Month: July 2012

“The world, as I see it, is a remarkable place.” — Jason Mraz

A year or so ago I found myself invested in a series of movies that tackled reality; specifically how we all perceive reality in different ways. Shutter Island, Inception, and Suckerpunch all dealt with the different shapes reality takes, all admitting that reality is subjective. It is not difficult to agree with that point of view, especially when one considers that the very idea of ‘point of view’ exists. Here is a simple POV trick I learned from my dean: Take your hand, extend the index finger and point that hand straight into the sky. You should be looking up at your hand. Slowly roll your wrist in a clockwise fashion. Now as you continue moving that hand clockwise, lower your arm so that you are eye level to your hand. Now lower that arm so it is waist level. You should be looking down at your hand. What happens to your perception of the direction your hand is moving?

That simple trick indicates how perspective shapes perception. Merely shifting the angle at which we see something may change how we see that thing. Consider then how emotion can shape reality. I am writing this while watching DMV workers, merely an hour into their shift, approach critical mass. From my perspective their anger and apparent disgust towards customers feels like an overreaction. However, when I consider their perspective from behind the desk, I suspect there may be some legitimacy to that rage. See, I am seeing customer confusion and slow moving tendencies for the first time. They see it 4-5 days a week.

Right here a physicist would stop me and say, quite rightly, that these people are experiencing an identical reality. Perhaps, but being a social scientist, I also recognize that their histories, attitudes, and current physical state affect how they perceive that reality, and furthermore, their perspective is key in determining that perspective.

A cop and a crook walk into a bank and see a robbery in progress. What do they look for? This comes down to role, an aspect of perspective. So, to cut it short, the main lesson from this is to be aware of your own perspective and those of others perceiving the same situation. Use that knowledge, as opposed to just your own point of view, in order to shape a 360 view of the situation.

Some thoughts:
1. I’ve been thinking a lot about grading and the role it plays in teaching. My students, for the most part, are in the class to receive a grade. It is the carrot that compels them to study and retain information for long enough to complete whatever assessment I can create in order to determine if they have retained information for said limited timeframe. This is not learning. So, I am considering moving to a more comprehensive mastery model. In this model students are required to complete an online remediation program that is designed to continue testing them until they reach a mastery level (80 or perhaps 90%). If I can tie this into their grade in a significant way (make it worth half the grade?) then their ability to pass is intrinsically tied to their ability to master the content. Given my proclivity to games, I can also tie higher levels of mastery (100%?) to additional class bonuses like the removal of an assignment or overall grade points or some way to do both. Now I need to. Create the same sort of mastery system for essays–maybe using the existing rubric as a guideline. You write 3 essays and cannot get a grade below a B. I keep sending it back until you hit that 80% threshold. Those who don’t make it by the time class ends (or by a drop dead due date) don’t get credit. In other words, they become the C students.

2. This brings up the argument of what does a C grade mean? C reflects average, right? Perhaps that is a longer discussion for another day.

Today’s post comes from a Chick-fil-A where I just spent $19 on what amounts to three kids meals and a chicken sandwich. This is not a complaint but a fact of reality. Nowadays a cup of coffee is upwards of $3.00 and date night costs as much as a yearly membership to most kids’ or a month at a really nice Gym. Such is the price of life in America, and we pay it, because we feel these prices are a bargain compared to what we could be paying in other places. Last night my wife got a bit upset with Walmart. There are many reasons she could and should be pissed at the ‘mart, but this fresh anger was brought on by their online store. She saw some outdoor furniture priced in the $3000 range. She felt it was ludicrous and it is, but I am also sure it exists because people will buy it at that price, which brings me to my point of the day.

The worlds financial engine is predicated largely on the principles of supply and demand. Where there is significant supply and little demand, prices are low. Where there is the reverse the reverse will likely be true. A wise businessman can manipulate these factors, artificially raising or lowering one or the other in order to create value. Meanwhile, the value of fixed and plentiful items remains the value that is most often manipulated, like water. That was monetized in a major way in our lifetimes.

I am no economist, but I am curious to know what will be the next big monetization. We monetized failure with the creation of derivatives, so anything is possible. Maybe we can monetize birth rates.

Some Thoughts:
1. I was thinking about souls and what happens when the well of souls is full. Will, at some point in creation, all the lives ever lived need to be recycled because we have reached the limit of all imprinted souls in creation? What would it be like to wake up 876 trillion years into the future. What would reality look like?

I need p90x.

This will be the second time I make this post. The first fell victim to the sticky hands of a three year old boy. He erased the post ‘accidentally’. A lot of accidents popped up in the hours following my arrival. It leads to the conclusion that they do cause more problems when both parents are around. I thought the distance might reset me, which it did partially. But their speedy return to negative behavior highlights a need to be recognized–for good or worse, and I know that I need to stay aware of that before tumbling into the old routines that did us no good to begin with.

I am being reflective.
Everything I tell you about learning and writing winds back to that idea of being reflective. Reflection is a huge part of meta-cognition, which means thinking about how you think, and even thinking about what it means to think at all. Trust me, there is no universally accepted definition of what thinking is.

Some thoughts:
1. This morning my boys were talking about the past and one remarked to the other, “you weren’t alive yet.” I listened to that and thought about what that meant. What were we before we were alive. If it is true that matter cannot be created nor destroyed then we existed in some state, even if it means we were not us.

2. Sleepy. It is too early to sleep, but the desire is there. Maybe I will just lay here for a while…

Of the many rules I learned in writing, the use of ‘said’ remains among the most controversial. According to some, the use of said is mandatory. You should end or begin a line of dialogue in this fashion and this fashion alone. However, other famous authors and practically all of my editors deplore the over usage of said as a dialogue tag. Here is an example of how said vs, other tags changes the temperature of a story:

“I didn’t think you were that type of person.” Taro said.
“You didn’t want to.” Rati said. “It wasn’t much of a secret.”

This version strips away any intentionality from the dialogue tags and forces the reader to focus on the language as a way to understand the situation. How does changing the flat tags to emphatic tags modify meaning?

“I didn’t think you were that type of person.” Taro spat.
“you didn’t want to.”Rati smirked. “it wasn’t much of a secret.”

In this second version the author, me in this case, intentionally forces the reader to interpret the words in a specific way. I do the work for you. Instead of making you dive into the context on your own, I give you a ladder and walk you down into that context. I suppose it could be called a matter of audience. Typically speaking, you want to do more hand holding with younger readers, so it could be the case that the more mature (from a sense of ability to interpret literature) the audience is, the less likely you are to want to use dialogue tags.

This is just speculation here, and don’t take it as fact. What is fact is the dichotomy between plain tag and flare tag writing. There are differences there, which affect the meaning of the writing.

Some thoughts:
1. Very few people pull of the bald head very well. I think you need to have the face and head shape for it. I likely do not, though the recent hair loss means I soon may have no choice. I met a guy who pulls it off rather nicely and it made me believe that facial hair may play a pivotal role too. In other words, bald and nicely groomed is good, but bald and letting your facial hair run wild is not so good.

2. WordPress does not support automatically numbered lists as far as I know. I’m okay with that. It just means spaces between the numbers; another formatting change to a blog that is still evolving.

3. My ghost armor on my iPad is heavily damaged. It keeps peeling, and I think it is the result of the climate shift. The iPad and I are in Washington where the air has moisture. I installed it in Arizona where the moisture is lacking.

Some time ago Maslow penned his hierarchy of needs. This was meant to classify, and to a certain extent quantify, the needs that every human has. I believe he was successful in establishing a base to which we can all ascribe individual needs. I do think it bears mentioning that we layer interactions in a way that obscures and even controverts these needs. I’m talking about the way we interact on a daily basis in social circles. All of it points back to Maslow, but it is so layered by the root differences in how we interpret information and how we send information that it has become a science (psychology) to peel back those layers in order to reach back to the root of what an individual is trying to achieve through action.

Once upon a time I had a colleague that was always angry. She wasn’t ‘in your face’ angry, but she wore this incredible burden of, ‘you don’t have it as bad as I do, so you can never understand my reality.’ This was probably true for her. The perception of ease and entitlement she wore was built from her difficulties and lack of entitlement, so understanding her point of view in relationship to my own was darn near impossible. That relationship was further hindered by my ‘shit happens, so go get a shovel’ approach to life. However, I really wanted to know what lived at the core of that feeling. Where is Maslow was this coming from? I believe now that it came from that love-belonging stage, or one step further at the level of esteem, where in a sense her esteem may be tied to external attitude and reflective of those around her. I.e. “how can you say these things and act this way while I am going through what I am going through. You need to be knocked down a peg or two.”

I can certainly relate to that feeling. I understand feeling like you or your situation is not recognized or even under appreciated, heck, at the core of my being is a man who is not recognized as valuable–in the way he wants to be recognized as valuable–by his family and peers. I will probably right a book about that one day, about how that feeling at first drove my writing and then murdered it, but that is a topic for another day. The feeling behind that topic is that same core motivation I believe made that colleague, and many other people behave in a bitchy way. It made them unlivable to a certain type of person who they felt was a challenge to their sense of things and order in the world.

This turned into a bit of a ramble, but the moral of the story is that at the core of all interaction is personal need and the quicker you can recognize the core human need that someone is trying to fulfill in their interaction with you, the faster you will find your way to better relationships and better communications with those around you.

Some Thoughts:
1. 3 blanket night last night. We don’t have heat in the basement level of this dorm where I am staying. Despite the suddenly cold night, I really have enjoyed being out here amongst the trees.
2. I think one of the core questions one should ask of any current and or perspective employee is: in a perfect world, what does your job and your workplace look like. Stay on them until they give a real answer. Don’t accept the ‘my job is lying on a beach in Miami crap’ because that is not true. Explain that it must exist in parameters of state and, to a lesser extent, function.
3. Writing hard right now. Loving it like a fat kid loves cake.