i matter, and so do you

no, this is not about a new product called iMatter. :) you know what it's like - you get a youtube link in your email or see it on facebook. it is a presentation of interesting facts that you haven't seen in this combination yet, and it gives you pause to think. i want to discuss a perspective popularly used in these videos. in particular, i have a beef with it.

this example is titled "did you know". on the surface it sums up the awesomeness of existence. at the end of it though, it doesn't sit well with me because it leaves me feeling a little overwhelmed and powerless.
well, "did you know" that more than 50% of the statements in this video are either unsubstantiated or just plain wrong? have a look and read on to see what my take is on it.

"did you know"

why do i bother writing about this?

i think the video tries pretty hard to make us feel insignificant, and i think this is misleading. there is much that every one of us can and needs to do. we need motivation to start doing something, not an awe-inspiring argument suggesting that that would be pointless. because we seem powerless, are we now free to feel good about our inaction? no, we need to act, get involved in all of this.
each of us matters. i matter. you matter.

am i being too earnest? isn't this video just harmless fun? advertising works by repetition, and if a point is just repeated enough, we start believing it. i think we need to be more critical with entertainments like this because they do transport a message. we should be careful not to take these opinions on board, because that's what they are.

have you had similar experiences? have you used something for entertainment and later found out that it was much more than that? i'd like to hear of your experiences, email/message me, or comment below if you want.

read on if you are interested in a scene-by-scene discussion of the statements made in the video.

my comments in detail

1. "china will soon be the #1 english speaking country" - that would take 25% of chinese speaking english. while so many might have had english at school, i doubt they speak it with any fluency.
2. 
   Hyderabad street scene
   "india has more honor kids than america has kids" - this statement contains a number of logical fallacies. #1 - IQ and education are not the same thing. #2 - we don't know what 25% means in absolute numbers. sadly, US honors level is likely reached only by the top 5% or so in india (my estimate). after all, fewer than 40% of adolescents in India even attend secondary schools, and illiteracy is still common in rural areas.

are we supposed to feel threatened here? india and china were the first to suffer in this crisis economically and they are still developing educationally as well as industrially. china tries desperately to outgrow rising unemployment caused by urbanisation. india has barely started this process. if you remember the 80s, remember how everyone thought back then that japan was taking over. this was followed by twenty years of japan's problems catching up with it. natural resources, education, and business infrastructure simply can't keep up with 10% growth rates. i have no doubt that they will level off.
both countries need western nations' support to grow their economy and educate their population, without repeating our unsustainable mistakes.

3. "if myspace were a country, it would be 5th largest" - put it in perspective; if the customers of unilever were a country, it would span the entire world. the same goes for most consumer products. does that mean there are many worlds? no. the impact of the internet is still comparatively small. if a youtube video generates 5 million views in a month, it is a blockbuster. in comparison, let's say only half of the american population watch the news twice per day. that's 300 million views per news item - in only one day! in the same vein, by the way, i have no illusions about the number of views i get with what i'm writing here... :)
4. 
   logarithmic graph of inventions
   "we are living in exponential times" - always have been, since the day stone tools were invented. new technologies struggle at first, coexisting with their predecessors, then grow exponentially until they explode into view and finally are everywhere. this was true for agriculture, architechture, book printing, the railways, the automobile, hence also the computer. it's nothing special, and the facts listed later in the video are mere consequences of it.
5. "exabytes of unique information" - mostly in video and audio. that's been around since the 19th century, the only difference now is that it is digitized and hence you can now count the information.
6. "half of what [students] learn learn in their 1st year ... is outdated by the 3rd" - that would be a very poorly designed class. a good lecturer makes sure skills are taught, not technical manuals.
7. "supercomputer with brain power in 2013" - maybe with as many transistors as we have neurons. but the power of the brain is not in the neurons, it's in the network. every neuron is in itself a powerful analogue circuit, and has 10000 connections. we are very far from such capability.

now these are just trying to make me feel inadequate. i can keep up easily, thanks very much, because at the end of the day, technology is for me, not the other way around. if it doesn't suit my needs or is too difficult to operate, i can do without it. history is full of technologies like that. 95% of the data avalanche will be forgotten, the important thing to remember is to ignore it. :) remember that famous singer from the 1890s? neither do i.

8. "X songs were downloaded illegally during this presentation" - whatever. all estimates along the lines of "music industry lost trillions" are bogus anyway because those who download songs either can't afford to buy them or just want to have a listen before actually going out and buying them anyway. in the 30s, records were free, as promotion for live concerts. in the 80s, music videos were free, as promotion for records. today, both are sold, in spite of technology. the music industry should quit whining and come up with a viable business model. and no, they can't keep growing to the point where everyone spends 50% of their income on their ringtone-ready products, there are other things in life.

as a scientist, i know that, for all the available computing power, we still struggle to understand some of the most basic processes in nature, since we lack even more computing power, and smart ways to use it. so bring on the "human brain simulation", i might actually employ it for something useful.
as a layman, i object to the assumption that other countries will take over. remember trade for mutual benefit? everyone can do better in the future, if things are done right. there is no reason to feel threatened - unless you want to rule unilaterally, that is.

darkness

Franz von Stuck - Inferno (1908)
(detail) VILLA STVCK

i get off the subway, where i was reading. on the up escalator. a noisy crowd comes down across from me, dressed up for saturday night out on the town.

on the wall behind them, i notice a picture. it doesn't belong here, is a thorn in the flesh of this early summer night, so warm and promising. it is outrageous, violent. it's an ad for a museum and no-one seems to notice it. whose idea was it to place this infernal picture of a dominant female figure, submissive men and fiery backdrop in this urban environment?

the picture draws my thoughts back into the book i'd read on the train. Dorian Gray, invincible, lives not his dreams but his nightmares, corrupting his youthful admirers, getting away with murder, escaping retribution, haunting opium dens, pondering his potential for unequalled debauchery.

i come up the stairs, making my way past smiling couples that group around a band of street musicians, playing out of all things Rossini's Thieving Magpie and all i can think of is Alex & his droogs engaging in random acts of gratuitous violence.

Alex & his droogs

for a moment, i feel quite out of place, travelling through the happy evening light, among the lively chatter of bars and market stalls shrouded in my little cloud of gloomy thoughts. but then fortunately i am not a teenager anymore - i can experience situations and the feelings that come with them without having to physically place myself in them, through literature.

what matters is not potential, there is far too much of it and life is too short to ponder it. what matters is what we choose not to realize. i think of it like an inverse allegory of the cave, maybe there is more out there, inside me, that i have not seen but i am better off only seeing the shadows of.

as A Clockwork Orange asks the question of how we can be truly good if we lack the potential to be evil, Dorian Gray asks the reverse question of whether we would realise out worst impulses if given the chance.

it seems to me that the cushy pillows of modern medicine, economic well-being, recreational substances, and city life - we choose to keep relations as close or superficial as we wish - all give us that chance but thankfully, for most of us the answer is still no.

the potential, though, exists, and art can be an outlet for it. so what draws artists to think about darkness, what drew me to the infernal image? maybe the fascination with what is in all of us, curiosity to explore strange possibilities, and discover beauty in them.
entertaining? certainly. educational? probably. boring? never!

i arrive at my destination with a smile on my face and spend a lovely evening barbecueing with friends.

selected quotations from The Picture of Dorian Gray

my italics

The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly--that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one's self.

... a psychological study of a certain young Parisian who spent his life trying to realize in the nineteenth century all the passions and modes of thought that belonged to every century except his own, and to sum up, as it were, in himself the various moods through which the world-spirit had ever passed, loving for their mere artificiality those renunciations that men have unwisely called virtue, as much as those natural rebellions that wise men still call sin.

He sought to elaborate some new scheme of life that would have its reasoned philosophy and its ordered principles, and find in the spiritualizing of the senses its highest realization.

... But it appeared to Dorian Gray that the true nature of the senses had never been understood, and that they had remained savage and animal merely because the world had sought to starve them into submission or to kill them by pain, instead of aiming at making them elements of a new spirituality, of which a fine instinct for beauty was to be the dominant characteristic. As he looked back upon man moving through history, he was haunted by a feeling of loss. So much had been surrendered! and to such little purpose! There had been mad wilful rejections, monstrous forms of self-torture and self-denial, whose origin was fear and whose result was a degradation infinitely more terrible than that fancied degradation from which, in their ignorance, they had sought to escape;

... Yes: there was to be ... a new Hedonism that was to recreate life and to save it from that harsh uncomely puritanism that is having, in our own day, its curious revival. It was to have its service of the intellect, certainly, yet it was never to accept any theory or system that would involve the sacrifice of any mode of passionate experience. Its aim, indeed, was to be experience itself, and not the fruits of experience, sweet or bitter as they might be. Of the asceticism that deadens the senses, as of the vulgar profligacy that dulls them, it was to know nothing. But it was to teach man to concentrate himself upon the moments of a life that is itself but a moment.

Is insincerity such a terrible thing? I think not. It is merely a method by which we can multiply our personalities.

Such, at any rate, was Dorian Gray's opinion. He used to wonder at the shallow psychology of those who conceive the ego in man as a thing simple, permanent, reliable, and of one essence. To him, man was a being with myriad lives and myriad sensations, a complex multiform creature that bore within itself strange legacies of thought and passion, and whose very flesh was tainted with the monstrous maladies of the dead. ... Were his own actions merely the dreams that the dead man had not dared to realize?

Dorian Gray had been poisoned by a book. There were moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through which he could realize his conception of the beautiful.

an apology

i don't mind your presence
but you don't belong here
she doesn't like you
but i don't agree

i could leave you alone
but then
you'd just run about aimlessly
never finding what you are looking for

you don't know it
what do you know anyway
but you are going nowhere
i'll make it easier for you

curled up
hugging yourself
you look cute
while you are dying

to the Armadillidium i washed from the bathroom floor