Life Outside the Kingdom of Singularity

I've always lived in a diverse world, beginning with my family who were culturally blended into a whole that would never be homogeneous. We barely fit into society most of the time, much less within the confines of the same family. In retrospect I understand it was because we were so different from each other. We had so many diverse skills, talents, ideas, and dreams that we were bound to part ways in order to achieve at least a semblance of success. We had to find our way through a maze of visions in order to claim one as our own.

But the visions were an excuse for a very basic truth that ran through all of us: we had to find our OWN way. It was the only chance we had to develop our ideas, our  personalities, our  paths separate from the herd. And it wasn't until recently that I began to understand how rare that was, how unusual to set upon a path unique only to you, and to seek independence in self and action from the familiar comfort of singularity. I suspect that it's not a world many live in  lately.

One place I notice it most is in the type of education most people currently receive. They are well-trained in their skill set. They are the best in what they do. They can discuss their field endlessly and flawlessly. Until they run into a very large wall.

That is the wall of singularity. They know what they know, and maybe the more creative ones can imagine and implement ways to incorporate what they know into something similar to create a third thing that resembles them both, but differs only slightly.

It is the same feeling trying to have a discussion with a member of the singularity. They know their subject. They can apply anything to that subject: the religion of computers, the politics of engineering, the literature of design. But then the wall gets them. Then the noose of singularity cuts off their thinking. Then the conversation becomes forced and not as entertaining. It is at some point, like discussing the weather. Yes, it rained in the past. It is raining in the present. It will rain in the future.

But there is no poetry to the rain. There is no search for meaning in  the sound of the rain or the feel of it upon the skin. There are no long songs written to the rain. It is all sterile and precise and oh so tedious and boring. 

And worse, such singularity crosses swiftly over into dogmatism. No new input means no new ideas. No new ideas means the existing ones are elevated to the point where they are beyond criticism. They take on a holiness, a religiosity that eventually won't allow criticism because the other sides cease to exist.

People then begin the process of becoming as rigid as their ideas.Change becomes fearful. Different people become scary. Different ideas become tyranny. The more the world around them changes, the more the singularity cling to the only things they know, whether it is religion, science, art, politics, music, literature, murder, mayhem, war, hate, bigotry, intolerance.

More than anything this spells the doom of cultures and society. It wasn't their differences that destroyed them. It was their sameness. Inbreeding of ideas is just as destructive as inbreeding of people. Over time you are left with monumental stupidity and nothing left to repair the damage done to communities, towns, states, countries, and eventually the planet. There's no one left smart enough or educated enough to fix the problems so the culture dies.

We are moving in that direction and we will reach the crossroads fairly soon. Ignorance has a way of taking over because it feeds on itself. But there are a few things to throw in its path that while it may not stop it, might at least slow it down some.

One of the biggest is education. I was one of the lucky ones as were many of my generation. We had a true liberal arts education, which meant we had to also study math, science, history, literature, and art. More than anything, we were taught to think and analyze, something that is rarely taught anymore. Now people are taught to focus, to apply precise learning to precise topics and not deviate from the task at hand.

But we need to deviate. We need to learn how what we are being taught applies to the past, present and future. We need to see the historical consequences of actions without the filter of politics or religion. We need to understand what it means to make our own decisions and therefore learn to accept responsibility for our actions. We need to learn to think, to analyze, to discuss, to hear, to listen, and to contemplate.

 Because if we don't, our singularity will be the chain hooked to the nose of our precious little prejudices, and the other end will be in the hand of those who need herds of singular minded sheep to use for their own purposes.

Life Outside the Kingdom of Singularity

Creeping up on Sixty

In a few days I'll be sixty years old. I've never been shy about examining the inner stew that I am, but there's something about that milestone that seems to require not only a closer look, but also a categorizing of it. There's a bizarre necessity to write about it all as if it were something that can prepare others as they embark upon the same precipice, or maybe warn them that there be monsters beyond a certain age. So here's a few entertaining monsters I stumbled across in the last few months leading up to this point.

1. The past becomes endlessly more fascinating than when we lived it.

People I knew decades ago suddenly came back into my mental present time. It wasn't so much a desire to reconnect with them as it was curiousity. I wanted to know how closely or how far apart the different paths we took from the same point actually took us. So I used this internet tubes thing and googly googled a few of them. I didn't find the ones I was looking for (isn't that always the truth?), but I did stumble upon a few of them by accident while searching for something else.

For example, I found one of my old art professors while I was using an image search tool to find someone else's work. It was a brain cramp moment when I saw the similarities that probably neither of them would see because it's their art, after all, but I could see because I was the outside observer to both of them. So of course I wrote him an email and said hello.

The next one was even more bizarre. A friend who was going to visit the Los Angeles area wanted to find a Vegan restaurant to eat at while she was there. I offered to be the friendly neighborhood googler and come up with the perfect place. I found it, a few blocks from where her conference was going to be held and as I was reading the website, a very distinctive name leaped out at me. I had exactly three friends in High School and she was one of them. We weren't blood friends or even the kind of friends who swore to name each other's first born after them. But I was grateful to her, for the memory of her because I could say for the rest of my life that I knew three people in High School who didn't suck. That was worth at least an email.

2. Change is not always inevitable.

I also reconnected with a goodly amount of ghosts from the past who seemed happy to hear from me. We exchanged a few emails and then let the silence between us grow again as the same reasons we did so in the first place were still there.

The most disturbing in a holy calcification batman sort of way was someone I really admired when I was in my twenties. He was an amazing writer who seemed to have such a phenomenal and perceptive way of looking at and writing about life. He was easy to find as he had self-published enough books, pamphlets, treatises, and manuals to level a fairly large forest.

But in all that copious amount of self-flagellation there was barely anything new that reflected decades of life. He was writing about the same things, in the same language, with the same passion as he did forty years ago. It was as if nothing of life had touched him in any way. He was literally the same man he was then. I was sad for him.

And I knew I could write whatever I wanted to about him because  he would never read this blog.  He has a disdain for the internet, for the social aspect of it. He said it distracted him from real life and he only used it to take orders for his books and answer book related emails. It explained the time warp that claimed his soul in the late 70's and never gave it back.

But the saddest for me were some of the women. They're the kind of women who always bring me a sense of deep sorrow when I read their obituaries, the women who lived and died within a few miles of where they were born. The obituaries are always filled with the children they birthed, the gardens they grew, the things they did for others. And how they never left home, neither physically or metaphorically.

But for a few short years when we were in college together, they had dreams we shared over wine, weed, and eternal blooming hope. These same women were going to travel the world, they were going to write the great novel, paint the masterpiece, find the cure for cancer, become the first woman President. Instead, their obituaries will say they lived and died a few miles from where they were born, and will describe the children they birthed, the gardens they grew, the things they did for others. I wanted to ask them why they gave up so easily but I knew they would never see themselves as having given up so there was no point in asking, no point in trying to recreate a past that died the day they graduated and took the path right in front of them instead of venturing out a bit to see what else was out there.

In the end, all the searching and googling and writing ended up with the same result: the good people were still good, the bad people were still bad, the boring were still boring, and the interesting ones had all disappeared into a world where they couldn't be found so they could go on being interesting without others expectations of what interesting was supposed to mean.

3. Expectations are like assholes, no matter how much we deny it.

The most surprising thing I discovered was that some of the people I connected with had expectations I'd be a certain this or that and were disappointed that I went my own way. They weren't interested in what I had done with my life, in the new paths I had carved through resistant wildnernesses, in the way I had managed to live a life of honor, ethics, integrity and love, and still survive on my own terms, by my own wits, and with no one telling me what to do but me.

Yes, I'm surprised that I make my living with art created digitally with cameras, computers, and scanned hand-drawn and created images. Yes, I'm surprised that I make my living writing about what I do, that I've channeled my passion for words into something that gives me pleasure, that allows me to share some of what I believe and most of who I am with people all over the world. Yes, I'm surprised that I've sold things with my art in just about every country in the world, all the provinces in Canada, and every state in America. Yes, I'm surprised that I've written to and shared dreams, philosophies, world views, visions, hopes, despairs, sadness, joy, sorrow, and love with people all over the world.

So I'm surprised when people I connected with again always said they thought I'd be a writer or an artist or an activist, but they never thought I'd be doing what I'm doing. It makes me wonder why they expected me to limit myself to one thing when there were so many options. It makes me sad that they see me as unusual and different and an exception to how they thought I should live.

I want to say to them that all I really wanted was to make a difference. I didn't want to go through life without leaving my mark on it. I figured with so many options available to me that I had no choice but to exercise them all if I was truly going to make a difference by having lived. So far, I think I'm accomplishing what I set out to do.

4. Some wounds don't heal.

Of course there are people I think about, people I loved, people I trusted, people I let into my life too easily and by the time I noticed they were bad people it was too late to shut the door. They are me as much as any of my art or my words or my actions. But the deep wounds don't heal. I can still feel sad, angry, upset, afraid when I remember them. I can let myself love them even after they hurt me. But there are some paths you can't walk backwards on and the path of wounds is one of them. I leave them alone, let them remain as lessons, as reminders that no matter how many good and decent people you know in life and call friend, the biggest assholes will always be the ones whom you loved the most. Age and time doesn't seem to even that out any. I hoped it would, but it seems some wounds are timeless and are meant to be with us in that shape and form for life. Maybe in the next decade I'll figure that one out to where I can explain it better.

Winter Pond by northwest_photograph
Large format printing by Zazzle

Creeping up on Sixty

Skateboards and Shoes at Zazzle!

I've been having fun designing shoes and now skateboards at Zazzle! Check out these two efforts. There will be a lot more soon as I come up with some more designs that are specially designed for them. These are some of my favorites from existing products. I especially love the shoes. Just click on them to go to my shop where you'll find more stuff like this. It sure changes my day to have new stuff to play with.

Technorati Tags: zazzle, skateboards, shoes, new products

Skateboards and Shoes at Zazzle!