Synaptic Community
Synaptic Community | joshnaylor.wordpress.com
With increases in the proliferation of social networking media such as Facebook and twitter and the creation of the ‘internet profile’ it threatens to redefine community (or at least what people are willing to accept as community).
SOUTHAMPTON UK, Facebook give us the opportunity to watch ourselves socially interact with the world, we can see our friends in organised lists and even read the transcripts of our conversations. Twitter lets us see who has been following our comments, again we can stand to one side of reality and judge the worth of our contributions to society through our musings be they comedic, political or whichever slant we may take.
With this increased focus on what could be described as the quantifying of social community we have lost touch with the qualitative element of social interaction and the effects that has on community. Blogs (such as this one) highlight a trend in the change in the value of opinion. Commentators can be anyone and everyone regardless to the value added to the societal conversation. In this way the internet has driven the rise of the individual. From a community relying on a journalist to present opinion on political matters we can now all be the expert regardless of the investment we have put in.
Electronic communications are both brilliant and yet tragic at the same time. Their brilliance in found in their cost and ease of use. Previously unattainable collaborations are now possibly resulting in incredible promise (such as the online Google library). Scribd is a website for social publications. Many large organisations such as universities publish alongside individual authors in this sodium medium which is enriching the conversations society has (in theory). It allows a greater openness in the process academia goes through to determine to way forward for knowledge advancement.
The tragedy however is so much worse. The tragedy is that it that electronic communications have the potential to produce a generation who think that communication (and therefore community) can be reduced to characters on an electronic display.
The thing about internet based social communication (and it could be argued any non-face-to-face communication) is that what makes it so attractive makes it so flawed at the same time. It is cheap, both in the monetary sense but also in the moral value sense. The value of communication is really in the cost and the sacrifice not in the ease of access. There are situations where electronic communication is incredibly useful but it is never the ideal situation. For communication and therefore community to work it must be an investment, it must cost something to mean something.
The idea of having a digital community, a community without ‘presence’ in a tangible way is a 2D model in a 4D world. The intangibles of community, seemingly things of very little performance and importance, are the things that make it real. It is the unintentional accidents which makes life and community beautiful. Without the weaknesses there are no strengths.
The film the matrix describes the human condition in a very interesting way. In the film one of the main characters tells another how the artificial intelligence tried to create a society for human minds to live in. This society, the character says, was perfect and yet the human minds could not function in it. They could not accept perfection, in fact they found it so intolerable they ‘lost a whole crop of minds’. This is a theme we see clearly reflected in the arts and music we treasure as society. Very far from perfection, evidently flawed and yet to us it represents beauty. In fact we knowingly strive after imperfection and tell ourselves that it is in search of creativity. We do not accept art/music that is mathematically correct or structurally symmetric. Why is it then that we accept a society such as facebook, a society so clean and defined? A society with a reset button and with no sense of space to breath is a society that has lost its way in the algorithms of life and has forgotten about the flaws which make it so wonderful.
Yes there are many wonderful advantages to being able to communicate at the touch of a button, but they are inferior to what we had before. In some circumstances it is electronic communication or no communication. Maybe we have to choose to value the personal interaction, maybe we have to prioritise it over any other form of communication. Perhaps the quality of a society is built on the quality of its communications, how high do face-to-face conversations rank in your world?
Acceptable Culture
Film & Television | joshnaylor.wordpress.com
More and more of today’s film offerings feature graphic violence and scenes of a sexual nature and the question we now face which generations previously have not is, how much is too much?
A poster for the 2006 Scorsese film.
Directors such as Scoresese and Tarrantino have been gradually pushing back the boundaries of acceptable cinema for the last decade or more. We’ve seen films about football hooliganism and we’ve seen films about Mafia. We’ve seen films that make you want the bad guy to win and films where it seems like everyone is a bad guy. The question we must ask ourselves is, are these films art?
If we can answer yes then as horrific as the contents are they have a place in the culture of society. They are there as a provocation to thought, and an exploration into the social and cultural impacts of the themes expressed in the film. They give insight into the situations they show and they shed light on previously shunned area’s of life. They are useful in the understanding of topics not covered by textbooks or teachers, which could lead to a greater effectiveness in dealing with elements featured in the films. Art is the artists way of presenting their world view through a skilful medium, it is this element of skill that lends authority to the message. Art without skill has no cultural authority to present its message and therefore no message to give. It is in the pretext of appreciating the skill element of art that we are challenged to think about and feel the thoughts and emotions the artists would have us do so.
If we have to answer no then what we are paying to watch and thereby funding is one man’s venture into the world of violence for entertainments sake. For many the appeal of violent films is the violence, something which we as a society have chosen to condemn and yet there is something in it which gives an instant pleasure to many in the audience. They do not watch to be challenged and provoked into thinking but merely to draw gratification from the things they see on the screen.
Film being art is important because it allows us to take a moral stance over it and yet still engage with it. We have no rights to criticise a morally debasing film with no deeper message if we choose to watch it. If we can critique the films we choose to watch we can can stimulate healthy discussion and debate. If all we can do is consume the films as entertainment we become morally and culturally fat and unhealthy.
Things to think about…
1. What do I happily watch as ‘entertainment’ and what does that say about me?
2. Do I miss the greater message behind films as art because of my superficial view?
3. Have I thought about what I find acceptable levels of violence/swearing/sex that justify watching a film?
The NHS
Politics | joshnaylor.wordpress.com
A society should be judged not on how they pamper their rich but how they care for their poor.
Florence Nightingale receiving the Wounded at Scutari, a portrait by Jerry Barret
RECENTLY IN AMERICAN POLITICS the issue of universal health care has come to the floor once again. It raises the age old question of the governments role between the doctor and the patient. It is an issue that has been settled in Europe for many years, the only remaining discussions are how to fund such a system. I think it goes beyond a simple cost issue, it portrays the very nature of American ideology. America is founded on the idea that you can have the best regardless of how this may negatively affect those around you.
It is a response to an aristocratic society where power was handed down, what is has produced however is the very same society that allows the few to trample on the many only this time the few didn’t start out privileged. The basic nature of American health care is a refusal to subsidise those who cannot afford it, it is a system based around the individual not the collective. According to the Independent Newspaper 47 million Americans have no insurance, that figure represents 1 in 6 people who have to pay the for all procedures from their pocket (some basic google research suggests a broken arm could cost anywhere from £400-£1000 given the current exchange rate).
The NHS in the UK is one of the countries greatest acheivements, whilst it might not be able to claim the highest quality care on the world rankings it is able to treat far more people. It is a system founded in 1946 through a country that had come together to defeat facism and racism. It is a country that had fought and suffered loss for fellow humans in poland, france, holland, belgium and many other places for which our only link was that they too shared the earth that we live in. It is a system that is bourn out of the idea that every man, woman and child is worth something in a community.
I feel more than content waiting in line for treatment and being placed on waiting lists knowing that someone somewhere is feeling the benefits of a health care system they could not even dream to be able to afford. It would be a dark day if the NHS ever ceases to function it is original role.
Notes.
The NHS is founded on the following three principals.
1. that it meets the needs of everyone
2. that it be free at the point of delivery
3. that is be based on clinical need, not ability to pay
A story within a story
Learning | joshnaylor.wordpress.com
Breaking down a problem into managble chunks.
I was recently watching a BBC 4 program about the history of maths featuring Marcus Du Sautoy, the professor for the public understanding of science at Oxford University (a position previously held by Richard Dawkins).
One of the interesting concepts he explains is how in maths many problems are solve by breaking things down, in the area of geometry particularly. A famous Egyptian text (the rhind papyrus) shows how the area of a circle can be calculated by breaking it up into smaller more familiar shapes (approximately).
This highlights a fundamental approach that mathematics takes to problem solving on many levels. In its very nature it breaks things down. When problem solving in a non-mathematical world there are still lessons to learn. Most problems, even if appearing otherwise on the surface, can be manipulated and rearranged into a series of smaller problems more easily solved.
Another unique lesson that mathematics teaches us is the building of shortcuts, most maths methods are shorts to longer, more complex methods saving both time and effort. Once a watertight shortcut has been found it can be applied in the strict settings that it is appropriate, the proof for the shortcut (or formula) can be very long. It is better to be sure of the shortcut that to shortcut the shortcut and end up having to take the long route every time.
First understand the question
Philosophy | joshnaylor.wordpress.com
Do you ever see a solution to a problem that seems counter-intuitive.
I was recently reading an article on a popular science website all about the treatment of the condition ADHD. The acronym stands for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, a condition that when found in children gives them a short attention span and can make them very unruly and badly behaved. It is somewhat surprising to learn that stimulates (in the same family of drugs as cocaine) are given to these children to help control their behaviour.
The science behind this, without getting too technical, is to try and stimulate the part of the brain that is involved in self-control. This allows the children to gain a longer attention span and therefore to behave in a more socially acceptable way. Upon further investigation the answer now seems somewhat logical but only based on the fact that we now understand the question, which in this case is the underactive region of the brain responsible for attention and self-control.
It seems therefore that we can conclude, in order to understand the answer, first we must understand the question. This might not sound very profound whatsoever and I am sure that many small children might see the wisdom in such a basic statement but sometimes it is the most simple truths that defy us all.
Things to think about
- When you don’t understand the solution provided are you sure is it the answer that is confusing and not the question?
- When you ask questions of yourself or other do you truly understand what you are implying?
- For those interested in the more scientific aspect of this reflection follow this link.
The night sky
Philosophy | joshnaylor.wordpress.com
Recently someone was describing how prophecies in the old testament seem very unconnected at the time of saying but from the perspective of the new testament seem to make a lot of sense…
THEY USED THE ANALOGY OF CONSTELLATIONS, a very interesting angle. We never really think about it but the constellations only really work for us (as inhabitants of earth), if for example we were to move to a different galaxy we wouldn’t be able to identify the constellations because we have moved outside of that unique line of sight. A completely different view would give us a whole new set of dots to join (not in reality but in appearance). It took us a fair amount of time to even get to the notion and idea that we weren’t the centre of the universe, after all things did seem to ‘work’ under that theory.
We look out and we can map images into the stars, we see the moon and the way that orbits around us. Things work so well for us that we think that we must be the centre of the universe and as mankind we fail to see that we only have a limited perspective on things. We miss the point, whether we are alone in this universe or not, we have set up base camp and refuse to budge both physically and metaphorically. 24 people went to the moon, that’s not even putting our big toe in the ocean of exploration.
I think the really telling thing is our priority for a different perspective, one of the most iconic images of space travel is that of the earth rising over the horizon of the moon (displayed above). It gave us a taste of perspective, it was the first hint of how much more to explore there was. It captured the imagination, so much so that is sparked the environmentalist movement who realised how abused the earth had become.
Having made such positive progress we failed to go any further (the Saudi oil price increase didn’t help but that wouldn’t have been an issue if we were really committed). Granted we do keep taking small steps forward but where are those quixotic giant leaps. It’s by going beyond the furthest boundary that we really discover, we discover more about what is out there and more about ourselves.
When our perspective changes and increases we become more enlightened.
