Loving Nonexistence

An almost hipster friend of mine once wore a t-shirt that read something like, "I've heard of bands that haven't been formed yet."  Arcing along the lines of the first liar not having a chance, the message conveys a sense of urgency to discover.  What about discovery is so exciting, I cannot say, but when it comes to bands, often the personal discovery of a band comes too late.  I discovered The Civil Wars, then started hearing them in sound tracks, and on NPR.  Then, they broke up.  The first time a person hears the Beatles, the cloud of disappointment over loving something that no longer exists looms dark on their voyage.

The Weakerthans, though still together, seem to be only updating their Twitter feed, leaving not much to love in the present.  Their previous albums are time capsules that I find myself revisiting, and whenever "One Great City" comes on, I am reminded of discovering the band for the first time.  The song is an ode to a home town, an expression of love for a city that can only be shown through a proud disgust.  The people of Seattle, for love of the Emerald City, complain about the traffic.  The people of Winnipeg, apparently, each in their own muttered way, proclaim, "I hate Winnipeg."

Like an old friend whose flaws you know better than they do, you cannot help but hate the town you are from, or living in.  If ignorance is bliss, then love is spite for flaws that are too obvious to ignore.  We lust in ignorance, a pre-love that builds around something that could never have existed.  We love in full knowledge, but blind ourselves with an image of what it never was.  Either way we are trapped loving something that does not exist.

Music and home towns are easy examples.  Relationships, pregnancy, and child rearing seem to have the same effect.  The recently single find fantasies to justify love that never existed, and the new parent soon fools themselves into the glory, forgetting the pain, of days gone by.  At the heart, we love memories and fantasies because they are ours to control.

Travelling is much the same way.  When on holiday, it is convenient to think that the experience was in some way real.  That the traveler experienced the place, people, or culture.  In actuality though, knowing a culture means to be assimilated by it, and once that happens, we are blind to it.  Stories of gang violence and abject poverty seem unreal, but to the people in them, the alternative is just as unimaginable.  The traveler never experiences their destination, and they may stay for years, building a facade of pliable love that exists for something that never was.

The fantasy genre, and maybe fiction as a whole, exists for our love of things that do not exist.  When we fantasize about castles and dragons, we generally leave out the smell of chamber pots and open sewers.  During the years in Middle Earth that Tolkien describes, he skips over the messy details of life, Sam only once waxes on about the Shire, and Rosy Cotton.  George R. R. Martin is perhaps better at creating the grey area of life, but even when evil and good blend to an uncomfortable hospital beige we can freely love (and hate) that which does not exist.

Unlike my friend, I will probably never have heard of bands before they exist, and most of my hobbies are innately involved with following (e.g. following trails), and yet, I find at the close of every day a feeling a little like the title of The Weakerthans' second album, "Left and Leaving."  I have left a moment in time that I will love, or love to hate, in my memories, and the day is leaving me to love in dreams of things that will never be, leaving me the transition from what never was, to what never will be.

Dignity

A few days ago, though it is difficult to keep track of time in camps, there was a NPR piece about the economic conditions in Greece.  A Greek man, either through a translator or directly, stated that while his job does not pay enough to cover his total expenses, at least he has a job, because a job is dignity.  I am paraphrasing this, but the basic idea remains, having a job is having dignity.

A coworker retorted that the idea of jobs as dignity is what caused the economic problems in Greece.  I took the bait, replying that I think, when you consider the entire situation, a job is probably necessary for dignity, and that it was probably the inflated credit rating from joining the EU that got Greece into economic trouble, not equating dignity and employment.  The conversation essentially died, but I continued to think about the idea of work as dignity.

Life in a camp lacks dignity.  As anyone who has had to use port-a-potties for an extended period of time, these destroy dignity.  The one I use here is cleaned weekly, and on Tuesdays, my bathroom situation becomes "less nasty, more splashy."  This is not dignity.

Yet, without employment, is there dignity?  A homemaker certainly has dignity, and is am important part of many households.  There is still an income in this.  There is a home, electricity, running water, etc.  These services that we have equated to basic rights are dignity, and these cost money.  I think it is likely that what the man in the NPR interview was saying was that with his job, he can afford (most of?) these services, which provide dignity.  What happens though, when one cannot afford this type of dignity?  What happens when an entire generation in entire nations cannot?  What will happen in the United States if the government continues to not spend money on necessary programs, and the economy continues to languish?

I have discussed these questions with various friends.  If, for example, I was not afforded the paycheck that accompanies my unfortunate restroom status, what would that mean.  Eventually, I would be faced with either homelessness, or with moving in with someone.  Conversely, if a friend or family member of mine was forced with this choice, I would gladly offer my home to them.  That said, in standard thinking, this means a period of months, and, in fact, my brother has extended this hospitality to me before.

In Greece though, these problems are not a problem of months, but of years.  Nay, likely decades!  If, for example, friends were to pool resources for 10 years, at the end of that period, would they want to part?  Pop culture has celebrated these arrangements in the television show Friends.  In fact, the idea of "roommates" is the basis of multiple television shows.  Frasier, Chuck, Firefly, and I am sure many others have some aspect of people being forced into a life together in order to maintain dignity.

Beyond the economic benefits to one or more members of the household, the environmental benefits are clear too.  Multifamily homes have smaller environmental footprints than single-family homes.  Thus, it may be possible that in the pursuit of personal dignity, these, dare I say, communes solve other problems that confront society.

For me, I see many ways that long-term, stable, relationships could form between people in the form of pooled resources.  I see a response to micro-sized apartments, shrinking or slow economies, and dwindling natural resources.  I see, a way for me to have dignity that includes a flush toilette.  Yet, it seems, that our collective dream of the future must shift from GM's Futurama, to something different, something that places universal dignity over consumption.

App Advice

A year ago I heard about an app that tracks your sleep patterns, and can adjust one's alarm clock to harmonize with the body's natural cycles.  Ten years before, a climbing buddy wanted to design an alarm clock that would do exactly that, but his idea, as I remember it, used an elaborate set-up of infrared cameras.  Curious about an idea that re-entered my life as a 99 cent creation, I downloaded it.

The sleep cycle alarm has been a failure for me.  I generally do not set an alarm if there is flexibility in my wake-up time, furthermore, the few times I have tried to use the alarm, the phone has fallen out of bed (which never seems to happen when I am not using a sleep tracking alarm).  While this should not be a problem, it seems that the app, recording either the best sleep of my life, or my death, has decided that either way, there is no reason to bother with the alarm.

The sleep tracking aspect was fun for a while.  I would tuck my phone under my pillow, feeling warmed by an eight hour visit from the radiation fairy, and drift to sleep.  My movements were recorded, and plotted against time, and any noises I made, above a certain threshold, were recorded as well.  Nothing entertaining ever came out of the noise recordings, just light breathing and an occasional cough.  The chart of my sleep cycles matched nearly perfectly with my how I rated the restfulness of my sleep.

If I awoke feeling well rested, the chart was smooth, and my bed easy to make.  If I awoke feeling groggy, the chart would be rough, and my bed would be messier.  Since I felt good or bad depending on how I slept, and if I felt bad, I had to spend more time making my bed, I was acutely aware of the restfulness of my sleep.  Regardless, when I turned off sleep tracking in the morning, the app on my phone would dutifully ask how I slept.

Eventually, my groggy mind started to perceive a surly tone in the question.  It was never a problem on 5-star nights, but the single-star mornings, I think the app was programmed to take on a different tone.  It was no longer a dutiful nurse at a sleep clinic trying to diagnose one's condition, but rather the jerk from summer camp who put tacks in your bunk.  My mind started to paint the app in an even more vindictive light.  The app took the role of the devil on my shoulder, but rather than imploring me to do something sinful, was lambasting me for being tired.

"You didn't sleep well?  Yeah, probably because you went to bed later than you were supposed to.  Even if you had slept well, it would not have been enough sleep.  Is Wikipedia really that interesting"?

The app, all in my mind, would continue to become more belligerent, and I feared not sleepiness, but the imagined guilt and attitude my telephone would berate me with if I did not sleep well.  If I had a hard time falling asleep, I would stop the recording, delete the bad section, and try again.  I knew that my phone "knew" what I was up to, and I would loose sleep knowing that my phone was neatly tucked under my pillow, dreaming up some rude comment for the morning.

I had to stop using the app.  I have successfully stayed away from apps that "help" me with any type of tracking.  I use the calendar, the normal alarm clock, the internet, but not anything that "tracks" something for me, and my relationship with my phone has improved.

Recently, a friend downloaded a calorie journal to her phone.  In addition to recording the calories she has eaten, it sets consumption goals, and calculates calories spent during exercise.  The app is fairly aggressive, because if you go over the consumption goal on Tuesday, the calorie goal for Wednesday is reduced by the overshot.  Almost instantly, her phone took on a sinister air in my mind.  She did a 3000 calorie workout, and went over her consumption goal by 100 calories.  Still running an over 1000 calorie deficit, the app docked her next day's consumption goal to illustrate its disappointment.

"You overate yesterday," I heard it saying in its judgmental tone.  My friend and I both argue back, for I was implicated in this purported gluttony in an even larger way, "We walked all day up to a mountain pass!  We had to cross an icefall"!

"Nope," her evil calorie app exclaims!  "You," it continues, "do not get ice cream today, because you ate a cookie yesterday."

I know I will concede to it, or try to sneak my snacks in outside of the all knowing gaze of the advice giving app.  And while I will admit that these guilt inciting pieces of programming may be useful for weightloss or sleep disorders, I think apps have a long way to go before I can trust them with any information they may judge me for.

Texas, Florida, Shame

National Public Radio published that researchers at the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay, have found that online ranters prolong their anger.  This seems to hold true with the cliche that the longer one complains about it, the longer it hurts.  As such, I held off writing about Texas passing laws that abridge a woman's reproductive rights.  Then, I held off on posting about the ruling that the murder of Trayvon Martin was legal.

I doubt that the hurt this type of legislation and legal precedence will ever truly stop hurting though, no matter if I complain or not.  So I will enter in my own lamentation, though my thoughts are not poignant through my words, or my position in life.  I will, instead, seek the succinct approach of offering two simple questions to addressing these travesties of justice.

In Texas, would a law be passed to deny a man to the full rights of reproductive health?

No, because the Texas lawmakers are misogynists, and so too, likely, are those who elected them.  No law, to my knowledge, has ever been passed to ban vasectomies.  In civilized nations, in fact, vasectomies are paid for by national health insurance.  In Texas though, the guiding light for law making is the subjugation, or continuation of the subjugation, of women.  Laws like this make it clear that a Texas man is not great, nor powerful, but is simply a bully who feels powerful when he attacks, belittles, or berates others.  Shame on Texans.

In Florida, would a minority, black or otherwise, be found not guilty of murder if they armed themselves with a deadly weapon, stalked a white person, was urged by public safety officials to stand down, then killed a child after instigating a confrontation?

No, because, apparently, six of six Floridians are racist, and condone the murder of other races.  How many Floridians would it take to get one, just one, who felt that the rule of law forbade the murder of children, regardless of their race, or affinity for midnight Skittles?  The jurors in this case represent Florida, every citizen therein, and have set the legal precedent that what was once premeditated murder is now self-defense.  Shame on Floridians.

The blame does not rest entirely on the blight on human civility that are the people of these two states, but on all Americans.  We, Americans, citizens, patriots, we are the oppressors and the murderers.  We have decided to side with the strong over the weak, to oppress rather than empower, and we have the cowardice to call it protecting life and freedom.

Shame on us.

American Vanity

Internet privacy is an important idea.  Unfortunately, corporations, not any government, were pioneering ways to track people long before the internet was in every home.  Owing to corporations, there is no internet privacy.  In some ways, I agree, this is a terrifying prospect.

My credit card companies know that I am wont to show up, unannounced, in a foreign country, and buy something in a grocery store.  More or less, I do not need to tell Visa that I am heading overseas, they know I will pop up in a random place, and start buying fruit and vegetables.  Conversely, if I want to buy furniture, Visa is going to need a DNA test to prove that yes, I am interested in owning a bed.  They know my preferences better than I do.  I remember a credit card company advertising the "service" of monitoring every single purchase to protect you from fraud.  The ad I recall had a handsome man describing himself to the audience as a "t-shirt and jeans guy," who decided to get married and thus bought a tuxedo, at which point, the credit card company called him to verify his identity.  Society, it seems, bought the service side of this spying.

As consumers, it seems, we gain piece of mind and increased services if we let Visa, Mastercard, and American Express know us better than ourselves, by spying on our every moment.  It is accepted as common place that to enjoy the full warranty on one's new blender, Osterizer needs to know your annual household income.  Yet, when it comes time for the Census, the American people seem to be hesitant to tell the government the number of people living at the address.

By completing the Census, schools, roads, airports, and social programs get funding.  Libraries and museums may open or close in the neighborhood, but these are not, apparently, services as worthy as the ninety-day warranty on a coffee pot.  What fear of the government could possibly be worth sacrificing livelihood for?  I doubt, in fact, any fear would be worth it.

Fearing one's government is not actually about fear, I think.  Rather, fearing the government is about the vanity of thinking one's life is something special.  I do not want to condone the NSA or CIA spying on anyone.  Yet, as a society (and it seems universally human to do so), we have come to the conclusion that we need to employ spies to keep us safe.  However, we fancy that our secrets are too dear to have them found out by a stranger sitting on the outskirts of DC, or Salt Lake City.  When it turns out that clandestine services do spy on people, particularly Americans, rather than asking why, it seems that we react with vehement fear of our secrets being found out.

The reality about it is that you, and everyone you know has secrets that are far too boring for that spying to be worth it.  An NSA file on me would be short, boring, and on a tape drive gathering dust for lack of use.  I would like to think I matter, that I travel enough, or have poignant enough blog posts, to have a detail of NSA agents following my life and times.  In fact, if the agents' viewing of Faux Social gets counted as a "page view" by Google's servers, I would be happy to pepper in juicier words like explosive, jihad, and McVeigh just for my own vanity. -Oman-

I do not think that this will work.  To me, the internet is a public domain, I think about it like a busy street with storefronts, and people moving about.  It seems totally preposterous to think anything you do there is "private," yet, like the busy street, most of what you do is "anonymous."  This is not anonymous like voting, but in the numbers of it.  When I shop at Amazon, they and I know exactly what I perused, then did or did not buy.  A store with security cameras could do the same.  I feel anonymous not because Amazon does not know who I am, but because we are strangers.  In the company of strangers, we are free as if anonymous because there will be no repercussions for our actions, no need to blush, lie, proclaim, or explain in the realm where everyone is a stranger.  Yet, like a police officer walking the beat, well trained people may be able tell the difference between a stranger and a potential bad guy.  -Anthrax-

Thus, in my view, I do not think Americans (or anyone) should be actively monitored in public (including the internet), not because it is an issue of privacy rights (which it may be), but because I doubt it is really worth the money.  If all of the money invested in monitoring Oman went into improving the lives of the poor there, how many people would choose extremism?  If  the money Americans spent on lipstick and fighter jets went into schools, libraries, healthcare, and financial security, would there be gangs and religious/political extremism?  If Afghanistan had access to a port, electricity, phones, internet, and literacy, rather than a century of imperial domination, would it have the Taliban?  There is no one fix, but the real problem is that militarism cannot solve social crises, and Americans are worried about the vanity of being spied upon, more than they are about foreign policy.

-Terrorist-

Microcosm Societies

Before I had ever lived in a camp, I read Microserfs by Douglas Coupland. The title is far more clever than I ever gave it credit for while reading it. It is a play on Microsoft, on feudal social structures, and general computer nerd-dom, which, I suppose, is as far as I took it while reading the book. Living in camps though, the idea of microserfs, the peasants of the smallest microcosms of a society, becomes fascinating, far from the confines of computerized LEGO programming in Silicon Valley.

Like Coupland's imaginary startup, a camp has its visionaries, its leaders, its middle class and its serfs. The social structure is a rigid caste, and the only thing that keeps the society functioning is that there is the promise of life after camp. People come to a camp to pay for what they do when they go home. To pay for lives that do not include the people they spend most of their time with. It is a weird dynamic. Imagine a water cooler conversation where no one will ever know anything about anyone else, where no one did anything over the weekend, and where there are not plans for the coming weekend. One functions in this environment because they have to.

In all camps, there is a hierarchy. It is essential that people have a leader, as anarchism simply does not get a job done. These duchesses and feudal lords can be brutal or kind, just as any others. They may plan for the winter, or their fiefdoms may starve. It is impossible to know before one has been in the camp what the leadership is like. Leadership though, is strange. In the Medieval period, these microcosms worked because an army backed the leader, and the leader backed the army. A symbiosis occurred at all levels of the chain, where the over- and underlying social strata agreed where everyone was. In a camp there is no army, instead, there is the upcoming Visa bill.

We are all Visa's indentured servants in these microcosms. Maybe a person has no debt, maybe a person always pays cash, but in the end, we owe now or in the future, and we know that we must fill our role in order to make that payment. It is the army of creditors that keeps a camp in check, there is no symbiosis.

This, makes something of a leadership vacuum. The camp leaders lead only by directing the work, yet s/he who directs the work does have power. If the leader is a fan of a football team, days when that team plays may end early, the basketball enthusiasts lose out. If the leader likes to run in the mornings, the morning meeting will be later. If they like an early dinner, workers will be early to their jobs, but back at the mess when the food is served. The power comes from the little things.

Who gets the power? How do they keep it? Like in any political struggle, the key players start to show their hand, and the knights, rooks, and pawns move into position. The power positions in a camp are the same as chess, and society. The king is all powerful, but crippled by the burdens of leadership. Their second, the queen is more powerful, s/he faces the conundrum of Lady Galadriel, to be pure and good, a champion of the pawns, or to become all powerful dark sorceresses. In either case, the queen may, intentionally or not, seek to usurp the king. Lastly, are the bishops. These are the hidden players, they control the conscience of the serfs, and thus, wield power that the king and queen can only demand. Pawns are the first to choose sides.

In minerals exploration, the pawns are usually the locals. They are infinitely replaceable, yet impossible to control. They see the whole camp establishment as outsiders. Often, race or ethnicity complicate relations between the monarchy and the serfs. They have nothing to lose in their meager existence, and so they are eager to choose sides with the person who gives the most present, and often petty rewards. If the bishop offers a workday that is 10 minutes shorter, the bishop will win the pawns. Yet, the pawns are the downfall of s/he who controls them. For the locals want things that are often contrary to the desires of the more loyal, more skilled knights, who will triumph against the pawns every time.

Knights in the camp society get the work done. They have a platoon of serfs behind them, but they get samples submitted, they log core, they run the computers, they collect the data, and deliver the goods. In the camp power struggle, the knights will win the battle. Yet, an exploration campaign, like a war, is not about a battle, but the compound effect of many battles. In order for one to win the war, a strong position must be held through many skirmishes. For these, one looks to the rooks.

Rooks, in the camp society are consultants and technical experts. The knights can win the battles fought today, but the rooks win the battles that will be fought tomorrow. The rooks are motivated by entirely different things. Rooks are motivated by professional reputation, by what happens outside of camp, more than within. From the top of their battlements, a rook can see what tomorrow will bring beyond the confines of the short field campaign.

From my tower, for I fancy myself a rook, I can watch the battles ebb, and the tides turn. I see racial and ethnic tensions flare, and the knights rally around their banner. I have time to sit, and ponder, in this microcosm society, who are the allies I want to maintain when I leave this camp? Who will bring me the most benefit when I deliver my fealty? It will never be the bishop, s/he lacks the wherewithal in my networks. It may be the king or queen, or with enough ambition, I can usurp even these leaders. So I, and the other fortresses watch, listen, and wait.

All of this, requires that outside force. The creditors, whether they be from the Bank of America, or the Society of Economic Geologists, we all seek the value placed on us by those outside camp. In this way alone, we are truly a microcosm of society. The technicians are microserfs, not only because we are a microcosm, but because they are more insignificant than the feudal serf. They are nameless, and ephemeral, they are but leaves on a tree, inconsequential today, and forgotten by fall. The brave knights, who fight for the banner of their fancy, they are no more influential in society. They are not minuscule because this is a camp of 50, but because this is a country of 300,000,000. This microcosm functions not independent of society, but dependent upon society.

While I wile away hours with an iPod, and an endless cylinder of rock, I contemplate why people work. Why people live in these camps the way they do. I watch the power struggles, and I come back to the same idea again and again, they do this because they will leave here. I wonder then, what would a truly micro-society look like? What will be the dynamics of the Mars One team, when they land with no intention of returning? What will keep them going? There is no creditor, there is no army, there is no future, just today, for the rest of their lives. In this strange world, I wonder, will there be microserfs?

Living in Elbonia with DRMs

Readers of Dilbert will recognize Elbonia as the fictional mud-filled country, and its totalitarian neighbor to the north, where Dilbert's company outsources work.  Nonreaders of Dilbert now probably know enough to gather that one would not want to live in Elbonia.  Like the characters of Dilbert, I have no desire to ever visit Elbonia, let alone live there.  However, like the profit driven corporation, I send myself to deal with whatever evil stands in for the mud in whatever place stands in for Elbonia.

My current Elbonia is Tok, AK, but most of the places I have lived in the last year or so remind me of Elbonia in some way.  I dream of escape, yet My beard is getting thicker, and I am starting to fear that I will never get all this mud off.  The only hope I have in these camps are the reminders of civilization I bring with me.  Unfortunately, all of my chocolate has melted in my 90 degree tent, and DRMs are preventing me from escaping with multimedia.

Apple, for various reasons, has been frustrating me for a long time now, so one day I decided that I should cut my final tie with the company, and move on from iTunes.  Still wanting to pay for my music, I tried Google Play, and discovered that in places with limited and slow internet, it really isn't a good medium.  I then tried Amazon, which is as convenient as iTunes, perhaps more, because you can buy music, rent movies, and ship garden tools to Florida if the mood takes you.  Amazon even has less restrictive DRMs than Apple, provided you are using a Windows or Android operating systems.  Playing iTunes files outside of iTunes proved too difficult to bother with, and thus, like a Dilbertian corporate slave, I went back to the most restrictive product to have the easiest access to the products I legally own.

Then, I bought a laptop with Windows 8.  Windows 8 was buggy, difficult to use, and credited with slowing down the sale of new PCs because of its general horribleness.  When it crashed, I switched to Ubuntu.  On an open source operating system one should be able to access their music, but not their iTunes music, nor download their Amazon music (though Ubuntu is installing with a link to Amazon on the dock).  Thus, while stuck in Elbonia, I am confronted with the realization that the things that remind me of a better place, are actually just reminding me of Northern Elbonia, where instead of a totalitarian state, it is a totalitarian corporation supported by the state.  Or, it all just came full circle, and I am in the cubicle maze with Wally and Alice.

In the end, only a few things are inaccessible to me here, while I choose if I want an operating system that doesn't work (Windows 8), or one that doesn't do what I want (owing to DRMs).  While I consider this, I have often considered that if I had stolen the media I cannot access, rather than paying for it, I wouldn't have any of these problems.