Find Your Outlets! (and two announcements)

I am proud and honored to introduce a new blog, from the illustrious Gadiel Rivkin: The Diversionist.

The pride I feel arises out of the conversation that helped initiate The Diversionist.  Gadi and I were emailing each other regarding a topic of mutual interest, when it occurred to me that his writing style, his passion and his worthwhile perspective were all qualities that should be focused into some kind of outlet.

The idea of outlets, for lack of a better term, has captured my attention as of late. As I told Gadi, "I strongly believe everyone needs as many outlets in their lives that energize them (creatively, physically, spiritually, etc.) as possible." I thought a blog would provide this for Gadi, so I suggested that he start one.  I am honored that he took my suggestion to heart, and I'm psyched that he has provided a new diversion for us all in The Diversionist.

There are several sources for the importance that I ascribe to everyone finding energizing outlets in their lives.  One is the concept of "flow" developed by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, which I read about here:

Finding Flow, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Flow is the state that arises out of the moment when your skill meets an attainable challenge; when you're involved in something that so captures your focus, time seems to fly by without your noticing.  This state energizes.  How each of us can achieve flow is unique to ourselves, but everyone owes it to themselves to think about what they can do to produce it in their lives.  

I think finding creative outlets is as important as a healthy diet and exercise.  It is so common today for people to spend most of their time engaged in activities that suck energy from them.  While this may be a necessity to get by, I think it's so important to find time for outlets, and as many as possible, be they creative, spiritual, meditative or physical.

Gadi has inspired me to take my own advice.  I'm working on a new project that I'll be posting about shortly, as soon as it's ready.  Stay tuned.

From The Terminator to Wall-E

I've noticed a trend in sci-fi movies over the past several years.  Characters' consciousnesses are more often becoming separated from their bodies.  This occurs in The Matrix, Avatar, even John Carter, to name a few.  These movies portray their characters having grand adventures, all while their physical bodies remain unmoving, seemingly comatose.

Although Keanu can seem comatose even on grand adventures...

Dreaming provides the oldest and easiest analogy to this ability. While our bodies lay there, our minds and selves are off doing who knows what.  But I think a more recent phenomena can explain the increased popularity and occurrence of this trend in storytelling. Namely the Internet.

As more and more of our lives are spent in the digital realm, and thanks to Facebook and other means of networking socially, more and more of our personalities exist outside of ourselves.  Even when we are away from the computer, a version of ourselves exists online with which our friends may interact.   As we undergo our own process of disconnection between body and self, something speaks to us when we see this disassociation played out metaphorically on film.

I am excited to see to where this trend will lead. Will it lead people to believe more strongly in a spiritual or metaphysical realm? Will people feel less like themselves when unable to access the Internet?  And most importantly, what awesome new ways will movies portray this disassociation?

One thing seems true, we as a society are becoming more comfortable with the role of technology in our lives. We have gone from the warning of the dangers of too much faith technology, as found in stories like Frankenstein, to the portrayal of technology as a means of salvation, as found in movies like Wall-E (even if that technology is saving us from the excesses of technology).  If forced to arbitrarily pinpoint the moment of this transition, I would look to sometime between The Terminator and Terminator Two: Judgement Day.  It is in these two movies that our switch from fear to trust begins.  As a representation of this, Arnold as the Terminator goes from attempting to destroy humanity in The Terminator (Frankenstein), to attempting to save it in the Terminator Two (Wall-E).

I can hear the complaints of an older mentality based on a fear of what affect this separation will have.
But I can also feel a growing awe and excitement at what changes this new technology will bring.

On Chess and Typewriters

I decided I want a typewriter.  Something like this:

Within a few days of making this decision, I downloaded a chess app.  Two actually.  

Several days after that, it occurred to me that a singular motive had compelled both thoughts.  You see, I find less and less time in my day for contemplation.  We all spend so much time on g-reader, or gmail or tumblr, or twitter or facebook and constantly switching between all of them, I start to fear my brain is rewiring itself to think in sporadic bursts.  I miss having thoughts that are...deep, or long.  I'm referring to quiet moments of processing, rather than a constant flow of input.  Even just daydreaming (which makes you smarter) more often would be nice.  At the same time, I have to reconcile this feeling with my ongoing love for the aforementioned "distractions".

Writing used to compel the brain to process more thoroughly.  I heard Abraham Lincoln would only write as long as his quill held ink before he stopped to gather his thoughts again.  But take writing this post for example, I keep stopping to add links or images and when I make a typo glaring red lines distract me from my thoughts.  Typewriters are not as slow as writing with a quill, but they present a more contemplative process than does writing on a computer keyboard, where I find myself typing nearly as fast as I think.  Don't get me wrong, this is useful for communicating and allows a stream of consciousness process, which is beneficial in many ways.  But I'm looking for something that will force my brain to think harder about big ideas, rather than faster about many ideas.

I am not sure which came first, whether wanting a typewriter came from a conscious desire to think longer, or whether it made me realize that desire, but after I made the connection between typewriters and chess, the importance of finding more quiet processing time for my brain became clear to me.  Both chess and typewriters impel the mind to think longer and deeper than most of the activities we are now involved in throughout the day.  I have come to crave this.

When I start to fear how constant access to information and instant communication are changing my very thought process, I'm reminded about what I have read in: 

The Information (buy here on Amazon and I get a cut)

which discusses how technology has shaped our thinking throughout history.  Gleick relates how Plato, I think it was, feared the advent of the written word, because he thought it would cause people to lose their memory from disuse.  Gleick also mentions that when the telegraph started to catch on, people were unable to comprehend, at first, that the news and weather they were hearing from other palaces was actually occurring at the same time that they were hearing it.  Before telegraphs, it would take days or weeks for news to get from one place to another, such that people only thought of news as what had occurred in the past.

As the internet grows to consume much of our thought process and daily activity, a similar transformation is taking place, the effects of which we have not yet fully realized.  This change is good.  But with new technology comes new fears, particularly with breakthroughs in communication.  When I start to think of the dangers of this change, I'm reminded of how people reacted to previous leaps in technology, and how those technologies have ultimately benefited society, and I am encouraged.  

While I have faith in the benefits of new technologies and their effects on how we think, I still think it important to avail ourselves of the benefits of older technologies.  It has been satisfying to play chess lately.  I am starting to notice a difference in how I think, though still a subtle one.  I look forward to finding a typewriter and discovering how it affects my thinking.  When I do I'll write on it about my experience and...uh...scan and upload it?