Good old Radiohead. If I listen long enough, I might just drift off into sweet, blissful void of submerged suffering...

This morning, I finished reading Brin's Glory Season. More on that in a bit.

Also on this day, I finally beat Pious. This means I beat the game on the Xel'latoth alignment. Now I get to start over and try it with Ulayoth or Chittagur! I've been told that if one wins it with all three, there's some sort of special bonus ending! (Someone I talked to in mass irc earlier tonight is right. Game consoles are a horrible waste of time.)

This afternoon, I paid a visit to the westminster king soopers, where I bought sandwich meat from the deli. Having now worked at a deli for over a month, it's quite interesting to observe the subtle similarities and differences between the way different stores operate.

For example, I found it fascinating that the westminster king soopers tightwraps their pre-sliced cheese packets, as opposed to simply covering them with loose wrap sheets, as we do in boulder.

Also, one thing I liked better about the king soopers here was that they displayed all their non-sliced meats in a case where everything is clearly labelled at the counter, as opposed to having them all stacked in a cooler in the back. (I would much prefer the former approach, speaking both as a customer and an employee. It's just easier for everybody when the customer can clearly see everything that's available, along with the prices, and find exactly at what they want at close range.)

I guess all this proves is that I am starting to become a true deli geek. Help us all.

This afternoon, I also managed to acquire a ticket to The Two Towers. Careful examination of my ticket voucher revealed that the AMC chain was not among the list of theaters that will redeem it, but Colorado Cinemas was. Having read Jaeger's content solutions post, I was already half tempted to glob onto his faction. The added incentive sealed the deal. I am now in possession of a ticket to see The Two Towers at Colony Square 12 at 1600 on Wednesday, December 18. All the people who hate and loath me may now be advised to avoid that particular showing. :)

Now, everybody go read this salon article. It's a good one, and in a pleasant exception to the recent "premium" trend, the entire text is available for the income-challenged among us to read.

Alright, now for a little tangential philosophical blabbering on my part, which may or may not make sense.

First, a little quote from the above article:

Obsession with either past or future can almost define a civilization. Worldwide, most cultures believed in some lost golden age when people knew more, mused loftier thoughts and were closer to the gods -- but then fell from grace. Under this dour but recurrent worldview, men and women of a later, coarser era can only look back with envy, hearkening to remnants of ancient wisdom.

...

Only a few societies ever dared to contradict this dogma of nostalgia. Our own scientific West, with its impudent notion of progress, brashly relocated any "golden age" to the future, something we might work toward, a human construct for our grandchildren to achieve with craft, sweat and good will -- assuming that we manage to prepare them. Implicit is the postulate that our offspring can and should be better than us, a glimmering hope that is nurtured (a bit) by two generations of steadily rising IQ scores.

The most recent two books I've read have been scifi novels focusing on different approaches taken by geneticists and social planners in attempts to create the futuristic "perfect world" -- a utopia where all inhabitants live in a sort of engineered paradise. So this is a topic that's been on my mind a lot lately.

In Huxley's Brave New World, everyone is engineered, through techniques involving both direct genetic manipulation, and a lifetime of operant conditioning, to love their work, their station in life, and their routine, and want nothing else.

Everyone is happy. The upmost perfection, right? Pain and suffering are nonexistent. But is a world where the works of Shakespeare can neither be appreciated nor comprehended by anyone other than a "savage" really what we want? (Leaving aside, for a moment, the implicitly sexist dichotomy imposed by the narrative when it makes the otherwise likeable, ironically heroic "savage" a repressed, puritanical maniac whose only method of dealing with the sexual advances of a woman is to lash out in violence and verbal abuse. But that's another critical tangent for another day.)

It prompts us to ask the question: What is a "perfect" world. Would would an ideal existence look like?

In another attempt to answer the question, David Brin's Glory Season portrays a planet of genitically altered humans, created specifically with the goal of making a better life for its inhabitants. Without going into immense detail (that's what reading the book itself is for), the story is set in a heavily female-dominated society, where the inherent superiority of females is taken as much for granted as that of males on earth was for thousands of years.

Women who "prove" themselves (in a Darwinian sense) are able to self-clone, under certain conditions, but still require the sexual help of males before they can do so. Anyway, getting to the point (and back to the focus of the article I linked to)...

Lysos, the originator of this multi-millennial-scale science experiment, believed, ironically, that humanity's obsession with scientific discovery had crippled people's ability to enjoy their lives. She observed that continuously-expanding technology and knowledge of the universe seldom lead people to a happy existence, and never in a lastingly stable manner.

Her solution was to create a planet where the vast majority of the population lived what might be called a primitive existence, a future harkening back to an improved "golden age" of the past.

(Come to think of it, the same theme is also evident in the story of Metroid Prime. Heh, yeah. Like the article says, our culture, especially the scifi/fantasy-loving contingent, is in a period of virtual obsession with such technology-spurning Romantic fantasies.)

In Glory Season (hopefully, it isn't too spoilerific to be relating these generalized notions), the heroine is ultimately faced, among other things, with the dilemma of accepting the plan of Lysos, or pursuing the heretical vision of scientific advancement. (With neither conclusion being explicitly endorsed or rejected objectively by the narrative. i.e. It shows some possibilities and arguments, and lets the reader decide.)

I love a statement made at a certain point toward the end. (Since I don't have the book in front of me, I'm going to have to glean what I can from memory.)

Despite the prevailing reality of society, nature, and the overwhelmingly powerful governing culture, she makes the choice to live life "as if" her ideal vision of the world is, in fact, the case. (I won't say exactly what that is here, cause it might be considered spoiler material. But people who have read the final pages will know to what I refer. (Unless they've forgetten, like I occassionally do after memory fades and is covered up by more recent input.))

To make such a stance is an incredibly powerful position to take, and also risky. To come out, stand up, and say, "I may not know the ultimate truth. Some facts may even directly contradict me. But I choose to live my life as if $IDEAL_POSSIBILITY is, in fact, a reality, and strive for it with every action." This, to me, sounds like the essence of positive living.

Anyway, that's a tangent too. Well, sort of.

Now we come back to me. What is my ideal with regard to the debate of an idyllic past versus the merits of relentless technological advancement? At various moments in my life, I've fallen in love with both ideals. As of late, I seem to have come to a point where I find myself incapable of making a definite choice, one way or the other. Hence, my personal ambivalence as to whether I even want to continue to pursue a career in the tech field, barriers imposed by the nation's sad economic situation aside.

On the one hand, I can hardly imagine living in a world without my computer, without my radio, without my television, without video games, without cars, without fast food, and other the innumerable pleasantries provided by the technologically advanced society.

Yet I am also faced with the entirely believable reality that the cumulative effect of such consumption patterns on a mass scale is certain to wreak havoc on nature, and worse yet, much of the rest of humanity.

How many of our toys say "Made in China", where labor conditions are utterly atrocious? How many of our circut boards are made in taiwan, where women work 16 hour days with shit for pay? How many of our clothes and shoes are made in God-knows-where by child slave labor?

I'm not even gonna start with the environment. Ya'll have heard it before, from many other sources. (I would hope.)

So, I too, hopelessly cling to hopelessly fantastical notions of a more idyllic time, and enjoy doing so.

But realistically, where do I want things to go? Somewhere like here, maybe? Or maybe something more like the inspirational much-talked-about "Gene's Vision". (I'd like to link to a nice summary, but nothing definitive pops up on google.)

Oh well. It's late. I've been typing too long. This is getting ridiculous.

I think I'll go out and see if I can get some exercise for a change. Hopefully, if I'm lucky, I won't have any prejudiced cops pulling me over for jogging (or, more likely, walking, given my lack of physical conditioning lately).

I'm outta here. And nobody take these wandering ramblings too seriously. Peace.