No Team in I

One current cultural complex alternates between the values of being on a team, or just following a leader. Usually one expects that moderation works best, but in this case a genius or gifted leader can be the right choice, though having a strong team is important as well. It’s illustrated well in the fortunes of sports franchises.

No question a perfect ruler is a wonderful thing – in politics, business, or sports. Almost superhuman, always making the right decisions. Lifting all those around with a series of almost miraculous performances and decisions.

On the other hand, single rule has issues too, well beyond whether the leader is always right. Illness, corruption, burn out and a general malaise on the part of anyone not in the charmed circle. A wonderful leader is often a short-term solution, and one which simply leaves a bigger mess to clean up when it ends .

There is also the unfortunate tendency of such strong personalities to assume they are gods, placed well above all mortals, and deserving of worship. Like the ancient Greek pantheon, they may become irrationally bitter or destructive over the smallest perceived slight .

Unlike those gods, they do usually require some kind of team to accomplish their whims. Alas, poor Zeus.

Alas, the rest of us.

Making Criminals

We are each guilty. As the Bible says “let him that is without sin cast the first stone”. Going through a red light as it changes from yellow. A few miles over the 15 mph speed limit. Fudging an application slightly from need or vanity .

Life isn’t fair. Being nice when accosted by the police sometimes gets you off with a warning (unless they’re too far behind on quota.) Sometimes they don’t like your looks. A fine or court appearance – it’s a free country except for time, hassle, and in some cases expenses for a lawyer. We won’t even mention bribes.

But the point is, if somebody doesn’t like you – the police, the actual officer, the people controlling the police – you are going to be harassed as a criminal for something or other. Even if “proven innocent” later, the loss of reputation, not to mention loss of time and energy – can be significant. Often that’s the point of the whole thing .

Juries were supposed to be the backstop. And maybe they were in the slow old rural days. Now they can be as intimidated as anyone else, and the massive loss and time of a trial makes an awful lot of folks accept a plea deal just to get back to normal .

When the judicial system rots from above or within, well, we’ve seen the results in Stalinist Russia and a bunch of other places. Maybe coming soon to a courtroom near you .

Goals

Goals are one of our most fragile, useful, illusions. Although they may help focus our activities, they are subject to constant change and apt to be overruled any instant by some contradictory pursuit. Not to mention modified or severely disrupted by changes in environmental reality .

But, as noted, they are useful anyway. I like to work at making my art better – although exactly what that means is tenuous. Draw more accurately? Accent a personal style? Create something beautiful? Yes, well, okay …

There is usually a question of trade-offs – enjoy that donut or continue the diet? More seriously, how willing should we be to direct all our energies towards a relatively exclusive vision. Trying to be the “best” at something, if done to exclusion, may “work” but leave us damaged or unable to do much else .

I’ve learned to accept reevaluation of goals as a normal part of consciousness. No doubt aided by being older, when it is only prudent to find time scale shrinking and capabilities more limited. I no longer try to run fast, nor to walk 15 or so miles. I do adjust to walking “briskly” on hills, and I’m satisfied if I do a few miles or so .

Thus also with my artwork. And, honestly, an awful lot of my daily moments. Sad, I suppose, from the goal orientation of youth. Which has faded, as all illusions do .

Binocular

Old Dutch Master still lifes make you think you can lift flowers or bugs off the painted surface. Modern photographs have the same effect. Yet in a very real way, they do not match the reality we inhabit .

Two eyes let us see – especially nearby – in parallax to be able to judge depth. For distant objects, of course, we have other references like size and haze and perspective, but they can be quite deceptive. In the real world it has been important to us primates to be able to focus in this weird binocular manner to better use our hands for handling fruit and tools .

That is a long prologue to today’s rant about cults – religious, secular, or political. Cults have beliefs that are strictly monocular. They have little depth and allow by definition for no other viewpoint. The strictest cult outlooks don’t even let one move one’s head to get a better or different view – that’s the definition of “heresy” .

Current culture has unfortunately devolved into a set of cults. Perhaps a saving grace is that complex humans can believe in more than one cult – often contradictory – at the same time .

Binocular vision and its philosophic implications is a gift from the universe we should always acknowledge gratefully .

AI and Pride

Perhaps we have all turned into John Henry, pounding railroad spikes trying to beat a machine. Artists are confronted with the same situation as other intellectual occupations – what used to take skill, pride, thought, and time can now be done by any teenager in a dull moment. The internet is flooded with AI images, movies, stories. Work has similarly vanished. Some of us remain luddites, stubbornly sticking to brush and pencil. Why? A waste of time…

But is it ?

Climbing a mountain or hiking in a forest is not the same as viewing a YouTube video of the adventure (not even – as technology advances – an IMAX immersion). Things we do for ourselves have both an outer and an inner component .

Accomplishment of something difficult brings pride. Even if it is only pounding spikes. Or painting a canvas .

The key is that doing something you like to do, either for the activity itself or for recognition, is a kind of play. The same task forced on you (especially repetitively) is a chore or boring job. We should avoid confusing the two .

Mankind evolved with hand coordination. In spite of our big brains, we remain a physically oriented species. I think AI art robs both the creator and the audience of that heritage. Except for the brief thrill of novelty, pride and satisfaction are completely missing .

Crude

I was raised in a fairly middling environment. Certainly not poverty nor even “salt of the Earth”, but not high end aristocratic. As I matured, I lost most ambitions of pretentiousness in my quotidian pleasures. I call it my crude peasant outlook .

For example, I enjoy a good steak. I do not go into purple prose ecstasy over exactly how wonderful it is – subtle flavors, tenderness, whatever. I find sauces and garnishes excessive. It’s just a good steak, another fine meal .

Most of the world I read about now seems to have passed me by. Pretentiousness reigns supreme. The “right things” are so much better. Handbags, salads, shoes, schools, cars, swimming pools … The internet sorts it all out for you to aid your expensive tastes .

I don’t pretend I like awful stuff. A dinner of peas and gruel is not enjoyable. Ratty clothes are terrible. But the level of relatively common, useful, and affordable stuff is quite high. And I try to appreciate it .

All in all, I find my crude peasant world a land of luxury and enchantment. I rarely envy all those others who mostly seem to scurry about hoping others will notice and envy them. That pretentiousness seems a terrible waste of our human gift of existence .

Fad Awareness

My wife has an amazing tendency to closely inspect only what she is interested in at the moment. It is honestly a trait most of us in this culture share. The forest is too huge, even the tree too complicated, so we examine each leaf as if it were the most important object in the environment .

That’s how our current “influencers” make money. Each proclaims the leaf they happen to be viewing as the most essential key to life. And lazy folks with no time for intellectual depth follow them for the sheer fun of it, like riding on an amusement park structure .

More unfortunately, religions and political movements have the same tendency. Seize on one or two narrow perspectives and defend them fiercely, ignoring forests, trees, and all the other leaves around them. Existence becomes tied to one or two holy objects. They compose essays, songs, poems, slogans. But beware if such gain power !

For most of us, as for my wife, it’s all a game of short-lived variety. A way to enhance each moment by becoming enchanted with the trivial .

But it’s no way to run a civilization .

Risk/Reward

Anyone can anecdotally give good reasons for never using an automobile. High on the list is a possibility of a deadly accident, examples of which abound. And yet, in this culture just about everyone uses a car all the time. Math has little to do with it. Nor do the horrible examples of mangled bodies. “Common sense” tells us that in spite of possible danger, it is far more useful to go places in a vehicle than to stay home. Unfortunately, such “common sense” is in short supply in other areas of our lives involving risk/reward .

Actually, anyone closely involved in a fatal accident either involving themselves or someone close to them wants to blame someone. The car manufacturer, road maintenance, whatever. And they rush about telling one and all about what must be done, maybe avoid cars at all cost .

That isn’t effective with stuff people are very familiar with. True “common sense” kicks in.

But in areas that are less well or less easily understood, anecdotes seem to rule. Medicines, laws, even right or wrong. Too esoteric to be easily understood. ” I know a man who …”, “I had a cousin who…”,” once I was …”.

All true. All irrelevant. When people try to make risk zero, as any entrepreneur can explain, reward vanishes .

Too Complicated

Our grandchild in fourth grade is being subjected to the “new math” curriculum. It is supposedly to encourage “curiosity about math”, and by implication the world .

I spent a little time teaching young children. In my opinion, the primary purpose of elementary school is socialization. Immersing children in the social mythology and tribal culture which they will grow into. That’s why I have always thought “homeschooling” was bad, because it missed that point and in many cases isolated kids from their future normality .

Learning at elementary levels should not be designed to “evoke curiosity”. Young humans are born curious. Nor are many children nor parents destined to become mathematicians. They simply want to use rote math facts and formulas in a complex world. No real need to “understand” why 2 + 2 = 4 – it just does! And that is useful at the grocery store .

Putting professional mathematicians – or professionals of any other academic subject – in charge of elementary curriculums was insane and wrong .

It is destroying what was once a noble pillar of our common culture.

Absolute

Real life is messy and full of contradictions. What feels bad might be good for you, what feels good might be bad. What works in one situation might not in the next. Rational people – whom we like to consider “sane” – understand this .

There seems to be a troubling trend, in times of complexity and change, for many people to drift towards absolutes. In an absolute frame of mind, there is no mess nor contradiction. A crystal clear vision separates everything into right and wrong, or some equivalent binary division .

Such a viewpoint does not allow for trade-off or risk/reward. It never deals in percentages nor probabilities. It does not allow for meaningful dialogue – all that can be discussed is how any other viewpoint is obviously wrong. The only mental movement must be toward whatever revealed “truth”.

It is of course comforting to join a cult of absolute believers. They can reinforce and magnify any belief so strongly that anything contrary – words, events, outcomes – cannot be accepted as “real.” Anything except the absolute is mistaken “lies”.

The internet is said to lead many down “rabbit holes”. At the bottom of each of these is some form of absolute. Sane people may deplore what is happening online. But unfortunately, sane people are in short supply and decreasing rapidly .