“This is Plan B.
“Every day for the rest of your lives, all of your living moments are
to be spent making others aware of this need — the need to probe and
drill and examine and locate the words that take us to beyond
ourselves.
“Scrape. Feel. Dig. Believe. Ask.
“Ask questions, no screech questions out loud —
while kneeling in front of the electric doors at safeway, demanding
other citizens ask questions along with you — while chewing up old
textbooks and spitting out the words onto downtown sidewalks —
outside the Planet hollywood, outside the stock exchange, and outside
the Gap.
“Grind questions into the glass on photocopiers. Scrape challenges
onto old auto parts and throw them off of bridges so that future
people digging in the mud will question the world too. Careve
eyeballs into tire treads and onto show leathers so that your every
trail speaks of thinking and questioning and awareness. Design
molecules that crystallize into question marks. Make bar codes print
out fables, not prices. You can’t even through away a piece of
litter unless it has a question stamped on it — a demand for people
to reach a finer place.”
…
“What do we ask?” Wendy says.
“Ask whatever challenges dead and thoughtless beliefs. Ask:
When did we become human beings and stop being whatever it
was we were before this? Ask: What was the specific
change that made us human? Ask: Why do people not
particularly care about their ancestors more than three generations
back? Ask: Why are we unable to think of any real
future beyond, say, a hundred years from now? Ask:
How can we begin to think of a future as something enormous
before us that also includes us? Ask: Having become
human, what is it that we are now doing or creating that will
transform us into whatever it is that we are slated to next
become?
Even if it means barking on street corners, that’s what you have to
do, each time baying louder than before. You must testify. There is
no other choice.
“What is destiny? Is there a difference between personal
destiny and collective destiny? ‘I always knew I was going
to become a movie star.’ ‘I always knew I was meant to murder.’
Is Destiny artificial? Is it unique to Man? Where did
Destiny come from?
… Your eyes will always feel as if you’ve been staring at the sun,
your bodies seemingly aching to cool them by staring at the moon.
There aren’t enough words for ‘transform.’ You’ll invent more.”
“… You’ll become clearer and clearer.”
p272,273 Girlfriend in a Coma, Douglas Coupland
Just got back from a good friend’s place, and it’s 1am so what else is there
to do but update the journal?
The disussions we had (which lasted some time) were centered around religion
and dating. Two subjects that I have no qualifications to speak on, but since
this is the net, I will anyway. And chances are that people’ll believe me
too.
I’ll start out light, with my requirements for a female in a relationship
(Brad, you can take this to yer wife if you want). From unserious to
serious…
- Female
- Breathing and concious
- Able to hold a intelligent conversation.
Now, this doesn’t have anything to do with like, math scores, or
having a degree or educational (not that these are bad things), but
more being able to think for themselves. Someone I can talk to for
hours at a time and make sense, who makes me think, and I can make her
think.
- Not a root vegetable.
- Someone who complements me and completes me as a person.
- Knowing the significance of the number 42 is a bonus, but
not required.
- … as is answering the questions "what is 6 times 9?"
I had a lot more, but I got distracted copying out the quotes above. Now onto
the religion.
It’s not Amish, but similar in a lot of ways. I’d love to get right into it,
but the only thing I have time for right now is a quick rant on education.
Seems that students are only required to go to grade 9, and are only expected
to. Why you ask (as I asked)? Well, you don’t need more that grade 9 to be a
farmer or truck driver.
Good point.
However, I’ve always felt that letting our children know what is out there for
them is better than sheltering them from the outside world and the
possibilities of things that they could do. What if Einstein was never told
that there were possibilities out there. If Socraties was told to stop asking
such silly questions, you will be a farmer like your father, and your father
before him. In addition to this, the sheltering of the whole society is
scary. Not in this particular case, but also of that of the Church of the
Netherlands here in the Valley. From what I understand it’s a very closed
society. You work for people within the community, and seldom go outside of
it.
I ask this: what happens when some child does decide that they wish
to explore the world outside, or wish to pursue some interesting things that
they might have stumbled across that the education for is simply not available
in the community?
If someone has been raised in the community all their lives, been sheltered
from anything that the community or religion feels is "bad" (my
dealings with this society is that we provide the internet connectivity to a
school and we have the banning/blocking software they use). What happens when
they decide that astro-physics rocks their world, and that they are going to
pursue further education at UBC.
How would happen? Several senarios come to
mind. Maybe they are completely discuraged from it, and remain in the
community. Maybe they do go.. but think about the implications of a totally
sheltered person going to a place like a university. Sheltered like these
people appear to be seems to be (based on their net connection style) that
they are not exposed to "bad" things. Nothing un-clean passes into
their network, so they are not given the opportunity to see if the net is evil
or not.
If someone comes to me and tells me that the Internet is evil, that’s fine,
as long as they can tell me why. "Because my
teacher/father/mother told me" is not an acceptable answer. Children are
smart, smarter than we think I think, and should be allowed to choose for
themselves. Obviously this is not something to apply globally, or without
supervision, but it is something I believe. I was given choices in my life,
and my parents never tried (as I remember) to prevent me from finding out
things for myself. If I asked what the hollocost was, they would explain to
their knowledge at a level that I at whatever age could understand, and then
maybe a book was pulled out, or a trip to the library ensued. I was not
sheltered. I feel sorry for people who are.
Now I’m off to bed, as I have a party to get togeather (and a battery for the
underground parking to get).