PSA. The Beast that is Blogging

            In the new frontier of the internet, is blogging worthwhile? For me the Holy Grail and goal of creating your own blog is in the attempt to bring it to the level of a healthy and thriving community. In its truest form, capable of being a public forum that will be capable of shaking off any burdens and any parasitic existences that latch onto it. This is my search to find merit in blogging.  

            As of May 2014 there were around 1.4 million blogs around the internet, soon after that anyone capable of trying to keep count couldn’t keep up. As far as the personal frontier of the internet goes, there aren’t many spaces bigger or more foreboding than that. This is what I find to be the main difference between social media and blogging.

I feel Social Media can more or less be considered to fall under the umbrella term of networking. Your space is very clearly defined, as well are all of the connections you make. But blogging is another monster entirely, at least to me. My metaphor for it, social media is the pre-fabrication of the internet. You set up your e-dentity within the blocked off area assigned to you, and you connect and expand starting with the people you know. There are some similarities there to blogging, if you can get your friends active on it, great.

 But while I consider social media as a sort of pre-fab, a blog is something you have to build and maintain from the ground up, a build project that can go beyond any of your expectations given the right set of circumstances. You start with an essentially blank slate, a canvas, an empty piece of paper, an open creative space, and you start it by essentially picking a random spot on the internet and hoping someone notices you, praying even if you require that kind of validation. Social media is something that can be effortless given enough free time, but a blog takes effort and work.

            Not many people build the house they plan to live in, it is much the same for our spaces on the internet. Blogging is hard, that is the very bottom line if you plan to get anything worthwhile out of the experience. If you want a blog to flourish, you must painstakingly craft it to be a valid space for the community you wish to build.

Build it well, and lay a foundation of truth, a space built out of lies will only become another diseased space that harbors trolls. It will be up to you to make sure your bridges stay un-tolled by such trolls. You need to be a bit gruff, I would consider it the only positive metaphor in comparing someone to a goat if they are capable of keeping trolls at bay

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In the end your blog is your castle, your kingdom, and this is in whatever form it may take. It will be your bastion in the wider wild world of the internet. If you are serious in your endeavor then you will form connections between other communities, potentially even making enemies along the way. This is as modern as the age of empires gets in the information era. You will take what ground you can, as you try and raise your flag in this ever expanding world.

Because it inhabits the gray space in the internet, there are some who use blogs as a means of truth and expression. Such blogs exist in places where the political climate is oppressive and there are no other means in their mass media. Such blogs are potentially capable of becoming a higher truth, something necessary in this world.

            Can I build a castle, a kingdom? Will it reach the heights I would desire? In the end, is it worth it. . .

            

Why you Sometimes Need to Open Pandora's Box

   Who would willingly invite chaos into their lives? If things could go on as they were, and if people knew they had a choice in the matter, it is unlikely that anyone really would. To us chaos seems something that breaks down spirit and leaves us miserable. It is the antithesis to everything we work for in the future because we crave an ordered future.

   To open Pandora's box is in a sense to open up chaos that you have sealed away or refuse to face either out of fear, or desire for order in your life. This can be as simple as staying away from certain things day to day, or reach as deep as ignoring your feelings. But in the age old argument, light and shadow depend on each other for meaning, so to is order born from chaos and vice-versa. I also want to say to you that dissent can only be born in a world with chaos, there is no change without change. And it is not simply accepting chaos, no. You don't merely wait for the calm after the storm, you steel yourself to face the storm to better face the calm.

   Face facts, seriously, face them head on. Don't cut off anything simply because it rocks the boat in your life. You need to be capable of change, you need to be able to face whatever comes at you. This is honestly a part of growing up. We certainly all receive a part of this each day in our lives in small doses, There are always wake up calls and reminders that we can do better, that we can be better. You can't move forward in your life by ignoring everything around you. Because even if you don't want to move forward in your life, even if you don't see the need to, you can still go deeper and become something bigger and better.

   Understand yourself first and foremost. You must understand yourself if you have any hope of facing the world. You need to be able to act in away that you feel is befitting of yourself and that you won't regret in the future. Do not cut off a part of yourself to change, you need to understand that it is a part of you. By claiming all of your inherit traits you also gain the ability to control yourself. You can embrace everything before you because you are able to embrace yourself. When you know yourself and claim your history, how you came to this point, you give yourself leave to break new ground for the future.

   Open the box. Invite chaos into your life. So that you can test yourself against it. Break the limits of everything that you have known so far. Just remember that when all is said and done, when everything is against you, when you aren't sure you can face the storm, remember that there is always hope at the bottom of the box.

 
 

 

Internet: Should have been there

   Look up my name, you wont really get much.
   
   You will know I exist, that I have a blog, a Facebook page, where I go to school, somehow you even can even find out my dad died without digging any deeper than searching my name and scrolling down a bit. But that's really not much at all is it? In fact while searching just the web and not just images, of the images that they do show not one is mine. The first couple images are actually of people I went to school with in high school. Today, I was mildly surprised though, because for the first time, I actually took up most of the first and second pages of my search. But all you get are some small facts, not really a complete picture if you don't know what you are looking for. 
  
   If you were to look on my Facebook page at the most recent history you would see some pictures of me and a video I'm in. The pictures I have popcorn in my beard and in the video I'm dancing ridiculously. That's something for sure, but I wouldn't even call it the icing. Unfortunately I mostly only post on other peoples' things. Why is this unfortunate? Because I pull off some really nice puns and you can't actually look them up anywhere, you can only stumble across them. As said by someone who bore witness to many such occasions " I swear that sam just lurks on facebook waiting for someone to post a status so he can make puns." And this is pretty much true. 
  
   There's something I really like about that though, because that is exactly what I do in life. There is always a part of me that is on the ready to turn a phrase, or to think outside of the box on any sort of thing that catches my interest. In fact, it is one of my primary modes of interaction with the world. And. It. Is. Wonderful. Because let me tell you, there is honestly nothing better than saying just the thing that gets a gut reaction day after day. 

  But this is a blog about my e-footprint. Well, I guess you could say I walk pretty softly. However I believe there is something completely authentic about all of this. To me, connecting to people online and in real life are done much the same ways. When I gather together with others, I tend not to be the origin of much, rather I am always at the edges, quickly gathering intel to say just what I need to, the right words in the right places (a phrase twisted from Pratchett).  I am not necessarily about creating, but rather I ere to controlling the flow of things, or at least following it all and pushing it into different directions. 



   

   

Comics, masks, and superpowers

In the world of comic books, anyone can be behind a mask. To the people, to the bystanders, there is meant to be hope that anyone could be a hero, anyone could take up responsibility to uphold justice in a world that doesn't always have it. Anyone could be a hero, and there are people out there fighting against odds that nobody can humanly face, with powers or abilities beyond the normal scope of understanding. 

But we know the faces of these heroes, the reader more often than not has a near complete understanding of who is behind the mask, what drives them, who they are. We are given a look into the lives of those who are meant to be heroes, and know things that in their world were never meant to be know. When you know precisely who the heroes are, will you really believe anyone can be a superhero? When we believe in this sort of guideline for what is super, can anything in our lives really be?

Superheroes are a pleasant and entertaining lie. A lie because it in essence taints our perception of the concepts of both hero and super if we allow it to. First I wish to point out that even superheroes without powers are still considered as more than human, Batman and Ironman exist outside the common sense of the everyday (because being rich counts as a superpower as well). Whatever human flaws they all have, they are nearly always predetermined to overcome them. Because in the end, someone else sat in front of a piece of paper, and created the existence you call a superhero. 

You know who the superheroes are. Even every single thing that makes them a hero. So then everyone else becomes bystanders or heroes that just aren't so super. It is impossible for anything to become something more on a scale that includes the likes of the Avengers, the Justice League, or any other group or individual superhero. If you so choose to believe such, then at the end of the day you know you aren't any of them, and you can therefore only be something less.  The icons and symbols become engraved into your heart. 

Personally I enjoy comics, in all their various media. I believe that comics try to really create some sense that anyone can be a hero, and really that is something very true. The problem is when we can't get past this fictional scale of what is super. These comic book heroes were all written and drawn to be fantastic, and for the most part at a peak of human aesthetics. It can be hard to accept you can be a hero when the scale can be so fictitiously tipped. The utter truth is that we create our heroes, in one form or another. Perhaps though, if we accept that the heroic spirit is something real, then we can create heroes out of ourselves. 

Always have in mind an idea of what it means in our reality to be super.  

The hero they needed, but didn't want.

         All change in life stems from a guiding force, in my eyes Shulamith Firestone failed to become such for her cause even though it seemed within her grasp. Today our world has seen leaders that have gathered their people together and changed the world. Such charismatics would become the face or center stone of their causes and become symbols or active leaders. Most notably among those who have become such are MLK Jr, Rosa Parks, Mahatma Gandhi, and Simone de Beauvoir of feminism’s first wave. In the begging of their work, some at least considered her the American Simone de Beauvoir.

            For all appearances, as the second wave, Firestone and the others should have had history and at least some resources to draw on. But then, it may be that the first wave had a clearer goal in mind for themselves. It was stated that their forces so often formed into different groups that they killed each other off both internally and externally. It seems that they didn’t even have an understanding of the previous feminism movement, being unable to name the previous leaders of the movement while seeking to talk with Alice Paul. It seems few women had researched the first wave as Firestone had.

            What was that world, where perhaps there was no guiding light? A catalyst, which Firestone was considered, is as often explosive as helpful. Firestone grew up in a restrictive orthodox home, where it seemed everyone but her sister was against her. Her father chastised her almost endlessly over the role she was expected to take, her mother was everything she ever represented about the then modern role of women, and even her brothers would strike her.  Really I cannot fault her for heightening an idea of sisterhood while in the movement. It’s very possible that any attempts to become the voice of the movement would have been seen as “having male hormones” and would have destroyed any attempts at collaboration from the get go. They would exist as a sisterhood and destroy anything that conflicted with that. This is quite possibly what led to her exodus from the group.

            As a leader of the group I feel that she failed, and likewise her people failed her. But the facts are there that even if she couldn’t become the charisma of the movement her actions had influenced many women in the second wave and beyond. In Firestone’s eulogy her sister Tirzah struck back against her brother’s lamentations. “With all due respect, Shulie was a model for Jewish women and girls everywhere, for women and girls everywhere. She had children – she influenced thousands of women to have new thoughts to lead new lives. I am who I am, and a lot of women are who they are, because of Shulie.” There is no doubt to those that know of her, that whatever the faults of her and her movement, she was a force of change for many women, and she carved her name into the annals of history.  

An article in the guardian about sisterhood and Trashing 

theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/may/02/feminism-trashing-shulamith-firestone

An everyday art of Zen.

Introduction: Understanding of the self and understanding of the world are intertwined at a deep level. To discipline yourself in one you will naturally find a meaning in the other. Some choose to live the lives of monks to further such goals. But it is still possible to find some understanding through taking control of your own life and senses, and channeling such things into extensive self-reflection.

1.      Listen. 

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It’s rather important. Listen to the world at large and the music it makes for you. You already connect yourself to others this way. But this also reflects into the music of humanity. In the world, with others, and with music, listen to everything and find what really calls to you.

2.      Open your eyes to the world.

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You can be blind just by refusing to look. Go out of your way to search for all of the beautiful things in the world around you. But above that do not think that you have the right to shut out the bad things as well. You are so connected to this world around you that you must make yourself see it as it truly is.

3.      Feel life on your skin.

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Your body is your instrument of change in the world. Know the world through your skin and the world has truly become a part of you. It is your ruler and your anchor, you measure your immediate self through the feeling of the air, the feeling beneath your hands, and the feelings between your toes.

4.      As human beings we eat to survive.

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Whatever choices we make about what to eat we should understand that all things we consume had life as well. By understanding your relationship with your food you elevate your understanding of the world you live in. Acquire a taste for the world.

5.      Breathe deeply and smell the air.

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Classify everything you smell beyond what is pleasant and not. Try to understand the differences between the air of the natural world and the air we have made for ourselves. Even as you understand that, know that you can have some control. By lighting the right kind of candle you can clear even the air for a time.

6.      Stop completely when you can.

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Clear your mind. First connect yourself to your immediate world. Feel the air on your skin, breath it in, tasting and smelling it. Take in the immediacy of the sounds and sights around you. Meditate on your world and what it means to you. Consciously break down and build up your own existence. Understand the changes in your life and your world. Perhaps try to understand what it all means.

7.      Mark the world.

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Grind your footsteps into the very pathways of existence. Express who you are into this world through your own skills and experiences. Take all your senses and push them out into whatever form you are capable of. Your self-expression is the truest form of yourself that will ever exist.   

A very human argument.

Comics can say a little or a lot. They can be good for a laugh, or good for a thought. In my own opinion the best ones can do both. Here’s one about a half man/half moon monkey trying to make sense of it all. I rather feel that’s where civilization is at now anyways.

Void

www.lunarbaboon.com/comics/void

            Dogs are certainly well known as Man’s best friend. More than anything else though it is because someone will notice that there is a rather vacant or void spot it their life. Really they just seem to have fallen into the spot. But they don’t so much fit the shape as we shape them into a placeholder. Not to say you don’t really love and receive love in return, but if you do it right you don’t really give the dog much of a choice.

            As human beings we grow a void as we experience life. Our feelings alone are no longer enough to keep us going. We realize that we like to feel wanted and loved, especially when we can’t always love ourselves. So we look for something, some people try and find it in their children. You can certainly feel wanted, even needed, perhaps even loved for a time. But as soon as they need less, they move onto experience. They don’t need you like you might need them, and you can’t control a kid like you can a dog. But even then you only ever have placeholders to something that doesn't go away.

            This huge human idea of a hole, a void, in our existence is coming from an eight box comic. The existence of the argument is even an argument. We have a void we need to fill and that can be well expressed in something it takes twenty seconds or less to look at. And really that’s exactly what it needs to be. Get a laugh about a man buying a dog to feel needed, when a moment ago he was attempting to tell his son he didn't need a dog to do that.  You have your laugh, but you get the message. In your busy day or quite hours, maybe you think about that comic, maybe you recognize that void in yourself. And then its only a click away to see it again, and see others, and perhaps see if there is also an real answer to the void somewhere out there.