Reputation

I don't really have anything specific to write about today but there are a lot of questions floating around in my head that I would like to get down somewhere.

1. What is reputation, why does it matter, and how much should we care about it?
2. In regards to #1, what is privacy and how does it affect our lives. Where does it's importance lie and how should it be protected? (I'm probably not going to even attempt to speculate on this one. At least not without doing some research first.)
3. At what point does it become necessary to know everything about something you are doing? For example, when doing something, is it necessary to know the history and motivation behind every action? This question was raised by a recent short discussion about religion, but I think it applies in a more general sense.

I guess I'll start on #1 and see where things go from there. I used to be incredibly over-concerned with what other people thought about me. Then I went through a phase where I basically said "Fuck you, world" and didn't care at all (at least that was my ideal). Now I find myself somewhere in the middle of those two extremes. A large reason for this reversion to the middle has been exposure to professional environments. I have always known that it is important to be well liked and respected professionally in order to really go places in a corporate world. However it is only somewhat recently that I have given in and decided to play the "game."

I am of the opinion that reputation is important since we are social creatures. We're stuck together and are going to form opinions about one another, so why would you not want that opinion to be a good one?

Networking is still something that I have issues with. It still seems incredibly self-centered and fake to be making "friends" only with the hope that they can somehow help you get promoted or make more money or something similar. I understand that this isn't necessarily the only reason to meet and befriend professional contacts, but I think it is the driving one in many cases. I find it incredibly difficult to make small talk with somebody simply because doing so might let them know I exist. Now this is completely different from just being friendly. I'm talking about the following type of thought: "That guy is the vice president of . I should go talk to him because he would be a good person to know professionally and might help me out in the future."

I have no problem with wanting to be successful. I'm just saying I feel dirty whenever I try to do something like the above scenario.

On a purely personal level, I think the line is actually harder to draw. At one extreme we have the person with no regard for others' opinions of her. At the other we have the person who's every action is dictated by what others might make of it. I'm still somewhat inclined to side more with the first person's perspective. I have yet to hear really good arguments for why I should care what any random person thinks about me. Of course there is the idea that I want people to like me so that I can have friends and people to talk to or hang out with (going back to the whole social creatures thing). How far can you extend this? Also, when does not caring (or at least acting like you don't care) become another way of enticing people to think more highly of you?

So from what I've said so far, it seems to me like personal reputation is itself a purely selfish thing. On a purely individual level, I don't know if there is anything that isn't selfish about it. Not that this is necessarily bad. However anytime you become a member of a group or organization then your reputation adds to the collective reputation of the group and any actions damaging to your reputation are also damaging to the group. In this case there is a level of unselfishness and responsibility involved.

I think I am actually more confused at the end of this post than when I started. I attribute some of this to lack of sleep. Anyway I will maybe be able to address the other questions above in later posts. I just needed to get them down as to not forget.

The things you said, I'm rehearsing them

The issue is the question becomes

There is no ending to the title sentence except this sentence. This post is not about the issue or the question or becoming of things. The original intenture of the language application that follows (for what do we do but apply language?) was to convey a thought of the fleeting kind that I wished to record before it learned there was a large an interesting world out there and flew away. Now, if we were to deviate from that in a hopeless attempt to... Ah, sorry why would all of this matter to you? Instead of telling you what teh post is not about or the complications regarding it, but instead get to the content of the original post itself.

What follows is an account of sorts. I say of sorts because it is not the type of account you might be used to. This account is of a young man. What is extraordinary about this young man's account? Well the fact that instead of typing I am analyzing every sentence, consciously or subconsciously for possible interpretations that could lead to some sort of idea about me as a person. The fact that I told you exactly that I'm doing that tells quite a bit itself in a step the other way. I told my self I wasn't going to the fuck care at all below. However it's not something easily stopped or remedied. But once again I digress. Back to the man's account.

Well this young man woke up one morning on a typical day in the place where he typically woke up. Nothing was out of the ordinary is what I am trying to stress. But what exactly ordinary is is probably defined differently wherever you are. I wonder if it's sort of the simple statistical average or linear regression or something. The norm so to speak. It is becomming hard to type, I must take my leave for now. 'Till we meet again. (Now I search for kickass song lyrics... or just copy what I hear right now)

Grass will never grow near this town again

News Media

Over 30 people were killed yesterday by a student gunman at Virginia Tech University. This is a tragedy and my prayers go out to everyone involved.

The reason I start this post of on such a depressing note is that it brought back a recurring issue to the front of my mind: The proper role of the news media in today's society. Now I don't claim to be a journalism major or have any idea what I am talking about, but I'm going to ask questions and speculate on possible answers. The following mass of words will probably be unorganized and pretty incoherent.

Disclaimer: I am not trying to make light of the events that occurred at VT. As I said before this is a serious tragedy.

To use the VT shootings as an example, this story will be covered by all of the major news networks for the next week or two at least (to make a conservative estimate). It made front page headlines in pretty much every daily newspaper with an eye towards national events. Everyone who doesn't live in a cave or under a rock will know to varying extents what happened. This event has the highest death count of any gun homicide in America to date. That being said, it pales in comparison to the genocide that happens daily in Darfur and other non-western nations, at least to my understanding. However the news coverage on these incidents is not even close to the coverage that the VT shootings will get. The VT stuff is a national incident while the genocide I mentioned earlier is international which may play a fairly large role in the varying amounts of coverage.

Lets take a different example instead. Fairly recently, celebrity Anna Nichole Smith died of mysterious causes in a room in Florida. This, along with the resulting legal stuff surrounding her child, was headline news for a solid 2-3 weeks. Now I can understand arguments as to why the VT incident should receive more news coverage, but I find if terribly difficult to rationalize how one of the largest story worth reporting in the entire world for this period of time is about some celebrity.

Basically I've come to understand that news media is more about entertainment value now than actually reporting news that people need to hear. Perhaps "entertaining" isn't the best word, especially when applying it to the VT incident. "Interesting" could also be used. This is especially applicable to television news, but is also prevalent in many news magazines and newspapers. Of course, this has always been the case to some extent and always will be with a capitalist news media independent of the government. The population itself is partly to blame as well. News stations play what people want to watch so that they can get more viewers and make more money. If the people would rather hear about a celebrity death than a depressing story about genocide in Africa or an investigative report into government corruption, then that is what will be shown. I would very much like to see more investigative reporting on mainstream television but that is not likely to happen.

I will touch on some more questions related to my somewhat cynical take on the media hopefully in the next post.

So we've fixed you with cement galoshes...

On Emo

Something that has been bothering me for a while is the concept of "emo." This, of course, is short for emotional. However the term iteself is incredibly poorly defined. Over the last few years, people have become increasingly eager to label others as emo.

One question I ask is: when did it become unacceptable to have emotion? To discuss emotion? To feel? Early on "emo" was typically used to refer to listeners of music described as belonging to the emo genre (what constitutes emo music is heavily debated). It also became a label for a certain fashion style commonly worn by listeners of emo music. More recently the term has become derogatory and been used (both in jest and seriousness) to label anyone who mentions their personal feelings, especially if those feelings are ones of pain, loss, depression, sadness, etc. This is a trend that I would rather not see. It encourages people to keep their emotions bottled up and that sharing their feelings is socially unacceptable. This is especially problematic for people who actually have a reason to be depressed, as letting this out has the high probability of bringing scorn and jeers from their peers. I probably don't need to point out that this is not very therapeutic.

Another consequence of the taboo that being upfront and honest with your emotions has become is the self-denial of emotion. According to some critics of being "emo," your average middle class white American youth has no valid reason to feel anything on the lower side of the emotional spectrum. I don't understand how this makes any sense at all. There is only one person on the entire planet who is the worst off, so for the rest of the 6 billion, there is always somebody who has it worse. That does not disqualify those people from feeling depressed. I agree that perspective is important, but when taken to such an extreme is (like most extremes) unhealthy.

I should point out that I agree with some of the criticisms of "emo kids" and the melodrama that accompanies them. But my main point here I guess is that the criticisms have become too large of an umbrella, creating the taboo I mentioned above.

Can you stake me before the sun goes down?

Hello World!

I have adamantly refused to start a blog for a long time now for a variety of reasons. I finally caved and created this because I keep having thoughts in my head that I would like to remember, but never can. I also hope to use this blog as a tool for organizing my thoughts in order to examine my own consciousness.

As for why I decided to put this information on the internet, it's mostly a product of my ego. It's here and public on the off chance that someone might find my posts interesting or at least worth reading.

The following manifesto is mostly for my personal use to serve as a reminder for why I created this blog. It's use to the reader is fairly limited.

My intention is to avoid turning this into a typical LiveJournal page where I write about how much life sucks. I also do not intend to write about day-to-day activities unless they spur some interesting idea. There will probably be times where I simply do a stream of consciousness post as well. I kind of like the practice of posting song lyrics at the end of posts, so I will probably do that, at least for a while. I expect my posts to vary quite a bit in level of language, civility, soberness, etc. I have no real aim nor goal with this blog so I don't much care how I come off.

Criticisms and other thoughts are more than welcome as comments, but I will most likely not respond to comments who's only intention is to flame.