economic reality, we’ve collectively had to embrace more grounded expectations in our lives. This has led to many of us choosing to focus on family, friends, education and work-life balance as our world shifts around us.
Such choices speak to a greater longing on the part of all humanity. A certain resurgent tribalism: connected, empathetic, and geared for the twenty-first century, seems poised for rapid acceptance among many. But in this age of hyper-partisanship and ‘fake news,’ both actually fake and just distasteful to some, there are some key concepts to remember and employ.
We must refuse to accept simple slogans in place of thoughtful analysis. We must demand of our media coverage meaning and context of the issues. We must talk to our friends and neighbors conscientiously about the consequences of sudden and extreme action in the service of an inflammatory single issue. And, we must let no single-issue demagogue dominate our thinking. Tribalism isn’t inherently bad for humanity, it’s our primal selves longing for connection and belonging in the service of survival and fulfillment. Yet we must remain careful and conscientious, refusing to give in to fear and easy answers, for the sake of ourselves and future generations.
Thanks for reading! This blog works in tandem with my YouTube channel of the same name. Feel free to check it out if you enjoy my content here. Come back often for regular updates, and see you next time...
YouTube channel here.
Thursday, April 26, 2018
Why We Need The Facts Before Condemning Police
A good friend of mine sent me a video a while ago involving a police shooting down in Huntington Beach. Along with it was the caption, "You know I love you man, but not all of you are good people."
For clarification, I work in law enforcement, at a larger agency here in California.
Initially, the video looked bad. In fact, it looked like an officer shot an obviously angry and possibly mentally ill man for simply walking towards him. This video wasn't flattering in the least.
Yet, I responded by saying I’ve been in similar situations. I know the feeling of being in such an altercation and the reality of it which is often stripped away in short clips. Give it time.
Then, days later, I see the same clip, but it's longer and shows a much larger section of the confrontation. Now, this version provides some clarification. The man shot threatened and attacked the officer, unprovoked other than being asked if he was okay. And, the attack continued until the man was severely injured. Suddenly, the cop doesn’t look so bad. The officer was attacked, he had every reason to believe the subject intended to cause great bodily harm or death.
The officer even instructs the subject to let go of his gun when on the ground, meaning when the kid got up into a fighting stance and was shot, the officer was legally 100% able to use his firearm.
We can Monday Morning Quarterback the ordeal, saying he should have tazed him, but I know the feeling of your adrenaline spiking, your hands shaking, your breathing pounding in your head, your vision tunneling around only what is right in front of you. Survival is all that matters in those moments.
At the end of the day, going home to our family’s is what matters. We just want to get through our shifts, and if someone gets in the way of that, we will do whatever it takes to make sure they fail in keeping us from going home.
Next time you see an OIS, wait for the fuller picture. Racism exists, and oversight of police is a great thing, a necessary thing, but a lack of economic opportunity is the greatest threat to those in the inner cities and poor communities around the country.
There are shady officers, and we make plenty of mistakes, but at the end of the day we’re people, trying to do a difficult job, doing what we can to make the communities we live and work in safer, with justice applied evenly as often as possible.
So check your facts before rushing to judgment, and give those on all sides the benefit of the doubt until the facts can be gathered.
Thanks for reading! This blog works in tandem with my YouTube channel of the same name. Feel free to check it out if you enjoy my content here. Come back often for regular updates, and see you next time...
Yet, I responded by saying I’ve been in similar situations. I know the feeling of being in such an altercation and the reality of it which is often stripped away in short clips. Give it time.
Then, days later, I see the same clip, but it's longer and shows a much larger section of the confrontation. Now, this version provides some clarification. The man shot threatened and attacked the officer, unprovoked other than being asked if he was okay. And, the attack continued until the man was severely injured. Suddenly, the cop doesn’t look so bad. The officer was attacked, he had every reason to believe the subject intended to cause great bodily harm or death.
The officer even instructs the subject to let go of his gun when on the ground, meaning when the kid got up into a fighting stance and was shot, the officer was legally 100% able to use his firearm.
We can Monday Morning Quarterback the ordeal, saying he should have tazed him, but I know the feeling of your adrenaline spiking, your hands shaking, your breathing pounding in your head, your vision tunneling around only what is right in front of you. Survival is all that matters in those moments.
At the end of the day, going home to our family’s is what matters. We just want to get through our shifts, and if someone gets in the way of that, we will do whatever it takes to make sure they fail in keeping us from going home.
Next time you see an OIS, wait for the fuller picture. Racism exists, and oversight of police is a great thing, a necessary thing, but a lack of economic opportunity is the greatest threat to those in the inner cities and poor communities around the country.
There are shady officers, and we make plenty of mistakes, but at the end of the day we’re people, trying to do a difficult job, doing what we can to make the communities we live and work in safer, with justice applied evenly as often as possible.
So check your facts before rushing to judgment, and give those on all sides the benefit of the doubt until the facts can be gathered.
Thanks for reading! This blog works in tandem with my YouTube channel of the same name. Feel free to check it out if you enjoy my content here. Come back often for regular updates, and see you next time...
YouTube channel here.
How To President Like Trump!
Our Commander In Chief has certainly not slowed down since taking up residence in the White House, and he brought a lovely bag of tricks with him to help him achieve his goals, to various degrees of success. Here’s how, once you’ve followed his formula to nab the Presidency, you can really maximize your demagogue President-ing skills.
Use Twitter, or some other social media, and attack people and organizations on the thinnest of grounds. The point is to keep the national conversation on what you want it to be, regardless of how controversial or pedantic. When people disagree with or berate you, hit back even harder. Never back down or admit you were wrong. Confidence is key.
Understand your audience. Trump knows his constituency tends to distrust government and the media, so anytime something goes wrong, or at least doesn’t go your way, attack these common enemies. Always deflect, blaming other members of government, even in your own party, and never take the heat for things that go sideways. Openly disagree with members of your own cabinet, and don’t hesitate to fire people that really get under your skin or cause problems for you.
Keep it simple. Call any negative media coverage or reports that emerge “fake news” and constantly drive that point home. Say over and over how mistreated and unfairly targeted you are, how dishonest the media is, and then tell the people you’re giving them the truth through your social media feed. Constantly talk of how much you’re doing, how successful you are at President-ing, and how great America is becoming because you’re in office, regardless of facts. What matters here is image.
Stay relevant, and keep using fear tactics and various calls of patriotism to rally your base around you. Try trash talking China before changing tune and focusing on North Korea. Use every terrorist act possible to rile up your base against immigration and in favor of greater national security, which may well translate into a harsher travel ban. Threaten military action for nearly any perceived foreign threat, and keep up a toxic hyper-masculine machismo. Never let up on these points regardless of rationality or facts, these just get in the way.
Stay relevant, and keep using fear tactics and various calls of patriotism to rally your base around you. Try trash talking China before changing tune and focusing on North Korea. Use every terrorist act possible to rile up your base against immigration and in favor of greater national security, which may well translate into a harsher travel ban. Threaten military action for nearly any perceived foreign threat, and keep up a toxic hyper-masculine machismo. Never let up on these points regardless of rationality or facts, these just get in the way.
Also, as a little bonus, stay away from mother-fucking Russia. It really just tends to complicate things…
So, now that you’re armed to the teeth with effective tips and strategies for rallying your mis-informed base and getting yourself elected President, best of luck manipulating the masses for the next four to eight years. Because, fuck honesty, and general human decency.
So, now that you’re armed to the teeth with effective tips and strategies for rallying your mis-informed base and getting yourself elected President, best of luck manipulating the masses for the next four to eight years. Because, fuck honesty, and general human decency.
Thanks for reading! This blog works in tandem with my YouTube channel of the same name. Feel free to check it out if you enjoy my content here. Come back often for regular updates, and see you next time...
YouTube channel here.
How You Can Become President!
If there is anything we’ve learned from the election of Donald Trump as POTUS, it’s that The People are PISSED! We are collectively sick-and-tired of feeling stuck and left behind in a world that seems stilted against the American Working Class. The vast majority of the American people agree that things need to change in greater favor of the Middle Class. Alas, here comes our Glorious Leader to teach us how it’s done, and get America back on track.
First, sow fear of immigrants, refugees, and foreigners. Tell them Mexico is sending us rapists and drug dealers, that Muslim immigrants are going to result in more 9/11 style attacks. Turn white Americans against minority groups.
Second, channel this fear into anger, and direct it at those outside of the American mainstream. Tell them China is taking our jobs and money, and we should be harder on them. Tell them Syrian refugees are on the border, and they may be ISIS. And if anyone disagrees, they obviously don’t really care about our National Security.
Next, take all that fear and anger, and play the hero. You are the only one that can save the country, the only one big and strong and tough enough to put America back on top, and make it great again. Tell them you are the only candidate fit for the job.
Paint things in simple, black-and-white terms. Tell people they are going to win so much they’re going to get tired of it, that a big, beautiful wall will be built, and Mexico is going to pay for it. Tell them you will stop terrorism and stand of for the People like no one else has or can.
Second, channel this fear into anger, and direct it at those outside of the American mainstream. Tell them China is taking our jobs and money, and we should be harder on them. Tell them Syrian refugees are on the border, and they may be ISIS. And if anyone disagrees, they obviously don’t really care about our National Security.
Next, take all that fear and anger, and play the hero. You are the only one that can save the country, the only one big and strong and tough enough to put America back on top, and make it great again. Tell them you are the only candidate fit for the job.
Paint things in simple, black-and-white terms. Tell people they are going to win so much they’re going to get tired of it, that a big, beautiful wall will be built, and Mexico is going to pay for it. Tell them you will stop terrorism and stand of for the People like no one else has or can.
Then, deflect your weak points via humor and paint your opponents as weak and ridiculous. Be brash and mean, sexist and effectively racist, but all under the guise of “saying it like it is,” and make sure it lines up with the not-so-hidden prejudices of millions of Americans that may well vote for you. In short, be cocky and bully others. Even double-bind opponents, saying things like their energy is low or their corruption is showing through, so you always come out looking superior for it.
Control the frame. Do everything you can to make the game your own. Unflinchingly tell your side of the story, say again and again that what you believe to be true is reality. Everyone else is living in your world, and it’s time they realize you’ve got it all figured out. Repeat the line until your acolytes are selling your propaganda for you, and ride it out all the way to the white house.
And finally, use social proofs and approval from the masses, notable people and authority figures to cement your perception as a winner, as someone to be taken seriously, as the person for the job. You are presidential, and every single person worth a damn that knows you believes so as well. You are selling yourself, an unstoppable winner, and playing on every emotion in the book to do it.
Bottom line: humans don’t vote based on data and rational discourse. They vote based on emotion, on how they feel about the world, their country, and their family. They vote based on fear and anger, hope and a desire for a better world. Trump is an example of one who mastered this process, and it took him all the way to the White House. Apply these age-old Orwellian tactics, and you might just become a terrible president too!
Control the frame. Do everything you can to make the game your own. Unflinchingly tell your side of the story, say again and again that what you believe to be true is reality. Everyone else is living in your world, and it’s time they realize you’ve got it all figured out. Repeat the line until your acolytes are selling your propaganda for you, and ride it out all the way to the white house.
And finally, use social proofs and approval from the masses, notable people and authority figures to cement your perception as a winner, as someone to be taken seriously, as the person for the job. You are presidential, and every single person worth a damn that knows you believes so as well. You are selling yourself, an unstoppable winner, and playing on every emotion in the book to do it.
Bottom line: humans don’t vote based on data and rational discourse. They vote based on emotion, on how they feel about the world, their country, and their family. They vote based on fear and anger, hope and a desire for a better world. Trump is an example of one who mastered this process, and it took him all the way to the White House. Apply these age-old Orwellian tactics, and you might just become a terrible president too!
YouTube channel here.
Wednesday, March 21, 2018
The Duality Of Humanity
Duality, this is what characterizes humanity, life on earth, the universe. Chaos and order, creation and destruction, coming together and tearing apart, death and life, selfishness and compassion, dichotomies we cannot escape. Life is struggle, existence is an uphill battle, order is rare and easily destroyed, yet chaos always gives way to order once it is imposed.
Energy, composing everything in our plane of existence, visible and otherwise. Colliding, fusing, repelling, radiating and combining, energy is the very definition of chaos, yet it is the precise foundation on which order is built. Balanced on a blade’s edge, energy forms asteroids, planets, stars, galaxies, and at least on our planet, life. It is the core of our duality, pockets of order in the chaos.
Life, the product of particle physics and quantum mechanics giving way to Newtonian physics, then to chemistry, and finally bowing to biology itself. A remarkably improbable event, life will nonetheless exist where it is able. An infinitesimally small, blue dot in the incomprehensibly vast universe, which may itself be in a sea of many, the Earth, our Terra Nostra, is a remarkably rare bastion of order in an ocean of chaotic energies.
Time, a concept developed by those with a finite amount of it. 13.82 billion years is the estimated amount of time our plane of existence, laws of physics, the universe has existed. Our own planet formed an estimated 4.8 billion years ago. Colliding, super-heated masses of energy coalesced, separated and settled over the course of eons to produce our solar system. Our particular rock would come to retain its heated, molten core, allowing the formation of a magnetic field, atmosphere, and retention of liquid water. The essence of chaotic order slowly building upon itself while remaining inescapable, life is indelibly defined by this remarkable force.
Cells, conceptually simple yet functionally impressive things. Lipid bilayers folding in on themselves, creating membranes which house proteins, amino acids and organelles which power the most advanced of creatures today. Beginning as objects hardly different from a virus, life struggled, fought the chaos, and shaped the very nature of this planet. Basic chemical reactions repeated, continued, combined with others of its kind to create ever more complex, self-sustaining cells over the course of eons. Prokaryotic cells gave way to eukaryotic cells, colonies of cyanobacteria reworked the very atmosphere of our planet, single-celled bacteria filling warm, shallow oceans the world over began to work together as multicellular organisms. Order built through chaos.
Death and rebirth, time and again our planet has provided this reality. Soft-bodied creatures in the Achaean, diversification of sea-based life in the Cambrian, early fish in the Devonian, land plants and insects in the Carboniferous, dinosaurs and large-scale diversification of life from the Triassic to the Cretaceous, dominance and diversification of mammals upon the downfall of the Jurassic-era world, emergence of the great apes, humanity’s more recent relatives the likes of Heidelbergensis and Neanderthalis, and finally anatomically modern man. A never-ending cycle of order fighting chaos, death and life, creation and destruction, the duality of our existence at its most apparent.
Struggle, the only true constant known to life on this planet. Survival demands it, our planet ensures it, our very neural structure, instincts and primal urges, compel us to challenge and overcome obstacles in our path. We are the product of hundreds of millions of years of such struggle. Fighting to survive, outcompete our adversaries, dominate the environment around us, continue our genetic heritage, give a safer, tamer world to our offspring, such prerogatives define life on this planet, and ourselves as a species.
Humanity, currently the undisputed, dominant land-based life-form on Earth. As impressive as this position is, we cannot escape the duality of our nature. Our reptilian brain structures still instruct us to respect strength and violence, to take, dominate, and win at all costs. Selfishness leads to survival, and survival is the rule of the day. In contrast, our more mammalian brain functions push us to be social, caring about others and their opinion of us, taking care of the community and cooperating with fellow humans for the greater good, promoting survival of the species over the individual. Both aspects of humanity, our urges to create and destroy, take and give, dominate and protect, accept what we have and struggle for something more, these urges define us, motivate us, keep us keen and working towards something greater. We are, in essence, both the figurative light and dark, good and evil, a delightful and terrible fusion of order and chaos.
Acceptance, this is required for one to truly live a fulfilling life. Our social customs, law codes, cultures and religions all acknowledge our duality, whether passively or actively. The reasons given for this duality vary based on custom and belief system, but the fact thereof remains inescapable. We may be born innocent and primarily ‘good,’ yet are selfish and self-absorbed from the outset. As we age the world forces one and all to adapt to the relative harshness of our existence, the more feral side of our nature.
Energy, composing everything in our plane of existence, visible and otherwise. Colliding, fusing, repelling, radiating and combining, energy is the very definition of chaos, yet it is the precise foundation on which order is built. Balanced on a blade’s edge, energy forms asteroids, planets, stars, galaxies, and at least on our planet, life. It is the core of our duality, pockets of order in the chaos.
Life, the product of particle physics and quantum mechanics giving way to Newtonian physics, then to chemistry, and finally bowing to biology itself. A remarkably improbable event, life will nonetheless exist where it is able. An infinitesimally small, blue dot in the incomprehensibly vast universe, which may itself be in a sea of many, the Earth, our Terra Nostra, is a remarkably rare bastion of order in an ocean of chaotic energies.
Time, a concept developed by those with a finite amount of it. 13.82 billion years is the estimated amount of time our plane of existence, laws of physics, the universe has existed. Our own planet formed an estimated 4.8 billion years ago. Colliding, super-heated masses of energy coalesced, separated and settled over the course of eons to produce our solar system. Our particular rock would come to retain its heated, molten core, allowing the formation of a magnetic field, atmosphere, and retention of liquid water. The essence of chaotic order slowly building upon itself while remaining inescapable, life is indelibly defined by this remarkable force.
Cells, conceptually simple yet functionally impressive things. Lipid bilayers folding in on themselves, creating membranes which house proteins, amino acids and organelles which power the most advanced of creatures today. Beginning as objects hardly different from a virus, life struggled, fought the chaos, and shaped the very nature of this planet. Basic chemical reactions repeated, continued, combined with others of its kind to create ever more complex, self-sustaining cells over the course of eons. Prokaryotic cells gave way to eukaryotic cells, colonies of cyanobacteria reworked the very atmosphere of our planet, single-celled bacteria filling warm, shallow oceans the world over began to work together as multicellular organisms. Order built through chaos.
Death and rebirth, time and again our planet has provided this reality. Soft-bodied creatures in the Achaean, diversification of sea-based life in the Cambrian, early fish in the Devonian, land plants and insects in the Carboniferous, dinosaurs and large-scale diversification of life from the Triassic to the Cretaceous, dominance and diversification of mammals upon the downfall of the Jurassic-era world, emergence of the great apes, humanity’s more recent relatives the likes of Heidelbergensis and Neanderthalis, and finally anatomically modern man. A never-ending cycle of order fighting chaos, death and life, creation and destruction, the duality of our existence at its most apparent.
Struggle, the only true constant known to life on this planet. Survival demands it, our planet ensures it, our very neural structure, instincts and primal urges, compel us to challenge and overcome obstacles in our path. We are the product of hundreds of millions of years of such struggle. Fighting to survive, outcompete our adversaries, dominate the environment around us, continue our genetic heritage, give a safer, tamer world to our offspring, such prerogatives define life on this planet, and ourselves as a species.
Humanity, currently the undisputed, dominant land-based life-form on Earth. As impressive as this position is, we cannot escape the duality of our nature. Our reptilian brain structures still instruct us to respect strength and violence, to take, dominate, and win at all costs. Selfishness leads to survival, and survival is the rule of the day. In contrast, our more mammalian brain functions push us to be social, caring about others and their opinion of us, taking care of the community and cooperating with fellow humans for the greater good, promoting survival of the species over the individual. Both aspects of humanity, our urges to create and destroy, take and give, dominate and protect, accept what we have and struggle for something more, these urges define us, motivate us, keep us keen and working towards something greater. We are, in essence, both the figurative light and dark, good and evil, a delightful and terrible fusion of order and chaos.
Acceptance, this is required for one to truly live a fulfilling life. Our social customs, law codes, cultures and religions all acknowledge our duality, whether passively or actively. The reasons given for this duality vary based on custom and belief system, but the fact thereof remains inescapable. We may be born innocent and primarily ‘good,’ yet are selfish and self-absorbed from the outset. As we age the world forces one and all to adapt to the relative harshness of our existence, the more feral side of our nature.
Yet, caring people and institutions abound even in the most chaotic places on the planet. Family, friends, and communities still support each other in a way remarkably uncommon outside of the human species. With the exception of small percentages of the population which are either incredibly philanthropic or sadistically lack empathy, humanity is a never-stopping sliding scale between what we commonly consider good and evil. Rarely fully one, rarely the other, thin strands of order built up atop the chaos.
Thus, I propose the human species wholeheartedly embraces and adapts to this reality, mapping it onto more primitive belief systems if they must. Realistic and flexible values and beliefs within a humanistic worldview have been shown to be the most effective and equitable used to govern individuals and society today. Laws which acknowledge human nature, mitigating the effects of its negative components while preserving individual freedoms, are far more valuable than neo-puritanical governance we are too often saddled with today, which prefers to pretend the problem of humanity’s darker nature does not exist or remains entirely criminal.
Social structures and institutions which enact and personify the best in our species should be uplifted, ensuring a baseline equality for all citizens in the realms of education, healthcare, housing, food production, water distribution and energy consumption. Modern religion, notably the Semitic variety, with a focus on the supernatural and archaic, outdated beliefs supported by violent and arrogant deities, would better serve humanity to give way to less legalistic, discriminatory and close-minded versions of themselves, simply encouraging the selfless parts of human nature, pushing humanity to greater discovery and cooperation while admiring and appreciating the natural world.
All in all, humanity would do well to remember we were not the first, nor are we likely to be the last dominant species on this planet. Caring for our environment, responsible management of resources, supporting our fellow humans and building an increasingly free world are worthy goals we should work towards. Yet, we must also accept and relish our more primal nature. Our anger, violence and vanity, when properly harnessed, drive us to work harder, protect our loved ones, compete more intensely, and push everyone around us to be the best version of themselves. Our sexuality should be explored and nurtured in safe, sane and consensual environments, fulfilling one of our most basic urges in a healthy, gratifying manner for all involved. Our need to love, be loved, and feel wanted is intoxicating when met, and loved ones allow us to tap into our drive to better ourselves and our lives more so than nearly any force known to mankind.
Thus, I propose the human species wholeheartedly embraces and adapts to this reality, mapping it onto more primitive belief systems if they must. Realistic and flexible values and beliefs within a humanistic worldview have been shown to be the most effective and equitable used to govern individuals and society today. Laws which acknowledge human nature, mitigating the effects of its negative components while preserving individual freedoms, are far more valuable than neo-puritanical governance we are too often saddled with today, which prefers to pretend the problem of humanity’s darker nature does not exist or remains entirely criminal.
Social structures and institutions which enact and personify the best in our species should be uplifted, ensuring a baseline equality for all citizens in the realms of education, healthcare, housing, food production, water distribution and energy consumption. Modern religion, notably the Semitic variety, with a focus on the supernatural and archaic, outdated beliefs supported by violent and arrogant deities, would better serve humanity to give way to less legalistic, discriminatory and close-minded versions of themselves, simply encouraging the selfless parts of human nature, pushing humanity to greater discovery and cooperation while admiring and appreciating the natural world.
All in all, humanity would do well to remember we were not the first, nor are we likely to be the last dominant species on this planet. Caring for our environment, responsible management of resources, supporting our fellow humans and building an increasingly free world are worthy goals we should work towards. Yet, we must also accept and relish our more primal nature. Our anger, violence and vanity, when properly harnessed, drive us to work harder, protect our loved ones, compete more intensely, and push everyone around us to be the best version of themselves. Our sexuality should be explored and nurtured in safe, sane and consensual environments, fulfilling one of our most basic urges in a healthy, gratifying manner for all involved. Our need to love, be loved, and feel wanted is intoxicating when met, and loved ones allow us to tap into our drive to better ourselves and our lives more so than nearly any force known to mankind.
Humanity must fully embrace and discipline our nature if we are to properly harness and maximize its effectiveness, as individuals and a collective species. We are dualistic creatures, light and dark, good and evil, selfish and selfless, order and chaos, creation and destruction, we are the product of a dualist world in a dualistic universe. Struggle and competition will continue to define us, as will compassion, love, and determination. When accepted and internalized, the duality humanity possesses allows us to be the most dynamic, successful, reality-changing species to ever exist on this planet. In short, a channeled, fragile, dynamic order on the knife's edge of chaos.
Thanks for reading! This blog works in tandem with my YouTube channel of the same name. Feel free to check it out if you enjoy my content here. Come back often for regular updates, and see you next time...
YouTube channel here.
Thanks for reading! This blog works in tandem with my YouTube channel of the same name. Feel free to check it out if you enjoy my content here. Come back often for regular updates, and see you next time...
YouTube channel here.
Sunday, February 18, 2018
Did We Evolve From Monkeys?
There are many impressive and alluring aspects to the industrial capitalism of the United States of America. From technology to entertainment, energy production to finance, there are many industries my home country tends to excel in. Unfortunately, as far as I’m concerned, one of these innovative fields is that of religion. It is dynamic and adaptive, with the Evangelical wing of Christianity possessing a particular penchant for changing with the mood of the people in a way nearly unmatched in the Western world. As such, we have among the highest rates within developed countries of adults who do not accept the legitimacy of the scientific Theory of Evolution. This isn’t merely unfortunate, it’s dangerous.
When speaking with fundamentalist creationists, plenty of whom are in my very family, they truly, earnestly believe the Bible is the literal, infallible word of God. Therefore, the Earth and our entire universe cannot be older than ten-thousand years or so, in their minds. Not only is this wrong, it’s wrong by orders of magnitude, yet believe on they do. Their viewpoints often result in a bombardment of questions the likes of, “Where did everything come from if God didn’t speak it into existence?” “If Evolution is so scientific, why can’t we ever seem to witness it happening?” and my personal favorite, “If we evolved from monkeys, why do monkeys still exist?”
To say I find this frustrating would be an understatement, so I’ve decided to provide some sweeping answers and explanations to this apparently difficult-to-understand concept. First off, a theory in the scientific community does not carry the meaning many would imagine and commonly use. There is currently a Theory of Gravity which describes why we are pulled towards the Earth, Radio Wave Theory is used for cell phones and other such devices, Germ Theory of Disease is relied on in modern medicine, the Theory of Refraction is utilized by contact lenses and glasses, Theory of General Relativity is accepted by physicists and the aerospace industry; there’s even a Theory of Heliocentrism, related to the Sun being the center of our solar system. All of these are now obviously factual, and are taken advantage of by modern technology and public practices every single day, yet they are ‘just theories.’ This is because they all have an abundance of evidence to support them, and are readily accepted by the entirety or vast majority of the scientific community. The Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection is exactly this kind of ‘just a theory.’
In other words, it isn’t “just” anything, Evolution is a profoundly well-established framework for understanding a variety of fields within and related to the biological sciences. Over a century of research, discovery and debate has gone into establishing, developing, tweaking, and understanding the complex and amazing story of life on this planet. There is no longer a debate among the wider scientific community as to the legitimacy of Evolutionary Theory, just as there is no debate regarding the existence of gravity, atoms, bacteria or radio waves. While the latter items may be more obvious in our day-to-day lives, the preponderance of evidence supporting all of these concepts are of very similar quality. One simply conflicts with an established religious doctrine, and is thus contested.
To top it off, our school system does a generally poor job of educating kids in what natural selection is, why Evolutionary Theory matters or just how much evidence there is in support of the framework. There are a number of misconceptions and misunderstandings I hear on a regular basis, and many are fairly easy to explain. First off, Evolution is a process through which life slowly diversifies into a huge variety of niches, creating complex and co-dependent eco-systems, like forests, jungles, savannas or oceans. For example, phytoplankton creates its own energy through chemical reactions using the power of the sun, while fish feed on the plankton to survive. Fish become food for predatory species, such as sharks or dolphins, and when these predators die, their bodies give needed nutrition for plankton. This is extremely simplified, but think back to the Circle of Life analogy from The Lion King and you have a pretty good idea of how these ecosystems work.
Secondly, the phrase ’survival of the fittest’ is a misnomer; the diversification of life is better described as ‘survival of the good-enough.’ So, imagine we have a dense forest, and an arriving species of bird is the first of its kind to make its way to this place. Let’s say there are insects living within the bark of the tree, leaving only small openings from which to catch them. Meanwhile, there are nuts which have fallen to the ground bellow, but the shells are tough and require notable strength to crack. The smaller birds with thinner beaks will be better suited to catching the insects, while the larger, stronger birds with stocky beaks will be better at breaking open nuts.
Now, picture these birds fifty generations later, when the larger, stocky birds breed with those similar to them closer to the ground, while smaller, thinner-beaked birds breed with others similar to them higher up in the trees. Imagine this trend continuing for hundreds; thousands of generations, and what you eventually get is birds which have adapted to the environment which allowed them to best survive. These birds slowly become so physically and genetically different, they can’t even breed together any longer, and as such are no longer considered the same species. This, my dear viewer, is Evolution by Natural Selection at work.
So the reality is, we do see Evolution happening before us, we simply don’t often realize it or know what to look for. In today’s world, when a horse and a donkey breed, they produce a mule. While still able to produce offspring themselves, their mules are born infertile and are unable to breed. This is because horses and donkeys are growing closer to a final stage of genetic diversification, that of finally cutting ties with a closely related species and not being able to breed together at all. Given enough future generations, horses and donkeys will no longer be able to produce mules, and will then be considered entirely different species. This is Evolution happening before our very eyes.
Humans, for our part, have also descended from such a line of diversified species. We have not evolved from monkeys, nor even other modern great apes such as chimpanzees or gorillas, yet all of us have a common ancestral species if we go back far enough. The differences between us come down to the niches we fill. Gorillas are large, strong and forage on the ground, while lemurs are small tree-dwellers with eyes better suited to operating at night. We homo-sapiens are omnivorous pack hunters native to grasslands, yet our niche, and how well we fit into it, has allowed us to become much more successful and diversified than most species could imagine.
So, we exist alongside monkeys and other great apes because we are not competing in the same niches. The so-called “missing links” between humans and chimps or bonobos are largely if not entirely extinct because they directly competed within our niche, and our species is the current winner. Jellyfish, trees and bacteria have all existed since long before humans were around, and continue to exist because they have remained the most successful at surviving within their specific environment. Evolution does not require what may seem lower level lifeforms to die off so others higher on the food-chain may live, it is in fact the opposite.
Life is built out somewhat like a pyramid, from the bottom up. At the base are single-celled organisms, such as bacteria, fungi and protozoa. They are required for everything above them to survive, as they are very often symbiotic and assist in biological function such as digestion, immunity, and decomposition upon death. Next up are lifeforms which can produce energy themselves, such as plants and phytoplankton, which feed herbivorous, plant-eating species like blue whales and cows. Then we have the meat eaters, or carnivores, which consume creatures feeding on plants. Finally, we have the odd species which don’t fit neatly into one specific category, often being insectivores or omnivores, and this is where humanity finds itself.
We have greatly benefitted from being able to consume many different types of foods for energy, and being able to survive and thrive in so many different environments. Our social skills, use of tools, and relative environmental flexibility have all led to our species breaking many of the traditional rules of natural selection, but we are by no means exempt from them. We find ourselves at the top of our food chain, and as many predatory and even herbivorous species before us have discovered, if our environment changes too drastically or our food supply runs out, we too will join the list of extinct species.
The bottom line is, we’re not entirely sure where our universe and all the energy within it originally came from. It may have been divinely orchestrated, or it may be through naturalistic processes we simply don’t fully understand yet. What we are pretty damn sure of, however, is our universe, the earth and life on it are all far older than ten thousand years old, and life on this planet is constantly changing and adapting. One generation at a time, one species at a time, earth has played host to a brilliant and incomprehensibly complex dance of life which is still carrying on before us.
We humans are a powerful player in this current world, yet we are still but one part, one cog in a massive machine we have little control over. We would do well to remember just how fragile our position truly is, and do everything we can to understand our place; how our world around us truly works, without the willfully applied blinders of ancient books preaching supernatural origins. We only get one shot at life, as people and a species. Let’s make it count.
Thanks for reading! This blog works in tandem with my YouTube channel of the same name. Feel free to check it out if you enjoy my content here. Come back often for regular updates, and see you next time...
When speaking with fundamentalist creationists, plenty of whom are in my very family, they truly, earnestly believe the Bible is the literal, infallible word of God. Therefore, the Earth and our entire universe cannot be older than ten-thousand years or so, in their minds. Not only is this wrong, it’s wrong by orders of magnitude, yet believe on they do. Their viewpoints often result in a bombardment of questions the likes of, “Where did everything come from if God didn’t speak it into existence?” “If Evolution is so scientific, why can’t we ever seem to witness it happening?” and my personal favorite, “If we evolved from monkeys, why do monkeys still exist?”
To say I find this frustrating would be an understatement, so I’ve decided to provide some sweeping answers and explanations to this apparently difficult-to-understand concept. First off, a theory in the scientific community does not carry the meaning many would imagine and commonly use. There is currently a Theory of Gravity which describes why we are pulled towards the Earth, Radio Wave Theory is used for cell phones and other such devices, Germ Theory of Disease is relied on in modern medicine, the Theory of Refraction is utilized by contact lenses and glasses, Theory of General Relativity is accepted by physicists and the aerospace industry; there’s even a Theory of Heliocentrism, related to the Sun being the center of our solar system. All of these are now obviously factual, and are taken advantage of by modern technology and public practices every single day, yet they are ‘just theories.’ This is because they all have an abundance of evidence to support them, and are readily accepted by the entirety or vast majority of the scientific community. The Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection is exactly this kind of ‘just a theory.’
In other words, it isn’t “just” anything, Evolution is a profoundly well-established framework for understanding a variety of fields within and related to the biological sciences. Over a century of research, discovery and debate has gone into establishing, developing, tweaking, and understanding the complex and amazing story of life on this planet. There is no longer a debate among the wider scientific community as to the legitimacy of Evolutionary Theory, just as there is no debate regarding the existence of gravity, atoms, bacteria or radio waves. While the latter items may be more obvious in our day-to-day lives, the preponderance of evidence supporting all of these concepts are of very similar quality. One simply conflicts with an established religious doctrine, and is thus contested.
To top it off, our school system does a generally poor job of educating kids in what natural selection is, why Evolutionary Theory matters or just how much evidence there is in support of the framework. There are a number of misconceptions and misunderstandings I hear on a regular basis, and many are fairly easy to explain. First off, Evolution is a process through which life slowly diversifies into a huge variety of niches, creating complex and co-dependent eco-systems, like forests, jungles, savannas or oceans. For example, phytoplankton creates its own energy through chemical reactions using the power of the sun, while fish feed on the plankton to survive. Fish become food for predatory species, such as sharks or dolphins, and when these predators die, their bodies give needed nutrition for plankton. This is extremely simplified, but think back to the Circle of Life analogy from The Lion King and you have a pretty good idea of how these ecosystems work.
Secondly, the phrase ’survival of the fittest’ is a misnomer; the diversification of life is better described as ‘survival of the good-enough.’ So, imagine we have a dense forest, and an arriving species of bird is the first of its kind to make its way to this place. Let’s say there are insects living within the bark of the tree, leaving only small openings from which to catch them. Meanwhile, there are nuts which have fallen to the ground bellow, but the shells are tough and require notable strength to crack. The smaller birds with thinner beaks will be better suited to catching the insects, while the larger, stronger birds with stocky beaks will be better at breaking open nuts.
Now, picture these birds fifty generations later, when the larger, stocky birds breed with those similar to them closer to the ground, while smaller, thinner-beaked birds breed with others similar to them higher up in the trees. Imagine this trend continuing for hundreds; thousands of generations, and what you eventually get is birds which have adapted to the environment which allowed them to best survive. These birds slowly become so physically and genetically different, they can’t even breed together any longer, and as such are no longer considered the same species. This, my dear viewer, is Evolution by Natural Selection at work.
So the reality is, we do see Evolution happening before us, we simply don’t often realize it or know what to look for. In today’s world, when a horse and a donkey breed, they produce a mule. While still able to produce offspring themselves, their mules are born infertile and are unable to breed. This is because horses and donkeys are growing closer to a final stage of genetic diversification, that of finally cutting ties with a closely related species and not being able to breed together at all. Given enough future generations, horses and donkeys will no longer be able to produce mules, and will then be considered entirely different species. This is Evolution happening before our very eyes.
Humans, for our part, have also descended from such a line of diversified species. We have not evolved from monkeys, nor even other modern great apes such as chimpanzees or gorillas, yet all of us have a common ancestral species if we go back far enough. The differences between us come down to the niches we fill. Gorillas are large, strong and forage on the ground, while lemurs are small tree-dwellers with eyes better suited to operating at night. We homo-sapiens are omnivorous pack hunters native to grasslands, yet our niche, and how well we fit into it, has allowed us to become much more successful and diversified than most species could imagine.
So, we exist alongside monkeys and other great apes because we are not competing in the same niches. The so-called “missing links” between humans and chimps or bonobos are largely if not entirely extinct because they directly competed within our niche, and our species is the current winner. Jellyfish, trees and bacteria have all existed since long before humans were around, and continue to exist because they have remained the most successful at surviving within their specific environment. Evolution does not require what may seem lower level lifeforms to die off so others higher on the food-chain may live, it is in fact the opposite.
Life is built out somewhat like a pyramid, from the bottom up. At the base are single-celled organisms, such as bacteria, fungi and protozoa. They are required for everything above them to survive, as they are very often symbiotic and assist in biological function such as digestion, immunity, and decomposition upon death. Next up are lifeforms which can produce energy themselves, such as plants and phytoplankton, which feed herbivorous, plant-eating species like blue whales and cows. Then we have the meat eaters, or carnivores, which consume creatures feeding on plants. Finally, we have the odd species which don’t fit neatly into one specific category, often being insectivores or omnivores, and this is where humanity finds itself.
We have greatly benefitted from being able to consume many different types of foods for energy, and being able to survive and thrive in so many different environments. Our social skills, use of tools, and relative environmental flexibility have all led to our species breaking many of the traditional rules of natural selection, but we are by no means exempt from them. We find ourselves at the top of our food chain, and as many predatory and even herbivorous species before us have discovered, if our environment changes too drastically or our food supply runs out, we too will join the list of extinct species.
The bottom line is, we’re not entirely sure where our universe and all the energy within it originally came from. It may have been divinely orchestrated, or it may be through naturalistic processes we simply don’t fully understand yet. What we are pretty damn sure of, however, is our universe, the earth and life on it are all far older than ten thousand years old, and life on this planet is constantly changing and adapting. One generation at a time, one species at a time, earth has played host to a brilliant and incomprehensibly complex dance of life which is still carrying on before us.
We humans are a powerful player in this current world, yet we are still but one part, one cog in a massive machine we have little control over. We would do well to remember just how fragile our position truly is, and do everything we can to understand our place; how our world around us truly works, without the willfully applied blinders of ancient books preaching supernatural origins. We only get one shot at life, as people and a species. Let’s make it count.
Thanks for reading! This blog works in tandem with my YouTube channel of the same name. Feel free to check it out if you enjoy my content here. Come back often for regular updates, and see you next time...
YouTube channel here.
Saturday, February 10, 2018
Was Star Wars Ever Truly Good?
Gungans, Ewoks, Asteroid-dwelling space worms, weak plot development, goddamn gungans, terrible dialogue, awful romantic subplots, loads of poor acting, idiotic stormtroopers, useless droids, EFFING GUNGANS; the list goes on. The long and short of it is this: even as a life-long Star Wars fan, I must admit, the saga as a whole, even the best films, have plenty of problems. Much of the franchise, including parts of the original trilogy, kind of sucks, in fact. With as much flak as The Last Jedi has been receiving, one might presume a rich, complex, masterful lore preceded it. But, that simply isn’t so.
Like most Americans, I grew up watching the original films and closed in on adulthood alongside the prequel trilogy. Like many pre-adolescent boys in 1999, watching the Phantom Menace was exhilarating for me, and I remain among a fairly small percentage of the population who hold a positive memory of my initial theatrical viewings of the prequels. They’re fun, fast-paced, action packed, and feature impressive world building paired with sublime musical scores. Not to mention, FULLY TRAINED JEDI LIGHTSABER AWESOMENESS. There’s no doubt the prequel trilogy sucks from a strict quality standpoint, but they’re so much fun to get lost in.
And that’s the point, really. The Star Wars films are overrated, not even Empire Strikes Back broke ground in storytelling or cinematography. What they are, and have always been, are supremely entertaining, summer-popcorn-blockbusters which have bled over into popular culture. Much as Shakespeare wrote for low-brow theatrical productions, while today his work is held up as exemplified mastery of flowing, heady, dramatic narrative, the original Star Wars trilogy is commonly regarded as something sacred, a holy portion of childhood not to be disturbed.
Frankly, I don’t have an inherent problem with this view. Star Wars films are among my favorite as well, and helped shaped my world as a child. Legitimate complaints against perceived flaws or creative decisions made in all of them, notably the prequels, are entirely justifiable and expected. The problem comes into play when this extends to automatically disliking new films which don’t fit into what specific fans want out of the franchise. It’s becoming incredibly common now for fans to project what they believe Star Wars should be, what they think the best version of the story is, onto the sequel trilogy and judge these new films accordingly.
Yes, Maz Kanata was shoe-horned into The Last Jedi, the Canto Bight casino sequence felt ripped out of the prequels, Snoke getting no background explanation at all left me feeling somewhat cheated, and why the hell the First Order didn’t just short-jump their Destroyers to surround and eliminate the remainder of the Resistance early on in the film is beyond me. The Last Jedi is not a perfect film, nor are any members of the Star Wars cannon. The Empire Strikes Back definitely comes the closest, but even this hallowed benchmark has plenty of campy and self-indulgent moments while leaning on hype from the original and giving a lazy cliff-hanger ending. It is not perfect story telling, and that’s okay.
The original Star Wars film was a simple, straight-forward hero’s journey tale. It was a coming-of-age, farmboy-saves-the-princess-and-slays-the-moon-sized-dragon-in-space sort of story. It was fun and well-paced, imaginative and captivating. Yet for the franchise to continue, it needs to break away from its roots as a children’s-sci-fi-fantasy and really build out the world around it. The Expanded Universe books, games and comics have been one way to enrich the franchise, but they became rather convoluted and internally inconsistent. So when Disney acquired LucasFilm, they needed to start over, to tell a cohesive tale from a unified source, and build out from there.
This is what we’re seeing now with the Sequel Trilogy and spin off anthology films. For the Star Wars franchise to survive and thrive long-term, it needs to adapt and mature. This is exactly what The Last Jedi does best: honor the past while blazing new potential for the future. Fans have had decades to imagine what the Original Trilogy heroes have done and are like all these years later, and it’s understandable many dislike the direction Disney took them, especially given their storylines in the Expanded Universe. Regardless, the backlash against the Sequel films, notably The Last Jedi, is unwarranted. Star Wars was never ours, it was never going to be decided by fan committees or a glut of individual authors. Not if it wanted to survive as more than a pleasant memory, anyway.
Disney is focused on world building, turning Star Wars into a cinematic powerhouse the likes of the MCU or the Call of Duty franchise is in gaming parlance. This isn’t going to be everyone’s style, not everyone will like this shift. Many will prefer the “good old days” which exist mostly in their heads. This is perfectly fine, yet fundamentally leaves us with two options regarding the saga. We can check out at any time, and choose to remember Star Wars for what it meant to us as children. Or we can adapt; appreciate the series for what it is: a franchise now more than forty years old, with a new generation of story-tellers crafting, for we the viewers, rich, flawed, fun summer-popcorn-blockbuster stories from a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.
Like most Americans, I grew up watching the original films and closed in on adulthood alongside the prequel trilogy. Like many pre-adolescent boys in 1999, watching the Phantom Menace was exhilarating for me, and I remain among a fairly small percentage of the population who hold a positive memory of my initial theatrical viewings of the prequels. They’re fun, fast-paced, action packed, and feature impressive world building paired with sublime musical scores. Not to mention, FULLY TRAINED JEDI LIGHTSABER AWESOMENESS. There’s no doubt the prequel trilogy sucks from a strict quality standpoint, but they’re so much fun to get lost in.
And that’s the point, really. The Star Wars films are overrated, not even Empire Strikes Back broke ground in storytelling or cinematography. What they are, and have always been, are supremely entertaining, summer-popcorn-blockbusters which have bled over into popular culture. Much as Shakespeare wrote for low-brow theatrical productions, while today his work is held up as exemplified mastery of flowing, heady, dramatic narrative, the original Star Wars trilogy is commonly regarded as something sacred, a holy portion of childhood not to be disturbed.
Frankly, I don’t have an inherent problem with this view. Star Wars films are among my favorite as well, and helped shaped my world as a child. Legitimate complaints against perceived flaws or creative decisions made in all of them, notably the prequels, are entirely justifiable and expected. The problem comes into play when this extends to automatically disliking new films which don’t fit into what specific fans want out of the franchise. It’s becoming incredibly common now for fans to project what they believe Star Wars should be, what they think the best version of the story is, onto the sequel trilogy and judge these new films accordingly.
Yes, Maz Kanata was shoe-horned into The Last Jedi, the Canto Bight casino sequence felt ripped out of the prequels, Snoke getting no background explanation at all left me feeling somewhat cheated, and why the hell the First Order didn’t just short-jump their Destroyers to surround and eliminate the remainder of the Resistance early on in the film is beyond me. The Last Jedi is not a perfect film, nor are any members of the Star Wars cannon. The Empire Strikes Back definitely comes the closest, but even this hallowed benchmark has plenty of campy and self-indulgent moments while leaning on hype from the original and giving a lazy cliff-hanger ending. It is not perfect story telling, and that’s okay.
The original Star Wars film was a simple, straight-forward hero’s journey tale. It was a coming-of-age, farmboy-saves-the-princess-and-slays-the-moon-sized-dragon-in-space sort of story. It was fun and well-paced, imaginative and captivating. Yet for the franchise to continue, it needs to break away from its roots as a children’s-sci-fi-fantasy and really build out the world around it. The Expanded Universe books, games and comics have been one way to enrich the franchise, but they became rather convoluted and internally inconsistent. So when Disney acquired LucasFilm, they needed to start over, to tell a cohesive tale from a unified source, and build out from there.
This is what we’re seeing now with the Sequel Trilogy and spin off anthology films. For the Star Wars franchise to survive and thrive long-term, it needs to adapt and mature. This is exactly what The Last Jedi does best: honor the past while blazing new potential for the future. Fans have had decades to imagine what the Original Trilogy heroes have done and are like all these years later, and it’s understandable many dislike the direction Disney took them, especially given their storylines in the Expanded Universe. Regardless, the backlash against the Sequel films, notably The Last Jedi, is unwarranted. Star Wars was never ours, it was never going to be decided by fan committees or a glut of individual authors. Not if it wanted to survive as more than a pleasant memory, anyway.
Disney is focused on world building, turning Star Wars into a cinematic powerhouse the likes of the MCU or the Call of Duty franchise is in gaming parlance. This isn’t going to be everyone’s style, not everyone will like this shift. Many will prefer the “good old days” which exist mostly in their heads. This is perfectly fine, yet fundamentally leaves us with two options regarding the saga. We can check out at any time, and choose to remember Star Wars for what it meant to us as children. Or we can adapt; appreciate the series for what it is: a franchise now more than forty years old, with a new generation of story-tellers crafting, for we the viewers, rich, flawed, fun summer-popcorn-blockbuster stories from a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.
Thanks for reading! This blog works in tandem with my YouTube channel of the same name. Feel free to check it out if you enjoy my content here. Come back often for regular updates, and see you next time...
YouTube channel here.
YouTube channel here.
Saturday, January 27, 2018
How Media Controls The Narrative
It is today well established most of the media outlets in the Western world are sensationalist, driven by viewership and advertising dollars. The idea that wildfires, floods, presidential political drama and grizzly murders are far more likely to make headlines in the daily news cycle than statistics on world peace, advancement in scientific research, or ways people are making their communities better places to live isn’t even remotely surprising to us, even as many bemoan this fact. While local television news stations, small newspapers and many independent media companies are at least attempting to bring people around the world meaningful information, an increasing percentage of Americans, and Westerners as a whole, are obtaining their news fix from 24/7 media giants the likes of CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC.
Such media conglomerates not only focus on the sensational, they set the tone for entire political debates. Built for extreme events such as 9/11 or hurricane Katrina, these entities stretch their reporting when the news cycle runs thin on meaningful content. The result is a host of talk show panels and political pundits, a deep dive into the river of mundane, hyperbolic, highly partisan and hyper-sensationalist rhetoric we’re barraged with in the modern day. They give legitimacy to conspiracy theories before turning them into full witch hunts, willfully overlook blatant corruption from their ideological allies while claiming their opponents are even worse, and use every trick in the book to push their respective agendas.
From the sycophantic rants of Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity, manipulating a misinformed viewership, to the obvious bias of MSNBC, demeaning anything and everything emerging from the Trump administration as a knee-jerk reaction, these networks exist to sell us ideas. Primary media outlets, especially those in America, don’t give us important, unbiased news. They often fail to even give us less important news for the sake of viewership and advertising revenue.
Our largest, most influential media networks sell us propaganda, ideology, a dog-and-pony show to not only distract us from events and decisions which truly matter, but separate us into artificial camps from which we bite and claw at each other relentlessly. While we, the general populous are busy believing our political rivals are enemies, those truly running the show in our country are busy pushing their agendas through well-connected lobbyists and huge corporate donations to collectively strangle and clutch the balls of our government, all while telling us corruption and inefficiency within our government are the real problems.
It’s undoubtedly true there are tens of billions of tax dollars wasted, misused and unaccounted for every single year in the U.S. alone, while political bribery, apathy and self-interest dilutes the ability of even the most well-intentioned politician to make meaningful change. Bureaucracy is notoriously inefficient and lacks responsiveness to the needs or complaints of the public, and many governmental departments doing good work are severely underfunded, while others become bloated due to their political connections. Government isn’t perfect, but the media rarely discusses measures to improve its function. Instead they nearly inevitably take one of two positions on the topic: the government is too big and needs to get out of everyone’s business, or the government should become larger and do more to help the people.
The final result is we wind up in an endless cycle of interchangeable lying and scheming politicians and lobbyists, the shrinking and enlarging of various programs and departments based on who controls the government, vitriolic political debate from network pundits over details ranging from obnoxiously exaggerated to painfully untrue, and continual disillusionment and disinterest in the political process from a large and ever-growing cross-section of the voting population. All of this dysfunction is by no means an accident, nor is it unavoidable. It is a purposeful and deliberate collective control of the national narrative, and we play right along, knowingly or otherwise. There is no single puppet master holding the strings, but a collaborative and adaptive network advocating for the interests of those truly holding the reins of power at any given time.
The good news is, this dysfunction and political theater is entirely escapable. There are plenty of solid, honest journalism endeavors around America and the world. The Economist, Reuters, ProPublica, Allsides, C-SPAN, and others all provide means to pivot away from the charade and indulge in more investigative, true journalism. We also have the option to tune out, to be incredibly selective about our media input generally. Regardless of your preference, being aware of the political reality before you is key. Watch for bias in the media you consume, and at least attempt to hear various sides of a debate before fully forming your own opinion.
When you hear an argument on Fox News or MSNBC, let it register in the back of your mind this is their job, they are attempting to persuade and influence you. It is your job to become as fully informed as possible before allowing them to do so. It’s far too easy and tempting to be lumped into idealogical tribes, to see Republicans or Democrats as the enemy, but reality is far more complex and nuanced than that. The truth is, those attempting to divide us are the enemy. There are real solutions to the many problems we face, and honest discussion of our disagreements to be had. We can take our power back from the billionaire media moguls, self-interested demagogues and corrupt power brokers of today’s world. We can and will figure our issues out together, one step at a time. All it takes is changing the way we think and act. Simple enough.
Thanks for reading! This blog works in tandem with my YouTube channel of the same name. Feel free to check it out if you enjoy my content here. Come back often for regular updates, and see you next time...
Such media conglomerates not only focus on the sensational, they set the tone for entire political debates. Built for extreme events such as 9/11 or hurricane Katrina, these entities stretch their reporting when the news cycle runs thin on meaningful content. The result is a host of talk show panels and political pundits, a deep dive into the river of mundane, hyperbolic, highly partisan and hyper-sensationalist rhetoric we’re barraged with in the modern day. They give legitimacy to conspiracy theories before turning them into full witch hunts, willfully overlook blatant corruption from their ideological allies while claiming their opponents are even worse, and use every trick in the book to push their respective agendas.
From the sycophantic rants of Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity, manipulating a misinformed viewership, to the obvious bias of MSNBC, demeaning anything and everything emerging from the Trump administration as a knee-jerk reaction, these networks exist to sell us ideas. Primary media outlets, especially those in America, don’t give us important, unbiased news. They often fail to even give us less important news for the sake of viewership and advertising revenue.
Our largest, most influential media networks sell us propaganda, ideology, a dog-and-pony show to not only distract us from events and decisions which truly matter, but separate us into artificial camps from which we bite and claw at each other relentlessly. While we, the general populous are busy believing our political rivals are enemies, those truly running the show in our country are busy pushing their agendas through well-connected lobbyists and huge corporate donations to collectively strangle and clutch the balls of our government, all while telling us corruption and inefficiency within our government are the real problems.
It’s undoubtedly true there are tens of billions of tax dollars wasted, misused and unaccounted for every single year in the U.S. alone, while political bribery, apathy and self-interest dilutes the ability of even the most well-intentioned politician to make meaningful change. Bureaucracy is notoriously inefficient and lacks responsiveness to the needs or complaints of the public, and many governmental departments doing good work are severely underfunded, while others become bloated due to their political connections. Government isn’t perfect, but the media rarely discusses measures to improve its function. Instead they nearly inevitably take one of two positions on the topic: the government is too big and needs to get out of everyone’s business, or the government should become larger and do more to help the people.
The final result is we wind up in an endless cycle of interchangeable lying and scheming politicians and lobbyists, the shrinking and enlarging of various programs and departments based on who controls the government, vitriolic political debate from network pundits over details ranging from obnoxiously exaggerated to painfully untrue, and continual disillusionment and disinterest in the political process from a large and ever-growing cross-section of the voting population. All of this dysfunction is by no means an accident, nor is it unavoidable. It is a purposeful and deliberate collective control of the national narrative, and we play right along, knowingly or otherwise. There is no single puppet master holding the strings, but a collaborative and adaptive network advocating for the interests of those truly holding the reins of power at any given time.
The good news is, this dysfunction and political theater is entirely escapable. There are plenty of solid, honest journalism endeavors around America and the world. The Economist, Reuters, ProPublica, Allsides, C-SPAN, and others all provide means to pivot away from the charade and indulge in more investigative, true journalism. We also have the option to tune out, to be incredibly selective about our media input generally. Regardless of your preference, being aware of the political reality before you is key. Watch for bias in the media you consume, and at least attempt to hear various sides of a debate before fully forming your own opinion.
When you hear an argument on Fox News or MSNBC, let it register in the back of your mind this is their job, they are attempting to persuade and influence you. It is your job to become as fully informed as possible before allowing them to do so. It’s far too easy and tempting to be lumped into idealogical tribes, to see Republicans or Democrats as the enemy, but reality is far more complex and nuanced than that. The truth is, those attempting to divide us are the enemy. There are real solutions to the many problems we face, and honest discussion of our disagreements to be had. We can take our power back from the billionaire media moguls, self-interested demagogues and corrupt power brokers of today’s world. We can and will figure our issues out together, one step at a time. All it takes is changing the way we think and act. Simple enough.
Thanks for reading! This blog works in tandem with my YouTube channel of the same name. Feel free to check it out if you enjoy my content here. Come back often for regular updates, and see you next time...
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