Ok, I think I'm going to lose some of my timidity here, and begin to lay out my heart and the details of lots of models which I have put together over the years about things. I realize that most USAer folks who read my words will misconstrue them. Because the premises behind many of my models is so far outside the box, they won't know how to make heads or tails of what I'm saying. However, this blog is not really written for a general audience anyway, and the real people I'm trying to reach here with my words are the folks who have put some time previously into looking at the world around them and pondering it - dispensing with preconceptions, and looking at things with a fresh perspective.

Hmmm...

It seems to me that there are two types of people in this world. There are those who love to muse about things, and those who spend their lives posturing and trying to get ahead for themselves. 95% of folks are in the second group. They learn to put on different airs which would seem to be meet for the situation. And they are struggling like salmon who swim upstream, to make their way for themselves in life. There are very few people who have sat down and thought deeply about all the different issues in life for themselves. People who muse a lot are very few and far between. A person who has thought deeply about life will recognize where the solutions are to the problems he or she sees around him. He will understand how trends take shape in small groups of people and large groups of folks, and he will work to push constructive trends whenever he gets a chance. This type of person cares deeply about other people. Unfortunately, because the posturers in our world are the larger group of folks, they tend to form consensuses about things among themselves, and they then tend to view the thinkers as being odd, because their premises with which they are building their models are always somewhat "outside the box," as it were. Deep thinking folks in the usa are really quite the objects of scorn, although because we are immersed in our society, we often become oblivious to this.

Another commonality among us deep thinking folks is that we tend to be very enamored with the idea of expressing affection through touch. Anybody who has run through all the models on that social custom sees the very profound value in it. Children in our society are always touching and caressing and being caressed. It's considered fundamentally important for young children to receive this kind of physical affection. However, adults in north america tend to get very weird attitudes about touch. There is lots of anxiety about what is termed "sexual attraction" (in quotes because I question the premises behind "sexual attraction", and really the entire context around that subject). In fact, more often than not, males in our society tend to completely conflate affection with sexual attraction, and then because of the problematic nature of sexual attraction as it shows on a person's face in different situations, they then proceed to push affection out of their lives altogether. Rejecting the custom of giving and receiving affection tends to make males in our society cold and distant.

No one is as troubled by this trepidation that our society has when it comes to expressing affection, as us deep-thinking folks. Because we are socially progressive in our outlook, and because caring deeply about those around us is so central to our way of life, many of us will tend to mix in that sexual attraction subtext with our affection which we show to other adults around us - especially younger adults. And those of us who are younger tend to be unnerved by that, because of what our society has taught us about such things. The upshot of this, is that younger thinkers are put off from hooking up with those who have more years behind them. And where young people ought to get mentorship - they instead embark on a long and lonely plod through life - among shallow posturers who can never appreciate them for who they are.

There is a whole vast sea of needy people out there who need our help. However, if we thinkers cannot even succeed in hooking up with eachother, we will never have the stamina or the resources to be able to help the needy masses.

explanation: I know some who are casually reading this essay will miss the context of what I'm saying here, because in your opinion the erudite of society are in the halls of universities completing their phds... or are doing some very important scientific research on this matter or that one. I am not referring to those people. I don't think of such folks as "deep thinking" people - even though they have a vast and wordy vocabulary that I'm sure would daunt any of us, when we tried to read their papers. For the most part, traditional intellectuals stay within the frameworks of the ideas of those around them. They are simply reiterating a point made by someone else at some other time. Those folks who I'm addressing in this piece, I believe will recognize who they are.

Sometimes I'm fascinated at how little a society looks in the mirror to see itself as it actually is. Stereotypes and prejudices occur only in moments of lack of clarity about the society one lives in. There are very profound differences in the culture of the West Coast cities, versus the inland areas of small towns and rural life in north america. I remember seeing this same cultural divide when I visited Queensland Australia for a month with a highschool class science trip many years ago. There is animosity from the city people towards the country people, and there is suspicion and scorn from the country people towards the city people.

There are differences in body language you see in people who have been raised in a windswept humid city, when you compare them to those folks who were raised on the sunny plains. Self-consciousness (ie shyness) is expressed differently in these different environments. Thoughtfulness also produces different types of body language.

The thing that I find most fascinating about this cultural divide is the fact that it seems in different locations there are customary ways in which self-consciousness is expressed by a large segment of society. If anyone is at wit's end that day, she or he knows that she can go out about her business, and if she shows her shyness and confusion in a particular fashion, it will be accepted as normal for a person having a bad day, or for someone who is feeling stressed out. The odd thing is, that the customary shyness routine becomes really viewed with sincere suspicion when that person moves to the other climate. And even those who consider themselves to be social progressives are vulnerable to the prejudice towards this very foreign kind of body language. When I was growing up in a west coast city, I remember always being aware of this cloud of suspicion around people who tended to stare a little bit too long off into the distance. Where I live now in the rocky mountains, I have discovered the matching prejudice. Here, the suspicion surrounds people with faltering speech patterns, or who blink too much. These behaviors are quite normal body language within the context of the society where a person was raised. But a cloud of suspicion will follow the hapless soul everywhere he goes if he or she demonstrates these kinds of patterns of body language when living within that different society elsewhere on the continent.

These differences in body language have to do with the fact that when the humidity goes up, and the wind blows, the eyes are prompted to blink more frequently. And this leads thoughtfulness to often be expressed on the west coast by a body language of gazing off into the distance and blinking. On the plains and in the rocky mountains, where it is drier, thoughtfulness is expressed with a gaze which has a lot less eye motion.

It's definitely a culture shock to move to a place which is different from where you were raised. Changing around all of one's body language routines to match with the tastes and social expectations of a new community is no small feat. And then, of course, when you return to the place of your birth, you face suspicion if you cannot immediately shift gears back into the kind of body language which is appropriate for that other climate.

So here I continue my weblog soliloquy. Hmmm...

To touch base with what I was writing about earlier, soon after I wrote that piece about excellence not being appreciated in the usa... I realized that problem is within the context of a larger problem - one where mediocrity is not given a place where it can do good and benefit the world. It seems that novices and beginners in all endeavors in the usa get very little appreciation and help from others. They get no guidance. I have really been interested in Canada recently. And one thing that I see up there which I really admire, is that there are constructs in place to help people who are mediocre at music, at writing, at film, or at other kinds of things. The parameters that novices are given to work within allows their work to go on to really have a good effect on society.

On another topic, I was at a formal party tonight and it was an interesting opportunity to muse about how I and all my peers who are entering middle age are doing in our lives. How are we influencing the world? What pathway are we on?

I have a suggestion for my peers and for everybody really... It's very important as one goes through life, to have mused deeply enough about how the world works to understand the value in ideas, and to understand how trends are set, and how they spin into motion. Too many people, as Henry David Thoreau said "...live lives of quiet desperation." Interestingly enough in this hyper modern era, it's just as true as it was in his era of the 1850s. And the problem seems to be that people don't take the time to muse deeply enough. They don't reach out and suck the marrow out of life, in this way. People try desperately to get ahead by conforming to one social form or another. Stop, people. Sit down and think for awhile. If a person has a broad enough perspective on things, she or he will make every action something that is calculated to better the lot of the people around her. That person will laugh with joy when there is something in the humour which represents a good trend which will lead people to see the world more clearly, and be able to live more deftly.

I have been fascinated with the movement around tourist towns. I live in one myself - a ski/college town in the Rocky mountains. It's a wonderful place to live. The ethic of adult play, the importance of being warm and friendly towards travelers, and the ethic of helping the young work together to produce a marvelous zeitgeist for the community.

How did the tourist town movement get started? It seems to have been the "act locally, think globally crowd" who were artists and craftspeople that decided to move to small rural communities and begin to remake them. These towns often have all the wonderful amenities of the big cities - performing arts, ethnic restaurants, and other stuff, along with the warmth and friendliness of a town, where you can walk down the street and often run into people you know.

The metaphor that comes to mind is seeing a child being born. The rural areas of north america have been an excellent uterus. People in rural communities have very high social and ethical standards. They have an ethic of friendliness, of opennness, and of smiling at your neighbors (including children) who you pass by on the street.

So, I muse to myself, "where can we start an even bigger and more glorious social happening?" Well, it seems to me that Canada would be an even more magnificent uterus, so to speak, for a baby of a new kind of community.

I remember a song from the 1980s which always has brought tears to my eyes. The Dream Academy's "Life in a Northern Town" - the message in that song seems to be a call out to folks south of the border to come north and help out revitalize the communities of the far north.

I just realized today that our society in the usa is one where people are not accustomed to giving thanks to those who produce excellence.

There is a way that the passion of people gets expressed when they find excellent stuff. They generally get passionate about the parameters the artist or maker of the good has set out for herself or himself, which will let her produce that good or service. What's the passion over free music downloading via napster, or pirate bay, or limewire? Well, the passion of people who tout the ideas of Lawrence Lessig when they talk about their love of getting free stuff off of the internet has some roots. It originates in the fact that people have been desperate for good music and good film which the behemoth music and film industries in the usa are not producing. Folks are finally finding quality stuff out there on the internet, and they see that those who produce that kind of good art are choosing to usually make it available for free.

In the same way, people have become passionate about shopping at health food stores, which inundate us with exciting and exotic new kinds of foods, with pretty packaging, and interesting flavors and textures.

Another movement I have seen rise in my lifetime has been the outdoor movement. People are passionate about getting all this cool gear. When I was a kid in the 1970s, the standard for camping equipment was army surplus or things from the Coleman company. But there was one trend setting company who seemed to change all that - the REI cooperative built a new store in seattle in the 1980s, which strove to support upstart equipment manufacturers who had creative ideas, and produced things in smaller quantities.

But these passions that people have about the business strategies of folks do not translate to actual words of appreciation to those who produce excellent things. I have, in recent years, become very fond of the computer manufacturer: Asus... They make high quality computer equipment... but I haven't written them any letters of thanks or appreciation. Their slogan: "Rock Solid, heart touching," while very original and very nice, seems almost kind of odd exactly because "heart touching" implies some sort of human exchange of appreciation between consumers and producers of equipment. And that just doesn't happen in the usa.

So musing about why our society has become so thankless towards people who's work is otherwise very appreciated, I asked myself why. Well, the thing that I've seen in my lifetime has been the wild fandom that surrounded musicians. Fan comes from the word "fanatic" - and those music afficiandos who expressed their appreciation to the artist became seen as a nuisance. I haven't been to a rock concert in a long time. I live in a little tourist town, which doesn't often get itself on the tour map of folks. But as I remember rock concerts from my teen years... the enthusiasm seemed to surround the fact that there was such a big jump in technical quality when people started buying compact discs rather than vinyl records and cassettes. I kind of feel the same thing is true today about young people's enthusiasm for modern film and video games. Even though the quality of the art and storylines is very low... the quality of the technical graphics is just superb. And rock musicians have sought to exploit the passions of their fans, by selling out large stadiums - this is where musicians get most of their money - from performances. Musicians have actively and foolishly encouraged all sorts of out of control fanaticism around their performances, hoping that they will sell more tickets because of it.

So what of fanaticism or fandom? I think that the flames of these passions are fanned intentionally by performers and music marketers. On the other hand, there is certainly a common effect which is completely organic. I was working for a while with a very prestigious musician who had in previous years performed on stage with big name music stars. And I saw an interesting dynamic around her. People who wanted to get to know her would trip over their words and ideas, and somehow wouldn't recognize that they were acting weirdly. When you have placed someone up there on a pedestal in your mind, you tend to think that you can be more childlike around them, I think. One steps back in time to that mode of being a child around parents or caregivers.

Generally, however, expressing appreciation is important. I never get any words of appreciation when I write my ideas in discussion forums on the internet. Usually I get combative people wanting to antagonize or "debate" me. It's quite disheartening. And this phenomenon is one factor in a decision of mine that I will not ever try to make money from publishing my philosophical musings in the usa. People just seem to be too anti-intellectual here. Another big litmus test for me was seeing how Mike Gravel and Dennis Kucinich came to be perceived by the general public during the 2007-2008 presidential campaign. These are two very erudite wise people... but the mainstream media painted them up as if they were cranks - and that's what people came to see them as. Someday, if I emigrate from the usa, then I might decide to publish a book or two. I just don't see it as being a safe lifestyle to be a writer or speaker who talks about grand new ideas in the usa.

There are areas where I do see more appreciation for what I do... working with children, and singing with a small choral group. And these things have consequently become greater passions of mine - although these things will not be things which help me financially with income.

Expressing warmth, affection, and appreciation to folks who produce excellence in a sea of others who produce mediocrity goes a lot farther to encourage those few to produce more of the same than just passionately supporting the parameters they seem to need to produce their material.

The internet is sick.

Why is this so?

Well my notion is that the internet is full of altruists. People work their fingers to the bone on behalf of different causes and agendas. They do all they can to create good things to give to those who come to their websites, but there is no way to make an income from this work that they do. People write for websites such as Wikipedia or Newsvine. People put up videos on youtube, or they create music, and distribute it on peer to peer networks. They seek earnestly to add value to the world they live in. They seek to influence the world, and change things. And yet and still they find nothing but lint when they empty their pockets.

It's been interesting to compare the evolution of attitudes and agendas on the open internet, with the evolution of events at a virtual 3dworld where I like to chat with folks - SecondLife. SecondLife is a healthy place. There are lots of seedy sections, where the avatar motion is really slow, and there are endless streets of empty shopfronts, where people are trying to sell their wares. But there are also very intriguing social dynamics evolving. People are role playing, and designing strategy games, and making nice bungalows where they can invite their real world friends over for tea.

Now the key difference here I would like to point out, is that SecondLife was designed from the bottom up to encourage people to create things, and to buy and sell them. You are taught the skills you need to create these crafts and services, and then you are given the tools with which to start up a business. And having property in SecondLife for a storefront or for your own events is quite expensive. Ideally one should have a private island, and that costs $1000usd initially, and $300usd per month for as long as you hold onto the property. So just like in the real world, having a business requires a certain amount of overhead, which you have to pay each month. The upshot of all of this, is that people get inspired in SecondLife. SecondLife goods and services are not expensive, and there's always stuff available for free, which is given out by people who wish to promote themselves. And I'm sure that most entrepreneurs give up quickly, not having made more than a few dollars. However, the fact that there are at least some ways of pulling in an income which are obvious, means that even if people fail at first, they will remain in good spirits, and become innovative, and some will go on to carve themselves niches which others haven't thought of yet. The upshot of all of this, is that people have hope, and they can see the way forward for themselves.

So my proposal is that just like folks have created so many varieties of discussion board software and blog software in php, that they would also think about creating web software which makes it very easy for the creators of web content, whether it be text, or audio, or video, or whatever - to charge for those who use that content. Paypal has a micropayments system which could be easily plugged in as a back end to web software.

Now, there are those who are petulant and exclaim that everything on the net has to be free. And they might be indignant about this proposal. To address those people... let me say that I think that because of the nature of the computer and the internet, audio, video, text, and imagery will be copied freely and will be shared freely forever. There is no turning back the hands of the clock on the technology. Those who want to conduct business on the internet will have to adapt their strategies to incorporate the zeal of folks who want to get things for free. When Gutenberg's movable type printing press was introduced in the middle of the millenium, it changed the world - and many people were out of work, and many others found new niches for themselves; we're going through a similar revolution now. And looking at SecondLife - I think that even when folks are given the websoftware tools, most people will not be successful with starting a business selling ethereal digital downloads, or content. But they will retain hope and their dignity, and they will begin to see a way forward for themselves where they might succeed as entrepreneurs someday. The wonderful thing about the internet is that it has removed the need for capital for those who wish to start a business.

And from here, I think the social dynamic across the internet would change dramatically. It no longer will be a place of the hippy vision of free sharing and consumption. It will be a vibrant place, where if someone has an idea of some cool project they want to create, she or he will also have the ideas in mind of how to pay for that project. If people can figure out how to pay themselves for their work on the net, this will untie a lot of hands. No longer will the most prevalent internet occupation be coming home from work on a friday afternoon, and writing or reading a sloppy blog entry.

I now have the skills to create this kind of web software using tcl/tk and I have a vision in mind for how I will do it. The question is whether and when I will find the time to set my hand to the project. So I hope others will take this vision as their own as well.

• Interview with Peter Galison - philosophy of science - how do the disciplines interact?

This are some personal musings based on the interview highlighted above. Since the interviewees bridge outward to larger contexts, I feel I can do the same, and metaanalyze the conversants, and generalize about my impressions of where Canada is on it's journey. I have seen the same kind of social dynamic among intellectuals in the usa in previous decades. This is quite an introspective few paragraphs, actually.

This is a very fascinating hour long cbc interview with Peter Galison - it's one in a long series of philosophical musings where different interviewees elaborate on their perspectives about the field of science.

It's very interesting for me to listen to these cbc podcasts. It's almost like stepping back in time to the 1970s and 1980s, for a person like myself who has lived in the usa my entire life. Listening to this podcast today was like lying in a meadow in the summertime, and receiving a massage all over my body by a light breeze which is blowing in. It's really a delightful experience. And as a person who as a child, and as a young man aspired to be an essayist - I can see how I would have envisioned that niche for myself. Sadly, times have changed in the usa, and the social dynamics aren't as they were decades ago. And touching base with Canadian mainstream media is a really excellent opportunity for reflection. I can see that where the people in this conversation are darting back and forth between so many intriguing topics - and exploring all the important contexts - there is an underlying reason for that manner of conversation. And that reason is actually quite a sad one. They are avoiding pointing out the elephants in the room... in order to avoid ruffling feathers. And what this means is that the best and brightest intellectuals of Canada are actually ceding power to those who are verbally combative. The verbally combative are focusing, as they did decades earlier in the usa, on making inroads into the real seats of power - they are going into politics, and seeking to change the face of journalism in Canada, to where it is more like the sensationalistic and moral dualistic journalism to the south of Canada, here in the usa.

Today, in the usa, there is no place for thinkers, anymore. There's too much jeering and cheering going on by folks who wish to make intellectual discourse a spectator sport. It's just not safe for a philosophical thinker in the usa. And thus the quality of many things goes through the floor - music, film, television... etcetera. Antagonism rules the roost here in the usa.

It's fascinating that after living a few decades, you can look at other nations, and view them in much the same way as you look at young people, who you can see would be headed for all the same mistakes you, yourself have made, if they continue on their current course. I hope they change that course.

At any rate, this is a great interview. But one elephant in the room which is not frankly addressed is the fact that specious ideas oftentimes become mainstream in science. People need to think critically about scientific research, and not blindly give credence to things simply because these folks are considered to be the professionals. This need for independent logical critical assessment of the issues in the world was very much emphasized by the philosophers of the past - people like Immanuel Kant.

I think it's very important that we think about social standards. I was raised in a west coast city, and I am always surprised when I go back to that city, to witness the social dynamics which are there. I was raised in a relatively wealthy suburb, and went to highschool in the poorer african american neighborhood in the inner city. Given it was so long ago for me, and I have grown so much and changed... I am dumbstruck when I see that there is still this barrier between the brown and the beige people in that city. The problem seems to arise out of the fact that the african americans are more gregarious, and outgoing than their attitude... and the ethnically european folks love their walled gardens. So there are two different sets of criteria - and neither set of people really ever live up to the standards of the other folks.

It's also interesting to see the attitude people have towards the neighborhood I grew up in as a child. People view that rich suburb as being "snobbish." "Snobbery" is a fascinating word. There really is no substance to the concept... it's a word that has to do with a stereotype of folks who live in neatly trimmed, relatively well off communities. The secret to such a happy community is not the money that's there - but instead, it's the fact that people keep themselves and eachother to a certain level of social standards. Outsiders are very much averse to this practice. In most of that metropolis, people have a very profound ethic that one should leave one's neighbors alone to do whatever they wish, however they wish to do it.

It's clear which neighborhoods have the better standard of living. And I really am always quizzical about the "cold" attitude of the european americans in the houses gridded throughout the main portion of that city. They're not happy in their lives. They don't smile at their neighbors when they pass them on the street. They live with eyesores two blocks away where businesses refuse to maintain their property properly.

If people want to have a decent quality of life, they have to be engaged with their neighborhood. They need to have a neighborhood coalition. They need to meet regularly to discuss the concerns that homeowners and renters have. They need to be cohesive as a community. There needs to be enough trust in the neighborhood, that people feel free to smile at children who are passing by on their way home from school.

One of the writers on the internet who I admire quite a bit is Dave Pollard. I actually don't read him often... and I think that he gets too much into the gritty details when writing about issues... and that he might not be targeting the needs of his readers as well as he could. But then, what thinker/essayist always does?

I really admire his vision of making an umbrella project where he seeks to cater to many different needs and interests which his readers would have.

In my estimation - nurture should be a prime directive for every one of us. We ought to do what we can to help those around us who are younger, and in need of guidance, direction, mentorship, or whatever.

I've been seeking to do this for several years at different discussion boards, but it doesn't always work. On larger boards it's sometimes impossible to turn around a zeitgeist from the chaos that reigns when people all want to interject their complaint and invective.

There's only so much you can do with a one-way medium like I have here at this website. I am almost ready to go live with a discussion forum I've created. That'll be nice, and there will be a link to it at the top of this page.

But I want to see what kind of cool thing I can build at this website under my name, as well. Maybe, for awhile, I'll copy Dave's example - in my own way.