Cedar and Pine

Comprehending the World through Narrative

There is a growing problem of the global trend. As we continue to create a more connected world, it becomes almost obvious that although ideas are created by normal, average individuals, they are more easily exploited and made a profit from larger entities. Instead of trying to create a more egalitarian world, the larger actors of the worl stage continue to dominate the markets and indeed the trends that become popular from year to year. There are amazing artists, musicians, and writers that may never be heard in this hemisphere not only because of their location but because of their class and ability to be heard. This is farily obvious, and yet, frustratingly enough we treat large trends as if they’re dictated naturally by the world. We look at yoga and see it as some national creation of India that has some foreign unnatural power to change who we are fundamentally. We attribute whole countries with levels of sophistication or primitiveness. The question I wish to pose is, can we live in a world where we don’t create fetish objects of people and ideas. Can we go beyond archetypes. It seems that a fundamental problem of our global civilization is our unstoppable ability to create stories out of the ordinary. We create narrative structures out of the mundane and yet on the other end we bring world events into our homes as if they can be comprehended so simply. 

The question becomes, what do we do with these narratives and how can we live beyond them? Beyond simply living a meaningful life (which is what this narrative problem actually creates), we must create a world that we must treat as reality and not simply narrative.

And yet, I feel remiss to bring up the importance of narrative structures; how they reveal our inner processes and reveal our ability to convey importance. It seems that we must find a middle path, or perhaps a path outside of our standard attempts to built context. Can we create stories without heroes, where there are no endings but continuums instead? And if so, would this destroy the fundamentals of not only creating history but creating meaning in life?

The Stereotype of East Asians

Commercials often do more than sell you a product, they also try to tell you what the culture is, which can be misconstrued as “correct culture”. In many ways these commercials speak for themselves but I think it is important to note that these commercials are only a small part of the rather large concepts of what it is to be Asian in America. Although we frequently target Asians as the model immigrant, it is worth noting that that isn’t how they are all treated. The model immigrant is one sided as a racialized and racist construction.

The “Asian” in the contemporary commercial is never simply a human being but a caricature as old as “Mr. Unagi” from Karate Kid. The idea of the strict Asian mentor is far from helpful in destroying old stereotypes. Of course, now it turns into a joke in itself but it simply builds on the old one instead of destroying it.

It doesn’t just treat them as a race of martial art experts, notably as buffoons. Commercials treat them as demure, passive individuals. I had previously posted this video on my previous website but I think it deserves repeating. I’m not suggesting that anyone needs to be loud and proud about their sex life but to be unable to talk about it all is another thing.

The Matrix and Fanaticism

The Matrix, first film

The Matrix is treated, by its audience, as a film that reveals the reality behind the illusion. However, the film, and the series as a whole, frequently reveals the insecurity of reality. In this way the film alters the identity of the hero, Neo, not as a superman but as a child. Within the film we see that Neo’s power exists solely in the Matrix, outside he is quite normal and suffers from the same basic existence as everyone else. As a child, his power is half illusion and half imparted by a larger world (imparted like the stakes we put in a child’s safety and education).

The Matrix is a creation by the Machines but the human resistance are the ones who seem to benefit from it the most. They roam the Matrix as chic desperadoes and give the audience the pleasure of seeing high adrenaline combat. Although humans are treated as an energy supply, they benefit from this system in a rather benign way. The question that Morpheus never seems to get around is what is the negative result of being in the Matrix? The Morpheus implies the illusion is the ultimate transgression.

In our introduction to Neo the film features the hero selling some illicit product and he makes reference to not knowing if he is awake or dreaming, followed by a comment about needing to unplug. Instead of looking at the allusion of the latter, we should look at the philosophy of the former. Within the film, we realize that all of humanity is “dreaming” lulled to this state by the nameless and featureless Machines and policed internally by the Agents. Outside the Matrix we have the Real. No structure, no community, just isolation (at least this is initially what Neo wakes up to. Not recognizing himself or his surroundings). For some reason, Morpheus wants to present the Real to all of humanity. But why? What is Morpheus’ end game? If it is to recreate human society-why bother unplugging people from the Matrix? We find later in explaining the rules of the program to Neo, that every citizen can become an agent (that is lose bodily control to one of them) at any time. On one level this is a repurposing of the Cold War threat, of the zombie genre, but on the 21^st century level. It reveals that the enemy is not only the destruction of the Machines and the Matrix but the shattering of the lived illusion, Morpheus and his band are techno-terrorists.

In the disco scene, the first meeting between our hero and the heroine, Trinity approaches Neo as a recruiter—essentially lying to him. He is being hunted, but only because he is being recruited. If it weren’t for Morpheus’ search, Neo would have nothing to worry about from the Agents. She gives him the propaganda of a pilgrim -“I know what you’re searching for…” 

Morpheus and his cell suffer from a sense of slave morality, they see the Machines as part of a system that causes them ill, even though the true by product is a malleable virtual world. For the Machines this is hardly the case, they have provided home and shelter for all of humanity and yet Morpheus resents this forced choice. How would Morpheus act in our world, would he take down the first world countries that oppress all other global non-contenders? He resents in the Machines in a Nietzschean sense. His resentment is aimed not at his immediate world but within the world of the Matrix. Morpheus does not care for Reality but for destroying illusion.

When Morpheus and Neo finally meet, we are confronted with an odd bit of dialogue—Neo is questioned in his belief in fate, in which Neo says, no, he doesn’t like anyone controlling his life. And yet, we later learn, he is the One, that his life is pre-ordained. It is not his own life, he belongs like a monument, to the world. The film frequently skirts with a certain level of Christian religiosity. Always stuck between ordination and individuation, but never quite resolving it in a meaningful way. 

Morpheus reveals that the Matrix is reification, the packaged world (Total Recall created a similar vision a decade earlier, with the same pill motif)—he shows Neo the Truth, which is quite arguably Morpheus’ truth, born from his experience. When Morpheus admits the history has been lost, why is it clear that the Machines won the war?  Why isn’t it the narrative of the machines slaved to human consciousness, forced to tend to human bodies for their own goo? Upon leaving the Matrix, the first conversation between Neo and Morpheus is the revelation that it is at least a century in the future. This is of interest because the where and the when become the same question. The idea of place is a matter of time and space as they orient ones actions together. 

Once Morpheus brings Neo into the Construct it becomes evident—as in most cases—that even though the foal is to destroy the Matrix, one cannot go through life without it. As Morpheus says, the Construct gives them anything they may need. He further explains that the Real is based off of perception, there is no “real.” However, Morpheus claims the Matrix is control and yet the Matrix gives humanity a wider array of choice than the reality outside the Matrix. In the film, Morpheus reveals himself to be, what we would call, a fundamentalist. He sees the world in a conservative narrow minded way. When Neo asks if the Construct is real, Morpheus leaves it to Neo’s perception to define it, but for Morpheus it is quite clear that there is nothing real about the Matrix or the Construct program.

The Christian mythos of the films creates a tentative balance within the film. We can see the evil through slave morality, we resent the machines even though their actions can also be viewed as good or even benevolent through master morality. Because the narrative is created through Christianity, the need for priests to abhor is unnecessary, the Matrix becomes all encompassing as a hate machine. The idea that the last “human city” is Zion, is almost laughable; we identify the city as the last bastion against the Machine hordes.

After the well known leap of faith sequence in the film, Neo is next shown the fact that the system is the enemy. Made clear with the woman in red. Morpheus declares that those in the system are the enemy until they are liberated from it. In this sequence, we see the fundamentalist approach—I may be trying to save you but because you are not yet a convert, you are also the enemy. “If you’re not one of us, you’re one of them,” he says. 

When Cypher is working on his traitorous plot, he reveals the futility of fighting a system that feels good. He intones that ignorance is bliss but in reality it is the knowledge he has acquired that has led him to such actions. He wants to not only trade in reality, he wants to trade in suffering for what amounts to heaven, he wants to be a rock star, someone important. 

Perhaps one of the best conversations within the film is presented by the character Mouse about, literally, taste. What is it that reality tastes like? It boils down to the most basic question of the film—what is the real and do I have a choice in the matter? The world within the Matrix raises the question of the point of existence, if we are the machine, what is the point? While life outside the Matrix has a grand purpose—to fight the Machine and the lowly existence within.

On the drive to the Oracle, Neo realizes that his memories are false, none of the events in his life are real. But in truth, this is wrong. The events did occur, just not in the reality he is not acquainted with. Trinity comments that the Matrix cannot tell you who you are but surely neither can the world outside the Matrix. Reality is what we make of it and respond to stimuli based off our experienced past. Neo is wrong, he experiences his world from the perspective of what he lived. 

Once the film moves past the Oracle scene, it becomes one long dramatic action thread, that ups the ante of the climax, the philosophy of the film is almost entirely dropped. Instead the film takes up the action film premise that the audience was looking for.

Cypher offers a rather succinct response to Morpheus’ fundamentalism. While he is of pulling the plug of his compatriots he compares the world of the Matrix to the military order of the real world. Which one offers him the most freedom? And then he pulls the plug on his shipmates and Trinity is the one who watches them die within the Matrix. The murder is transcendental between the two worlds.

Agent Smith elaborate during the torture seen that perhaps humanity sees itself in its own suffering. Then he continues further that humanity lives within the Machines’ civilization—and this where the dichotomy arises. We can now see that Morpheus fights agains the colonization of humanity, humanity is dictated by a system outside their construct, even as it mirrors their own system.

The film overall has a great amount of action fodder and more than the other two films in the trilogy, this film feeds not only a desire for action but also delves into baseline philosophical musings. Admittedly some of these musings do become rather interesting to contemplate. However, within the film actions often do not pan out along philosophical lines. Very little is thought out. One wonders when one will finally say “So after we defeat the Matrix, then what?” But Morpheus becomes unconcerned about the what next, fully incited by the now. Perhaps this is the most realistic quality of the film, Morpheus does not care for the result of his actions. After all, if any person in the Matrix can become an Agent (if you’re not one of us, you’re one of them) then would liberation mean the destruction of everyone in the Matrix and if so, why bother at all? Morpheus is part of the vanguard, something that becomes more clear in the following movies. He is very much on his own, his religious belief in the One/Neo reveals that his eschatological beliefs revolve in a different orbit than the others in his world.

The First Decade of the 21st Century

As we close out the year 2011, I can’t help but think of how changes eras and decades are hardly demarcated by easily defined base-ten markings. For example, the Clinton era and grunge music seems to demarcate the 90s, despite two years of the 90s already existing. Even in viewing larger historical consequences, Americans are taught that with the end of World War II, the 1950s began. Of course there are always transitions but it seems that certain events are viewed with such clarity as to easily pin point the instance of changes; others only in retrospect.

It seems that it would be easy to simply say the first decade of the 21st century is simply the “Bush era” or the era of the War on Terror; that from September 11th to the assassination of Osama Bin Laden easily demarcates the cultural shift in America. However, we can go beyond the decade of trauma and look at the shift in personal culture. As we often look at the decade as the era of drone warfare, extraordinary rendition, and other synonyms for the current predicament of semi-private global war (one could easily view the current war as fight between corporate markets and ideas of individualism/sovereignty) we may need to look into the changing sphere of private life.

The first iPod was released almost exactly a month after September 11th. Admittedly, Steve Jobs had already come back to Apple with the colorful iMac but it was the iPod that started the new cycle of clean and sparse design that became the hallmark of not only Apple but all other ideas of design. How much more slate and brushed aluminum has entered our lives since the addition of the monotonous color scheme of the iPod. As much as we now look to the clean look of the Mac OS, nothing has quite caught up with that first design.

I do not think that Apple as surpassed the implications of the War on Terror but it has certainly snuck into our lives that is only now quite understandable. Before the iPod, mp3s were not quite as easily accessible (Napster was shut down earlier in 2001), my first mp3 player required that I buy the codec for mp3 encryption, something I was loathe to do. But since 2001 music has become relatively free and similarly as Wikileaks goes on trial (Assange as well as Manning), we can see how information too is being liberated from institutions and easily dispensed through rapid communication services.

In a way, OWS, the Tea Party, the disillusionment with Barack Obama, and the treatment of bank institutions marks the turning point in American culture. For the last four decades the cynicism created by the events of the late 60s/early 70s have come to ahead, ideological cynicism has reached its peak. Instead of accepting the acts of big business or the federal government, people are taking movements to better understand and control their lives. The world of Apple and patriarchs of the current war may continue but the common person has left that dialogue for something more local.

Now the question remains if people will pay more attention to the actions in their immediate world as well as global implications of seemingly small events, or will we continue to focus on what Siri says in response to questions about HAL.

Worst Shows On Television: Terra Nova

The first thing one notices when watching Terra Nova is that it immediately doesn’t live up to the awesome concept it’s based on:

The earth is so thoroughly ecologically destroyed the only hope for humanity is to travel back in time and start over again before humanity even exists.

The show suffers from a similar problem that V faced; the events are so extraordinary but the response from characters is so underwhelming that the audience can’t possibly bother to care. When one travels back in time and is confronted with dinosaurs you’d expect some amazement as well as some trepidation when exploring a world inhabited by people-eating dinosaurs. But immediately everything is familiar and not the least bit scary.

Underneath this lackluster wonder at their new world, there is the opportunity for a real interesting plot. The show has touched very briefly on the fact that some people who have made this pilgrimage, Sixers (from the sixth pilgrimage), have some hidden agenda. Instead of taking a worthwhile page out of Red Mars or any other sci-fi drama about colonization, the Sixers are playing it close to the chest. Perhaps it will fall victim to the same problems as The Event, not allowing the audience to expect more from the show, in fact Flash Forward suffered from the same problem; the biggest event of the show occurs at the very end of the failed season.

The show suffers from maddening issues of consistency and idiocy. Por ejemplo:

1. Teenagers who grow moonshine outside the safety of their compound
2. A Birds influenced episodes with pterodactyls that are whisked away from the colony off screen.
3. In the future there are population quotas and yet the main character, a cop, has a third child and gets put in jail and escapes off screen.
4. Despite having scientists that are best in their fields, when there is an EMP, only the bartender can fix the computer chips.

There is certainly more holes in the plot than can be listed but the four above have stuck out. The plots frequently feel like failed Star Trek episodes, probably because of Brannon Braga helmed the end of the Star Trek TV franchise. I still watch it because I am curious about the overall plot but I certainly don’t have hope that this is a good story.

Is Capitalism Corrupt?

The very idea doesn’t seem to be one often contemplated and as OWS enters into a rather unseasonable November, I think it is worth noting how capitalism creates and accepts corruption. As Merriam-Webster defines corruption as the inducement to wrong by improper or unlawful means, the definition shows, there is a stimulation toward the action of corruption. In a society that abides by the belief that financial gain is a goal in itself. The black market is like any other market except for the question of its legality. Often when we think of corruption, we think of the black market, but perhaps it is worth noting that with the growth of the Occupy Movement, we are no longer looking at the black market as a corrupt system but at the legal economic system as corrupt.

Beyond the call for a fair economic system, we are looking at the space that divides the idea of profit that leads to company growth and innovation and looking at the idea of profit that is coveted above other financial/corporate practices. Does this show that capitalism is a corrupt system? Or perhaps the better question is, is capitalism corrupting? Why do we live in a system in which the infamous Ponzi Scheme can not only occur in 1910 but again a century later? So while some see corruption as alien from capitalism, it seems more that capitalism and corruption are simply delineated by the idea of what is legal. Some may look at the world and say, “We have capitalism, which works. We have democracy which works. All we have left is to end poverty, disease, and international conflict.” But wouldn’t (and shouldn’t) the response in turn be, “But we’ve always had these systems in place, what if poverty works because their is capitalism. After all, yes we can all hypothetically make wealth but by definition we cannot all become wealthy.”

November at OWS

As Occupy Wall Street continues into the month of November, a lot has changed since I first visited OWS about a month ago. The site of the protests is clearly more “hunkered” down than my initial visits. Yes the site is now about 50% tents while the food area, the media center, and the library have a much more defined area and structure. The debates, conversations, and open workshops are also better laid out. The limits placed on the drumming is certainly a godsend for the community and to be honest, I couldn’t see much of a tie between the goals of OWS and the drumming. It seemed like a simple coalescence of a certain scene. With all that said, I think the number one concern that I have had as well as others related to the number of homeless people who have come to call OWS their residence. 

There have been some conspiratorial talk that the New York Police Department have told the poverty stricken to head to OWS. Admittedly, there are two ways to view this. Either the NYPD is purposely trying to dismantle the cause through subverting it with New York City vagrants or the possibly more likely scenario that the police do not know what to do with these people that the state is not prepared to care for. So doing the best that many of the police can do, they’re directing them to the most affordable and perhaps most benevolent support in the city: OWS. I am not trying to paints the police as being a naive force for good but I do think that many of the police at Zuccotti Park cannot recognize the movement of OWS as anything more than certain class of people protesting. That is to say, certainly the people at Zuccotti Park  are the same as the homeless people who wander the city. Isn’t there a relief effort occurring right in Lower Manhattan? Of course this is not true but to the police the scene is exactly that.

Getting Axed: Deodorant, the Male Gaze, and Objectification

Another video that shows the humor of heterosexuality. The uncontrollable nature of how men respond to women, especially in the face of desire. Axe has a long history of displaying some form of objectification. Either insatiable women or in this case, men who are unable to control their own bodies. Here replacing the common conception of the uncontrollable penis for the uncontrollable arm pit.

Occupy Wall Street Observed

Although it has been far too long since I’ve updated this website thoroughly —mainly due to moving, grad school applications, internship applications, and all sorts of related things—I did want to relay my personal feelings having attended Occupy Wall Street half-a-dozen times.

To be honest, to call the people of Occupy Wall Street “an angry mob” or any other synonymous term would be silly. The over all since is one of solidarity with a common frustration. There is plenty of sloganeering and chanting but that has been simply around the concept of a shared experience. Frustrating and dissatisfaction runs through the crowd but only as a rallying cry to other.

The response from the right has been the most odious and perhaps even the most significant. Their response has been modulating between the idea of the angry mob to that of “dirty hippies”. And to be honest, there are those who fit the dirty hippy coinage but mostly you see adults between the age of 21-45. Most have been willing to discuss their politics which ranges from simple dissatisfaction to those who open wish to see a radical change in America.  It has been unfortunate that many on the left wish to ease those wary of OWS that they are in fact NOT socialists, communists, radicals, and anarchists. However, the motives and wishes of those involved, either voiced or not has been close in line to calling for drastic radical change.  

The most nerve raking events that I have noticed have all centered on singular officers in blue who stand apart from the other officers. That is to say, the police that I have felt fearful of have been those without anyone to communicate with. As many have reached out to the police to join on the side of the occupation, it seems harder to reach out to these lone officers who stand unhappily to the side with their hand on an unclipped holster. It worries me the most that these officers encircle the park fully armed, some with truncheons. Many have circulated on Facebook and other social media websites, the comparison of the Tea Party being armed populist and OWS being unarmed radicals. The response, especially from Fox News, has been the Tea Party was a real movement with real goals and OWS is an especially dangerous group. I must admit that if given the chance, the Tea Party wouldn’t know what to do if the government did butt out of their lives. Can one imagine the state without government protection, does one want the 1920s to return or the world of South American privatization under Pinochet and others?

Those on the right fear that OWS will (and wants) to turn the United States into the USSR, but that doesn’t seem to really be the case. In reality, the most likely scenario is that of a “social democrat’s” reform, government benefits for citizens, higher taxes, and a much more stable job market. Admittedly, I know close to nothing about economics but I do know that privatization does not lead to general prosperity to all. I do hope that OWS continues to offer the dialogue against privatization and the free market model; for that reason I will continue to support and get off the 4 train at Wall Street.