The Simple Truth.

Nothing, for me, is simple. (even that statement, upon the further reflection of typing this second one, is much too simple to be true, and it’s not.)  

It would seem simple enough to create an adage “if someone thinks something is simple, they are wrong”, though, how could such a thing be true in every context -when such few (if any) things are? That would also assume we could know every context. We already have an issue seeing correctly the contexts that we have looked at with scrutiny (we see them as far more simple then they are).  

Perhaps I’m using a rather complex bit of text to say simply that ‘everything is complex; even more complex then we now know.’  Choose something you know, really think on it, and you’ll soon see it as more complex then you thought it before, regardless of how complex you thought it before.  

There are manners of speaking, of course, wherein we include the concepts of simplicity and complexity, and, often, things can be said to be ‘simple’ in those relative circumstances. Take the idea of a problem on your computer: you can’t find a file. You search in every folder you can click on and you say “I can’t find that file”. This continues until a 12 year-old enters the scene and uses the handy search field and, like Apple Magic, the file is found. You say ‘wow’ and the 12 year-old says “it's simple.” I know, such a terrible example, it could never happen to you, but that enhances the point- we think something is complex until we think we know it.  Even engineers -who study for years- cough out the words, when they are demonstrating some complex bit of arrangement to a colleague they are exacerbated with, saying “ it’s really very simple.”

And so it goes, from some odd clever person to another, in a wide cycle of one-ups-man-ships that we enjoy around the globe daily. But it's quite a different thing, to know how to 'simply talk to a girl', than to understand the complexities of why this young specimen of the species Homo sapien [latin for ‘knowing’ or ‘wise’ ‘man’] seems to desire so strongly to talk to her at all (especially when he would be awfully unhappy if all he got to do was simply talk to her.)

I really do scratch my head weekly, as terribly simple and ignorant words fly from pulpits around the spinning earth... and simple people enjoy them.  I guess I just have too deep a sense of the paramount atrocity that conflating ideas reek upon civilization.  We live in an elaborately involved complex of realities (reality meaning a 'realm of consciousness'). You are blind to the reality experienced on the other side of the globe, until the New York Times posts an article about it with photos that make you feel you get enough of a glimpse to open your mind to some other reality some other poor soul is living far away from you and your take on things.  The universe is a multiverse, and a complicated and labyrinthine one at that. You hardly can look closely at something you see every day, only to notice a tangled and bewildering existence that baffles the mind (at least my mind). This is why I hate pictures of human skin, where, all the land of small creatures it truly is, is exposed and in color. I like to believe that if you zoomed in on my skin, you’d simply see the smooth skin I see. Not the cracks of my lego-body much too closely resembling the lego building blocks of my monkey cousin, I hope isn’t as related to me as some apes claim. I’d rather pretend I’m not the universe to a host of living things -mostly inside me- and so I do, and I say “I’m simply me- take a look- do you see anything else here? No, of course you don’t, it's just me, plain and simple.” 

There is no truth that is straightforward.  Even reading this sentence you are reading something completely different than I’m thinking as I type- and there is no way around it, italics of not. I know that there is a limited range of meaning, I’m only pointing out that the considering of such things is vastly convoluted, if not Byzantine.  Hence the misunderstandings, and why else would you be asking yourself what exactly the point of this particular arrangement of the alphabet is.  The point is that “ghsdjkdhakdhsad” is the only simple thing in existence. There is no such thing as “chaos.” The nano-second you label it with some simple word to pretend you understand it, you err  Chaos is better revealed in the agonizingly ordered stacks of baseball cards sitting in attics across america. Chaos is starting each sentence with a capital letter.  One reason I think so many people want to find a “God” is only to simplify the myriad of multifarious possibilities. How exceptionally annoyed I can be, when kindhearted folks attempt to placate my sprawling mental voyages by trying to moralize me into accepting ‘what is so simple.’  I will not feel guilty for not being as ignorant as the next guy, no matter how ignorant I’m doomed to be, in my limited cubicle of perception.  I don’t mind not being able peel back the curtain on the heavens, as much as being told that I am not allowed to look for the seams.

If the existential moment wasn’t a thorny, knotty, nexus lying outside the peripheral vision of the masses (obsessed with ignoring pictures of creatures on their skin) we might have less killing in the name of invisible creations, and no need to drink imported beer.  If, at midnight, I’m not so sure of the senseless (literally) things that no one is sure of, then, at midnight, I just may be that much more brilliantly honest. Or perhaps the great canvass, that this checkered and variegated reality is but a thread in, alludes me. Plus... I’m tired.

We Are All Oppressed: part 1 of my Review of Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion

I'm on the fence right now.   I'm reading a bunch of books and thought i'd offer some thoughts on them.  Let's start with Richard Dawkins'  The God Delusion, since it's such huge hit.

I'll do a number of these, so this is just the start.

1.  We are all oppressed.

Richie Dawkins has made a name for himself, but so far it’s not in valid reasoning per se.  Distinguished philosophers shake their heads at his poplar “The God Delusion,” which contributes nothing to the Philosophy of Religion, the question of God, and seems to be unaware of the last 50 years or so of philosophy on the subject. 

But, I’ll get to that later, today is about his first chapters.

His early chapters only prove the hypothesis I’ve wondered on before: everyone thinks of themselves as oppressed. 

Growing up in a number of different groups, I saw how each group saw themselves as oppressed. When I became a christian, all we saw was how the large atheistic liberal agenda machine was slamming us around and oppressing our rights and our faith. Dawkins sees the tables as turned, and begs us to hear his weak cries through a large and horribly powerful Religious Agenda Machine that threatens the sane existence of intellectuals like himself.

If I hadn’t grown up as I did, I might be inclined to believe him.

Who is right - The oppressed atheists (who DO have to put up with a LOT), or the oppressed Christians (who DO have to put up with a LOT) ?

Sadly, religion does have that military-driven Islam on its side, which somehow finds men is suits to continue to appear on TV and claim it as a religion of peace - as if one man on TV (who is obviously quite westernized) counts more than the thousands holding signs threatening the murder of the entire western world; in downtown London even.

SideNote: Islam lived at peace with Christianity in many countries for many years... as long as they were in charge. But the point is that Christians were once quite safe within the borders of Istanbul, and today they are not.

Dawkins builds a series of Straw-men for his argument on God, beginning by attempting to paint his opponents as dangerous powerful idiots who must be stopped. The first stage is to set-up a situation where atheists, or those closet-creatures who are afraid to admit their doubt, are under the looming thumb of irrational religionists.  

It’s always good to be the underdog.

Atheists claim Religious people are privileged, and Religious people claim that the atheists are privileged.

Faith is a blinding, dangerous thing, I think. Whether you believe in God or your belief is that there is no God, and no meaning to life.

Either way you are likely to see yourself as oppressed. It’s part of our Post-Modern era. 

One of our key Post-Modern themes is that of suspicion, whether Gays are suspicious of being unjustly treated, or Women (look at the feminist Interpretations of the Bible), or the Atheists, or the Religious Right, or Blacks, or Middle-aged White Men, or Asian Women, or Mexican illegals, all Immigrants, the Rich, the Poor, all you need to do is to name a group and they all can read the same copy of Time magazine and find that their particular group or enclave is being maligned (they can all read the Bible the same way).  We are all quite suspicious... not just the feminists who see marriage as a way of man dominating women and imposing ‘traditional’ gender roles.

So... Who is right? Who is really oppressed?

Maybe we all are...       ...and in our fear of being oppressed, become oppressors. 

Toys and Interpretation Part 2

     An article in the Chronicle of Higher Education relates well to this thinking through of Toys and Interpretation.

The article was written by a sociology professor who applied for a job in a toy store. She wrote about her interview for the job as follows. The professor--a white, middle-aged woman--was interviewed by Olive, an African-American woman: 

"Olive told me that she wanted to hire motivated sellers who could provide excellent customer service. Although I didn't have any retail experience, I told her I thought I could do the job. Olive put three toys in front of me: a CD cartridge of a Lara Croft Tomb Raiders video game, a white Barbie in a bikini packaged inside a sand pail to take to the beach, and a black Barbie dressed in a 1970s outfit. Olive said, 'Pick one and sell it to me.' 
"I took a deep breath. In my other life I am a professor of sociology who specializes in gender and sexuality studies. Barbie has become a symbol of the postmodernist turn in gender studies; her cultural meaning has been deconstructed and reconstructed by a number of feminist theories. I devote an entire section of my course on sexuality to unpacking Barbie's cultural significance. But far from being helpful, those arguments paralyzed me. The complex race and gender politics of the situaltion--me, a white woman selling a black or a white Barbie to Olive--were simply overwhelming. 
"I said, 'Well, you don't have to sell Barbie: girls always want her (mentioning that I had read that the average 10-year-old girl owns eight of the dolls), so I will sell you the CD.' Lara Croft is not exactly a wholesome or apolitical alternative to Barbie. One of the earliest female icons of computer gaming, her long flowing hair, enormous breasts, and crack fighting skills set the standard for the dozens of imitators that followed. I said tha if we assumed Olive had a PlayStation she needed the game because it was the basis for a movie that had just opened. I also said that it was important for girls to be computer literate; as long as their parents approved of the content, girls should be exposed to the same computer games as boys so they could compete in the real world. 
"Olive shook my hand and told me I had the job!"

 --Christine Williams, Professor of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin: an excerpt from her book "Inside Toyland: Working, Shopping, and Social Inequality," published by University of California Press

"you don't have to sell Barbie" 

I also wondered if you have to sell Tomb Raider, i mean boys don't mind playing an action game where there is a woman with enormous breasts, and girls love the empowerment of the "Action-Star Woman". 

I wonder what it means, that you don't have to sell Barbie. Besides the point that Barbie has achieved a high-enough popularity that it sells itself, i wonder why. Are their certain toys that capture an important part of every human's needs as they grow up. Do dolls help serve a certain purpose for little girls, of idenification, of longing to grow into something, of idolizing? 

Like toy guns, which, if you don't buy, boys will make (and make anyways) out of a fallen tree branch, or anything that can be held as a gun (like a banana) - Dolls can be a home-made device, and i'll bet were often made in the last 2 centuries. I'll bet there is a vast history of dolls on wikipedia somewhere, waiting for interested people to look up. 

Interesting how certain toys and games we play as kids act as a sort of preparation for later experiences in life.  I wonder how they can help/hurt our encounters in life, and how important it is to look ahead to experiences that will come later (like falling in Love, marriage, huge Kung-Fu fights) when we are kids playing with toys.   I wonder......

Toys and Interpretation

As I study the Art and Ideology of the 20th century, i've been musing on the 'meaning' of toys and art and stuff

my favorite toy:

Those who know me know I've never really thought in terms of favorites, but if pressed (and i guess i am) I'd have to lay the burden on the amazing G.I. JOE toys. The crazy amount of movement allowed with the arms, legs, knees and waist, still keeps them as the all-time best action figures... says me. Of course some might complain that the rubber-band-waist-holder-together-thingy broke too easily, but i thought they just gave you a chance to have war-amps in your battles. Did playing with G.I. JOES teach me anything about myself and culture? That's the question right there. It certainly taught me that i viewed things in terms of images and conflicts, and i often found myself making mental-films of conflicts, closing one eye to control the images i played with, not even realizing i was pretending to make movies. I would control my perspective, while playing with the toys and wasn't satisfied with "pretending", but needed the playing with G.I. JOEs to look "good" to me. The cultural teaching might be the importance of imagination, pride, war, and fun, as underlined by the proliferation of such toys, and me being allowed to play with them so much. It subtly painted the subjects of War and fighting in terms of bravery and story. It encouraged me to stand out and fight for things, or at least that those were good ideas worth imagining.

Why do i care about Toys?

Toys are art. Consumer-art might be different than "Fine Art" but it's also much the same. Both communicate things to us in varied and complex ways. What is communicated and how it gets interpreted is also quite important. It is vital, both as artists (everyone is one) and consumers, that we understand interpretation, and understand how pop-culture teaches us and strives to communicate with us (usually the message is "BUY!").

Since interpretation concerns meaning, and as artists we invest a lot of meaning into our works, it becomes increasingly important to understand how interpretation works, as we seek to better accomplish our artistic goals in communicating meaning. We are always communicating something in art, and so, if we aren't aware of the complex array of factors affecting the meaning of an artwork, then we are flying blind and aren't in control of the messages we are making, and the spectrum of interpretations our art is open to. One of the "reasons" (if we would ever put it like this) we make art is so that people interpret them in certain ways, wether a single way, or many. Understanding interpretation allows us to make informed decisions every step of the artistic journey.