Perspective
08:20 Thursday, 11 November 2021
Current Wx: Temp: 50.52°F Pressure: 1012hPa Humidity: 66% Wind: 5.01mph
Words: 887
One of the things you learn in therapy is something philosophers (Stoics) and Buddhists and others have known for a long time, and that is that there are at least two parts to every "story." There's the thing the story is about, and there's the story-teller. There's the situation, and what we think about it.
And the only thing we ever talk or write about is the latter, because that's where our experience is located; and we're mostly interested in our experience, we just think we're interested in the thing we're talking about.
Zen tries to get beyond that, beyond "subject-object" duality; DeNiro in The Deerhunter telling John Cazale, "This is this! And not something else." I think that was the first time I ever experienced Zen, if you can say it was an experience. There are two movies that I've loved that I've only seen once, because I don't think I can watch them again. One is The Deerhunter, the other is Saving Private Ryan. I'd say they're both very Zen. I think when you're in the experience of the absence of subject-object duality, the experience might be said to be one of bliss. Watching someone else in it might be far from it. But that's a story for another time.
What this story is about is our preferred western narrative framework, the zero-sum game, the duality within the duality, winners and losers and only one of these is preferred, only one is privileged.
What prompted this little meditation is something I read yesterday at The Online Photographer. In a follow-up to a previous post, Mike enjoins his readers to consider some questions he poses. One is, "5: Fuji vs. Micro 4/3, who wins?" and that pissed me off. Being pissed off is a feeling, and feelings pass and I'm not pissed off anymore. The question still engenders a feeling of frustration, fortunately for you dear reader, so that's why I'm here.
Everything is contingent, everything is connected to everything else, everything affects everything else to one degree or another. So the stories we choose to tell, and the way we choose to frame them, sometimes affects the course of the story itself, the "self-fulfilling prophecy." Not always, and it's not necessarily because of the story, but it plays a part if only in our experience of the story (thus reinforcing the preferred frame).
In Mike's framing of the question, he explicitly invokes the zero-sum framework, of Fuji (a camera manufacturer) and Micro 4/3 (a camera sensor format). Mike believes and seems to wish his readers to believe, that only one can prevail, "win." One infers that the loser will no longer exist someday.
Well, it's a foolish question from the standpoint that ultimately neither the manufacturer or the format will exist one day far enough in the future. It's also foolish because it's likely that any number of his readers will no longer exist before either the manufacturer or the format cease to exist. Who's the winner in that context?
And what is the value of the answer in any context?
Presumably, as a photographer, you might wish to invest your time and money in a winner. Because who wants to invest time and money in a loser?
Mike goes on to close the obvious disconnect between manufacturer and format in his poorly framed question by invoking the question of the future of OM Systems, the new company formed from the former Olympus camera division.
These stories don't always end up the way the story-tellers seem to wish. I'm writing this on a Mac, and it may be hard to believe today, but for many years the dominant narrative about Apple was that it was dead. Well, that narrative was overtaken, in part, by a better narrative, the return of Steve Jobs. The rest, as they say, is history.
For OM Systems, the jury's still out. There's no heroic figure on the horizon to change the narrative. Who knows? Can't say it looks promising.
So what?
For now, OM Systems still manufactures and sells a complete camera system with a number of very capable bodies and lenses. My oldest body is probably nine or ten years old, still works. Sensors and stabilization have improved since then, but I expect my E-M1x and E-M1 Mk3 to work until I'm 80, if I live to be 80 in our "run, hide, fight" dystopian Republican future.
Should you not buy a camera because the manufacturer may go out of business someday? Well, of all the factors you should take into consideration, I'd say that's near the bottom of the list.
I'd say the bigger problem everyone faces is living in a culture that embraces the zero-sum game as its preferred narrative framework. It leads to a lot of sloppy thinking, poor choices and unfortunate outcomes. Not just in photography, the camera business and blogging, but in life and society as a whole. Subject-object duality is problematic enough, further bifurcation into "winners" and "losers," with one being preferred and privileged excludes a whole lot of valuable things and diminishes all experience.
Anyway, what do I know? I'm an authority on nothing. I make all this shit up. You're strongly advised to do your own thinking.
✍️ Reply by emailVeterans Day
05:36 Monday, 11 November 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 71.71°F Pressure: 1015hPa Humidity: 96% Wind: 0mph
Words: 1124
Some of the most important lessons of my life were learned in the Navy. Not because the Navy taught them to me, in a pedagogical sense; but because military service can offer good opportunities to learn those lessons, if you're paying attention.
First, I should say why they were "important," that is, "of great significance or value."
Value. Definitions often become recursive, where words refer to synonyms to supposedly "define" meaning. One definition of value is, "the importance of something." Also, "worth" and "usefulness."
If you live long enough, and are blessed or privileged enough to do so with surplus in your life, you may become aware of a certain aspect of the experience of being. An interior emptiness, or disquiet as you regard all the effort and activity of your life, the material things that accumulate and surround it, and you wonder what it all "means." What it's all "for."
Most of us in America are blessed with surplus in our lives. Even many of those supposedly unhappy with their circumstances. I'm relatively confident that they experience this question too, perhaps often.
What does it all mean?
Meaning is important. It's like "stability" in naval architecture. Stability is that feature of a ship's design that determines its ability to remain upright among the forces the sea imposes on it. It may heel to port or starboard due to wind or wave action, but it resists that force and when it is removed, it returns to a level, upright orientation.
If a vessel is unstable, or lacks sufficient stability, it will capsize when subjected to forces other than buoyancy and gravity. It may not sink, though it probably will, but its utility as a ship is gone. If it doesn't sink, it becomes a hazard to navigation.
Meaning is what helps provide stability in the interior experience of our lives. It's what resists the vicissitudes of day to day existence, and keeps us upright and moving forward.
Habit can do the same thing, but not to the same extent, not with the same strength. People without meaning in their lives rely on habit, and are often capsized by the cruel fortunes of fate.
Where does "meaning" come from?
Some people find it in the tenets of a particular faith. This is perhaps one of the largest, if not to say "greatest," sources of meaning for many people. Others can find meaning in philosophy, education.
But these are external sources. Abstractions, ideas, that come from outside of our lived experience. We are embodied beings, and lived experience is the "reality" of our lives. And lived experience is where we have the opportunity to make "real" meaning.
Something that I learned, in part through my service as an officer in the Navy, in part through my service as a husband and a father, and in part through the facilitation of an experienced counselor, is that life is meaningless. That may come as a surprise to some.
We bring meaning to life.
We make meaning.
And I suppose I should point out here, that everything you're reading is an abstraction. It is the distillation of my lived experience, and it will remain an abstraction to you, forever. To know what I'm writing about, you'll have to live it yourself. Then it will become your reality.
So, Veterans Day. What is it about?
Ostensibly, it's a day set aside by our nation to honor veterans. A day when all Americans, presumably, acknowledge in some way the value and meaning of the service and sacrifice of those Americans who served this nation in its armed forces. Who wore the uniform of their country, and represented its values to the world.
Mostly I think it's just a Monday holiday for people. But maybe that's just me being cynical.
So another word that we have to define, "honor." I've done that before, but I'll do it again.
Honor is both a noun and a verb. I'll define the noun first, and I'll do it without looking it up in the dictionary.
"Honor" is that quality of individual character that is earned or accrued through the action of upholding the shared values of the group. Someone who has honor, has kept faith, with shared values. It is achieved in action, it is not accrued passively.
Honor is supposedly a good quality, a desirable one. We uphold honorable people as examples for how we should live our lives. As exemplars of the goodness of our values.
As we do on Veterans Day.
Presumably.
"Honor," the verb is a transitive verb. An action verb. You do it to something. My favorite kind of verb. Yours too, if you have a bias toward action.
When we "honor" someone, we call attention to them from the group. For a period of time, the attention of the group is directed toward the individual or people being honored. This is intentional. It has some importance, some value. The attention of the group is intended to be favorable, to be respectful, to be an affirmation toward the object of the attention.
It should be, it's intended to be, reciprocal. In one direction, it rewards the people receiving the attention. In the other direction, it affirms to the group, that this is an example.
Here is a life, or here are the lives, of people who upheld our shared values through action. These are people who can be examples, whose lives or whose actions are worthy (value) of emulating.
And by emulating those lives, those actions, we will make meaning in our own lives.
We will reify what formerly had only been abstractions. We will accrue honor in our lives. We will make meaning, and add stability and strength to our own moral character, the vessel that carries our immortal souls through the rocks and shoals, heavy seas, dark and lonely nights in the sea of existence.
I find this lacking in America. Some enormous part of America is lost. Capsized. A hazard to navigation.
The most recent election of a dishonorable man is a manifestation of the lack of meaning in American life. It's more akin to nihilism. That nothing matters, nothing means anything.
So it is with some bitterness that I come to today's Veterans Day.
This is not to shame anyone, though I wish that those who voted for him might have the capacity to feel shame.
This is just the sad, bitter reality we face today.
What helps me is the meaning I have found in my own life. I won't go and do anything stupid, because, while I may be heeled over at the moment, I know I'll return to an even keel. I don't need to panic.
"Just be cool, she'll hold." Perfect Tommy.
✍️ Reply by emailEquality Before the Law
06:38 Monday, 11 November 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 71.64°F Pressure: 1015hPa Humidity: 96% Wind: 0mph
Words: 280
I had intended to include this in the preceding piece, but it slipped my mind as I went along and I don't wish to insert it there now.
As a member of our nation's armed forces, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. There is no oath to the commander in chief. We swear to obey the orders, the lawful orders of the commander in chief, but we swear no oath to him. (Or her. Someday.)
Foundational to the Constitution of the United States is the idea that all citizens are equal before the law.
We know from experience, as a practical matter, that this is often not the case. But that is not from design, it is from a failure to keep faith with the values imbued in the Constitution. So it is no excuse to abandon those values.
The Supreme Court ruled that the president is above the law, even in the limited circumstances that Justice Roberts seems to feel justifies this dishonorable betrayal of every veteran who swore an oath to support and defend Constitution of the United States.
How can all Americans be entitled to "equal protection under the law," if the law of the land is that one man is above the law?
This was a slap in the face of every veteran.
A sign of contempt for the value of their service and sacrifice.
And every bit congruent with the contempt and ignorance and narcissistic nihilism of the man who appointed three of those justices.
America is capsized. And it will take a long time before we right the ship.
And it may sink before we can.
✍️ Reply by emailThe Gospel According to Cohen
07:54 Monday, 11 November 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 71.56°F Pressure: 1015hPa Humidity: 97% Wind: 0mphWords: 324
This is the hat I wear on my morning walks these days. You can see the sweat ring beginning to form, and the darkness of today's perspiration.
Anyway, Leonard Cohen's Suzanne came to mind as I walked this morning. I was thinking about encountering a neighbor who might "thank you for your service" me. (I didn't.)
As you may be able to tell, I'm coping with recent events by blogging a lot here. So, in that vein, let me say to all the hypothetical, insincere people who might feel as though they ought to "thank you for your service" me: Your thanks are not required.
It was an honor and a privilege to serve America under oath, in uniform for twenty-six years, twenty-two of them as a commissioned officer in the United States Navy.
And I am so very grateful to this nation for entrusting me with this honor and this privilege.
I would do it all again, in a heartbeat.
Finally, Leonard Cohen's Suzanne came to mind as I walked the sidewalks of this over-55 community, where probably two out of three of my neighbors voted for the man who is the antithesis of everything my service stood for. It came to mind because of the analogy I made of character as the vessel that conveys our souls.
I guess I'm feeling kind of religious.
Anyway, this came to mind:
And Jesus was a sailor
When He walked upon the water
And He spent a long time watching
From His lonely wooden tower
And when He knew for certain
Only drowning men could see Him
He said, "All men will be sailors then
Until the sea shall free them"
Finally, may I humbly request of my small audience, if you feel that any of today's posts have any worth or merit, today at least, please share them. (Use the permalinks. This will scroll off the home page tomorrow.)
Thank you.
✍️ Reply by emailVeterans Day
08:59 Tuesday, 11 November 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 26.42°F Pressure: 1007hPa Humidity: 84% Wind: 16.58mph
Words: 427
Got an email this morning from The U.S. Naval Institute:
Two hundred fifty years ago, a handful of determined patriots took to the sea to create and defend a fledgling nation. From those earliest days of wooden ships with smooth bore cannons to the age of atomic power, guided missiles, and the dawn of cyber warfare, veterans of our sea services have endured the hardships of service in distant seas and on hostile shores. They sacrificed precious time away from families and friends that many citizens take for granted. From Tripoli to Midway, from Inchon to the Persian Gulf, those who served have faced the dangers of the sea and the violence of the enemy to keep us free and preserve the values that make our nation great. It is because of their devotion to duty, their quiet professionalism, and their willingness to do what must be done that we sleep better at night knowing they are on watch. As we celebrate the 250th anniversary of our naval services, may we look to our veterans not only with gratitude but with our own resolve—to preserve the peace they fought to secure, and to carry their example forward for the next 250 years.
[There's a para break between that last sentence and the preceding text, but I don't know how to preserve that in the block quote.]
Let me just say that I wanted to vomit when I read this.
"...those who served have faced the dangers of the sea and the violence of the enemy to keep us free and preserve the values that make our nation great."
"The values that make our nation great."
What values would those be?
The ones we're ignoring today? The ones we're not upholding? Defending?
The President of the United States is using the armed forces to violate the law, and the U.S. Naval Institute is silent.
In an example of irony as the fifth fundamental force of the universe, the home page of the U.S.N.I. claims "The home of influential debate since 1873." Really?
Homelessness is worse than I knew.
"Dare to read, think, speak, and write"
Unless you're the "institute" itself. Then I guess it's "Keep your head down and your mouth shut, or you'll lose your lease!"
Too much of a sacrifice?
The men and women of our armed forces are being made into criminals, and the veterans who ought to be speaking out against this obscenity are silent.
It's bullshit. Cowardice.
You don't stop serving when you take off your uniform.
✍️ Reply by emailToday's "On This Day in the marmot'
09:29 Tuesday, 11 November 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 26.65°F Pressure: 1007hPa Humidity: 82% Wind: 16.58mph
Words: 15
The "On This Day" pages are ephemeral.
But today's is worth a look, I think.
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