Thought for the weekend: on simplicity.
I was initially going to open this post with a quote from William of Ockham, the progenator of "Occam's Razor." However, when refreshing myself on the history of Occam's Razor, I learned that the original quote was hardly as pithy or strongly-worded as its modern incarnation.
Ockham originally wrote "entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily." He said this in reference to the impossibiliy of proving the existence of God through pure reason.
The contemporary interpretation of Occam's statement is applied much more broadly as the "Law of Parsimony" or "Rule of Simplicity:"
"Other things being equal, a simpler explanation is better than a more complex one."
We live in a complex society. And, sadly, it's easy to reject simple explanations when they might actually be the way to go. I tend to harp on weight loss and nutrition, but it's hilarious how people seek out complicated answers when they simply don't want to make the changes necessary to change their lives. "Blood type" diets? Come on!
Relationships have become too complicated. I don't want to always be blaming technology for everything, but a lot of the people I talk to on a regular basis allow for Facebook and social networks to influence their assumptions and interactions of and with other people more than actual, spoken conversations.
Let's not allow our perceptions of life to get in the way of life itself. Be objective. Be clear-headed. Keep feelings and memories partitioned so that we can learn from our experiences instead of rewriting them in our minds.
Perhaps the best modern-day interpretation of Occam's Razor is the KISS Principle:
Keep It Simple, Stupid.
Visual India
Last weekend, I joined with some friends for a night of Indian food and a screening of the Criterion release of The Darjeeling Limited on blu-ray. It was a fun night all the way around.
After traveling to India several times, (always working, never for simple tourism), I've become very attached to Indian culture. I'm certainly not an expert, but I enjoy the food, the art, the history, and most of all, speaking with the people there. One is hard-pressed to find kinder, gentler and more interesting people than those who live in India.
India has become popular in America over the past few years. I think that mass notice of Bollywood and its surrounding culture has had something to do with that it. Personally, Bollywood song-and-dance films are [very] far from my favorite genre of cinema, but I do enjoy the energy they convey. India is incredibly well-suited for such an indigenous film industry, because the country is so amazingly visual.
The visual beauty of India almost belies the poverty and grittiness of what everyday life is really like there. The people are so colorfully arrayed, the landscape is so varied and the traditional architecture is so nuanced that it is harder to attain bad imagery than good imagery in such an environment.
I think that its sheer visual beauty has led to many Americans falling in love with the idea of India without ever facing the country itself. I said as much to a German backpacker I spoke to at the Delhi airport earlier this year. She was going home after several weeks in Goa, and she said to me "I don't see many Americans traveling in India. Why do you think that is?"
Given the amount of business we do in India, I was surprised that Americans seemed underrepresented in a vacation hotspot like Goa, but I could understand why, and said as much in my response.
"I think that most Americans like the idea of India--the colors and the food. They just aren't too crazy about the smell."
Possibly a harsh thing to say, but I still feel it to be true on principle. India is a shocking country to visit upon one's first arrival into a nation where the air smells like burning cow dung as much as it smells like cinnamon.
But the sheer beauty of the country, and the beauty of soul which shines out of the eyes of its people, will charm any visitor into submission. I was reminded of this while watching The Darjeeling Limited last night. It made me excited that Best Exotic Marigold Hotel opens in American theaters this week. It made me ecstatic to return to India myself later this year.
The beauty of India can almost be called a gateway drug to the culture. There is poetry in its harsh landscape and simple country dwellings. India's cultural fabric is a frenetic tapestry of crowded streets and heart-stopping traffic; shouts of the street vendors, passive-aggressive inquiries from beggars and blindingly white smiles from inquisitive children. The paradoxical contrast and cohesion of all these elements make it a country which lures in the curious and claims them for its own. Whether by force of charm or the underlying mystery which such a culture presents to outsiders, India is an experience.
The principal characters in The Darjeeling Limited are so representative of how visitors are affected by the country. That's one of the reasons why I love the film so much.
Francis (Owen Wilson) goes to "have an experience," but his purposeful strides from temple to temple, punctuated by side-trips for power adapters and painkillers hold him back from actually experiencing anything until he abandons his control issues by the end of the film..
Jack (Jason Schwartzman) distracts himself with his girlfriend in Europe and a temporary fling with a train attendant. He allows his more carnal impulses to distract him from the larger picture of what is going on around him. He allows the specific to totally detract from a full perspective.
And in the middle of it all is Peter (Adrien Brody), who seeks out novelties like a child, all the while resisting the responsibilities of being a father which await him at home. He matures by the end of the film, but one wonders how he ever expected to get a cobra through customs.
As an American, it is my responsibility to represent my country and my fellow Americans in a positive way. After all, we have set ourselves up as the guardians of world democracy, and it's the least we can do to be pleasant and teachable. We cannot allow inconvenience, different or expectation to hold us back from visiting countries like India.
The world is huge. Just think about it! Consider the varying climates and cultures in India, China, Egypt, Germany, Britain! And many people are content to spend their entire life living in one city, considering travel to be "for other people;" perhaps to be reserved as a reward given to one's self when too old to fully enjoy the experience.
Never settle for the sedentary life. The world is there for a reason. See it. And visit India first.
True accomplishment.
It has always been my firm believe that entertainment and advertising reflect culture, and are not the root of it. Causation is hard to prove, but the correlation between films and television shows and the eras in which they were/are produced is never a coincidence. The entity known as Hollywood has a long history of providing escapism during wartime, asking questions of society during periods of cultural shift, and providing a creative outlet for those on the margins of society.
Then there's advertising. Right now, smartphone advertisements seem to be the clearest indicator of what people associate with social power. This ad in particular makes my blood boil with annoyance:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzTy9_xS1yA&feature=youtube_gdata]
What does this commercial say? How do the characters relate to each other?
- A hierarchy exists wherein the better individual is determined not by what they do for others, but by how fast their phones receive information.
- Notice also that fast access to information does not spur them on to do anything with the information except hold it over the heads of their neighbors.
- These individuals are recipients and consumers. They are not action-oriented people. Their usage of technology does not signify any real accomplishment on their part; they use the scientific advancements made and maintained by others as the basis for a misguided sense of superiority.
This is probably an unnecessarily reactionary response, but smartphone and wireless carrier advertisements seem to sum up where we have arrived as a culture. We do less, we move around less, we think less and read less. Our smart phones and back-in-a-flash data plans give us near-instant access to a literal world of information via the internet, but if pop culture is any indication, we use that access for little more than looking at kittens on youtube. Like the man and woman in the commercial above: we stay in one place, we receive and we consume.
We have lost touch with what it is to accomplish things that are meaningful and real. We don't produce. We don't wield as much interpersonal influence as we should.
Technology and mass communications are supposed to be tools for culture, but they have themselves become culture.
“We need to know who we are and if we have what it takes. What do we do now with the ultimate question? Where do we go to find an answer? In order to help you find the answer to The Question, let me as you another: What have you done with your question? Where have you taken in? You see. a man’s core question does not go away.”
- John Eldredge, Wild at Heart
The Shard, the Gherkin, and societal evolution.
Roger Ebert wrote a blog post last night about city planning and his own traditionalism in choosing where to eat and relax. The springboard for his discussion was The Shard, Britain's as-yet uncompleted entry into the world of skyscrapers. I found the idea of The Shard interesting, so I did some more reading about it and found this diagram of The Shard and another recent and unconventional tall building in London, 301 St. Mary Avenue--"The Gherkin."
So, here we have a comparison of the Burj Dubai, the Shard, and "The Gherkin." The Shard is/will be one of the tallest skyscrapers in Europe by the time it's completed. No matter how big it is for Europe, however, it's not remarkable by worldwide standards. Kuala Lumpur, and now Dubai, set new precedents for what can be accomplished, in terms of both design and structure. Gone are the straight lines and futuristic optimism of the American Art Deco skyscrapers of the 1930s and 1940s. The future is here, and this is how it turned out.
But it has me thinking. This isn't a scholarly-sound post, just my impression of the way things are.
If we look at science fiction, there is a trend. I don't mean Star Wars or the kind of blockbuster films that abandon ideas for the sake of spectacle. The best science fiction deals with ideas of human character, leadership, society and progress.
There are some common themes and trends. One of them was best exemplified in the recent film "Wall-E." The idea is that technology in human society leads to decadence and material excess. I think such a state of being is taking root right now. Our triumphs are no longer celebrated at the individual level; we display our wealth and intelligence through the construction of massive buildings in which to house offices and apartments. We are intelligent enough to design tablets and smart phones to facilitate our increasingly and unnecessarily complex systems of networking and interaction.
Homo sapiens have great big brains. And now our lifestyle and diet is going to make these wonderful brains shrink like raisins. We eat and live the way we do because we afford to. We ignore the downside of things because, well, we don't want to deal with it. It disrupts our comfort.
Our great success will be our downfall. Technology is always a crowning acheivement in society, from the wheel to fire to the space shuttle. But what do we do when we allow technology to be the tie which binds us to our world?
Links:
"I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled" - Roger Ebert's Journal
"London's Shard half a kilometer shorter than Burj Khalifa and Dubai has 15 taller buildings" - ArabianMoney.net
Shard London Bridge - Wikipedia