Culture, you ninny!

Hey, now I'm mad at culture, too...
You know what I'm talking about. That council of experts that all sit down together every Friday around a big conference table and decide what is and what isn't art this week. You all know they exist, don't kid yourselves.

Apparently games are not art yet. Yes, they've gone a long way since, say, the 80s, or since LucasArts - which used to have the name, the essence but not the "social acceptance", where anyone but us geeks were concerned - last made something worth mentioning. But they're still not seen as "art" by those that matter. The essence of Academia doesn't seem to care, at least not yet.

Than just finished Half Life 2's first episode. Yeah, apparently those expansions are serialised now. And they're damn fine in every respect, and even I can tell, being the non-"real"-gamer that I am these days. It seemed like... well, I won't say "like an interactive movie". I won't even say "like a good interactive movie", or something as crass as "a milestone in gaming's storytelling evolution". It's all that, but it is, truly, and most importantly, more. It's a game that makes you realise what games were meant for: communication, with the people who made the game, and with the game itself. Like "real" art.

And what makes me mad, this time, is that noone is there to look at it and tell the world why it's important, sociologically, and why mankind is richer for it. And not just this game, which caught my attention this time, mind you. I'm talking about games in general, the kind we play and make us feel... richer for it.
No courses out there teaching people how to make a brilliant game, what it takes to provide us with such an experience. No books, no magazines, other than the ones that would make money from advertising the games in the first place.

Yeah, I'm doing Film Studies, and films have been around... well, much longer than I have. Can we only examine things that retrospectively? I remember being told, time and time again, when I was younger, that we live in a fast-paced time where social evolution is concerned. And I believed them back then, but I really doubt them right now. I should probably have waited a few decades before believing anything I heard about the "here and now" - it seems like we have to make sure, before talking about things, that the "here and now" is safely buried as the "then and there".

Science, you ninny!

I'm mad at science today. Neuroscience specifically, 'cause, like, normally it's my friend and I respect it and all, but I realised something and now I'm mad at it and I won't speak to it for today. Or at least I'll try, 'cause I usually enjoy our conversations, and I still have an issue of New Scientist to read and the RSS feed of SciAm on my googlepage. Hmm. Pffft.

I was actually thinking about diseases such as MS and Alzheimer's, that apparently rely somewhat on thought processes and feelings to occur. And they're quite trendy these days, more people seem to have them than in the past. And so do other diseases and conditions, that may not directly rely on stress and such, but things like that are officially risk factors for them.

And there's a lot of upheaval against more tangible things like smoking or food cholesterol and vitamin deficiency, since there we can "see" the enemy and punch it harder, but thoughts and feelings we can't put a face to, at least not yet. People like Kevin Warwick who managed to encode and transfer feelings over the internet may actually help in this field, and so can various cognitive scientists at some point, who try to map thoughts and feelings and find where they can be pinpointed in the obscure island that we call the brain... but that's kind of the problem, I find.

There don't seem to be that many people, to my knowledge, that examine the "how" of the thing. How thoughts and feelings actually "happen", how they electrically/biochemically occur and are transferred and transcribed in there. Now that's something we could affect if we could pinpoint it. If we knew how our neurons go about making us feel this way or that, if, for example, their physical structure being a certain way and changing to that, or certain biochemical substances' presence, are involved in me worrying too much about having to wash the dishes before I go to class tomorrow morning, now that would help.

And the thing is that there are steps being made, as I said, in the right direction, but it feels like noone has really taken the time to connect the dots, interdiciplinarily. It would take someone who would be equivalently familiar with the relevant neurophysiology fields and psychology, at least, but I do believe that it would make sense that two disciplines that have so much in common would work together more closely and intensively. Or they may have done so, but I don't really know of that many examples of cases that have produced interesting results, where I would imagine that they would.

I'm waiting, people! And so is humanity, in essence. We truly need to find how to look at the ways we think and feel, in ways through which we can tangibly affect them. I think and feel we have many reasons to do so.

Is Ignorance Indeed Bliss?

I was thinking the other day, about how the idea that the earth was round had been proposed so many centuries ago, yet humanity still chose to socially ignore it and believed that it was in fact flat, with no scientific evidence to reject the claim, just an instinctive feeling that "well, it must be flat, how wouldn't it be?". And this is just an example, one of many popular misconceptions that were challenged, successfully, with the establishment of scientific thought.

It could actually be argued that people back then were much more content believing that there was nothing but the end of the earth beyond those vast oceans, for which they had neither the technology nor the need to examine any further. So, it could be said that, sociologically, it was safer for them to be free of such worries and questions, until they actually had a need for what such research struggles would offer - namely, there were at some point too many people and not enough resources for them, so new land needed to be found. And only then was the truth faced and acknowledged at last.

'Cause up to then, there were already people who were familiar with, say, Pythagoras' theories and calculations, but whole systems were in place to make sure that, socially, nothing like that would be taken seriously by anyone who could research it further or do something about it and still let others know.

So, this makes me wonder: Is there some type of social mechanism that urges humanity to deny certain types of knowlege for which there is no direct need yet? Do people as a whole actually deny certain truths just because they can't be bothered with them right now? Is there a whole set of common dreams and experiences that we could all strive for but don't really need the hassle?

It would make sense that humanity would deny a whole set of areas of research... And what good would it do, for example, to physically locate or scientifically examine the human soul, should it be in any way tangible? Would it cause anything but fears and worries right now? Aren't we better off if we don't ask, until or unless we ever have a reason to?

We still have so many things to worry about, hope and strive for, scientifically. Space travel and colonisation, for example, is a hard enough goal already. It's just that I'm curious to find out what we don't want to find out. Oh well...

What I want to be when I grow up

As long as I remember myself, I've been searching around in dark alleys of my mind and the world around me, trying to figure out what I'm supposed to do for a living. I went through various phases, performing theoretical acrobatics between the sciences and the arts, delving in various fields that made me almost certain that I'd finally found the answer, with the latest of which being screenwriting - an art that I do, in fact, want to keep up if I can.

But what recently dawned upon me is that I don't need to fulfill any bills pre-assigned to me at birth, if I truly want to do something with my life. I just have to find a way to do what I'd be doing anyway, and find a way to eventually get paid for it. After all, everyone has some use in this world essentially...

So I thought, hey, what do I do all the time? I write. I don't necessarily tell stories, in fact I love to have stories told to me - some of you may already know that Than tells me one every night as we go to bed, prompted by two random words that I select for him, and even despite that, I've spent my life absorbing and enthusing upon stories in books or comics that I read, films or series that I watch, even lyrics that I listen to, which always have a story behind them in order to make me happy.

Most of all I like to have stories told to me, in one way or another, and then write something that, effectively, says "thank you". Whether it's a blogpost, a "notepad diary" .txt, a forum post or a story, screenplay or set of lyrics, I express my gratitude through words, just because I think in written form anyway (Than has actually claimed that I'm able to correct spelling mistakes in someone's speech...). And hey, I was lucky enough to fall into the social sciences, a Film Studies course in particular, which has so far allowed me not only to experiment in the field of screenwriting and video production, but to see that it's a good thing to discuss and write about things that other people make.

So yes, the man I have beside me right now is one whose destiny is to tell stories - through making comics or directing, or hopefully both. But, being the person that I am, and despite the fact that I will occasionally tell stories of my own to express the fact that I'm glad when other people do, I now think it's my destiny to spend the rest of my life saying "thank you" to people who tell me good stories, whether it be in academia, magazines, websites or just in a cafe with my friends.

Ahoy, Cult Leaders!

Heading fast towards the end of this course, possibly able to finally obtain a university diploma after 7 long years in academia, this year already seems worth my while.

The Blockbusters course, for which we have to write 8000 words overall on a relevant topic of our own choosing, led me to what was, for me, a fairly obvious choice: to examine how on earth a cult-followed yet academically and mainstream audience quasi-ignored auteur, Sam Raimi, managed to fulfill a fanboy's dream and make the most box office successful film of all times, Spiderman.

I love to dwell on things that seem like paradoxes, whether they're "positive" or "negative" ones. And it does seem like an amazing paradox, an unexpected victory on the part of the "team" of us geeky fan-kids, that one day the world seemed to wake up and acknowledge not only our existence, but our "superiority" in a sense. And the sense, in fact, that seems to matter most to it: $$$!

The type of people that I feel like I belong to, that sad portion of overcultured and hyperenthusiastic humanity that is grouped together, not by a religion or a football team, but by a shared love for things that other people make up for us, usually come out as losers in the big game of living in a society governed by tangible objects and the fulfillment of everyday needs. And it does indeed seem important when "we" feel acknowledged, because "one of us, one of us, one of us" emerges victorious.

So, although 8000 words on my part do seem like enough of a tribute to "our" Uncle Sam - I'm only a human typewriter after all - I just needed to add the icing on the tribute cake with a blogpost today. Sam Raimi, thank you, and I hope it marked the beginning of a new era, within which being geeky is officially the way to go - nerds had their time with the rise of the internet era after all, it's our turn now ;)

Oscar Wise and the unbearable subjectivity of reasoning

So, I was out the other day, with Than and a few friends of ours, and Than and our friend Ted sat there arguing about something they both agreed upon, as per usual. It took them a bit more than it usually does to realise that they were just saying the same thing in different words and were basically arguing semantics.

The whole debate regarded the way years are measured when we're talking about age and when we're talking about calendar years, with the only difference being when we celebrate what year. Ted was insisting that they're measured exactly the same way, since the same arithmetic principles are used in both cases, while Than said it's the other way around, since we celebrate the beginning of a calendar year on New Year's Day, but the passage of a year on our birthday. And the simple fact that the one said "it's the same" while the other said "it's different" was the point of a 20-minute-or-so disagreement.

So, ok, if we assume that point zero was when Jesus was born (which another friend of ours in the group desperately tried to point out that it was not, in fact, when Jesus was actually born, since it has been determined arbitrarily a few centuries later, which we all were obviously aware of, but it was not our point at the time), then by the time baby Jesus celebrated his first birthday, it would start counting as year 2 on the calendar. And if there were calendars on the wall back then, when Mary was out with her baby carriage (again, if there were baby carriages back then) and an old lady saw the baby, the following dialogue would ensue:

The old lady would go "oooh, what a sweet baby, and what a cute little beard it has... is it a boy or a girl?," Mary would reply "a boy," and then the old lady would say "how nice... and how old is he?." Mary would answer "well, he's one year old since last week," so the fact would then be that if anyone looked at their calendar on the wall, the year shown would be year 2, and not year 1 as we may have expected. The reason for this being that we start counting a calendar year from its first day, but a year of age when the year has passed. Strange for some, natural according to counting and celebration conventions to people like Ted, Mathematician and USTV guru.

But the wonderful thing here is how long they disagreed before realising that they didn't really disagree in the first place. And the even more amazing thing is how often it happens with the two of them, usually lasting for no more than a couple of minutes with a drumroll backing. So, the moral of our story really is that the pure and simple truth, as another friend of mine, Oscar Wilde, once said, is rarely pure and never simple.

Which brings me to the reason why I am such a fan of the scientific method and of logical reasoning according to convention. People think and talk in so many different ways, that if two people, both of which I consider amazingly smart in stupendously different ways, disagree or think that they disagree so often, it cannot be assumed that we all speak the same language, even if we use the same pool of words. There must be some set of rules as to what counts as true and how, in order for humanity to be able to talk about things, since we're all basically cursed to have to communicate things other than "I'm hungry" or "I love you" like quasi-normal animals need to. And even then, whatever we learn, there must be some way to record it and pass it on, so as to be able to say that we know more today than our forefathers knew a few years ago, some set of rules to test its truth and to realise how we got there, in order to map out the theoretical territories we all waddle across, so as to avoid traps, pitfalls and going round in circles if other people before us have pointed them out somehow.

So, in the sea of abstract thinking, sailing in a boat of my own subjectivity, science and logic are my only oars.

Take it easy, take it from me

So... I'm in Greece, on steroid treatment (which is actually working) and on sets doing practical work. Unpaid (except for the extra parts) and fresh, well enough to do things I'm not really well enough for (if that's not a sign of my getting better, I don't know what is) and happy as a happy cow, I'm actually doing something with most of my day and appreciating the simple things in life.

Which brings us to the question: How come I didn't do these things sooner? How come I didn't live my life to the max, but just overblew things in my mind instead, before I could do anything useful about them or in general?

Life is essentially simple and comprehensible, easy to manage if one knows what one wants. And I wonder what tiny little imp in our brains screws things up sometimes, making things seem so complicated and serious...

I must officially state that I've decided to take things lightly. If it's important, but I can't do anything about it, then worrying won't help the matter at all. If I think of something to do about an issue, I'll just have to do it. And prioritising is always the way to go - which, essentially, is always a personal choice, and people always understand. If you can't make it "just because", and they can accept that, then why not accept that you can't make it because you have a reason / excuse / don't bloody well want to?

So no, I don't own the world, and I'm not responsible for its emotional wellbeing. No, really. I'm not. And if you have any objections, you can carefully examine the specifics of how I don't care, and still achieve more than I used to.

Singular Sclerosis

Oh well, I haven't been active on this blog for months, about the same time since I've felt like a real person. I have been diagnosed with "a single incident of brain infection, typical of multiple sclerosis according to the MRI scan", which means that I don't have MS yet, since it has to be multiple in order to be called that, but it's a single incident, lasting a few months so far, that almost crippled me for a while (half my face is still numb, and so are the edges of my fingers, my vision is blurry and I crash into things a lot, I get tired before I can even say the word out loud and I haven't been able to use my computer for more than a couple of minutes at a time for ages), but "in 6 to 8 weeks after the intravenal steroid treatment" (on greek Easter Sunday, that was) I expect to be all better and it may never return (which I hope), or it may do at some point and I'll thus be part of that portion of the population that science can't really do anything about just yet. And no, this hasn't managed to make me reconsider my views on studying biochemistry, I met enough people during my 4 years there to know that someone, at some point, will discover something useful about the situation, whether I'm part of the solution or not - although my 4 wasted years enabled me to show off to doctors and friends, not being an alien creature in the hospital that has no idea what's wrong with her, what they're doing to her or why.

The cool thing about this is that, eventually, everything will be ok, even if it's just for a while. They seem to hope for a full recovery, and although I'm not well enough to fill in my time with any of the things I enjoy doing (reading, writing, drawing, sitting on the PC for hours on end or watching film after series and series after film on Than's computer screen are just not options right now, just like doing useful things around the house for him or myself), I'm enjoying it while it lasts. It does have its benefits, most of them including the amazing people I have in my life (my mother and Than being the two main ones, and if you'd asked me beforehand I don't know if I'd assume they had it in them to support me like they have), as are things like university assessment extensions (I got two weeks for three essays and managed to hand them all in yesterday, by the agreed time, and, had I not, I would be given the whole summer due to "mitigating circumstances", but I managed to eliminate a few things I'd still have to worry about as soon as I could) or the worries that probably got me here in the first place.

I never knew Than had it in him to be so supportive - I was usually the one dragging him about, worrying about him and his health or financial status or his struggles with the University and his excellently creative dyslexia that only hinders him in the one department that I can do something about and guide him through (writing long essays), and the roles seem to almost be reversed around the house during this time. He's split himself in two, learned to cook and even uses his skills in tidying up and washing the dishes, since I don't beat him to it right now, and still he manages to find time to do all his creative work (from the webcomic to our documentary, which you can find the crude, uni version of at http://www.deeplexuniverse.plus.com ), keep in touch with friends that constantly ask about me, cover me on the Serendipitous forum when I'm not in the right state to worry about it and still be available when I need him to get me stuff or when I need to be "carried" somewhere to do something - whether that be the University across the road or the cinema across town, which, as I discovered, is the only thing I can enjoy right now: no monitor to tire my eyes, complete darkness around me and a huge screen for me to enjoy a film on).

And my mother, on the other hand, has been a dream come true. I've always known she loves me to bits, but both her and my father usually avoid spoiling me if they can, probably to make me stronger for it. Still, during the past couple of months, she came over to the UK twice, we went clothes shopping till I dropped (that's always our "quality time" together), she escorted me to all the doctors and hospitals I needed to go to within the dreaded NHS system, and spent tons of money on me and my wellbeing on the way. Things I had wanted to save money for since last year, such as a freezer or even an mp3 player, just appeared out of the goodness of her heart, as did non-material things that I thought would never happen, her sitting on a chair next to Than and talking casually, discovering that I'm not the one thing that tears them apart, but the one thing that they have in common.

And yes, everyone else has found that soft place in their heart to worry about "poor old me" - the University (some lecturers as well as the field secretary have seemed really worried by the dreaded "MS" initials), my father (the diagnosis, as well as my mother's first trip, came just after a 75-page translation for his work which he PAID me for and I did at my own pace), friends and family of all sorts and just about anyone who's passed through my world at this time of year seems so supportive and so worried... I'm not dying, you guys, at least not any more than every mortal being in this world is...

I remember the worries I had a few months ago and they almost seem funny now. Than has already thought about finding a non-creative job next school year when we come back, and the projects for the summer ahead seem ideal - not only is a friend of my dad's partner going to find me something in a hot-shot greek production company, but last year's producer guy is already searching for something - paid - for us to do during the summer in a film and TV advertising production background, as well as a friend of ours who is setting up a music production studio and has offered to give us internships there and impart some of his sound-related knowledge, since we plan to spend time around there in the forthcoming months and I will personally be paid extra by his wife-to-be for some english-to-greek translations that she'll need during that time (she's English and has just started learning the greek language, which has still not enabled her to use her copywriting skills there), while she's already tried to pay me for the translation of their website - money which I feel bad about taking from friends - and Than will have his webcomic advertised on their walls... It seems like a fairytale, and if I'm allowed to avoid working at my father's company this year (unless they really, really need me for a few afternoons, to do something that noone else there can do), the summer seems ideal and will be a tiresome yet pleasurable change from my freaking-out-while-being-unable-to-do-anything past few months.

Overall, this has made me think twice about the old grandmothers' attitude, "as long as you have your health, everything else is secondary"... Health (and its absence) was a realm that my mind had never truly considered until now. Things change so drastically without it, and factors such as University deadlines and money issues seem so small now - at least for the time being - that they can be overcome in a second, since I have a good and truthful excuse.

I'll be more active in the near future on this blog, I promise, but my long-term absence is something I don't expect anyone to tell me off about (I literally couldn't have spent half this time writing something till now that I'm starting to get better) and I won't really feel bad about personally. It wouldn't have been an issue otherwise, but it was, due to this - I kid you not. And all for the better now, optimism at hand.

Striving for excellence

I live my life investing myself in everything I choose to do, passionately. Yes, I've done things in the past "just because I had to" and barely scraped enough effort to remain "above average", but those aren't the things I chose to do, they were merely things I had to do. When I decide, through my own free will, to explore an area, I simply must do my best - and, since I've never really had to "support myself financially" in any of these areas yet, I mostly invest tons of effort into fields that won't really give me the same in return - unless you count the appreciation of friends and family as a profit.

But then I look around me, and I see tons of people making a living in areas where, the way I see it, they shouldn't. From a tragically mediocre television writer, to a graphic designer who "complains about her not being able to find a job, although she has a degree" - although I can produce more visually pleasing and objectively functional things than she can, and it's not even my field - to sad excuses for creators of any kind or NHS doctors who are obliged to give you 10 minutes of their time but don't invest a second of their thoughts to actually try and figure out what's wrong with you, but instead they remind you before you're able to say anything that the appointments are for no more than 10 minutes and if you need more time you'll have to book another one.

And yes, it's fair enough that these people aren't going to offer you their souls in return for your trust, but I just wonder how they can live with themselves... They are definitely within their rights to do no more than they're obliged to and hope for the best in return, but how can they dedicate their lives, that's the rest of the time they have here on earth to actually do something and be the best they can be, to some field or cause and not need to excel in it? How can they be so oblivious to anything that could be seen as constructive criticism and instead take it as an offense because it's not gratitude? How can they? I wonder...

And it's not that I personally am better than anyone else, heck, I haven't changed the world in any way (yet), and I won't expect anyone to be infallible, but I want people to try to be, at least in the one or two fields they've acknowledged as their "areas of expertise". So no, next time you show me your crappily laid out fanzine and try to pass it off as a "magazine", or next time you show me your stupid home video and try to pass it off as an "amateur film" - or even when you show me the story you wrote because you had "an idea" and ask me for my opinion, I'll tell you the truth, not a sugar-coated version of it. I'll phrase it as nicely and inoffensively as I can, but I won't hide a single thought, a single "negative" comment. I won't tell you that "you suck", I'll just try to tell you that "I expect better", and how, and why, just in case it reaches the constructive side of your brain - even if I can tell from the way you asked me that all you wanted to hear is "hey, good job". Especially if I know I could do better myself, in your shoes or mine.

Logical Fallacies

More often than not, I find myself expressing strong disagreement with what someone is saying, ranting and ranting and trying to explain myself. And more often than not, the point which I disagree with is not their actual point.

An enormous amount of people around me fall into what are, to me, painfully obvious "mistakes" in their arguments. Trying to explain and support something which may be correct or true or a matter of their own tastes and preferences, they use annoying amounts of arguments that are blatant logical fallacies.

From irrelevant or inadequate appeals to authority to "begging the question", from post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacies to straw man demagogies, from hasty generalisations to abstractions, from circular arguments to irrelevant conclusions, they're easy to fall into yet easy to spot - they're hard to avoid when arguing, and hard to explain to the person who's just fallen into one if they see you as a "debating opponent". And the most annoying thing is to be aware of one's use of them yet unable to explain them; to be the one striving for logical argumentation and a combined quest for the "truth somewhere in the middle" and be talking to someone who uses Sophism and treachery (even in their own mind) in order to "win the debate". I'm not your enemy, you ninny... I'm your compadre in our common search for the truth!

A lot of people I converse with often find me "annoying" in this sense, since, to them, I debate in a way that is not "relevant" to the question... I spend ages going over and over details in their argumentation, instead of just stating a general conclusion which I believe to be true (or not). And it's all in the eye of the beholder... I DO want to agree with people, I sincerely do, even if it's just to "agree to disagree"... But I speak in a language that's foreign to them, which is not necessarily "wrong" - we're just incompatible in conversation.

I allow for personal tastes, as long as they are identified by the argumentor instead of stated as general "A is better/nicer/cooler than B" facts, and I allow for less "strong" statements, such as "this MAY be true" and "that is PROBABLY NOT true", but I can't accept an argument that, with logic, can just not be PROVEN as "true" or as "false", when it is presented as such. Yet I seem to be one of a tiny handful of people who cares for that...

And the funniest thing is that I spend hours annoyed by this happenstance, instead of just ignoring it (and its supporters) when I recognise it being done - most people don't care about logical theory or philosophical argumentation, and I can't say they're wrong not to care. But I, personally, care a great deal. I love to learn new things, and as such I see disagreements as challenges, as a chance to discover why and how the other person believes what he or she does, to find even a tiny fragment of truth I can learn from them. Yet when I disagree, most people assume I disagree with their actual point, with the truth of the logical argument, whereas I spend more time examining and testing the logical path that led them there.

They just want to be "right", they feel they are and as such they need to prove they are, or just reject me as an idiot in this occasion. I just want to find out the truth, or prove / show them the truth if I know it to be thus. I don't know why... I can't really do otherwise (although it should stop bugging me as much as it does, I should just accept it as one of humanity's absurdities). But it's just... well, WRONG... It's not my fault...
It. Does. Not. Compute.