The greatest bit of knowledge shaping my life these days is my growing awareness of separating individuals from their systems. The relationship of people and their systems, institutions, society, etc is apparent to most anyone, but few people seem to exercise this understanding. Especially when it comes to empathy and education. I hope that I will have a better, more rounded analogy to demonstrate this in the future, but in the meantime there are plenty of examples to jump start this thought process.

The easy recent hot topic, which admitantly I haven’t researched the exact situation since the general scenario benefited my mindset so well, is the multiple black police officers who are being charged for the deaths of individuals they arrest. Reactionaries are quick to cry out that this is proof that all the protests and outcry against black violence from a racist system is misguided. How could black on black violence be racially motivated? Meanwhile, the rest of us know that this is evidence which benefits the progressive accusation.

It doesn’t matter the race of the perpetrators when its the system that is being accused. The system belongs to our dominate white society, and the victims are overwhelmingly visible minorties. There’s actually been multiple cases popping up with black officers being charged. It raises the question of why, after such struggle to have white officers charged for blatant abuse and improper conduct, is the system suddenly having such an easy time charging black officers? Your racist childhood friend might suggest that this is beause black people are inherently more violent. It’s okay. Remind them that black officers weren’t being charged for violence until white officers were threatened, but don’t waste your energy fighting them. When we come to understand the relationships of individuals and systems, we can afford individuals a little more space to be incorrect. Individuals naturally have values and beliefs. It’s our systems which benefit the most from rules and facts.

Of course, systems are made up of individuals, so we need to be aware of individual status in order to be aware of system status, but individuals are allowed to deviate. Consider addiction. Alcohol is addicting. Television is not addicting. Our current societial system acknowledges these statements, but that doesn’t mean that individuals can’t consume alcohol without dependancy, nor develop dependency to television. A good society aims to afford its individuals both pleasures and relief from struggles. Individuals need to be heard for a system to benefit them, but individuals need to know how to communicate to the system rather than becoming aggressive with other incongruent individuals who aren’t equipped to help.

Individuals are never equipped to help systemic problems. Our greatest powers and assets are directly intertwined in systems. This has been the most useful observation to me personally. A brain is a fine system. It gets you by day to day. Having a writing system, which involves the brain but ultimately is external to it, will get you by year to year. A collection of writings can help many people, possibly over lifetimes. So far this has all been achieveable by individuals. However there are even further benefits to databases of writings, databases of collections, and even databases of databases. These require systems of individuals to cooperate and manage in order to extract the most benefits. Databases trump collections as they group and compare relavant data.

An individual can potentially be well versed in a small database and extract a lot of benefit from it, but getting the most out of a typical lifetime requires information that could fill many many databases. Individuals don’t need to know everything, but they most benefit from understanding how to navigate our system of databases to find trustful, helpful information, and most people in our society do not. That’s why we have chiropracters giving advice on virology, or enthusiasts of cultural folklore thinking they understand more than archelogists or even geologists. It’s not bad to have individual opinions, layman understanding, or even systems of unvocalized cultural knowledge, that’s just how our humans work. It is problematic though when we misplace trust or importance in the least accurate systems.

So I guess it comes down to energy allocation. I have a much better time knowing that there isn’t a benefit to fighting with my ignorant, racist childhood friends, especially when they are still part of a social system that rewards them for being so. They can be a jerk if they want. As much as I can be a jerk to them for their views. I’d love to have them understand that their individualistic observations aren’t satisfying in light of a properly databased system of information… but they never seem to care. I will step in if they are being or preparing to be destructive to other individuals. I will step in to help an individual to the extent that I am able with the knowledge that I am not fixing their system of problems. I will place my real energies and strategies into changing the system which creates problemed and problematic individuals.

Soma is old news, but it’s a deep enough game that it’s often worth checking out a new take. Soma is also very good at explaining itself so new takes are typically very similar to the old ones. This take is just as adequate and thorough as any good summary before it, but something in the intro caught my attention. “Soma is a different game (…) based on running, walking, and hiding (…) It’s one of those games you buy for the story.”. Dude, why don’t you just call it a Walking Simulator?

I guess they were making the video for people who might not be familiar with Walking Simulators and such concepts that I’ve learned to take for granted. I’ve noticed this potential jargon reboot a couple times now. Especially in media communities where young people are easily attracted, and I think I’m in the midst of another generational shift right now. Anyone who’s existed long enough anywhere gets to experience when the new generation moves in on their turf. Ironically, or at least in my case, it’s a one way feeling. Pursuing an interest into new territory never feels like you’re invading someone else’s space… Unless they make it feel that way.

I’m trying to become more aware of this trans generational interaction because I’ve definitely done this to older people and it always sucks. It feels alienating when a new person enters a space with vague questions on technique and meaning, you have those answers, but any attempt to impart them is received with dissatisfaction, disbelief, and disconnection. It’s a basic communication error that I see echoed in any situation where an answer is given, but no matter how correct, it is simply lost on those who can’t anticipate how to receive it. For example, I’m part of an art community that intentionally uses a very limited color palette and newcomers always seem to ask “Why can’t we use different colors?”. The answer is: because the existing colors are based on luminacy rather than hue, so even though they look dissatisfactory as simple solids, they are extremely versatile when paired with other colors in the same palette. I can say this to every new person who asks, but as it is a group setting and I have no special authority, inevitably someone else will echo their frustration and they will bond over continuing the question and seeking to change the system rather than putting effort into understanding my own response.

It’s very easy to get stuck on this experiential communication divide, and I do, but however correct I feel, I’ve seen the situation enough times to know that it’s often these new and ignorant people that take established mediums into new and exciting directions. Which I then can profit from the renewed accessibility. Like how I grew up begrudging traditional art, but new digital art techniques eventually made the medium more approachable and appreciable. Plus, as I’m becoming a member of the older generation, being able to take account of these patterns, I think the onus is on me to make it teachable. I don’t feel like I’m going to be very successful in that endeavor, as I have yet to find the words to make my shared passions graspable to newer generations, but it’s nice to at least put into words of my own medium. Then maybe someone new will stumble across it and refine it. Inevitably they will only grasp enough to feel as to feel they don’t owe any credit, but that’s how it goes, I suppose.

Anyway, the video isn’t about that, but I felt the themes of copying vs transfering information, and relentless ignorance were a good connection.

I was part of the Trail Art performance put on by the Inner Fish Theatre Society, and not to dump on the project, but the performance itself meant absolutely nothing to me.

That’s part of what was interesting about the experience, because the experience had a lot of value, and I wonder how many people felt the same way. It might be a perspective that I’m very late to the party on.

Of course audiences, and in fact us actors ourselves really want to to derive meaning from a performance, and it’s not uncommon for auteurs and those adjacent to circumvent textual meaning, but the actual performance of this event seemed to be irrelevant compared to its construction and delivery.

We were letters on a hillside, we had a direct message to convey in literal text, and the director had an artistic vision on how to express that text, but it was very flexible and constantly evolved right up until the formal delivery. Each of us amateaur, volunteer performers brought a unique aspect to the development and deployment of the scene, and I’m sure every audience member took away an interpretation just as unique and derivitive.

Regardless of what the formal intentions were for anyone there, I can’t imagine the grand message of it all being anything other than “community”. I’m very grateful, and derived a lot of meaning from having met and worked with all these different people, even if I personally thought the project was in structure rather meaningless. That’s not a critique, I just wonder how intentional that take away is from a director standpoint, and how many other experiences in my life have been missing this insight.

I’ve replaced fuses in my stereo system with magnets where ever I can find them. Now I’ve learned that they still function as fuses! Sort of. They’re not tuned to a specific voltage, but once they got hot they demagnetized and fell apart. That saved my amplifier this time. Good to know.

Canadians and American’s are often vocal of how they love to support freedom, yet many of these most vocal proponents are very directly pro-slavery. Our society has a movement corruptly labled as “quiet quitting” and is considered “anti work”, but the definition of that action is to do no more than what your job contracts. That is the very basis of employment. We’ve normalized the basis of work to be a form of “quitting”.

In fact, it is the moral obligation of anyone who supports freedom to oppose working more than what a job contractually entails, and of course for employers to ask no more. Admitedly, in many mundane ways this can be bothersome, but these obligations are amongst the only ways to keep power on the side of labour. To do otherwise normalizes uncompensated labour; that is slavery.

Employment enables freedom by trading labour for needed material resources like food and shelter, but at a point once freedom is enabled and stable, one begins trading their own freedom for resources that no longer support it. You can’t trade freedom for more freedom. Anyone who considers themselves on the side of freedom against slavery should be striving to strike that balance before employment becomes slavery; and spread freedom enabling resources as wide as possible.