[Empty references] are a part of the wider memeification of our culture in which recognizability equals entertainment... where it becomes increasingly difficult to engage stories with commitment and sincerity.

-From The Marvelization of Cinema. A great follow up to Memes* cause depression

Japanese practice: Self-introduction

 

Cantonese Practice: Le Petit Prince 24

 

Cantonese Practice: Le Petit Prince 22 - 23

Cantonese Practice: Le Petit Prince 21

 

Hidden Brain: The Paradox of Pleasure

According to this two-part program (1, 2) basically if you're getting the constant dopamine that a modern person receives, our homeostasis will naturally baseline us in a state of depression. So if you want to not be depressed, you have to pretty actively not live like a modern person (e.g., no internet at home).

 There are so many good nuggets but here were two that I remember:

"In our narcissistic culture, you'll find people want to escape themselves and into something else. We are so inundated with thinking and worrying about ourselves that our escapism shows we want relief from that."

"I thought I was unhappy because my life was hard. It turns out I was unhappy because my life was too easy."

I'm rethinking my relationship with the internet and consumerism, down to things that we typically think are mundane and basic like "listening" to music (and podcast consumption!) I'm already cranky thinking about the withdrawal that will happen without my Youtube crutch, but the program convinced me there is no end to the manufactured infinite quantity of novelty, and each hit digs deeper into the dopamine cache that cannot be satisfied.

Anti-book bans

You may have heard of book bans, but some states and counties like our local school system have proactively enacted an "anti-book ban." This is a ban on bans, and within the school system, this means parents cannot opt their children out of curriculum with LGBTQ-inclusive texts.

Personality-wise, I love the idea of anti-book bans. Instead of libraries and BOEs being on the defensive from relentless conservative networks, they flip the story and assert the authority and leverage they've had all along. "If you don't like it, tough nuts, we're gonna give kids the opportunity to be more open-minded than you."

From the school board's perspective, I think it is appropriate, if not understandable, to equate this moment to school integration. Back then schools faced the wrath of angry parents, but the right thing to do was to keep letting the schools integrate. 

The message that kids see when they see parents openly protesting is "I am not okay with gay people." People of course have religious convictions against homosexuality. But parents should do well to tread carefully in the manner of how they discuss sexual identity, with LGBT youths from religious family backgrounds having higher risk of suicide. Sayings like "your identity is in Christ and not in being gay" are trite in the same way of "your identity is in Christ and not in being Chinese," because things like race and sex are so profound to our lived experiences that, yes, in theory Christian identity is rooted in Christ, but we minimize the beauty of imago dei by minimizing our particularities.

If we take the evangelical position that being gay is a distortion of the Christian sex ethic, there is still beauty in the distortion. For every gay or gender disphoric person who calls to Jesus, in evangelical lexicon, God is glorified to an even greater extent than a comfortably cis gendered person, because the weakness of man is the boasting in Christ. 

My personality does run contrarian, and that was one of the main appeals of being a Christian in the first place. "Society seems to be fluid or contradictory in gauging what's right and wrong, but God has a clear standard." So for religious parents, they could see this as a discipleship opportunity to have engaging and close conversations with their kids while gaining credibility that they aren't scared and are open to hearing and loving all people.

I am biased to the public school system. The hands-off approach of my parents wouldn't have served me well in areas like sex, drugs, and other sensitive health topics, but thankfully the schools were the safety net to give me really positive and practical information on how to navigate those things. In their message to parents, they cite research showing that "inclusive materials are a key component of a safe and supportive environment for LGBTQ+ students and increase positive psychosocial and educational outcomes." This honestly should be a shared goal across the community and I appreciate the system for the good faith effort.

Affirmative action shower thoughts

A Princeton professor said: 

At Harvard, more than 80% of recruited athletes are admitted. That’s orders of [magnitude] greater than any racial consideration. It also comes with considerable racial implications. 70% of athletes at Harvard are white, whereas only 40% of the student body is.

This is pretty revealing. You could argue the real enemies of equity, exacerbators of exclusivity, and honestly the most obvious elephants at elite colleges are: sports recruiting and legacy. AOC later quoted the same stats I think so I'm in good company.

But the quote also implies that the 40% white student body, while not even at > 50%, is still higher than it "should" be based on standard considerations. And also that, later in the thread, for colleges that don't consider gender they end up with more women admitted. I think that's fascinating.

Now on to shower-borne solutions. Why do people care about getting into elite colleges? I assume: better job opportunities. And subjectively "social prestige," but I'll focus on jobs for now because I think part of the solution is to undercut prestige. So. What if. Hear me out. We had "college blind" job hiring? Or affirmative action with consideration to diversify educational background?

"That's infeasible."

Is it though?

Federal law already bars employers from discriminating against potential or current employees on factors such as gender, race and age ("equal opportunity employer" or "EEO"). What if we simply tacked on educational background to that list?

"Educational background" is becoming more and more of a subjective bar with less and less utility thanks to democratized online learning materials. Personally speaking, college was the biggest waste of time educationally. I learned nothing that was unique to the particular university, and public high school education was much more meaningful overall.

So how could companies implement this? Google already sort of does this with "hiring committees" and so some of my colleagues didn't even attend college. Hiring committees are a detached cabal that have not interacted with the candidate and only look at the merits of the candidate's interview answers. The committee is blind to educational background, gender, and race. To make this equitable, the top of the funnel needs to include an intentionally diverse pool and that's where Google is imperfect, as are all other companies, since recruiters have extreme leeway and discretion on who to get through the screen.

"So you're saying there should be some federal law that asks recruiters to censor the college a candidate came from before presenting to hiring managers, or companies must consider candidates who attended non-elite colleges (>15% admission rate) in the pool, and the law also asks companies to revamp entire campus recruiting strategies, basically eliminating campus recruiting as it exists today?"

"...Yea!" It only sounds impossible because we settle into artificial constraints on what's possible! I think this is more feasible than fighting at the college admissions level, contending with incentives of endowment and sports economics, VERSUS at the employer level, where it's easier to argue college name != performance. Back to the shower for more thoughts.

Cantonese Practice: Le Petit Prince 18 - 20

 

The limits of therapy

Not letting Alan Noble corner the market on exegeting modern culture, the late Tim Keller has an extremely incisive chapter in his book Forgive titled, “Our need for forgiveness.” It’s based on an article written by Wilfred McClay on “the strange persistence of guilt,” where the modern (western) person, like all persons before, tries to cover their shame and sense of inadequacy *except this time* without the help of explicit moral categories, which is an idea ironically from Karl Marx. Thanks also to the default acceptance of Nietzsche and Freudian ideas that underlie therapy, mainstream therapy rationalizes and detaches itself from moral universals like guilt.

I don’t want to reduce the chapter to a couple wordbites so would recommend reading it in its entirety, but from personal experience I would agree that cognitive behavioral therapy does not cover dimensions of anxiety that are irrefutably moral and spiritual in their subjective experience. This is by design of course, so it’s not a gotcha. CBT I think helps folks to curb excesses in their *thoughts* to prevent *feelings* and *actions* from a downward spiraling.

But “not spiraling” is different than “joyful.” So what gets in the way of being joyful that CBT can’t address? It’s that nagging sense that you’re not good enough, useful enough, or loved enough, by other people or by yourself. No amount of CBT self-thought-policing with affirmations of “I am worthy” will actually sit deeply unless you bring about some standard of, well, what makes someone worthy to begin with?

The deflecting person will look outside and see how society and other people have unfairly deemed them unworthy (e.g., “not smart enough for the job”, “not funny or pretty enough for friends”). This is an archetype that fits the modern MO – victimhood is righteousness. Even if that situation is true, there are two problems: the practical problem is that mere acknowledging doesn’t really help one find joy, and the philosophical problem is therein lies a moral judgment. Those two words CBT is highly allergic to. The moral judgment is that other people are the guilty ones.

But how do you guide a CBT client with this complaint? You have to somehow straddle “those judgments by other people are not true” and “those people may have understandable reasons for treating you this way (a la amygdala function).” A bit vacuous and not joy-inspiring. This is what I actually experienced in my CBT sessions, and this is not an accusation but just an observation on what conflicts surface within this framework.

The honest person will look inside and see that, yes, there are truly things that make them unworthy. A spiteful heart, destructive habits, ungracious attitudes. Dr. Keller cutely quips Instagram is not enough to cover these things we know to be true of ourselves. Pronouncing all guilt onto other people is creating an artificial, or rigged, scale to make sure we don’t acknowledge the inadequacy/shame that we don’t know what to do with (thanks to Nietzsche). CBT would posit that you’ve developed your unworthy traits as your body’s natural way of dealing with stress, and thus we need to reprogram the brain to think-feel-act accordingly.

The “best case” is you start to act in ways that are more righteous. But that doesn’t solve the inherent problem of sensing right vs. wrong actions in the first place. And so when you inevitably do something wrong, you behavior manage your way out and hopefully don’t think too deeply as to why you keep feeling dissatisfied.

To his credit, Dr. Noble does dedicate a whole chapter to the limits of therapy in his essay-book On Getting Up In The Morning. He does not downplay the need for it but acknowledges that it’s hit-or-miss at best. Positively speaking, CBT has been beneficial for me to understand better how I think, why I operate in a certain manner, and increase my capacity for compassion when others act destructively. And it is a sort of relief to know that it doesn’t, shouldn’t, and can’t address the lingering accusations, which compel a need for deep acceptance and love from a worthy party.

Cantonese Practice: Le Petit Prince 16-17

 

Cantonese Practice: Le Petit Prince 14-15

 

Cantonese Practice: Le Petit Prince 12-13

 

Memes* cause depression

*well, internet scrolling in general, which are basically memes or meme-adjacent.

During company layoffs, I went two straight weeks looking at nothing but internal memes. They were really helpful in processing the feelings of hurt and shock. 

Memes with my colleagues straddle an interesting spectrum. It's "connection" with a real collective community, but the collective is across 200K employees.

Extrapolate that to an entire internet "community" and you have the state of today's media. For all the split-second entertainment that's out there, I rarely laugh. That's true unfortunately not just with internet browsing, but with life and with people too.

Is it just me? Are we not having as many belly laughs with people as with past times? 

I could be conflating a number of other true things: 

adult friendships don't tend to be as deep as those from youth,  

raising a kid is a perpetual beatdown,

pandemic disconnection,

desensitization from working in a frenetic environment,

but let me just stick to my thesis a little longer. First, what am I calling a "meme," and why do they make us depressed? A meme (picture, short video skit, stupid Tweet™️) is basically an attempt through media to get a "Oh I know that feeling!" It's creating a "connection," and the more niche the reference the greater the payoff, e.g., in order from basic to niche: SAT -> 90skids4lyfe -> depression/anxiety/introvert/antisocial -> grad school memes with relatable themes -> NUMTOT -> MD is a cult Not a State -> Super Secret DMV bboy page. Honestly for every human experience, and I mean *every*, we've created some media.

But here's the thing. I think connection is zero-sum. At the core of it, memes create connection to a nebulous internet entity, which thus disconnects us more and more with our real counterparts. We strip ourselves the opportunity to laugh with real friends, because would-be funny convos are constantly scuttled with our mental "oh I've seen this line of humor already in a meme." I sense this constantly in my interactions. People including myself have a hard time laughing from true novelty, because there is none.

And it's even more negative than zero-sum. The meme reduces the dimensions and dignity of the human experience it's making fun of. Tokenizes and trivializes. Ironically, the more nuanced ("niche") the meme is the more the tokenization effect. Because of this, I draw a line at Christian memes. Under no circumstances I'll entertain Christian memes. That's the last thing in my life I need trivializing. 

As self-proclaimed Nostalgia King, I think about how life was in the 2000s. Even though we had internet, its use was so different. We still used Facebook to catch up with real people in our lives, not random impersonal internet personalities. AIM chat was in its heyday. We connected with real folks. 

Will I stop with memes? Maybe! I unfollowed a bunch of meme accounts by the end of writing this. Out of all my social contexts, I think I have pretty good laughs with bboys. The meme skills of the community are so poor it's actually a net-benefit. It also helps you're inherently vulnerable and silly when participating. A lot of the things discussed here are themes from the book "You Are Not Your Own" by Alan Noble. Excellent read, seriously cut me on specific modern problems that older religious figures don't have insight into (a la memes, porn, and smartphones).

Chronicling my growing up while learning electric guitar: middle school anime music

0:13 the Fourth Avenue Cafe from Rurouni Kenshin ED 4 
0:49 READY STEADY GO from Fullmetal Alchemist OP 2
1:45 Dune by L'Arc-en-Ciel 
2:07 Driver's High from Great Teacher Onizuka
2:28 shuffle from Yu-Gi-Oh! OP 2
3:18 OVERLAP from Yu-Gi-Oh! OP 5
4:13 River from Gundam SEED ED 2

Sentimental: "One of the big marks of the loss of identity is nostalgia." - Marshall McLuhan.

Anime music that I listened to in middle school is like the deep core of my musical taste -- delightful Japanese tunes. I wanted to show that delight in songs like Ready Steady Go which indeed are fun to play, but what ended up on video was the 20th take and I'm not as animated. I also never noticed how MUCH L'Arc-en-Ciel I listen to... it's like I forgot them for Asian Kung-Fu. So many other songs I wished to do like Jiyuu e no Shoutai but forgot. The Dune song is for my son who likes it surprisingly (it's a little weird) but w/e I'll play it.

Technical: omg what can I say about 4th ave cafe. I'm not even sure if this guitar part should exist, I can't hear it in the original song. I was challenged by a friend to make my guitar track more prominent but...omg it's SO HARD to get a good tone so I'm chickening out. Maybe I need a real amp and not free Garageband ones. Something up with the interface? Anywho, it's crazy the amount of time I spent increasing the body of the sound without making terrible noise. I'm talking days of going back and redoing the pedalboard. High notes: "Oh I need flange to round it out." Low notes: "Oh EQ picking up too much bass." It's just crazy.

OK. Breathing. Ready Steady Go is likewise pretty fast, so settling for a more basic rhythm. Let's give up on the palm muted tremelos, it's spray and pray. For these songs I need to cut out the entire lower half of EQ frequencies to match the tone. And Driver's High requires a 24th fret...my guitar don't got that. Overall, L'arc is harder to play than AKFG, so respect to the older school.

Shuffle has hard solos that I won't attempt, but otherwise the easiest to record.