10 Seasons Too Many

Did everybody catch the American Idol finale? I sure did! And by that I mean it was on the T.V. while I wasted my time in a significantly more interesting way by staring at my computer screen. It didn’t take me very long to remember that I hate everything about the show. Outside of laughing at the discovery that Jennifer Lopez was on the judge panel I didn’t see any entertainment value in the program.

I usually love championships, and I mean any kind of championships. I watch the Super Bowl every year despite the fact that the game is usually very one-sided and football is like the worst sport ever. There’s just something very wrong about a singing championship determined on the basis of popularity.

If you ask me the format of the show should be reversed entirely. I think that the judges should determine who is the most talented in the final leg and the fans should be able to say who they want to see more of in the initial rounds. The only contestant that I’ve ever seen on “Idol” that I would consider voting for is Larry Platt. Any contest that doesn’t allow Pants on the Ground guy to advance obviously has some fundamental flaws.

I don’t actually know anything about music. This is one of very few things that I have in common with like… all of American Idol’s viewers. It doesn’t make any sense to have a bunch of people who are clueless about something vote on it. That would be like letting ordinary people vote on tax policy… or gay marriage.  

Even if I did know anything about music what would I even be voting on? There are many, many talented singers that never make it in the music industry. So I guess I would be voting on stage presence. And wouldn’t you know it; the world is full of people who can put on a show that never get anywhere as well… Why aren’t we exposed at all to the contestants’ ability to write? I can guarantee that quality writing is rarer than good singing and performing. Of course, that's only requisite for good music- not popular music. 

What I really don’t understand is why people continued to watch the show after Simon Cowell left. He was by far the most articulate and constructive judge of the bunch, yet he was the most hated by the fans. As a performer I can tell you that he’s the only person on the panel that I would actually listen to. We all have enough friends that will tell us that we did well regardless of how terrible we really are. What we all need is somebody to tell us how to do better in the future.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that American Idol is a dumb show that is full of dumb. 

Who Knows, Y'know?

If you’re reading this, then congratulations, you’ve survived the rapture. Wait… that’s supposed to be a bad thing. Man, religion is confusing. I suppose that confusion is the only guaranteed result when one attempts to solve life’s great mysteries. Even still I can’t help but wonder what purpose my extremely unlikely existence is meant to serve. For the final of my philosophy of religion class I wrote an essay about the meaning of life. The writing was really rough but I’d like to think that some of the ideas are worth sharing, and share them I shall! I’m going to cut out a rather lengthy segment on what is called “Divine Command Theory” as pretty much everything I wrote on it could easily be found elsewhere. All you really need to know is that both actions being good because God commands them and God commanding actions because they are good are problematic ideals. Anyhow, here’s like half of the paper. 

“…I have yet to encounter a convincing argument in my life that has persuaded me that the meaning of life is necessarily anything more than simply “to live.”

In Leo Tolstoy’s work “My Confession”, Tolstoy provides the story of how he transitioned from leading a life that he believed to be devoid of reason to the pursuit of a life that was religiously virtuous. Tolstoy begins this work by discussing just how miserable he was during the period in his life when he attempted to rationalize everything and lived by logic and reason. At some point he began to be haunted by the question of why he was even alive. As far as he could discern there was no way to answer this question through reason. Science and rational thought could provide him with the answers to all kinds of questions about the particulars of objects within the universe and their relation to one another, but could not lead him to the answer of why he should continue to live that he so desperately desired. Tolstoy renounced his pursuit of reason after observing countless individuals leading what he believed to be good lives through the pursuit of faith. He believed that these people had truly a discovered the meaning of life- that life is about transcending our finite existence and pursuing an eternal life through God.

When reading Tolstoy’s argument for leading a religious life it is apparent that he was serious about throwing reason to the wind. The idea that religion has worked for many others is nothing more than an appeal to popularity. Just because a certain belief or custom works for another person or group doesn’t mean that it will work for another. In this case there isn’t even a sense of certainty that religion does in fact work as a solution to the meaning of life. Because others are following a certain lifestyle and seem to be happy with it does not mean that the values of this lifestyle are correct. A billion people believing in eternal salvation will have no effect on what happens to any of them when they die. Either they were correct or they weren’t and simply believing does not make the transition from the finite to the infinite a reality. The frame of reference that Tolstoy establishes in the beginning of this piece also suggests a bias in his search for meaning. A man who believes that he is “… an accidentally cohering globule of something.” is probably one with an immense desire to change this viewpoint that may or may not have high regard for objectivism in doing so. Additionally, his dissatisfaction with life by no means necessarily leads him to religion. It could just as easily lead him to lead a life of hedonism, or to simply embrace his nihilism. He may not be wrong in saying that disregarding reason is the only way to determine the meaning of life, and it is of course possible that religion is the answer, but this is far from a definite conclusion. There is a reason that they call it a leap of faith after all. In order to investigate the issue further it is beneficial to explore the motivation of others for pursuing religion as the answer.

…Insert discussion on DCT here…

All of this discussion on the meaning of life gets heavily bogged down when God becomes a factor in the equation, which is why I find Albert Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus to be the most compelling work in this section. In his writing Camus suggests that Sisyphus’s tragic fate of aimlessly pushing a rock up a hill for all eternity is not all that different from the plight of modern man. This is a depressing notion on the surface, but Camus’ argument is one that sees Sisyphus as a happy man. While the rock can be seen as a burden it can also be viewed in a positive light. No matter what happens Sisyphus will always have a rock to push, and at times it could indeed be satisfying just to push the rock, even if he knows the exercise to be futile. Camus goes as far as to state that “[h]is (Sisyphus’) rock is his thing.” Once Sisyphus realizes and accepts the hopelessness of his situation he overcomes it. The only way for his situation to conquer him is for him to hope for more.

As I find myself awake at an unreasonable hour working to complete this paper I can see the link between Sisyphus and myself. This paper will be reflected in one grade that will probably have a marginal impact on the rest of my life which will likely be insignificant in the grand scheme of things. I fully understand that my entire existence could be completely without meaning, but unlike Tolstoy I am not concerned with this idea. Maybe there is a Truth that establishes a fundamental code for morality and maybe there isn’t. So long as I can keep pushing the rock up the hill with a smile on my face and an open mind to embrace the Truth should it present itself to me I’ll be just fine. As they say, sometimes the journey is its own reward.”

This is a far cry from my complete views on life. There’s not even word one on how people should treat one another. It is a good start though, and if I were asked to state in one sentence what I thought the meaning of life was the answer could easily be discerned form this text. 

Keep on keeping on. 

Techschmology

Before I make the following statement I feel it’s necessary to state that I understand the hypocrisy. That being said, I hate technology.

 It all started with calculators. Calculators (not graphing calculators, mind you, we’ll get to those later) are horribly inefficient. In elementary school I was repulsed by the idea of using a calculator for any of the four basic mathematical functions. If I couldn’t find the answer mentally faster than I could punch the problem into my calculator then that was a sign that I should have stayed in bed that morning. Math is sort of like a second language in its own right. If you don’t practice regularly it gets harder. Using a calculator is like the opposite of practice. I think more people would be good at math if they weren’t so comfortable just saying that they were bad at it.

Of course, there comes a point when it’s no longer faster to do things with pen and paper. This is when one will rely on either a computer or their trusty graphing calculator. A graphing calculator has the ability to, you know, graph, which is a pretty handy tool. However, the differences between a basic calculator and a graphing calculator allow the user to have games on their computation device. Which brings me to my next qualm- technology is distracting. Can you think of any classes in High School that were more interesting than playing Galaxian? Maybe. Are any of them math classes? Probably not.

Graphing calculators don’t even compare to smart phones in this regard. I remember when the first generation of iPhone was released. A friend of mine was strangely eager to drop $500 on the new model as soon as it was released. After he picked it up I never saw his eyes again. There are some useful things that smart phones do. I mean, I don’t know what any of these things are, but I have to believe that they exist. Mostly they just make people forget about their surroundings. It’s ironic how much damage that a device designed for communication has done to face to face interaction: a topic much broader than I will bother to delve into for the purposes of this post.

And what the hell is the deal with Angry Birds? Why on Earth should I, a person who neither owns a smart phone nor has any desire to acquire one, have ever heard of that game? I hear somebody mention Angry Birds at least once a week and I can’t for the life of me make any sense of it. Perhaps there’s more value to simplistic handheld gaming than I understand, but that’s an error of judgment that I have no reservations about making.

Recently I started driving with a GPS. I quickly learned that it did not “know” the roads in my hometown as well as I did. I was heading to Minneapolis this weekend which required me to get onto a highway that is roughly a mile from my house. Instead the GPS thought it would be cool to drive two miles and meet the highway further along. I suppose that driving in town longer meant better gas mileage, but the route the GPS sent me on involved taking a left turn over a median that was constructed about a year ago. When I went right to turn around at a roundabout just down the way (which really has no business being there, but that’s another story) the GPS began to recalibrate my position to try to determine a new route. Hooray for satellite positioning. It’s nice to have for getting to places that I’ve never been, but I’ve started to unplug the machine as soon as I even vaguely recognize my surroundings.

So, this might have been more of an incoherent rant than anything else, and I didn’t even touch on the scary side of technology (gogo Skynet), but I think I got my position across. If you can do it yourself, you should. 

A Case of the Mondays

I stared at the rings under my eyes, wondering if they had become a permanent fixture of my appearance. Or worse yet that exhaustion might have become my default state of being. The morning air was cold and my shower had left me unsatisfied. Our hot water heater seemed to be as ill-equipped to handle the weather as I was.

I looked upon the leftovers in my fridge with an expression of disdain. I wasn’t about to throw any of the Chinese that I had been hoarding away, but I wasn’t about to eat any of it either. I didn’t feel keen on taking a trip to the local grocer, so rather than doing so I made my way to a local coffee shop to grab some soup before I consigned myself to the library for the night. Their soup of the day was chicken noodle. Appropriate.

At this point in time I realized that I had left my headphones in my room. The music playing at Mugby Junction would do while I ate my soup, but this would make my time at the library rather unpleasant. The inclement weather quelled any considerations that I had about retrieving them. As I pondered my predicament “Biggest Mistake” by The Rolling Stones started to play from the speaker above my head. This left me no choice but to laugh about my minor misfortune. I’d be returning home for dinner in a few hours anyway.

I wasn’t surprised that the library was crowded when I arrived. Perturbed, but not surprised. It’s always this way at the end of the semester. I wondered where these people did their studying during the rest of the year. To be entirely honest I was more concerned with why they weren’t studying there now. Some day when I have the time I’ll propose my model for priority seating in the library to the university. If the voting took place in the library during the middle of the semester it would pass for sure.

When I finally found my seat I examined my schedule for the week and tried to establish a timeline for when I would need to finish each of my projects. It’s probable that a number of these deadlines should have been set to be met some time last month.   

One seven page paper, one portfolio comprised of revisions of everything I’ve done in my writing class, one PowerPoint presentation and two exams. Easy peasy. As fortune would have it my finals schedule left my Monday and Tuesday completely free. It’s really never as bad as it looks- it’s always better or worse. Personally, I try not to sweat the pressure too much. These things have a way of working out.