First, let me just say, that I am not "for" drugs. I barely drink (and was well over 30 before I ever had any alcohol at all), have never smoked (anything), and am fairly resistant to taking even painkillers (which my wife thinks is insane). Basically, unless the doctor has told me to take it, I'm not much for putting drugs into my body. I'm part of the "war on drugs" culture that came out of the 80s. You know, that whole egg-frying-in-a-pan-that's-really-your-brain thing.
BUT!
We have the wrong idea about addiction and what it means, and the way we've been warring against drugs for the past few decades obviously hasn't worked. Of course, most people, especially old, rich, white dudes in politics strongly believe in doing the same thing over and over and over and over with the hope that, at some point, it will suddenly work. Einstein's definition of insanity.
For a long time, we've know that some personalities are more prone to addiction than others, you know, weak people. At least that's how we've always termed it culturally. Weak people are poor people, usually minorities, who are unable to enrich themselves, living destitute lives hooked on drugs and alcohol. If only they were better, stronger people, they wouldn't have problems with the drugs.
But that's all wrong, and that's not what it means when we say that some personalities are more prone to addiction than others. [For a discussion of personality, you can take a look at my "Exploring Personality" series.] Now, I'm not going to get all clinical, and I'm not going to cite a bunch of studies and include a lot of links that no one is going to look at anyway. This is going to be a very general overview of some recent studies and what I think they mean. So, sure, the conclusions are my own, but I think they are valid.
One thing we know is that some people are more prone to addiction than others, but let me re-frame that statement:
Under the right conditions, all people are prone to addiction. Some people are more prone, but all people are susceptible. And it doesn't even have to do with the actual drugs.
See, if you put a rat, alone, in a small cage with nothing in it but the rat, well, it doesn't make the rat happy. If you hang a bottle of water on one side of the cage and a bottle of drug-spiked water on the other side of the cage, guess which water the rat will drink. It doesn't take long before you have one addicted little rat. And I hear you thinking, "But that's just a rat..."
Wait! There's more!
If you have another cage, a large, comfortable cage full of fun, little rat toys and a whole community of rats and you have the same two bottles of water, guess what happens. The rats almost never become addicted. Some of them, sometimes, will sample the drug water, evidently just for the experience of it, but it doesn't become a cage full of drug-addicted rats. It's kind of the definition of recreational drug use. All of them try it but, mostly, they just ignore it.
What you can take from this is how rats react to their environments. Rats in a negative environment -- alone in a cramped little cage with no stimulation -- will becomes addicts if given accessibility to drugs. Rats in a positive environment -- plenty of social opportunity and things to keep them busy -- will almost never become addicts even with easy access to drugs. The reality of the situation is that it's not the drugs that are the problem; it's the environment.
Now, if you take an addicted rat, and not just an addicted rat, a heavily addicted rat, and take him out of his cramped, little cage and put him in the other cage, the one with all the rat friends and toys, a very unexpected thing happens: The rat kicks its addiction. It almost immediate, in fact. Some of them have to deal with withdrawal symptoms, but, pretty much, they just stop the drugs. Even though the drugs are right there in front of them, they give them up. Not some of the rats. All of the rats.
Because the addiction stems from the poor environment and the brain's search for (for lack of a better all-encompassing term) stimulation, not the drugs. The drugs are just the tool the brain uses to deal with what is, basically, a trap. But you take away the trap and you give the rat freedom and options and a social environment and you take away the "need" for the drug and the brain just says, "That's enough."
Do you know what this tells me? It tells me that people with addiction problems are suffering from the same condition as the rat in the tiny cage. They feel trapped and the drugs are the way they cope. We've been trying to solve the problem by taking away the drugged water supply, but the problem is that there are too many bottles of drugged water for us to ever get rid of them all. You take one down, and someone else comes by and hangs another in the same spot. Or we take the person out of the tiny cage and put him in a slightly better cage with only plain water to drink (rehab) until he breaks the addiction but, after that, we drop him right back into the cage he was in before. It's nearly impossible to break the addiction cycle with these methods.
You know what would break the cycle and cause people to just drop their addictions? If we took the billions and billions of dollars we spend on the "war on drugs" and used it to help build better environments for the people struggling with addiction. Which includes helping them to find some purpose and work they find meaningful. They'll give up the drugs on their own that way.
We will never win the war on drugs by trying to bring down drug dealers and take down drug lords in other countries. There's too much money to be made. The only way to break the cycle is to remove the need the for the addiction.
Showing posts with label Brain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Brain. Show all posts
Monday, January 26, 2015
Friday, December 19, 2014
Math Is Dumb (and Why)
Okay, so to be fair to math, it's not math that is stupid. I mean, math is just math, after all. Math, regular math like addition/subtraction, multiplication/division, algebra, doesn't change. 2+2 will always be 4. Always. The quadratic formula will ALWAYS be the quadratic formula:
Am I giving anyone flashbacks? Or nightmares? Or flashbacks to nightmares?
So it's not math that's the problem; it's the people who write and/or produce textbooks.
There's been stuff in the news recently about how some school districts have been offering classes for parents who need help with their math skills in relation to the new common core math standards. Every one of the news stories I have heard or read make it sound like there is some issue with these adults. They're having to go back to school because they're just dumb. Smart parents don't need help with the math. I don't think this is necessarily the case.
Granted, I don't think a lot of adults have retained much of their high school math and, really, that's okay, because you don't need, in general, much math to get by on. Heck, if you have any kind of cell phone or tablet (and who doesn't? I mean, even I have a Kindle at this point), you can get free calculator apps and stuff, so all you need to know is when to add or subtract or whatever, not actually be able to do it. But I don't think the issue with the new common core stuff is lack of ability or knowledge; I think it's because it's full of made up crap that didn't exist thirty years ago.
And, yes, I mean made up crap because, as I said, basic math doesn't change. There is nothing new to add to it, because, guess what, 2 + 2 = 4! Period (okay, exclamation point). End of story.
So, a few weeks ago, my daughter asked me to help her with her math. This not an uncommon occurrence, nor has it been an uncommon occurrence with any of my kids. I mean, I have spent time teaching both algebra and calculus so getting asked to help with BASIC MATHEMATICS should not be an issue, right? RIGHT? Except what she said was, "Hey, Dad, I need help with this neutral table."
...
...
...
Neutral table? What the heck? I'd never heard of a neutral table. Which is kind of what I said except it went more like:
"What are you talking about? There's no such thing as a neutral table."
"Well, I have to do one for my homework."
Great, my kid had to do some thing that wasn't even real for homework. So I had to take her math book and figure out what the heck she was talking about because, guess what, neutral tables are SO made up that you can't conveniently find them online.
Are any of you wondering, now, what a neutral table is? Well, I'll show you.
Pretend you need to figure out the answer to 7-3 and you can't work that out in your head and you don't have any fingers. Guess what! You can use a neutral table! It looks something like this
+ + + + + + +
- - -
only with a box drawn around it. You match the +s to the -s and remove all of those pairs. Whatever you have left is the answer to your problem, so the answer to this one is 4+s. The problem here is that doing it like this does not address something like 7 - (-3), because you still have to know to make that into 7 + 3. To be fair to my daughter, the problem she needed help with was slightly more complicated although not much more. My question was, "Why aren't you just using a number line?"
Remember those?
That, actually, is still my question. And she didn't have an answer for it.
But I actually know the answer. It's an answer I don't much like.
You can't sell new textbooks without "new" math in them. There's no incentive without new material, after all, other than to just replace books that are falling apart, but how often do schools really need to do that? Judging by the texts I used when I was in school, not more than once a decade at best. But if there's new material... Well, that changes things, so you have to make up brand new "math" to convince schools to re-invest in new texts.
The problem is that it's not really math. I'm sorry (okay, I'm really not); neutral tables are not math. There should not be a section in a math book about how to use neutral tables. They are not a THING. At best, they are an example of a thing, a way of showing a kid who isn't getting adding and subtracting a way to figure it out. So, maybe, you give this info to teachers of 1st and 2nd graders (to the teacher) as a way to explain adding and subtracting, but it does not belong in a 6th grade math text as a THING that you need to know how to use to algebra.
Neutral tables are not the only thing my kids have asked me about that didn't exist in math a couple of decades ago; they are just the most inane thing they have asked me about. And they are inane. It's a waste of teaching, a waste of class time, a waste of brain space. And, now, it's a waste of my own brain space just knowing that these things exist.
Seriously, that our education system is tied up with textbook publishers is one of the reasons that our education system is suffering so much. The education system should not be allowed to become like the military, paying for gold-plated toilet seats and the like. But, again, the education system and what's wrong with it is another topic entirely.
So it's not math that's the problem; it's the people who write and/or produce textbooks.
There's been stuff in the news recently about how some school districts have been offering classes for parents who need help with their math skills in relation to the new common core math standards. Every one of the news stories I have heard or read make it sound like there is some issue with these adults. They're having to go back to school because they're just dumb. Smart parents don't need help with the math. I don't think this is necessarily the case.
Granted, I don't think a lot of adults have retained much of their high school math and, really, that's okay, because you don't need, in general, much math to get by on. Heck, if you have any kind of cell phone or tablet (and who doesn't? I mean, even I have a Kindle at this point), you can get free calculator apps and stuff, so all you need to know is when to add or subtract or whatever, not actually be able to do it. But I don't think the issue with the new common core stuff is lack of ability or knowledge; I think it's because it's full of made up crap that didn't exist thirty years ago.
And, yes, I mean made up crap because, as I said, basic math doesn't change. There is nothing new to add to it, because, guess what, 2 + 2 = 4! Period (okay, exclamation point). End of story.
So, a few weeks ago, my daughter asked me to help her with her math. This not an uncommon occurrence, nor has it been an uncommon occurrence with any of my kids. I mean, I have spent time teaching both algebra and calculus so getting asked to help with BASIC MATHEMATICS should not be an issue, right? RIGHT? Except what she said was, "Hey, Dad, I need help with this neutral table."
...
...
...
Neutral table? What the heck? I'd never heard of a neutral table. Which is kind of what I said except it went more like:
"What are you talking about? There's no such thing as a neutral table."
"Well, I have to do one for my homework."
Great, my kid had to do some thing that wasn't even real for homework. So I had to take her math book and figure out what the heck she was talking about because, guess what, neutral tables are SO made up that you can't conveniently find them online.
Are any of you wondering, now, what a neutral table is? Well, I'll show you.
Pretend you need to figure out the answer to 7-3 and you can't work that out in your head and you don't have any fingers. Guess what! You can use a neutral table! It looks something like this
+ + + + + + +
- - -
only with a box drawn around it. You match the +s to the -s and remove all of those pairs. Whatever you have left is the answer to your problem, so the answer to this one is 4+s. The problem here is that doing it like this does not address something like 7 - (-3), because you still have to know to make that into 7 + 3. To be fair to my daughter, the problem she needed help with was slightly more complicated although not much more. My question was, "Why aren't you just using a number line?"
Remember those?
But I actually know the answer. It's an answer I don't much like.
You can't sell new textbooks without "new" math in them. There's no incentive without new material, after all, other than to just replace books that are falling apart, but how often do schools really need to do that? Judging by the texts I used when I was in school, not more than once a decade at best. But if there's new material... Well, that changes things, so you have to make up brand new "math" to convince schools to re-invest in new texts.
The problem is that it's not really math. I'm sorry (okay, I'm really not); neutral tables are not math. There should not be a section in a math book about how to use neutral tables. They are not a THING. At best, they are an example of a thing, a way of showing a kid who isn't getting adding and subtracting a way to figure it out. So, maybe, you give this info to teachers of 1st and 2nd graders (to the teacher) as a way to explain adding and subtracting, but it does not belong in a 6th grade math text as a THING that you need to know how to use to algebra.
Neutral tables are not the only thing my kids have asked me about that didn't exist in math a couple of decades ago; they are just the most inane thing they have asked me about. And they are inane. It's a waste of teaching, a waste of class time, a waste of brain space. And, now, it's a waste of my own brain space just knowing that these things exist.
Seriously, that our education system is tied up with textbook publishers is one of the reasons that our education system is suffering so much. The education system should not be allowed to become like the military, paying for gold-plated toilet seats and the like. But, again, the education system and what's wrong with it is another topic entirely.
Tuesday, January 28, 2014
Vader's Offspring
Wait! Wait! I'm talking about these books by Jeffrey Brown.
The books have brightly colored pictures that are easily appealing to kids. Funny things happen, like Luke hitting Lobot in the head with pasta sauce at dinner, which are also appealing to kids. However, it takes a certain knowledge of Star Wars and of being a parent for these books to really hit home.
I love Darth Vader and Son. It captures a moment when Luke is probably around six or so and is a great picture of what it's like to be a dad. As in the scene with the pasta sauce: Vader's hand is to his forehead in that great "I can't believe he just did that" pose. This, though, is one of my favorites:
Vader's little princess is good, too, but it doesn't quite live up to Vader and Son. Mostly, it's because he used all the great kid moments in the one about Luke. Because of that, the one with Leia is less focused and strays up into teenagerdom and young adulthood. I have to say, though, that some of the dating stuff with Han is pretty funny. Here's one of my favorites from Leia's book:
Tuesday, November 26, 2013
The Tea Kettle
There's a story behind "The Tea Kettle," but today is not the day you get to hear it. No, today is the day you get to go read "The Tea Kettle," which is a story. But not the whole story nor the story behind the story. Look, just hop over to Out of Print, sign up for the email notifications for when there's a new story posted, and read mine. Then, you can even go back and read some of the others. Mostly, they're not too long, not even mine, so do your brain a favor and go do some reading.
Sunday, November 24, 2013
I Can Spell Better Than My Brain
"What are we doing tomorrow night, Brain?"
Apparently, incorrectly spelling words, the same as every night.
I think we tend to give our brains too much credit. I mean, we rely on them to do stuff for us, stuff like thinking and spelling words correctly and remembering stuff. Yeah, I expect my brain to remember stuff, and I used to think it was pretty good at it, but I'm coming to believe that was just me and not my brain.
My brain does things like this:
My kids and I are leaving for school in the morning. My daughter is always the first one out the door. By a lot. I'm not really sure if she thinks that makes her brother (or me) go faster, but it doesn't. At any rate, she'll ask me to unlock the car for her (which I can do from inside the house, thank to modern technology (AWESOME)), and go sit in it while her brother is still doing things like packing his lunch (which is already made, he just has to put it in his lunchbox), so, sometimes she's out there for a while. I'm frequently standing around in my jacket and my hat trying hard not to say, "We're going to leave without you," because he would just come back with "Okay!" and go back to his DS or whatever it was he was doing before he had to get ready to go. Anyway, we finally get out the door and I'm dreading getting into the car and having to listen to my daughter complain about how it's already 7:53 and she wanted to leave at 7:50, and the boy and I get in the car and she starts in on why it took so long and I start the car and say, "Did I lock the front door?"
One might think at that point that I'm asking Chompyhead (that's what we'll call the boy for reasons I may explain sometime), but I'm not, because I know he wasn't paying any attention. No, I'm asking my brain. Because, see, probably, my brain did tell my hands somewhere in the getting-out-of-the-house part to lock the front door, but I wasn't paying any attention to that part, because I just wanted Chompyhead to get out the door and into the car. And what does my brain say? "I don't remember."
"Seriously? That was, like, 30 seconds ago!"
My brain shrugs at me, "I don't remember."
That, of course, makes me angry, and I have to say, "What's the point of you, then?!" and climb back out of the car to check the door which is, of course, locked.
And I can't tell if my brain is laughing at me and chuckling "got you again" or if it really didn't remember, but, if it's going to go to the trouble of locking the door, it could at least let me know that it's done it. If I have to go back and check, what's the point?
And, so, when I'm writing, I don't want to have to think about how to spell words. Theoretically, my brain should know how to spell all of those words, right? Well, evidently not. And I'm not talking about obvious finger mistakes like "teh" instead of "the," I'm talking about words that my brain misspells over and over again. Especially homophones. Come on, Brain! You should know the difference between "peek" and "peak" and "steak" and "stake" and you shouldn't be "oblivious" by typing "obvious" and it shouldn't be "necessary" for me to stop you from typing "neccesary" every freaking time! I mean, come on! You've been doing this for a long time, why am I still having to remind you that it's only one "c"? Especially when I'm willing to give you a pass on "occasionally;" that one's totally on me.
All I want, and I don't really think that this is too much to ask for after all of this time, is that you get it write the first time. See! There you go again. I bet you thought I didn't see that. And it's that kind of thing that makes me wonder if you're doing all of this on purpose just to see if I'm paying attention. Well, I am! And I don't much appreciate having to go back and fix your "mistakes," if that's what they are. You can be replaced, you know.
yeah, yeah I hear you laughing, "Science can't do brain transplants, yet." How do you know? Just because it's not being advertised, doesn't mean it's not going on somewhere. Besides, I have a Brain sitting right here next to my computer just waiting for the chance to take over the world!
I think we tend to give our brains too much credit. I mean, we rely on them to do stuff for us, stuff like thinking and spelling words correctly and remembering stuff. Yeah, I expect my brain to remember stuff, and I used to think it was pretty good at it, but I'm coming to believe that was just me and not my brain.
My brain does things like this:
My kids and I are leaving for school in the morning. My daughter is always the first one out the door. By a lot. I'm not really sure if she thinks that makes her brother (or me) go faster, but it doesn't. At any rate, she'll ask me to unlock the car for her (which I can do from inside the house, thank to modern technology (AWESOME)), and go sit in it while her brother is still doing things like packing his lunch (which is already made, he just has to put it in his lunchbox), so, sometimes she's out there for a while. I'm frequently standing around in my jacket and my hat trying hard not to say, "We're going to leave without you," because he would just come back with "Okay!" and go back to his DS or whatever it was he was doing before he had to get ready to go. Anyway, we finally get out the door and I'm dreading getting into the car and having to listen to my daughter complain about how it's already 7:53 and she wanted to leave at 7:50, and the boy and I get in the car and she starts in on why it took so long and I start the car and say, "Did I lock the front door?"
One might think at that point that I'm asking Chompyhead (that's what we'll call the boy for reasons I may explain sometime), but I'm not, because I know he wasn't paying any attention. No, I'm asking my brain. Because, see, probably, my brain did tell my hands somewhere in the getting-out-of-the-house part to lock the front door, but I wasn't paying any attention to that part, because I just wanted Chompyhead to get out the door and into the car. And what does my brain say? "I don't remember."
"Seriously? That was, like, 30 seconds ago!"
My brain shrugs at me, "I don't remember."
That, of course, makes me angry, and I have to say, "What's the point of you, then?!" and climb back out of the car to check the door which is, of course, locked.
And I can't tell if my brain is laughing at me and chuckling "got you again" or if it really didn't remember, but, if it's going to go to the trouble of locking the door, it could at least let me know that it's done it. If I have to go back and check, what's the point?
And, so, when I'm writing, I don't want to have to think about how to spell words. Theoretically, my brain should know how to spell all of those words, right? Well, evidently not. And I'm not talking about obvious finger mistakes like "teh" instead of "the," I'm talking about words that my brain misspells over and over again. Especially homophones. Come on, Brain! You should know the difference between "peek" and "peak" and "steak" and "stake" and you shouldn't be "oblivious" by typing "obvious" and it shouldn't be "necessary" for me to stop you from typing "neccesary" every freaking time! I mean, come on! You've been doing this for a long time, why am I still having to remind you that it's only one "c"? Especially when I'm willing to give you a pass on "occasionally;" that one's totally on me.
All I want, and I don't really think that this is too much to ask for after all of this time, is that you get it write the first time. See! There you go again. I bet you thought I didn't see that. And it's that kind of thing that makes me wonder if you're doing all of this on purpose just to see if I'm paying attention. Well, I am! And I don't much appreciate having to go back and fix your "mistakes," if that's what they are. You can be replaced, you know.
yeah, yeah I hear you laughing, "Science can't do brain transplants, yet." How do you know? Just because it's not being advertised, doesn't mean it's not going on somewhere. Besides, I have a Brain sitting right here next to my computer just waiting for the chance to take over the world!
(My Brain with his pet Yoda.)
Okay, so that taking over the world stuff is why it's still sitting on the computer, because I don't want that kind of trouble, but...
Your job, Brain, is to do the spelling. That's what I have you for. You're supposed to be the one stopping me and saying, "hold on there, buddy; 'necessary' only has one 'c'," not the other way around. If I have to do all the spelling and checking and all of that, what do I even have you for?
You know what, I can, too, get along just fine without you. I think you're really more trouble than you're worth. And, no, they don't check for brains before they give you a driver's license. That's dumb? Well, yeah, I know, but have you seen the other people out there driving around? You, of all brains, ought to be able to recognize brainless driving when you see it, so you can't hold that one over my head. I'll just drive like everyone else; they seem to get along just fine. Oh, I'll be dead within a week? We'll just see about that!
fklg l;jhghh ;zufhkl ;ljsdhg ;zhghg ;[ioghdfs lasdjgiou ;';kzjg ;pjfo ;lajlkhui aldhi0rt ...
Monday, April 1, 2013
How To Be... a Brain Surgeon
Have you heard, "It's not brain surgery?" Well, sometimes, it is.
The most interesting thing I've found out about this career is that it takes much longer to become a brain surgeon in the United States than it does anywhere else in the world. That's kind of a frightening thought and one that makes me hope I never need to have my brain operated on in any place outside of the States.
But how do you become one?
Well, the old fashioned way would be to get yourself a saw (a bone saw, preferably), open up the skull, and poke around a bit to see what would happen. That's rather frowned upon these days, though, even if it is funny to poke someone's brain and make his leg jerk. What that means is that this is not a "do it yourself" career path. Basically, you're looking at 15+ years of post secondary education for this one: four years of college, four years of medical school, some time interning (a year or two), and, then, five to seven years of neurosurgery residency. And that's just for the basics. If you want to specialize, then you get some additional training. It's a career you need to really want to do, because you're going to be learning it for a long time.
But, hey, being a brain surgeon allows you to get to use such cool tech as the gamma knife!
My dad had one of those used on him several years ago.
There are all sorts of things we can treat, now, that used to just be a death sentence, not the least of which is aneurysms. Don't get me wrong, aneurysms are still deadly, but, if they find them in advance, now, they can often do things to prevent them from rupturing. Not like when I was a kid when we had a family friend in whom they found one (he was having headaches), and, basically, they told him all he could do was hope that it didn't burst.
So, yeah, if you're willing to put in the time, being a brain surgeon can be a cool gig. Just go ask Anne; she used to be one.
NOTE:
"Part Eighteen: The Angel" is still FREE! today, so go pick up a copy if you haven't done that yet.
The most interesting thing I've found out about this career is that it takes much longer to become a brain surgeon in the United States than it does anywhere else in the world. That's kind of a frightening thought and one that makes me hope I never need to have my brain operated on in any place outside of the States.
But how do you become one?
Well, the old fashioned way would be to get yourself a saw (a bone saw, preferably), open up the skull, and poke around a bit to see what would happen. That's rather frowned upon these days, though, even if it is funny to poke someone's brain and make his leg jerk. What that means is that this is not a "do it yourself" career path. Basically, you're looking at 15+ years of post secondary education for this one: four years of college, four years of medical school, some time interning (a year or two), and, then, five to seven years of neurosurgery residency. And that's just for the basics. If you want to specialize, then you get some additional training. It's a career you need to really want to do, because you're going to be learning it for a long time.
But, hey, being a brain surgeon allows you to get to use such cool tech as the gamma knife!
There are all sorts of things we can treat, now, that used to just be a death sentence, not the least of which is aneurysms. Don't get me wrong, aneurysms are still deadly, but, if they find them in advance, now, they can often do things to prevent them from rupturing. Not like when I was a kid when we had a family friend in whom they found one (he was having headaches), and, basically, they told him all he could do was hope that it didn't burst.
So, yeah, if you're willing to put in the time, being a brain surgeon can be a cool gig. Just go ask Anne; she used to be one.
NOTE:
"Part Eighteen: The Angel" is still FREE! today, so go pick up a copy if you haven't done that yet.
Sunday, September 30, 2012
Getting the Wrong Message
We live in an age of t-shirts. They're like membership badges. You wear a shirt, and people comment on it, and it let's you know whether or not they're in your club. Unsurprisingly, I have several Star Wars t-shirts. I used to have a lot more, but most of them have been retired. Okay, so, yeah, I still have them; I just don't wear them anymore, because an awful lot of them are 20 years old and not really fit for wearing anymore. A have a couple of Sandman t-shirts, I have Animaniacs and "Pinky and the Brain" t-shirts, and I have this t-shirt:
(I also have a lot of other comic book related shirts, but I don't really have time to list all the shirts I have!)
I imagine that emblem is familiar to most of you out there, but, surprisingly, it's one of the least recognized shirts I have. It's also one of the most commented on shirts I have. Whedon fans will almost always say something, but, frequently, people who don't know anything about Firefly will say something like, "Nice message. We could all use more serenity." I just sort of nod and grin and say, "Yeah, we could," while thinking something like "if you only knew."
When I was in college, I was in this writing group. A lot of (pretentious) poetry was batted around during the meetings. One of the rules was that you were not allowed to claim your own work. We were also encouraged to comment on our own work so that no one would know it was ours by our silence. Non-committally comment, of course. That was hard for a lot of people, so most everyone just sat silently when one of their pieces was being read and commented on.
One night, there was a particular poem that was read. I don't remember what it was about, but, evidently, no one was getting it. The author of the poem was trying to restrain himself, but I could tell he was getting frustrated, and he was really fighting with himself to keep from blurting out how wrong everyone was. Including the professors. One professor in particular. Awkwardly enough, I was the one that caused him to explode, but it was because I got it right. I gave my interpretation, and he slapped the table, jumped up, and pointed at me yelling "Yes! Finally! Someone gets it!"
I felt kind of bad. Bad in that it was my fault he lost his cool. It was kind of weird that he lost it over his message getting through when he'd managed to hold it together through everyone getting the "wrong" message. But that's kind of the point: there is no "wrong" message. There is a failure to communicate the intended message, but it's hard to say that a message pulled from a reading is wrong. Unless, of course, you're Barney Stinson rooting for the bully in The Karate Kid. Barney just gets it wrong, but it's not like that for most of us.
No, most of us carry away a valid message even if it isn't quite the one the author intended, and you know what? That's okay. None of the people giving the "wrong" interpretation of the poem that night had messed anything up; they just didn't quite understand the point the author was trying to make. That doesn't mean those other points weren't there, because we weave into our writing things we have no idea are there until someone else points them out to us. And that's okay, too. That's why other people can see things about us that we can't always see, and it's why we can learn about ourselves through other people and the way other people read what we've written.
You know what else? I don't think Joss would be upset about people coming away with a message of serenity because if the t-shirt based on his movie. I think he'd say, "That's okay."
I imagine that emblem is familiar to most of you out there, but, surprisingly, it's one of the least recognized shirts I have. It's also one of the most commented on shirts I have. Whedon fans will almost always say something, but, frequently, people who don't know anything about Firefly will say something like, "Nice message. We could all use more serenity." I just sort of nod and grin and say, "Yeah, we could," while thinking something like "if you only knew."
When I was in college, I was in this writing group. A lot of (pretentious) poetry was batted around during the meetings. One of the rules was that you were not allowed to claim your own work. We were also encouraged to comment on our own work so that no one would know it was ours by our silence. Non-committally comment, of course. That was hard for a lot of people, so most everyone just sat silently when one of their pieces was being read and commented on.
One night, there was a particular poem that was read. I don't remember what it was about, but, evidently, no one was getting it. The author of the poem was trying to restrain himself, but I could tell he was getting frustrated, and he was really fighting with himself to keep from blurting out how wrong everyone was. Including the professors. One professor in particular. Awkwardly enough, I was the one that caused him to explode, but it was because I got it right. I gave my interpretation, and he slapped the table, jumped up, and pointed at me yelling "Yes! Finally! Someone gets it!"
I felt kind of bad. Bad in that it was my fault he lost his cool. It was kind of weird that he lost it over his message getting through when he'd managed to hold it together through everyone getting the "wrong" message. But that's kind of the point: there is no "wrong" message. There is a failure to communicate the intended message, but it's hard to say that a message pulled from a reading is wrong. Unless, of course, you're Barney Stinson rooting for the bully in The Karate Kid. Barney just gets it wrong, but it's not like that for most of us.
No, most of us carry away a valid message even if it isn't quite the one the author intended, and you know what? That's okay. None of the people giving the "wrong" interpretation of the poem that night had messed anything up; they just didn't quite understand the point the author was trying to make. That doesn't mean those other points weren't there, because we weave into our writing things we have no idea are there until someone else points them out to us. And that's okay, too. That's why other people can see things about us that we can't always see, and it's why we can learn about ourselves through other people and the way other people read what we've written.
You know what else? I don't think Joss would be upset about people coming away with a message of serenity because if the t-shirt based on his movie. I think he'd say, "That's okay."
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