Black Mirror: USS Callister.

I should have started blogging about various Black Mirror episodes back when I first started watching, so that's what I get for being lazy. I will start with the season four premiere, and then at some point this year go back and muse over the likes of "Fifteen Million Merits," "White Christmas," "Men Against Fire," etc. As always, there are spoilers.

Season four starts with "USS Callister," about a tech genius, Robert Daly, who created the code for a massive online multiplayer game platform called Infinity. The episode begins with Robert as captain of the Callister, guiding his small crew through an easy engagement with a known villain; we then see that it is his own personal version of the game, which he gets to go home and 'play' every evening. Aww, sweet.

In real life Robert is quite socially awkward, with none of the bravado he can display on the Callister (nor anyone fawning over his more mild accomplishments, as the ship's crew does). It's easy to see that he can be the confident hero in the game that he cannot be in life, something that we are perhaps too familiar with in this contemporary world. However, the true Black Mirror hitch comes to the fore soon enough: Captain Daly's crew are digital copies of people he knows from work at Infinity. Digital copies who are aware of their existence and retain memories of their life outside of the game.

Overall the episode is already one of my favorites, not just because of but due in part to its homage to the original Star Trek series, and it hits just the right notes without being hammy or heavy-handed. There's a Khan-like enemy, southern California-cum-alien planet locales, and a climax that includes every element necessary to be the average climax (trickery, a race against the clock, a closing wormhole, a dangerous shortcut). The switch to the new, J.J. Abrams style at the end, with the giant lens flares, high-key palette and swooping camera movements was absolutely spot-on.

By virtue of the, for all intents and purposes, sentience of the digital copies, "USS Callister" also features one of my favorite plot conventions, which is showing how characters behave in two vastly different situations (much like the before-and-after lives of Walking Dead characters). Most of the ship's crew come off as upbeat, carefree, shallow people at their jobs at Infinity, but placed inside of the game (due to crossing Robert in some truly minor way), the shallow become deep; the carefree, sacrificial; the meek, brave. They become versions of themselves they would otherwise never know, face fears they would never contemplate, the irony being that back in the real world, they are none the wiser.

The episode also deals with one of my favorite quandries, the 'dying to escape' option. It is an echo of the general idea that life is a prison we can only escape through death; for the digital copies, the Callister is that very real prison, and with Captain Daly ruling as an 'asshole god' their only hope to be free is to ultimately delete themselves. They know this is an action, like death, they cannot undo; furthermore, even if there were an afterlife, it does not exist in the realm of artificial intelligence. There is no hope, and yet the crew chooses to abide by the old Klingon maxim: "It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees."

But there is yet much more to this episode, much to ponder, so it's time to go down the rabbit hole.

Video game school? GREAT IDEA.

I stumbled across this fascinating article in the New York Times Magazine about a school in New York City (of course, where else?) named Quest to Learn that uses video games as a central educational resource. There are so many different facets of life and education that the article directly and indirectly touches on, that this blog post will probably become over-long, but hey, where else am I going to post this?

What I want the reader to understand is that I'm not anti-video game. Dear God, the hours and hours I spent in the days before worries playing on systems from the Atari 2600 to the XBox 360. I also am not saying that a video game design course couldn't be integrated into existing curriculums and used interdisciplinarily to great effect. It's just that some of the ideas and philosophies driving the Quest to Learn school indicate what amounts to a scrubbing of all pre-21st century pedagogy in favor of funneling learning through video games.

Video games, essentially, teach us how to be more robotically functioning - greater response time! improved dexterity! increased peripheral vision! There has always been a decision-making function. In the great, old Atari game Pitfall it was, should I cross the lake by hopping on the croc heads or by swinging on that there vine? Decisions happen every day, nearly every instant, as physicists in favor of the infinite universes theory can tell you. So while video games can give us improved military skills and heap more decision-making on us, what they fail fundamentally to be able to teach us is the why in life.

Let's get to the thick of things. The article states, "In a speech given the day before the start of the 2009 G-20 economic summit, Eric Schmidt, the chief executive of Google, offered his own tacit approval, suggesting that playing video games, especially online multiplayer games, fosters collaboration, and that collaboration, in turn, fosters innovation — making it good training for a career in technology. 'Everything in the future online is going to look like a multiplayer game,” Schmidt said. 'If I were 15 years old, that’s what I’d be doing right now.'"

But that's just it, Eric - I'm not 15. Nor are about five billion other people on the planet. Just because video games are fun, and because there are grown-ups who find dealing with them easier than dealing with being a grown-up, does not mean that a diversion meant primarily for people who don't have responsibilities 18 hours out of the day is suddenly supposed to be all we ever do and see.

Hamlet was deep.

To be, or not to be: that is the question:

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? -

- who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought...

A contemporary application of the categorical imperative.

It's times like these that I wish I had just a few more followers, so maybe something I said could reach a large portion of eyes.

About three years ago when I first joined Blogger, my blog was just a place to get really, really pissed off and say how I really felt about things. I have curbed that instinct here.

Anyway, one day I wrote a post about Immanuel Kant's idea of the categorical imperative. There had been a recent news story about some lame teen outfitter selling shirts that said very inappropriate things on them, mostly things degrading women/girls, and as I read the comments on the story I was saddened and pissed off that so many people were saying, "If you don't like it, don't buy the shirts."

So I asked my readership of zero, what if that was how everyone handled things they found inappropriate/offensive/wrong/immoral?

- don't like war? Don't fight in one.
- don't like rape? Don't go out at night.
- don't like child abuse? Don't be friends with the parent(s).
- don't like the death sentence? Turn off the news.
- don't like the lyrics to songs these days? Turn off the radio.
- don't like corruption in business? Don't buy anything.

The categorical imperative is "an absolute requirement that asserts itself in all circumstances." So if you apply a thought or statement to multiple situations and it still seems "right" (makes sense), then there's a greater likelihood that it is.

Clearly, applying it in this instance reveals that if we shouldn't ignore war, rape, child abuse, and so many other things that are wrong in this world, then we shouldn't ignore anything that's wrong. Conversely if we should ignore apparel that urges young men to treat their counterparts as objects, then we should ignore everything negative.

This does not mean that every single individual has to take up a flag for something. But when someone does, it should be recognized as illogical when another person tells them not to worry about it.

Because again, logically, ignoring a problem does not make it go away. It does not suddenly, magically make the problem a good thing. It does not make someone forget that there's a problem.

The only people who say "don't like it? Ignore it" are people who are not only okay with the problem, but are allowing for that problem to be universally accepted, for it to become mainstream, and hoping for all opposition to the problem to vanish and quite passively so. People like this are also parrots, who say things they hear without ever thinking about what those things actually mean. Enter the prevelance of the ridiculous slogan I've been picking apart.

I mean, really? Do none of these people ever stop to consider if someone said the same thing to them about something of which they disapproved? No, because they assume the world is exactly like them, that their viewpoint is the only one that matters, and so they have little experience seeing more than one side to an issue, let alone the weighty task of walking in someone else's shoes.

If you couldn't tell, I find a slogan like this to be utterly repulsive because of how totally and inherently illogical it is. And the fact that it is so obviously illogical, and so obviously harmful when put in practice, makes it worse.

Now, I know that at some point someone could say, "There's a big difference between war or rape, and silly shirts with questionable sayings on them."

And I'd say that's true. There is a difference. However, consider the criminal justice system. There are crimes that in some states draw a death penalty; some crimes that garner a life sentence; some that result in twenty years, some that result in paying a hefty fine, some that result in probation, some in just a five-dollar ticket.

But you wouldn't say, "There's a big difference between raping and murdering eighteen women, and robbing a corner drugstore of fifty dollars. Therefore, the latter is not a crime."

So you would not say to ignore the impact of teens walking around with sexist comments on their shirts just because it's not war or child pornography. The underlying principle remains the same.

However, I'm also not saying that any one person has to be affected by any of these things. But what's crucial to remember is that a person's indifference to something does not affect its actual right or wrong quality. Now, if you want to pull out the old yarn of "don't tell me what to believe," that's fine, but just realize that it takes a badass to stand in public and say that murder is moral, or rape is moral. No matter how advanced your liberal ideology, there are still some things that you'd have to be crazy to think are okay.

In the end, indifference to something looks almost just like acceptance of it. So I'm tired of people playing the indifference card. And in the end, telling someone else to be indifferent to a problem which they've already decided bothers them, is mind-bogglingly arrogant.

As someone once said, it's a free country. People can, for the most part, do and think what they want. I agree with this.

I also, however, understand the nature of cause and effect, and the nature of consequence. If we continue to breed a nation, or a world, of indifferent people, then it will be those few left who remained passionate who have all the power.

And it starts by ignoring something as "silly" as sexist T-shirts.

It's a problem I have.

So, I'm still pondering Wicked.

(Pondering = overanalyzing, picking to shreds, tearing leaf by leaf till there's nothing left)

I've gotten caught up reading like every single review of it on Amazon, and by far I'm not the only one wondering why so many hanging plot threads. (I especially enjoyed this review and this one, but again, read at your own risk if you plan on reading Wicked in the future)

I think Maguire was caught up in some kind of postmodern experiment. Two reasons why:

1) Art imitating life. When, in anyone's life, do we get all the answers? When do we ever have it all figured out? To leave so many questions - to have minor characters overstay their welcome and major figures vanish forever - to never grasp the meaning of life, the nature of good and evil - to die a pointless death - that, Maguire is saying, is life. Many readers will hate his depiction because we don't want chaos from a story, we want order. We want a major life that makes sense in the end, with a well-written denoument. We don't, in the end, truly want reality.

2) It would be quite a postmodern thing, simply, to wait and see the reaction of readers to a plot that continually dies, continually jumps in time, continually leaves resolution unrealized. Not unlike the artist who puts a black dot on a white canvas and says 'Art!' It's more about the participant's reaction than anything else.

I find myself defending Maguire because I still remember my reaction to his flawed novel, and I found many of the characters and setting fascinating. However, I still hate the unanswered.

Okay, break's over.

Wow! Ugly people have value, too!

You've probably heard of (and heard) the newest singing sensation, Susan Boyle from Britain's Got Talent. She's in her late forties, has never been kissed, and is decidedly un-pretty by contemporary standards. But she sings - forgive the cliche - like an angel.

I'm always amused, in a kind of ticked-off way, when people's mouths turn into O's and they point in wordless shock at someone who has more than a fair share of talent but is not 'beautiful.' Clearly, women bear the brunt of this surprise, since men are usually more vaunted for what they can do, and what kind of person they are, than what they look like.

Why is it that we still equate beauty with virtue, talent, morality, and ugliness with corruption and worthlessness? We will never be the 'enlightened' world we assume we should be in the 21st century, as long as we can't wrap our tiny brains around the fact that people are not objects. It is impossible for our facades, our appearances, our decaying bodies to accurately represent the maturity of our souls, the many trials we are set to, the endless moments in which we change for the better or the worse and then back again.

(Why do we retain this malfunction? Is it survivalist prejudice, sexual attraction, lower-order thinking? Or - for more adventurous minds - do we keep the memory of another time and place in the deepst parts of ourselves, a time and place in which what one saw was what one got, and we can't shake this memory, to our own misfortune?)

Nobody lays awake at night because an ugly couch is neglected. And far too often, no one cares when someone is judged, withheld, robbed of opportunity because they don't supernaturally embody holiness and light.

Susan Boyle is decidedly un-pretty by standards put in place when humanity on this earth first sprang. That her voice is such a shock to the masses says to me that those standards may very well be our legacy until the last of us takes their final breath.

How to fail good.

"The goal of life becomes individual glory and greatness. The failure to achieve these aspirations, to be who we should be, seems to diminish us. As we age, as life deals its blows of fortune and bad luck, as we face the harsh reality of human limitations, our own limitations, we become resentful. We hate ourselves for failing."

~ Chris Hedges, Losing Moses on the Freeway

I relate to this perhaps a bit too much, LOL. Living in America, perhaps we're fed the lie too much, that anything is possible, when it's not. I wanted to be published fourteen years ago. I never dreamed I'd be this age and still unaccomplished. But it seems the lie exists apart from any type of reality, especially individual realities with so many bumps in the road that keep us from realizing this gilded dream. And feeling like a failure sucks.

He goes on:

"All lives, at their deepest level, are failures. We fail to be the person we want to be; this is inevitable for we are human. We will fail to achieve all we want to achieve. We fail those who love us in small and large ways. We are failed by them. We suffer betrayal and feel unappreciated. We are never as good as our expectations. We never overcome all our faults. We act in ways that are foolish, inconsistent, mean or thoughtless. This is part of our ordinariness, part of the failures inherent in human life.

"But only if we can accept this failure and our ordinariness, only if we can have the courage to face this wounding pain, can we find sustaining joy and happiness."

Klaatu barada nicto.

Saw The Day the Earth Stood Still last night.

How to keep this post relatively short...hmm.

In both the original and the remake, the little boy's father has died in the war. He and Klaatu visit the grave at Arlington.

In the remake, the boy (played by Will Smith's son, Jaden) is lamenting how his father left him.

Klaatu replies (and I paraphrase), "You know, nothing ever really dies. The universe wastes nothing. Things are merely transformed."

Earlier in the movie, Professor Barnhardt (played by John Cleese) is reasoning with Klaatu about the impending end of the world, saying how many civilizations have come to a major crisis, and many have been destroyed. But sometimes, in the nearness of destruction, we as humans realize how much we are capable of, and we change accordingly, we evolve. Instead of diverting what can be the 'end of the world,' it is possible to allow such circumstances to create something worth more than what came before.

A few weeks ago I posted a single thought, ganked shamelessly from someone's e-mail signature: "Just when the caterpillar thought its life was over, it turned into a butterfly."

Normally I find e-mail signatures cheeky and pendantic...but this one has always stayed with me. Imagine knowing - without a doubt, you're sure - that you are going to die. Everything is coming to ruins. Light is being snuffed out. Time is about to stop. Death is here.

And then...you transform, into something more beautiful and free than you ever knew existed.

For these reasons, I found The Day the Earth Stood Still more than worth my time.

Would that be the Pacific, or the Atlantic, or......?

Disclaimer: into a vast ocean, I merely dip a toe.

I find the trend in current music interesting, how popular the artists are who draw on old-school soul and rock. Generally, a mixing of musical styles is something that excites me so I have no qualms about it. My personal favorite example is Nicole Atkins, who exceptionally recreates a sixties pop haze while gently incorporating contemporary flavors. If you haven’t heard her album Neptune City, then you honestly don’t know what you’re missing.

The first quote of Baudrillard’s that I used on Nov. 7 was, I believe, a prediction, a foreshadowing of the pinnacle of a postmodern world. “A universe where…it has all been done.” Are we getting there? I think so.

Oftentimes I’m driven to think, what if the ‘best’ has already been done? (And yes, I understand what an incendiary word that is in these postmodern times) The middle of the last millennium saw such a perfecting of forms in art and music and literature (baroque and classical and romantic); what if, to continue creating new forms in art, we are forced to go further and further from that which human discernment finds acceptable? And in avoiding that, what if all that is left to be done is ‘playing with the pieces,’ as Baudrillard said?

That being said, I'm aware that no one truly knows what the future holds. There have been some sci-fi prophets but, it will always be difficult for the contemporary mind to comprehend a futuristic world. (Just look at the old show "Space: 1999")

I quoted the French philosopher’s ‘radical antagonism’ statement because, in short, I believe that chaos is a direct result of infinite diversity and the free will given us. There is to be no equilibrium found, though we may conceive of it and hope for it.

And the ‘immanent purpose of obscenity,’ I see it as I have always seen it: the human mind becomes bored. There is no recycling of interest. Whether individually or as a group, we must take something to its extreme as an alternative to abandoning it; you know the extreme has been reached when the only thing left to do is to reflexively go backward and reclaim some of the old order. And what are we left with?

Playing with the pieces.

The book is Postmodern Theory: Critical Interrogations.

Postmodernity as dystopia.

Courtesy of Jean Baudrillard, French philosopher and sometime-postmodern theorist:

"[The postmodern is] characteristic of a universe where there are no more definitions possible. It has all been done. The extreme limit of these possibilities has been reached. It has destroyed itself. It has deconstructed its entire universe. So all that are left are pieces. All that remains to be done is to play with the pieces. Playing with the pieces - that is postmodern."

"The universe is not dialectical. It moves toward the extremes, and not towards equilibrium; it is devoted to a radical antagonism, and not to reconciliation or to synthesis."

"Things have found a way to elude the dialectic of meaning, a dialectic which bored them: they did this by infinite proliferation...and by obscenity which henceforth has become their immanent purpose and insane justification."

Just...yes.