Tag: YouTube

Aeon

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Now feels like a good time to plug a favourite website of mine. Aeon is all about ideas and when you read though the titles of the different articles they publish, the mind illuminates with excitement. They generally publish essays and short videos. The essays are usually three to four thousand words and of a high enough level not to be considered light reading. For this reason I can get a bit lazy as I know it will involve a certain amount of mind effort to read one. It is things like this that allow me to realise that my use of the internet doesn’t go much further than looking at football, politics, buying things and generally killing time and shutting off my brain. The internet is the greatest invention and has the potential to revolutionise society on scale not obvious since the printing press and I use it to kill time and shut my brain off. I know I’m not alone in this. Humans are ridiculous.

Aeon then involves a little effort, if you’re me, but it is well worth it. They used to also publish Ideas that were usually around the one thousand word mark which my short attention span was more suited to but they unfortunately seem to have done away with them recently. They publish essays on philosophy, science, history, psychology, law, nature, education and every sub category within.

For example this is an article on Ashoka Maurya who was an Indian Emperor over two thousand years ago. Seeing first hand the horror of warfare he creating ‘an infrastructure of goodness’ which also included the spread of the teachings of Siddhattha Gotama – the Buddha – and changed the face of the Indian continent in the process.

This is an article on the spread of pathogens throughout history, from The Black Death to polio, and how they’re generally spread silently by the seemingly healthy.

This article discusses free will and determinism, using our understanding of the sometime random actions of molecules to give some answers to this age old argument.

This is an essay on the concept of ‘hysterical women’, how women’s pain is often medically overlooked and undertreated but that ‘believing all women’ is not necessarily the answer and oversimplifies the issue.

This discusses how not only is privatising public services bad economics but also how it undermines our social and political bonds as a community.

And finally this is an article about how fish are nothing at all like us but that they are sentient beings and that they finally deserve a real place in our moral community.

Ultimately these are just a few examples of articles they publish and even then they’re only the ones I’m drawn to. There’s a little of everything for everyone. I mention Aeon because they’re not a massive publishing or news company, they don’t have adverts all over their website and they produce really interesting work. It’s online magazines like this that people need to be made aware of in these times of sensationalism and factual inaccuracy.

Just because I can I’m attaching a video of sea life in the Ningaloo Canyons off Western Australia. The video is on YouTube but is from Aeon, or at least that’s were I found it. There is also a video on the creation of the police force by Robert Peel in 1829 and what that has meant for society up to the present day. Enjoy the fish for now though.

The Failed Individual

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I’m going to expose my lack of knowledge when it comes to social media and / or computers. I just watched this video on Facebook and attempted to somehow download it to put up on here. I have done this before with YouTube but clearly it’s beyond me with Facebook so please click on the link and watch the three minute video before reading ahead.

There is a lot online at the moment about police violence or things of that ilk and this video is attempting portray an American police officer over stepping the mark, or at least in this case attempting to. He is trying to get a driver who he has pulled over for speeding to step out of his car. The driver doesn’t want to and is telling him to just fine him and let him go on his way. The video is only three minutes long so we have no idea what happened prior to this recording or after when some other officers turn up. He first threatens to pepper spray him for not getting out the vehicle but in a comedic way his pepper spray is empty at which point he takes a hold of his taser. He suggests he wants him to step out of the vehicle because he is concerned for his safety. If you have watched the video then this paragraph was pointless but humour me.

This might sound counter intuitive but I actually feel a little sorry for the police officer. Yes don’t get me wrong he is clearly not handling the situation well but he’s also clearly not suited to the task he is attempting to carry out. He has no authority in a job which demands above all else authority. He is clearly either nervous, scared or simply not suitable. And that’s what I want to focus on. This man is not suited to the job he is trying to carry out. Now that could mean the job itself makes demands of people that rely on authoritative bullying, but somewhere down the line they have employed and trained this man who should not be doing a job which can lead to situations which result in potentially killing someone. One day either he will be killed or he will fuck up and kill someone. For me, he as a human being has been failed by a police force and a crumbling system, which has allowed someone clearly dangerously unsuitable to find himself in a situation above his head. He may not be a victim on par with or in the style of George Floyd but it’s important to recognise it is this kind of thing too which highlights a corrupt and failed state and it’s institutions. Thankfully this movement isn’t just focusing on the individual, people are seeing the bigger picture, but it’s also important to see the human being too even when he is being a dick.

A New Form Of Live Music

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About six months ago I made a conscious decision to see more live music. I have seen a fair amount in my life, not loads and not enough to be impressive in any way, but there have been memorable experiences I can count on more than one hand. There have though been occasions in which I have passed up on seeing someone; leaving a show early fifteen years ago because of girlfriend issues and not staying to see The Prodigy still rankles as a major moment of regret. This spring and coming summer then I was hoping to see some music but this has clearly all changed. While some summer festivals have been postponed until the autumn it is pretty clear I’m not going to get this music fix in the short term.

This pandemic has forced people into embracing new approaches to getting their message, music, produce and so on out into the world. The internet is yet again showing itself to be a most incredible tool and social media may have plenty of downside but it is proving to be an brilliant source for sharing when people need it the most. There is one phenomena which I have been enjoying and that is the live music. From what I can see this began with people not necessarily famous but who were used to performing regularly be it bars to small venue. I have a few friends on Facebook who have put on some shows and while I haven’t watched them all, I have enjoyed them, not announcing my presence just watching as if I was sitting silently at the back of the gig and leaving just as they ended.

A few of the more famous musicians have been getting in on this too, for various reasons, some charitable and some personal. I watched Post Malone do a really good show of Nirvana covers to raise money for the World Health Organisation. I then listened to a few of his actual song and realised he wasn’t for me, but his take on Nirvana, with the help of Blink 182’s drummer Travis Barker, was really impressive.

I discovered yesterday that a favourite dub artist of mine Panda Dub took part in something called the Aftrwrk Online Festival.

While these are ultimately the type of videos you’ve been able to watch on YouTube for a longtime there is something different about watching them live. We are leading such disconnected lives in quarantine that even the slightest connection to something happening in the moment that others are also partaking in can not be overlooked. I don’t think for a second that this form of music will overtake actual live music in person but it will certainly have forced people to view and approach other medians of live music in a new way.

Tonight then there is one by a group called Whitehorse who I came across about a month ago. Tonight they are doing a live show at about 22.00 British time. This is a link to their facebook page from which I think it will be shown.

Maybe I’ll see you there.

Challenging Our Beliefs

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Today was a day of soul searching. Soul searching in the sense of trying to decide whether I should buy a book which is written by someone who I think holds a different ideological belief to me. For a rather complicated reason I found myself searching through my ebay basket deciding which book out of the ridiculous amount I’ve saved I would buy. I finally settled on one called “Get Over Yourself: Nietzsche For Our Time”. Now while I’m not entirely ignorant of the great mans beliefs I would struggle to sit down and roll many off in much depth and as he is someone who I would like to learn more of I thought this book looked like an interesting read. Quite often we learn better from things we can relate to so the concept of this book seemed ideal for me, and in some ways still does. I decided to do a little research on it though, check out the reviews as much as anything and there aren’t many but I did start to get the impression the author Patrick West was of a more right leaning perspective politically and I won’t deny that this concerned me somewhat. Hence the soul searching.

The thing is I want to hear different perspectives, I think it will help me to create a more well rounded set of beliefs and values. I am more likely to read an article from a left wing news source but I don’t refuse to read something from other sources, unless it’s YouTube of course which I draw the line on. I admit though that I unconsciously and consciously am more critical and demanding of something that potentially challenges my ideals. That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t read this book, I might just agree with him and he might explain it from a perspective that opens my eyes to a new understanding of the world. My problem is that a book that is described as challenging “identity politics, therapy culture, ‘safe spaces’, religious fundamentalism, virtue-signalling, Twitterstorms, public emoting, ‘dumbing-down’, digital addiction and the politics of envy” can easily fall into the realm of alt-right internet trolling bullshit. I would love to read about them from a Nietzschean perspective but Nietzsche’s words have been corrupted so much over the years by all sides that there’s every chance it has happened here again. That’s the problem, I would love to read this perspective and this approach to understanding contemporary issues, but it has to be credible, the arguments can be agreeable or disagreeable but they can’t be flawed through inherent bias.

I went on this Patrick West’s Twitter and it’s not clear from any news articles he posts where he really stands. He’s written for The Spectator which is a respectable conservative magazine, and The New Statesman which is a respectable left wing magazine. What concerns me though is that in each of his Tweets he starts off ‘The latest The New Poujadist’ and it turns out there was a chap called Pierre Poujade in France in the 1950s who led a right wing populist movement. This doesn’t fill me with confidence that someone who is that willing to pick a side, although I don’t discount I misunderstand this cultural reference, could in anyway write a balanced sociopolitical book on contemporary society. And it’s so frustrating because in a way I actively want to read things I disagree with but I also don’t want to waste my time on crap and a book that could have had such potential may just be a load of crap. We live in such polarised times that stepping out of bubbles has never been more important, but coincidently, it feels like it’s never been so hard either when people are so intent on making noise in some vain and inglorious desire for attention. Back to the drawing board.

Don’t Taste The Wasp Twice

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We as a species have an inbuilt response to new things, we fear them. There is a practical reason for that and it is rational; new is unknown and unknown could mean danger. As a species we have managed to survive, adapt and evolve to the point we’re at in our evolutionary cycle. I don’t doubt one reason for our success so far has been down to instinctively following that practical approach mentioned above. Is it instinctive though? When we are young children we try to touch or eat anything new, it appears we sense next to no danger in anything, yet as adults we have become cautious if not neurotically fearful. That would suggest we are taught to fear new and unknown things but then puppies and adult dogs mirror human growth fear patterns too. Perhaps puppies learn new can mean danger because sometimes they experience the pain of discovering new things, like the taste of a wasp, or a dogs parenting is just not something obvious to my untrained eyes. Can we then take that further and use it to explain why we are so weary of new sources of information, or even new information that may contradict our previously held beliefs.

I suppose it is probably quite a straightforward idea, we distrust new sources because they are unknown and we haven’t built up a relationship of trust with them. We reject new information because our current beliefs are known to us and with them we have so far survived to this point in life. With them we have safety and life, potentially this unknown new information may lead to danger and the taking away of either our safety or in the extreme our life. There is also the issue of narrative to take into consideration, what doesn’t fit our narrative we are likely to dismiss but I’ll not go down that avenue this time.

I was sent a link to a video on YouTube by a friend who has a differing set of ideals and beliefs about how best we should approach the world than I do. I rarely bother engaging him in discussion anymore because neither of us come close to seeing the others perspective and I always end it feeling exhausted and frustrated that I’ve wasted an evening arguing with a brick wall. When I received this video I assumed immediately it would relate to one of his points previously made, which it did, and in my mind I had already rejected it before even contemplating watching it. My initial response was to see it was a YouTube video and dismiss it as worthless. There are many useful videos on YouTube and I have taught myself how to do all sorts of things through them, but videos of a political or social nature are quite often just a pile of tosh. I had already rejected the point because of the source platform. I decided to watch it a little, not the full one hour because I have better things to do, and did some research on the speaker and his organisation. Seemingly they are of a different persuasion to me but I still watched and tried to listen to the message. After ten disagreeable minutes I gave up because I found him frustrating, it appears you can’t argue with a pre-recorded person. I do understand why angry people comment now but I still refuse to get involved in that game. Ultimately my point is that I like to think I gave the speaker the opportunity and I listened with a clear mind but it’s not easy when you already think the platform the information is on and the source of the information are unreliable and bullshit.

Absorbing new information is clearly an incredibly challenging task. We struggle to absorb anything that is new because it is unknown and potentially dangerous, and we struggle to accept anything contradictory to our present set of beliefs as it challenges what has so far kept us safe. The YouTube example above is an easy one to dismiss because the contents and the platform are like the Daily Star of video journalism but sometimes we get contradictory information from credible sources and this can be hard to accept and equally dismiss.

The more I delve into these things the more I’m starting to realise just how hard, if not impossible, it is being some kind of discerning, moral and decent person. Here I am, just like yesterday back to the fallible human. Is failure what makes us human, or perhaps the ability to recognise and improve on our past failures. It is okay to be fallible. It is unavoidable clearly, but is it only acceptable if and when we try and avoid repeat failure. Being conscious of our previous failures, accepting that they are inevitable and pushing on in the search of perfection, or at the very least an acceptable success. Don’t try and taste the wasp twice, it’s all so simple now, if only I had realised that earlier.

The Art Of Procrastinating

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Procrastinating really is an art form when done at it’s finest. I sat down an hour ago at my computer to do some work on something and knowing I had a little more time than usual decided to just have a little browse of the easy thoughtless websites I usually like kill time with. My version of those are football related and I can easily spend an hour reading the latest news, transfer gossip, he said / she said stories that don’t require much thought. Perhaps that is why they do so well; they grab you with click-bait style headlines and then are usually written so simply the mind needs to put in only the minimum effort to read them. They are also addictive. Facebook is the other procrastinator but while football is seemingly still there, I have managed to give up bothering with it much beyond emails to other people and obviously posting these blog pieces. Twitter and Instagram? Don’t be silly.

Why do we procrastinate then? Is this another example of a lack of discipline? Procrastinating is about doing something else, usually thoughtless and a waste of time, to avoid doing something more important and likely more challenging. Even this piece today is in itself procrastinating; just as I finally closed the football related windows I realised how much I had just been wasting time for the last hour and how I was still stuck in the old habits of the past. Why not write about it then and while I need to write something today, there is probably a slight avoidance in this action by doing it at this moment.

We all procrastinate though and modern society is just full of opportunities. If it’s not football news it’s Facebook. If not that it’s some stupid click-bait site giving you thirty moments someone you don’t actually care about either embarrassed themselves or didn’t wear make-up. Struggling with not enough click-bait then why not play some kind of addictive game on your phone or become a zombie to short YouTube videos. These are all technological methods but what did people do before Nokia kicked it all off with it’s highly memorable Snake game? People must have still procrastinated but I was about sixteen then so it’s hard to say. Maybe doodling was more common, people certainly read newspapers more but that’s not solely a procrastinating thing. Genuinely I don’t know. Perhaps I can find out online, that should kill some more time.