Random Ramblings

There's just so much going on. Israel / Iran, Russia / Ukraine, plane crashes, and idiot politicians. Some might be surprised to find out that I'm no fan of Trump ... but then again I didn't like him in the 80's and 90's either and I don't think he's mellowed with age, I think he's gotten worse. Back then I thought him the stereotypical used car sleezeba... er ... I mean salesman. Now I still think that's what he is, but now with a healthy dose of spoiled brat added in. He wasn't the popular choice before his first term he squeaked in because the Republicans had like 14 different runners in the primaries and none of them were strong front runners. The thing was that since the field was so wide he won some of the early primaries by narrow margins with under 20% of the votes, and there is a good chance that his name recognition got him more votes than his platform.

Okay, let's be real here, in the early states he didn't HAVE a coherent platform in that first run, he was an outsider with a famous name. The first did appeal to the voters that were sick of career politicians, and the later appealed to people that had no real reason to vote beyond 'It's my duty' and zeroed in on a familiar name. Regardless of that he won a few early states and one thing has been shown again and again in studies ... people will tend to back the person that they believe will be the winner. Keeping in mind that going into that race Trump had jumped parties (he'd been a registered Democrat his whole life in NY), was known to be friends of the Clintons, had several very public fraud suits against him, as well several very public bankruptcies ... If the Republicans had anyone that was remotely qualified he should have been an easy one to get rid of, but instead he squeaked by in a couple early states and took a small lead, that momentum allowed him to pick up more backing, more donations, he could point to those early victories and, again, some people who might have otherwise backed a different candidate were like 'my guy isn't looking too likely, let's back this guy he looks like he could take it' ... not because they agreed with or even liked him, just because they felt better backing someone that they thought might win. 

I should mention that I despise two of the three types of voters I just described. The 'I'm only here because it's my duty but I don't really have an opinion beyond that' and the 'I'm going to vote for 'x' because he looks like he'll win, not because I agree with him or think he'll be a GOOD choice, but just because he looks like a winner' ... if we could find a way to get those votes (from both parties) out of the system ... well I'd like to think the world might be a better place. 

I look at people that voted for Trump (by their own admission, I'm not guessing here) appalled at the effects the tariffs had and I looked at them and I'm like, this was expected, it wasn't a surprise ... I mean I'm no economist but I saw this coming. Or the ones that are like 'I wanted the tariffs to bring back jobs, but this immigration stuff, I didn't want this' ... well you voted for it ... you get the whole package, not just the parts you want. Again, it was part of his campaign, anyone that listened to him, that followed him in the least knew this was part of what voting for him was.

I look at people that I know complained and hated Obama for trying to 'Rule through executive order' that praised Trump with every one he signed, even the ones that were technically meaningless. An executive order only applies to agencies under the direct control of the Executive branch ... it doesn't create law, it can't suspend or repeal laws, those are powers of the legislative and/or judicial branches of our government ... and the number of people that don't understand that separation of power is depressingly high, particularly when one of them seems to actually BE the President.

The world is on fire and the President isn't helping any of it and is, instead, throwing gasoline on the fires in his own country. I am all for the rule of law, but for it to work the President has to operate within it, and from the beginning he as acted as though he is above the law, he says that he can't stand by while law enforcement officers are attacked while doing their job ... but he just pardoned Jan 6th rioters that ... oddly enough ... attacked law enforcement officers that were doing their job. He is a power motivated hypocrite at best, and a dangerously delusional narcissist at worst. Most Presidents that I look back on I can say they made some pretty bad mistakes looking back at it (I'm looking at you Reagan) even Carter, Bush, Clinton, "W" Bush, Obama ... but I can say with all of them that I believe they believed they were making the best choice ... doing the right thing ... But I'm not sure with Trump ... I can't say that I honestly feel like even HE thinks this is the best for the country ... He really does strike me like someone playing The Sims and removing all the doorways so that his little Sim family is trapped in the burning kitchen just to see them suffer. 

Too much going on

 I say this because I am experiencing the paradox of having so much to write about that I can think of nothing to write. No, even that's not quite right, it's not that I can't think of anything to write it's that I can't focus on anything to write about it because as soon as I do I think of 3 more things I should write about. Modern lack of civility, AI and the assault on art, the stupidity of the current economic situation, the state of the education system, the failures and pitfalls of social media,  and the arrogance of ignorance ... just to name a few bouncing around my head.

Net result is that I'm likely not going to talk about any of those ..... or maybe I'll write about all of them. We'll just have to wait and see. Sometimes I look around, I listen to the news and read things that make me wonder if I'm the only one that sees some of this stuff. I mean I feel like I can't possibly be ... well, let's be fair, I know I'm not because I know my wife sees at least some of it too because we talk about things such as this fairly regularly. But outside of that? Well let me tell you a story.....

Last year I was working late evenings catching drives for various jobs and we had a 'one off upload' coming in that night. That is a client coming in that just needs to use our fast internet connection to upload their media to another location ... usually LA or New York. Well turned out they were shooting marketing material for a show we were working on (we didn't know what they were shooting when we booked the job, and they didn't know we were working dailies on the show, just had heard that we had good internet connection and reasonable rates.)  ... none of that's important by the way, just a cool coincidence.

 Well when he came by to drop the material for the upload since there was nothing going on in the office I offered that he have a seat, it was only a 30 minute upload based on the data anyway. I started the upload and we sat down at the breakroom table and talked. There was something political in the news ... I don't remember what now ... and normally I wouldn't normally discuss politics with a client, but he brought it up and while I doubt we'd have agreed on everything, we did on this point at least in general neither of us spoke too specifically. He was about my age ... maybe 5 years or so older if I had to guess (and I would have to as I didn't ask) ... and one thing we definitely agreed on is that we, as a society in general, have largely lost the ability to disagree.

I've talked about this a bit before I think, or maybe I haven't here ... I don't remember ... but starting I'd say with the news media in the late 90's or so and then into the rise of 'social media' nearly everyone and every topic largely became black and white, but reality and life rarely truly work that way. Discussion, debate, discourse is how we, as a society, learn about the complexities of issues by getting information from a differing point of view. But too often now, anyone that disagrees with someone becomes 'the enemy' (and we both noted that this behavior is from both sides in pretty much any discussion ... it isn't a left/right or a liberal/conservative or even a black/white issue .... it's a society issue.

A lot of people in today's society have decided that their view is the one true view, that what they see is THE answer and that everyone else is wrong. But that's not always the case, and with almost every complex social issue it is certainly NOT the case. Everyone has different experiences, different points of view, maybe different understandings of a situation. A friend of mine showed me an image many years ago, and I've used it many times in talking about this issue, but I recently found one that took it even a step further:

 

What you know and see may be true, but it doesn't mean that it is the whole truth, it doesn't mean that what someone else sees and describes from their point of view is wrong or a lie. This tendency to attack and belittle anyone with a different point of view only leads to not actually understanding the TRUTH of the matter. We are stronger and better as a society if we can take a step back and look at something from a different perspective, listen to someone that might have different life experience and take a moment to understand their view of things, doing that might give us a better picture of the truth, a better understanding of the issue and allow us to work toward better solutions, better ways of treating others around us that maybe we don't understand at first because we don't share their point of view, their experience, or their upbringing. 

 Don't get me wrong. Some things are simply wrong. Judging or treating someone differently because of their race, religion, sex, or anything like that is wrong, full stop ... do not pass go, do not collect $200. Any group that preaches, teaches, or condones hatred toward another group, who wish harm on another group ... is wrong. Some will say 'then punching Nazis is wrong too' ... in a way, that is correct, however, Nazis have traditionally been the aggressors and defending yourself or others is not wrong. Most reasonable people understand that these things are bad, so if you have a group of people going out of their way to identify themselves with such a group of people openly ... yeah ... Captain America had the right idea....

Letting go

I was watching a clip from an interview the other day. The interview was with Samuel L Jackson and he was being asked to give advice to up and coming actors or want-to-be actors, and what he said made me think. I won't go into how he laid it all out, because I don't completely remember it, but what it boiled down to was 'give up on your expectations and do it for the sake of doing it.' I want to note that it was give up on your expectations, not give up on your dreams. Because a lot of people don't realize how their expectations hinder them in chasing their dreams.

Really what he was saying, echos something that I see in these types of interviews a lot and it centers on the fact that people, in all walks of life, have certain expectations about doing things and succeeding at doing things. And when reality doesn't align with those expectations it makes it easy to give up, or quit. Another actor I listened to talked about the actors that basically say, 'I'll give a try for a few years' and he said, if that's your attitude, save yourself the two or three years and figure out what you want to do. Now in these cases they were talking about acting, but it is true in a lot of fields ... art, writing, music, sports, business, investment, careers in general.

My script writing professor in college on day one had us go around the room, saying what we wanted, not just from the class, but from learning script writing, what was our ambition with the skill, and as people answered he wrote the answers up on the board. Some of the answers were, fame, wealth, have a script made into a movie, learn story structure, learn character development, finish a degree. (The story structure answer was me for the record). Once everyone was done, he circled Fame and Wealth and then crossed them out saying, 'If you're here for these reasons, do yourself a favor now and go find something else' and then he circled 'have a script made into a movie' and said 'if you want to do this, or want to learn to tell better stories, I'll be happy to teach you what I know.' He continued saying 'because if your focus is on becoming famous or wealthy it's much more likely that you will become discouraged and fail, but if you focus on the craft of telling a great story, then it's much more likely that you might find wealth or fame.'

 The problem with it is expectation, if your expectation is that you're going to be famous, if that is your focus, then every time you fail to live up to that your likely going to lose a little more drive, doubly so if you see someone else get a break ... more over when you are focused on fame or money, you're more likely to try and make what you think will sell or be popular, which likely means that what you create will end up just one of hundreds or thousands of others almost just like it.

In any creative endeavor, create to create. Create for you, write the story that's in your heart even if (possibly especially if) you can't imagine that anyone wants to read it. Write the music that you want to hear, the lyrics you want to sing. Paint what speaks to you, take pictures of what catches your eye and sparks your imagination. Because if YOU love it, if you love making it, you'll improve at it, you'll learn and get better because you want to make it better, you'll create and polish your creation and it will shine. Then the next one will be better as you take what you learned and start from a better place, and you'll learn and improve and polish. 

I won't say that if you do it you'll absolutely become famous and rich, but I will say that if you're doing whatever you do because you love it, you're more likely to stick with it through the hard times and, thus, increase your chances of coming out better on the other side than if you were just doing it for money. Because if I've learned anything it's that if you care about the result then nothing is ever easy, because things are only easy if you don't care about the result ... and if YOU don't care about the result ... neither will anyone else.