An Important Reminder

Scottie Cometh

Mr Dis App had been born into a small rural community. Lived around the same several familiar cottages all his life. But he, he’d always felt, had also been born into a fate. Since early life, he had known things, understood things.

He had had intimations that perhaps he wasn’t alone with his knowledge--perhaps other people weren’t mindless automatons either but there was just no telling and also the inner voice had been impossible to ignore.

Plowing away on a piece of farmland, cognizant of the existence of faraway, opportunity-ridden places, he kept himself ready. He knew someday fate would come for him.

Laugh and scorn all you want, he thought about other people. You will ooh and ah soon enough.

And after an eternity but before you’d know it, there came fate looking. It was old Scottie, in a cheap used car.

Well fate looks off, Dis App had thought. The person is perfect but he is so dishevelled, and the car is wrong.

“You’ve been expecting me,” the sage said.

“You know it.”

“Get ready, we have to go.”

“I am. Where to?”

“There waits pain and ignorance and a shrill pang of disappointment in the city of Nuu.”

“Is it far away?”

“Why, yes.”

And Dis App was happy. Far was perfect.

Value v. Progress

Quite recently I wrote about how society is not getting better and just now I realized how easily that can be argued--not because it would be wrong but because of the pride society takes in itself.

There is a popular idea that is thought to be new, however it has always been the human approach to its communities: newer societies are better than the old ones (there are views, contrary to this but let us not discuss nostalgia now). It comes from the observation that new orders are set up because the old ones are mended or upgraded. But is it true?

It is, but only in the most technological sense. Society, as a means of something, as a very functional tool evolves into a better means, into something more functional. The structure enables us to do much more things and the new order, the new society can effectively react to many new issues. But it would be a folly to call the advancements good or bad.

Equality for women, the abolition of slavery and child labor, education--these are all huge steps forward but they do not necessarily fall into the category of good or bad because these things are progress and not values. Mind you that in retrospect it is always represented that old times were evil, when the oppressed suffered and died, when in fact the oppressed could sometimes be content and happy and feel satisfied--surely not because of the riches bestowed upon them but although their lives were hard it was not unavoidably a life they wished they never lived.

The difference between progress and value is not transparent because both are highly desirable. Still, they are not the same, although at times they may mix.

Progress is when something is being made. In sociological questions it may be assumed that progress is infinite, as there cannot be an ultimate society. It may be hard to accept, even so, almost impossible to accept because every step is very rewarding and needs to be served as an end in itself. So sometimes we are under the illusion that this or that change in the community will perfect the whole thing. Equality is the eventual goal and when that is achieved, we are done. However it just depicts how short-sighted we may be. Looking at history, putting ourselves in perspective, it seems like the greatest delusion to say that we would finish the work. For the people, who organized themselves into the first society, it must have seemed like agriculture is the greatest human feat, as it brings about a supply never before seen. And then the same happened with every new societal invention, its creators were so touched by their own grandeur that I imagine some of them almost cried. However, looking at those things today we just shrug and call it primitive. Even so, about agriculture we would say it is necessary for human existence but we would never take the extra step of saying agriculture is a value. Certainly it is in economic terms but it does not have a higher, abstract form. It is all about function.

In contrast with progress, value is an end. To be tender toward people, to save somebody, to sacrifice something, these can sometimes serve progress, but they are also satisfactory in themselves. And it also teaches a good lesson about the people of the past: everybody, throughout history, had the potential to live equally valuable lives or fill their lives with equal measures of value, as opposed to the social progress, which goes stage after stage.

So society does not convey an absolute value, however tempting to compliment ourselves with it. Societies can be advanced and complex and functional but goodness or badness remains in the life of the individual.

Do not speak unless you can improve upon the silence.

Quaker saying (via austinkleon)

(actually it’s a communication principle based on Kant’s maxims but yeah, way to go)

Work today

And it's been another day! (I took this phrase from POPS, which is an incredible YouTube series... just sayin') So yeah, I've been revising, grammatically, my book-to-be, which is funny cuz' this normally happens after getting a publisher. Yeah, I suck. But I'm past the half-line and the hardest part is behind me. I know I'm not a big name and not the best guy to pick to be an author of children's stories but I still live in my kid-self's magical dreamworld, so I couldn't get myself do anything else. 'Kay, maybe I lied because I enjoy practically everything and maybe next year I'm gonna start my studies as a mechanical engineer (farthest thing from any literature). BUT enough talk, cuz' it's getting out of control and it's nothing but self-obsessed, self-endearing blogging :P LOL I'm a little harsh but I consider it as a healthy sense of criticism over myself ;)

THEND (The + End = ThEnd)

it's a whole new level

ps: the alternate ending kicks ass

New video! EVERYTHING IS POSSUM! (took way longer to make than at first it would seem)

The right answer is always figured out early on, when it isn't, it means, that you are not ready to know it.

The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby  (via sunst0ne)

Neat compositions

Others' fears are suspiciously often irrational, while ours are, suspiciously again, always justified.