Tag Archives: Culture

The times are not a-changin’…

Posted on December 13, 2011 | Leave a comment
Here’s a article on why styles haven’t fundamentally changed in the last 20 years. This is why it doesn’t seem like two decades have passed since the 90s — I am still wearing the same outfits. Is this a sign of the decline of American civilization? Maybe.

Here’s a quote that relates this to the fantastic leaps in technology we have seen over the same period:

“Why is this happening? In some large measure, I think, it’s an unconscious collective reaction to all the profound nonstop newness we’re experiencing on the tech and geopolitical and economic fronts. People have a limited capacity to embrace flux and strangeness and dissatisfaction, and right now we’re maxed out.”
 Kurt Andersen: From Fashion to Housewares, Are We in a Decades-Long Design Rut?

The face of American culture used to change radically every decade or two, writes Kurt Andersen, but 1992 and 2012 look disturbingly alike.

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Posted in Web Finds

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The problem that we’re wrestling with, as a culture, is that the old ways don’t work anymore. Capitalism doesn’t work anymore, not in the old, unfettered, limitless growth way we think of it. Many jobs, many industries are going away. … Continue reading →

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Posted on December 2, 2011

Surrender? Never!

Posted on April 26, 2011 | Leave a comment

The Sad, Beautiful Fact That We’re All Going To Miss Almost Everything  struck a chord with me, because it is about me. Lately, my primary hobby has been culling. I admit it. I’ve been working out systems to cull which books I read, trying to get down to a manageable list, so that my planned reading doesn’t stretch 1,000 years into the future. Ditto with movies. Ditto with TV. Ditto with online reading, blogs and such. Ditto with recipes I’m going to cook. Music… well, I just leave my iPod on shuffle and forget that any music was recorded after 1990 or so.

I feel inordinately proud of my culling efforts, as if I’ve finally worked out the way to bob along, perfectly satisfied, in the sea of information, art, culture and ideas that we all drown in every day. To tell the truth, I think I’ve spent more time culling of late than I have actually reading or watching or listening. Culling provides more satisfaction. It feels like progress somehow.

But I know that it’s not really progress. It’s just a way to avoid throwing up my hands and shouting, “I surrender!” There’s way too much going on out there, and I will never, ever get to it all. Because if I start thinking that way, I start to feel overwhelmed, and a nap on the couch starts sounding like a very good idea indeed.

But the worst thing about surrender is the realization that there are so many talented people out there, producing so much good stuff, so why should I add my tiny little voice to the din? What could I possibly have to contribute to that vast whirlwind of human culture? Hasn’t it all been done or written or said already, and usually by someone more creative, smarter and interesting than me?

So if culling is a survival mechanism, then it’s one I’m going to embrace happily. Surrender? Never.

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Treat adults like adults and you get… adults!

Posted on August 19, 2010 | 1 Comment

Remember when you were a kid and you dreamed of being a grown-up and doing what you wanted when you wanted? No one could tell you to get up or go to school or do your homework. You get to decide! That’s freedom.

Then you grew up and got a job and found out that people still got to tell you what to do. They told you when to be at work, when to go home, when you could take time off, how much you could be sick. It was called the HR policy. So much for freedom.

In the 21st century, some companies are actually experimenting with not having any (or many) HR policies. Netflix has a freedom and responsibility culture, and they don’t have a vacation policy at all. Red Hat maintains a similar balance between freedom and accountability. Best Buy invented the results-only work environment: no meetings, no required time in the office, just accountability for results.

The experiences of these companies have been similar: The more freedom the company gave to its employees, the more accountability it received in return. In other words, the more the company treated its employees like adults, the more they acted like adults.

And when companies restrict freedom, should it come as any surprise when their employees start to act like children?

Does your organization need a “no policy” policy? (Opensource.com)
The Story of How We Uncovered the Red Hat Values (Dark Matter Matters)
Reference Guide on Our Freedom & Responsibility Culture (Slideshare)
Smashing the Clock (BusinessWeek)

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Posted in Random Rants

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How to take control of your RSS feed reader…

Posted on June 17, 2010 | 4 Comments

“And it’s like, why can’t I be a good enough person to know things about anything? Why am I so pathetic that I can’t even read, like, 100 words a day? And then I have to hit the ‘pretend everything is read’ button, which is basically like hitting the ‘lie to yourself’ button. It’s embarrassing. I hate myself when I do it. It’s like the biggest possible failure you could have in your entire life, basically.”

When I read this article in The New York Observer about obsessive RSS completists, I definitely recognized myself. Yeah, I used to subscribe to 100+ blogs and websites in Google Reader. Yeah, I used to have to get that bold number of unread posts down to 0 whenever I opened Reader. And I couldn’t just mark all as read, either. I had to skim every post — the title, at least! It felt like cheating, otherwise.

And then I had an epiphany. I was spending so much time on Reader that other things were being neglected. That was okay when I had a job, but now I have more important things to do than work. Like read real books. And take care of my child. Something had to change.

But before change can happen, there must be an ah-ha moment, when you say to yourself, as I did, “This is my tool. It does not own me. It works for me. I am the boss around here.”

The first thing I did was clean out all of my subscriptions. I unsubscribed to everything. I only kept a handful of feeds that I cherished and absolutely knew I wanted to read (almost) every post. These went into a folder labeled “Blogs I Like” and there they will remain permanently.

Next, I went on Twitter and subscribed to the Twitter feeds for the blogs I had unsubscribed from. Twitter has much different — and significantly lower — expectations than RSS. (I have written about this before.) There is no bold number of unread items. Eventually, what you haven’t read falls off the screen into oblivion. Twitter is not your ever-growing pile of homework; it is the water cooler, the fun place you drop in during work breaks.

(Eventually, I had to weed down the number of Twitter feeds I was following too, but more on that at another time.)

Gradually, I started adding blogs back to my Google Reader. It is, after all, not easy to really get to know someone on Twitter. If I want to dive in-depth into a subject or learn more about a particular writer, than I need to read their blog for a while. Only for a while. All of these new blogs go into a folder labeled “Trial.”

Here are my rules:

  • When I subscribe to a new trial blog, I mark everything as read right off the bat. After all, I don’t want to start off with a backlog and handicap myself.
  • If I log in to Google Reader and there are more than 100 unread items, I immediately mark everything in the Trial folder as “read.” No guilt, no mercy. I am just reading these sites on a trial basis, so I’m not missing anything. This is what I tell myself, and it works.
  • If at the end of the month or so, I haven’t shared or starred a post from a particular feed, then I unsubscribe. (I use Google Reader’s Trends to find this info.) So at the beginning of every month, it’s like I’m starting with a fresh slate. What a good feeling.

If I really like a “trial” blog, I may start following the Twitter feed. But if it moves from the Trial folder to the Blogs I Like folder — which currently contains only 3 subscriptions, by the way — then we know it’s love.

And in the meantime, I can get back to the book I’m reading. Right after I check Twitter.

Feed Me, I’m Hungry! New Yorkers Skim, Freak, Purge as RSS Reading Mounts (New York Observer)

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Posted in Geeking Out

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Thoughts on radical homemaking & challenging cultural norms…

Posted on June 15, 2010 | Leave a comment

Recently, I have been reading about the “radical homemaking” movement, which like the simplicity movement and similar shifts, values domestic work more and tries to reduce consumption and consumerism. What I see this movement as being about at its heart is challenging the pre-set cultural values of consumerism and traditional work in the corporate world. It is a search for another, possibly more satisfying way of life that hasn’t already been road-mapped as the American dream.

I’m not a big fan of the term “radical homemaking,” which I think is merely a way to rationalize these life choices and make them seem legitimate, especially for well-educated feminists (I have written about this before, when I first saw an article using the term in The New York Times). But my dislike of the term applied to it doesn’t negate the effort, in my opinion.

The backlash against this movement and similar ones that challenge cultural norms — local or slow food movements and voluntary simplicity are two other good examples — is that one has to be privileged to practice them. In other words, if you don’t already have money or property or an upper-middle-class background, then you couldn’t possibly pursue these movements comfortably. The net effect of this argument seems to be that if you are privileged, then just get on with living your privileged, consumerist, typical American middle-class life and stop trying to get back to simpler values or the land or whatever.

Maybe it is easier to question what we have all been taught since birth and experiment with different ways of living if you come from a background of privilege. Or maybe the privileged practitioner is more likely to write about the experience, and so those are the voices we hear. But that doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be done or that we should silence those who are doing it by accusing them of privilege. As someone who has never felt comfortable with the expected American life path, I can appreciate and learn from the experiences of others who are trying to live their lives differently.

We can all take many different paths to the same end, an attempt to find satisfaction and contentment outside the unsustainable cultural values of consumerism and corporate work. One person may give up a prestigious job to go back to the family farm. Another may start a community or rooftop garden in the city where she lives. Some may stop buying new things or only eat food grown locally. In their own small ways, these life choices do qualify for the term “radical” because they go against the norm, and I want to hear about them.

Only by constantly questioning our cultural norms can we evolve, something we desperately need to do. Our species faces enormous problems, which have recently been crystallized by the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. We’re not going to find the solutions by doing things the same old way.

For more:
Meet the Radical Homemakers (Yes! Magazine)
Radical Homemakers (MetaFilter)
To Live Content with Small Means… This Is My Symphony (Miss Minimalist)
RadicalHomemaking.com
Radical Homemakers: redefining feminism and the good life (techstartups.com)
The Femivore’s Dilemma (nytimes.com)
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On the science of near-death experiences…

Posted on April 12, 2010 | Leave a comment
Rosa Celeste: Dante and Beatrice gaze upon the...
Image via Wikipedia

The unexplained phenomenon of the near-death experience is the source of many cliches about death and the afterlife. The term near-death experience (NDE) was coined by Dr. Raymond Moody in his 1975 book, Life After Life. However, reports of such experiences have occurred throughout history. For example, Plato’s Republic describes an NDE.

In a typical NDE, a person who is pronounced dead or is very close to death leaves their body and floats toward the ceiling. The person typically reports seeing a bright light or moving down a tunnel toward a light. Sometimes the person sees angels or dead loved ones. Sometimes their life flashes before their eyes, or a spiritual being tells them it is not their time yet and sends them back to their bodies.

Just as we can never know for sure what happens to us after death, we will probably never know whether the NDE is real, hallucination or some combination of both. However, a recent study has posited that excess carbon dioxide may cause typical NDE hallucinations. In a study of 52 heart attack victims, 11 reported NDEs, and their carbon dioxide levels were all significantly higher than those who didn’t have NDEs. Other people who have inhaled excess carbon dioxide have reported similar experiences as the typical NDE. But this study is the first to find a direct link between carbon dioxide in the blood and NDEs.

A person having an NDE often feels calm and at peace or experiences a feeling of unconditional love. These feelings may correspond to the sense of detachment, lack of emotion and calm that many people feel during traumatic events. In a defense mechanism, the brain releases large amounts of endorphins, which can produce these sensations.

Still, many people who have NDEs afterward feel a renewed appreciation for life, a sense of compassion toward others and a lack of fear about death. I just wish more of us could experience these things without having to almost die first. Well, perhaps we can. A stiff dose of ketamine, a horse tranquilizer, can produce remarkably similar hallucinations. Maybe when we start feeling depressed about life or our fellow human beings, the prescription should be a dose of ketamine and its accompanying NDE.

As always, when we want to understand anything, it is a good idea to turn to writers for insight. Here are some novels on the subject:

  • The Matt Zander Journals by Gary Denne
  • Passage by Connie Willis
  • Fearless by Rafael Yglesias

For more…

Near-Death Experiences Explained? (National Geographic)
How Near-Death Experiences Work (How Stuff Works)
Can Science Explain Heaven (Newsweek)
Patients Draw Life-After-Death Experiences (Newsweek)
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