| It's my birthday fuckers | ||
| And there's nothing you can do about it. | ||
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| Skeletor - NeoBone Warrior | ||
Spent a few days on this one. Turned out quite well. |
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| You opinionated fileplanet! | ||
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The title's an inside joke only about 3 people in the world would get. Now they can feel special. Anyway, been thinking about opinions on and off for probably years but I've actually written down a few notes so I wouldn't forget these and keep rethinking them with no results on and on ad infinitum (whatever that phrase means). I don't know how many times I've heard famous people when asked what's the best advice they could give to 'get it big' and said famous person has said "believe in yourself no matter how many people say you won't get there and it's a waste of time". I'm no famous person myself but it seems to me this is a rather dangerous thing to say. Sure it is important to have self belief (most of the time) but you're not going to get anywhere unless you have the ability to back it up and that's where the emphasis should be. If you've worked hard to learn and have gotten to a point where your skills are marketable, then you have every right to believe in yourself and most probably do already, deep down. The result on the emphasis of self belief alone can be seen in any of those Idol shows where you've got a 'singer' who's clearly not very good but tries to persuade the judges by sheer will alone. I think it's a result of this whole 'anyone can be great' culture that seems to perpetuate through so much story telling whether it be books, TV shows or movies. Clearly only a few people in the world can be great because if everyone was great, then everyone would be normal. What's also interesting are all these pre-teen or teen TV shows and movies where the main character is somehow special but they only want to be 'normal'. These are two conflicting messages here. So people end up trying to be 'great' not with ability necessarily so they can still portray this normality idealism. And people follow these guys. It's the act of actually being excited and passionate about something that's enjoyable rather than the actual thing you're being excited about. And in a dissolutioned generation without any great struggle it's easy to do. I've just realised a lot of these themes appear in Fight Club. Maybe that Chuck guy was onto something. Anyway, which leads to the original topic I was going to talk about. Everyone has opinions, they're like arseholes remember. It's rather hard and rather boring not to have an opinion. Let me give you an example, when HL2 and Doom3 were launched, game forums around the world that had anything to do with both these games were suddenly plagued with the argument of which one was better. Even though it obviously doesn't really matter which game is better according to someone other than you but there is something about hot topics with two largely opposing sides. I got sucked into these arguments and I read them all up ravenously until eventually I got insanely bored with people making the exact same points over and over again. Why did I do this? To tell you the truth I think it was an ego thing. Many times I just skipped over people who had similar thoughts to me so I could read about the people who were 'so obviously wrong' and make myself feel smart and impressive. Game forums are overwhelmingly dominated by males and it really is a game to become the alpha-male there. On such a hotly contested topic, it was easy for anyone with views upon this to see strongly polar views and feel superior to them and so the arguments went on for months and months until The world is so full of opinions and it can become dangerous with hotly contested subjects without enough facts to make a decent decision. That's where science and specifically scientific and peer reviewed studies should come into play when there's not enough information to say which direction is the best. And this world is so complicated, with so many variables, many times we just aren't able to know what action will lead to the best results. And this is assuming people can become objective about issues when there's so many outlets for arguments to grow and polarise. Then if you do infact choose the right choice, it may end up looking like the wrong one anyway because the minorities who might have had to get the bad side of the decision have so much opportunity to become vocal and the people who got the good side don't need to become vocal and so don't. There's no way I'm ever becoming a politician. The way they're perceived today is mostly a result of the way we live, the tough choices we have to make when there are no clear answers and the technology that allows us to argue in so many new and inventive ways than before. |
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| Woman 1 | ||
Sorry, haven't updated in awhile. Here's a drawing I just did to make up for it. I've been practising figures and heads the past couple of days. |
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| Society's Problems, at All Good Stores. | ||
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Now what I'm about to talk about isn't necessarily stuff I've studied for years and I'd love for knowledgable people to debate me on my points but I've been thinking about left and right, capitalism and communism and all that stuff for a little while now. My mum's very much a leftie and doesn't waste any opportunity to diss America and it's capitalistic greed and in my So with no research due to a lack of time and my ever present laziness I've come up with a few thoughts for all you legions of readers out there. Capitalism works, it relies on a very basic, animal and universal quality of humans. It has worked for quite a long time in those countries that have more or less adopted it. It increases the average standard of living. However, like many things, the best choice is probably not black or white, but something grey and I think it's also a bad idea to think of the situation in terms of ideaologies that are mutually exclusive. Capitalism relies on many squillions of individual actions (such as you buying a coke) that somehow forms a metaphorical amorphous entity that shapes and changes due to society forces. But just like communism, to me there seems to be a flaw, and it is a human one. We are not infallible so we should not expect the system to work infallibly. Basically we as consumers buy what we want, not necessarily what we need. That's why we've got this 'epidemic' of obese people for instance. And there's this feedback loop between the consumers and the producers. Advertising finds universal human wants and tries to show that such and such product provides that, but in it's current form, advertising itself influences the very culture it takes as it's base, purifying the wants into some sort of hot, meaty stew. Maybe an apt example of this sort of evolution on a small scale is every new iteration of Big Brother. This provides problems when the wants do not correlate well with the needs of a populous, again using the example of the 'obesity epidemic'. Interestingly though, because of this there's this new surge in having a 'healthy' lifestyle but I think the real basis for the new trend is the want to look good to potential partners than any true need to be healthy. Again this is an (almost: See asexuals, an interesting subject in itself) universal quality. Will this new 'health' trend counter-act the obesity trend? I doubt it. It's there for the wrong reasons and the other ways to look beautiful will take over most real attempts at getting healthy. So is there any way to continue to use the virtues of capitalism while also making people to buy more what they need rather than what they want? Well what if we try to remove this advertising feedback mechanism I mentioned earlier? Advertising is obviously still needed but if there were strict rules placed on it to stop the ads influencing the very culture they espouse, the feedback loop might just be removed. Just imagine all ads being along the lines of "Hey, this is our name, we provide such and such and this is our pricing". Obviously this isn't very practical but thought experiments are always good ways to expand horizons. If this could actually be done without companies finding loopholes, cultures would be free to evolve on their own. There would probably be large market shifts in the long term. The main problem would be to keep the consumers spending to keep the economy going strong. A consumer culture could possibly be maintained on public forums where people talk about the products they have bought and decide for themselves the best products to suit them. Perhaps without the ability to manipulate people into buying inferior products and making consumers more knowledgable, competition may get more companies to pursue making better products. How much would this benefit society if it works? I don't really know but maybe, just maybe without society telling us to pursue these universal, animal urges, people would spend more time exploring new ideas and justifying our belief that we're somehow not animals but something more. What are your thoughts? |
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