I know anachronism is a fact of life  in dieselpunk and steampunk. But outside that context? I struggle with it. Even within those genres, sometimes it can be jarring.

I’m thinking about this at the moment because I saw The Great Gatsby a few days ago. Overall it was a great movie, but it definitely didn’t feel as “historical” as it could have. And that’s fine–obviously the feel of the movie was intentional and not the result of sloppiness, as is the case in hack novels. Of course any time I mention this, more than a few people have told me that I’m being silly–that particular director does it often. It’s a thing. Didn’t you see such and such?

That’s all correct. Nevertheless, for the sake of argument . . .

In steampunk, anachronism is an integral part of the story’s architecture. The whole reason it works is because authors have figured out how to make what really was, to us, a dry and dull period interesting again. Don’t believe me? Try reading Victorian literature. It’s good, just like literature from any age, but don’t try to tell me it’s paced the way we like it or makes a whole lot of sense to us culturally.

In the case of this movie though, it’s superfluous, and they made no attempt whatsoever to hide this fact and make it work. They forgot the Crisco. They didn’t warm the forceps. It kicks you out of the story and into MTV land. And I don’t quite see what the point of it was.

I’m talking about the soundtrack and pop culture references.

I guess it allows a generation that doesn’t read books, let alone old ones, to appreciate a classic story. But would it have hurt its popularity to have done a more artful treatment of the book? I don’t think so. It already was slaughtered by Iron Man 3. Maybe it’ll do better in 20 years when some jackass decides to make yet another version, but some bizarre contemporary one with .  . . flying cars and fucked-up slang. And instead of booze being such a big deal, it’ll be bath salts.

Given that, I guess we’re lucky that they didn’t shit all over it by making a contemporary version.

Besides all that though, this did make a pretty fun diesel movie. It looked right and the acting worked extremely well. As mean as it sounds, an actor like Tobey Maguire is perfect to portray what is essentially a cipher for the benefit of the reader . . . or convenience of the writer. And the good thing is that even with the ridiculous, jarring anachronisms, the point of the book survived.

So anachronisms–how do they really work now? I think, unless they’re mistakes or just bad writing, they have to be a deliberate, cynical postmodern manoeuvre. If you’re going to do it, make sure it’s a full-on postmodern wink-wink-nudge-nudge sledgehammer to bring down that fourth wall. It’s like jazz–a bad note can sound good if you do it with enough authority and the right amount of repetition. I think it’s easier for a critical person like me to get over such an obviously dumb artistic decision than it would be if they’d tried to make their nods to today’s audience more subtle.

The other way to deal with them is to just avoid reality altogether and write dieselpunk. Even better if you write secondary world dieselpunk. I can’t even explain how fun it was to write Blightcross and how much fun (in theory, if I ever get time to write) the already-outlined sequel will be.

On an unrelated movie note, I also just saw I Love You, Man. Yes, I hadn’t seen it. Anyway, it’s a little sobering and pretty funny to watch yet another Paul Rudd character who is basically a slightly wussier version of myself. Derp.

You can bet your ass that when I got home I picked up my guitar and played Limelight.

I just listened to Norwegian avant-garde metal band Shining’s new album and I think it’s worth plugging. These guys need more exposure.

Check out the video for I Won’t Forget:

What I love about this band is that it’s basically the band I’ve always wanted to create but couldn’t. These guys are schooled jazz musicians who play death metal. Jorgen Munkeby fucking throws down the guitar in the middle of songs and does saxophone solos.

There is nothing more awesome than this. Unless for some reason you don’t like jazz or death metal. Derr. . . .

Then you had the video game–not the regular Sega or SNES one, but one of the awkward CD-based versions that was filled with jittery cutscenes. I had the 3DO version. By the way, the 3DO was fucking awesome. No system will ever compare to its awesomeness. Where else could you get random washed-up stars appearing in shitty video game cutscenes? Like Kirk Cameron in The Horde. 

Yeah. Demolition Man. I started thinking about the movie because over the weekend I was at Sparkling Hill and took the opportunity to try the only cryo-treatment of its kind on this continent. Besides the fact that being there meant I have the best girlfriend in the universe, it was insane. It’s actually colder than what froze Sylvester Stallone’s character in the cryo-prison. The temperature we experienced doesn’t even exist naturally on this planet.

Okay so it was only for 3 minutes. And it’s just long enough for your body to combat inflammation and do other weird things, but not long enough to actually lower your core temperature, so I wasn’t even shivering at the end. It starts off as a surprise, a kind of cold that’s so extreme that it’s hard to identify it as cold. Maybe that’s the point and how it works–whatever my body was doing to compensate, it turned those 3 minutes into a strange panic of extremely dry air, a feeling like I couldn’t breathe even though I was breathing harder than I have even in the most intense interval workout.  Maybe that change in respiration is why I didn’t really feel cold.

At the end of it, you’re on an adrenaline rush and it kept me going the rest of the day. I went in with some soreness left over from a squat-deadlift day 3 days before. It might have helped temporarily, but it’s been a long time and my legs are still sore. Granted, any therapy like that is going to take more than one treatment to do much. The other hitch to this treatment I could see, at least from an endurance athlete perspective (it’s pretty popular with triathletes and so on), is getting there soon enough after the workout to slow the damage.

The real benefit for most people is just that it’s just a bizarre, unique experience. Well worth it, no matter how terrified you are at the thought of being locked in a crazy meat freezer.

Besides that, now I understand writers’ retreats more than I did. The spa was such a great, quiet environment. Before my life became complicated and busy, I didn’t see the point of having to shut yourself away to write. Now when I struggle to finish one short story in six months, the idea of taking a week at a spa like Sparkling Hill just to finish some writing seems like heaven to me.

But not like . . . cabins and stuff. I couldn’t do the writer-cabin thing.

So I’m high maintenance. Meh.

It’s this British kid complaining about how all the adults are wrong because he doesn’t like taking exams, and the good old “when am I ever going to use pythagoras?” and the usual bullshit kids have been coming up with since the beginning of time when they suck at school.

I just find it so embarrassing. All the kid has done is claim that the same excuses students have been using since the invention of school as some big deal work of art or social commentary. So why does everyone care then? It’s the old “media is the message” problem, where the fact that this is involved with “social media” means it’s automatically a good idea, when it in fact is a dumb idea.

Oh yes, you can apparently put any dumb idea in front of a backdrop of dramatic muzak and a heart-wrenching video of a sad boy being scolded (just like everyone was at one point) and if it’s on youtube, people will automatically give that dumb idea legitimacy. I find it crazy how the kid wants us to “think for ourselves” (but all without having to do the hard work of gaining skils that thinking requires) and yet nobody in the comments section appears to be doing anything of the sort. If anyone were thinking for themselves, they’d be upset by this video.

The guy/kid/poet/whatever didn’t come up with anything new, or even imaginative, so this isn’t even a critique of him. You hear this stuff all the time but the difference is now people actually take it seriously.

It exposes just how far the rift between reality and society has grown. People have no connection to where the things they need come from, how they got there, and what it takes to live like we do. If they did, they wouldn’t be giving children who say these things a record deal. We’d just tell them that grown-ups need to use triangles to solve industrial problems, and that learning about literature is important for understanding the world. Then we’d just tell them to go back to school and do well.

But no–since reality now exists, as this kid put it himself so accurately, “on instagram,” “on facebook,” and “on the street.”

The mistake here is in thinking that everything has changed and that none of that “old fashioned” stuff like being a well-rounded person who can do lots of useful things apply anymore. Yes, a lot of economic activity occurs within the realm in which people like this operate. Fine. But the real world of buildings and numbers and nurses and all sorts of concrete stuff still exists. If it didn’t, facebook wouldn’t either.

If we as a society seriously think that bullshit like instagram and facebook means anything more than entertainment, advertising, and some economic activity in the tech sector, then we’re in serious trouble.

By that same token, encouraging others to reject what adults tell them about school and exams and be satisfied with working at Starbucks while they pursue a rap career on facebook is an awesome way to ensure a good pool of cheap domestic labour. Which could be a good thing. But I think a society based in that kind of ignorance is doomed.

This poet doesn’t want an exam to define him. That’s understandable, because letting anything like that define you is dumb. But the error is in assuming that it’s the exam that’s deciding his fate. An exam is not something that just happens to you. It’s not herpes. An exam, however, is fully within your control. The only factor in the outcome is yourself. You either choose to put the rapping on hold and become good at the same math everyone has to learn, or you choose not to and run into trouble a decade later when you’re old enough to want to join the real world.

So the video got my hackles up because I actually had a math final exam this morning. I watched that nonsense this morning while drinking coffee and getting ready to do a final cram before heading to the exam. And part of the reason it’s so infuriating is because I was exactly the kind of person this kid is appealing to. Ten years later, I’m struggling to cover all the ground I lost because I was an independent-thinking slacker who would never listen to anyone. I wanted to play music, I wanted to write. I did both those things for most of my twenties. And they didn’t get me anywhere. I don’t want my future children to have to tell their friends that their dad is “on instagram” for a living. They’ll probably feel better if they get to tell their friends their dad is an engineer.

All that struggling, all that making up for the attitude I once shared with this kid, and suddenly I’m told that exams shouldn’t matter? Fakk off.

Don’t get me wrong. I fully understand the point about people who don’t necessarily want to follow the usual path and want to figure out everything for themselves. Like I said, I was one of those. But speaking as one of those, we don’t need any encouragement. The reality checks that adults/institutions offer us are just a mere morsel of the shitstorm ahead–trying to survive in the eat-what-you-kill world is about as tough as it gets, and if a kid can’t handle being told that they need to pass an exam, they’re definitely not the sort who is capable of making it as a rapper or poet or whatever this guy thinks is more important than triangles. People like me are almost impossible to sway at that age. I repeat–no matter how much the rest of you want to romanticize the creative independent jackass, encouraging us is a mistake!

What might have worked though, is someone smart enough to recognize flexible thinkers with excess mental energy and the kinds of careers that would appeal to them. I know that’s almost impossible, but seriously once I actually read what a civil engineer does, it appealed to all the same parts of my brain that get off on playing in 7/4 or writing about giant robots. The average age of the people in my program is 27. There are a lot of around-30 creative types, some with arts degrees, who go back to this program after they realize they want a normal life with a family and a good job. Being a creative person is not a life-sentence to shitty work.

I don’t know how well the analogy really fits, but it seems like often the right thing to do is compare things to gonorrhea, so I’ll stick with it.

Why am I going over this tired conversation? Because it seems no matter how much it’s said and by whom, it’s still pretty virulent. If all it took was reason to get rid of it, nobody would have done stupid things to manuscripts since Stephen King wrote On Writing.

Okay so the reason this came up is that once in a while, a person and their girl need to  deliberately choose the worst movie available and watch it at a creepy theatre. So, like any normal person would, we smuggled in some wine and had a go at The Host.

Now, I haven’t read the book. This isn’t a stab at the author. Enough people have done that and despite what it seems like, I’m not into trashing other people unless there’s a good reason to. All I am doing is using this film as a catalyst for discussion about gonorrhea.

So I doubt I have to tell anyone that I’m not a particularly animated person, and can pretty much contain any emotion and keep a straight face. I could not while watching most of this. We did have a hell of a time, and it was a lot of fun. So in that respect, The Host was well worth it. But only to two of the most sarcastic people ever created.

The problem with flashbacks is when they’re used to foist often unnecessary information on the reader. Duh. That’s repeated so often it’s painful to actually be writing it. But anyway. Sometimes it’s a lazy way of forcing us to remember plot coupons that might titillate us later on. In this movie, a regular pattern of flashbacks happened in the first quarter. Okay, ham-fisted, sure. But you eventually get used to it and consider it part of the story’s architecture. But as soon as the author shoe-horns that plot coupon they want you to have into your brain, they change the structure and abandon flashbacks altogether.

You could argue for pure pragmatism on this and say I’m overanalyzing. You’d be right. But even though simpler is better and solid writing is usually better than elaborate techniques, I think there’s a limit to how careless you can be with these tools for the sake of easily dealing with exposition.

I think Blightcross had a couple flashback-type things going on. But if I remember correctly, my approach there was to not write them as scenes but quick, invasive thoughts. Not only is it economical, but I think dealing with it that way puts you more in the character’s head in the present while still having to deal with the past. You’re getting what they’re dealing with right now while they’re being reminded about something in the past, instead of being immersed in that past. Does that make sense? That’s by no means the only or best way, but the point is that there are a LOT of ways to do what writers think they can only do using a flashback scene.

Look, all we really care about is why the character is remembering something now and how it’s affecting them and how we think it’s fitting into the story. Very rarely have I noticed scenes accomplishing this better than, say, injecting an invasive thought into the character. And yes, what I did isn’t practical for most films, but in the end, there’s no reason to be using those flashback scenes. I didn’t feel any more connected to what was going on in this case.

The exception is of course the case of the parallel story. I actually like these a lot when people do it right. Think of basically every episode of Highlander. Even those were a little ham-fisted, but as long as you have an entire narrative that’s being played out alongside the main story, it can be interesting. It is not just for the sake of dealing with exposition, but literally integral to the engineering of the story. Or having it in reverse–the main story being one gigantic flashback framed by something important taking place in the future. But both of these hardly resemble the literary shrapnel that is the usual flashback.

Also in this film: a lot of internal monologue. This is such an important thing to get right, but in this case I was left, again, not believing it. It’s a tough thing to make work. I still struggle at it.

The trope itself deserves a post of its own later. Any attempt to do it in an interesting way deserves some props, even if it didn’t work out.

The one interesting potential in this movie was the romance situation between the host body, the symbiote, and their separate interests. Note how I said “potential,” since it wasn’t utilized the way it could have been. It was a little cutesy, especially the way the author basically used algebra to solve it: the distributive property used here easily allows everyone to be with whomever they want at the end and leave us with a sickening scene designed to satisfy youths wrapped up in the fidelity stage of psychosocial development.

Anyway, you always have to be on guard against your own laziness when you write. Or when you do anything, really.

Oddly enough, I thought the movie was done quite well. There’s only so much you can do with a script. The soundtrack was great and so was the photography. Even the acting wasn’t terrible, but as I said, the things the actors said almost caused us to make a scene.

So there are eight days left to vote for the Aurora awards and I feel like I haven’t done squat to get in on it. It’s kind of upsetting on one hand, but I guess a person can only do so much, and I’ve been very good at committing to too many things at once lately. This problem is so extensive that I seriously looked for a drafting course to take over the summer to keep myself occupied before going into the civil engineering program in the fall . . . which would have been ridiculous and redundant given that you lean drafting in that program anyway.

I mean, I don’t need to be occupied any further. Why must I keep finding excess ways of doing so?

Anyway, I’m the completely wrong personality type to generate hype for myself. Or for anyone else. That’s probably a really shitty thing to write on the internet if I ever want an agent or other publisher to even think of dealing with me in the future. But I think it would be easier to deal with it and possibly work around it if I didn’t try to play that game and just was honest. I have good work to sell, and will put in a lot of work to sell it, but unless someone tells me exactly what to do in order to sell it, I’m sure as hell not going to magically turn into an extraverted marketing genius.

I had this problem with bands too. There’s just so much non-musical crap to deal with that I ended up having more fun just playing what I wanted in my house than I probably would if I’d gotten with a real band. I always looked up to guys like Jeff Beck–ones known for being reclusive but still somehow manage to be relevant. You don’t need hype when everyone knows you’re better than Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton put together.

I like to deal with individuals. Crowd/groupthink scares and baffles me and I guess that is where I fail as an artist who would like to sell a lot of stuff. I especially hate groupthink when you see it happen in larger arenas, like politics. For example, it makes no sense whatsoever to me that Justin Trudeau would be a good choice for the federal Liberal Party, but it’s been decided before they even vote for it. And all without any basis in reason whatsoever. No debate, no discussion, just hysteria.

Not to get into politics or anything.

Once again, check out the Aurora Awards. It would be awesome to get a dieselpunk novel on the nominee list, wouldn’t it?

Seems like “art” is a word used to define stuff that a certain group of people want to see or stuff they already know. Just like “activism.”

Beautiful Soul academics and kids.

Is a second-coming of Schoenberg possible?

I doubt it.

So yes, I’m kind of struggling with math right now. I wouldn’t even say struggling, since that would imply that I didn’t grasp the concepts. I do that just fine, but just kind of suck at actually performing the calculations. This is probably due to the fact that early on I was discouraged from math and from the age of about fifteen onward, didn’t pay any attention beyond what would get me a C-. Given that, I have the basic comfort with numbers less than that of a child, and as such I’m looking for ways to improve that. And for some reason, I’ve decided that learning how to use a slide rule is going to make numbers more intuitive for me.

I grew up reading Heinlein, and it seemed every smart person (which, kind of like Rand, was always the protagonist since people who don’t agree with you are never smart and have ability, but I digress . . .) was always using a slide rule. I realized that yes, back when he wrote those books there was nothing else to use and it probably didn’t make anyone think twice at the time. But anyway, the things always seemed so fascinating to me. The guy had people flying starships and solving all sorts of complicated problems with a slide rule. Since I didn’t care about what math actually was until now though, I didn’t really get what that meant. Now that I’m doing math and physics, it seems pretty damn cool.

One must always guard against hipsterism, however. But I think this is safe: this is not an affectation, for one. You could argue that slide rules are still practical. If you crash your starship on some awful planet and your calculator gets crushed under a chair or something, how the hell are you ever going to sort out your shit? How are you ever going to deal with triangles? And we all know how triangles save lives. Triangles and survival knives, if you follow Heinlein. I think the logical evolution here would be a slide rule that was also a knife.

Also, hipsters are only concerned with “arts” or “media.” I don’t think they have the wherewithal to learn an antiquated system for the sake of doing trigonometry. You don’t need any serious math to publish your own underground magazine that’s all about your balls.

But seriously, I remember a couple months ago watching a news piece about some schools here getting kids to learn on the abacus. After a while the kids wouldn’t even need the abacus and just visualize it and be able to carry out calculations out of thin air. At first I thought this was one of those stupid new teaching fads that are going to ruin kids even more, kind of like “new math,” but now it seems like a great idea. I’m thinking analog, tactile devices make more sense to the human brain (at least for the purposes of learning) than memorizing stuff out of a book, then punching it in a calculator. Not that I’m even considering actually ditching the calculator for a ruler, but for where my brain is at, analog is going to make the connections in my brain a lot better.

It looks like these things have a bit of a cult following, which is neat. A major seller of new slide rules just happens to be a short drive from me, and their website is adorable.

I just can’t decide which one to get at this point. I didn’t know they were this complicated!

Anyway, besides that I have a short story coming up, and yes, it’s of course a prequel-ish Blightcross-related piece. And that’s all, really.

I wish I had more time to write. The projects in my notebook are piling up at an alarming rate.

Is there a point in reviewing an outdated model of anything? Meh. I hope the current version of these shoes hasn’t been changed much.

Anyway, It’s that time when I stop drinking coffee in the morning and take a shitload of caffeine pills before my runs instead, which means that I’m obsessed with running again. This leads me to the shoes I’ve been using for the last year, and probably way past their intended life. I figured after 756kms I should have a good feel for them.

I remember buying these in October 2011. I’d had plans to do the BMO Okanagan marathon and had recently read Born To Run. While I avoided that general bandwagon, it did get me to think more about the gear I was using and I realized that both Asics models I’d been using had way too much heel and arch support. So I set out to find a zero-drop shoe. At first I wanted one of the hipsterish “minimalist” shoes that were pretty popular at the time. They may still be but I haven’t paid attention to gear, having no need or cash for new stuff for a while.

Anyway the girl at the store knew her stuff and steered me to the Adidas Adizero Tempo 4 instead of a real zero-drop. I think it was the right choice.

I wasn’t just changing my gear, but also technique. Before these shoes I did end up with ankle issues a lot, and sometimes knee issues. You know how it is (if you’re a runner)–people shake their head at you and just assume it’s because running is bad for you and that you’re a dillhole for doing it so much. And if you don’t know any better, you believe it and think it’s normal.

Not so.

With a 10.6mm heel drop, I was worried that it wouldn’t be the fast, almost-nothing shoe I’d wanted. But it felt pretty fast in the store, and for some reason felt lighter than it really is, so I ignored the numbers and bought them.

I used these for everything from interval training on mountains to 20k runs and the way it’s built was the perfect setup for getting someone off of running on their heels and onto their forefoot. The heel is still kind of stiff, but the rest of it is pretty ductile and makes it feel crazy fast compared to, say, the Asics Gel Pulse I’d been using before. Doing that almost eliminated knee pain entirely, and significantly reduced the ankle issues I always have. And the best part was actually being faster.

The thing is, after over 750km you’d think they’d be done. I’m not so sure. I’m still using them and soles lack the conspicuous, concentrated wear-patterns that over-correcting shoes always get. My Asics ones have the weirdest spots worn down as much as a shoe can be worn, which make you want to diagnose yourself with all sorts of imaginary foot-strike abnormalities. These, however, are really worn, sure . . . but not in such a strange way, since, I assume, the foot has more ability to move as it needs to instead of being forced into static little box and told to strike in a perfect straight line every time, regardless of the forces hitting it.

So I’m not going to rush out to get another pair, since they’re still working they way they ought to . . . which seems to be not working much at all and standing aside to let the body do what it needs to. It pretty much just stops me from stepping on hepatitis when I run through Rutland without being ridiculous and unfortunate like Vibrams.

I do still wonder about zero-drop racing shoes and might go for the Asics Piranha though. Tough call.

I don’t know if people in the US have this thing going on today, but here it’s all about the pink shirts. It’s a viral collective action directed against “bullying.”

This leads me to the topic of the psychotic actions of groups in general, and is probably going to snowball into an anti-collectivist rant. Ah well.

I write about this a lot in my fiction, I realize. For sure Blightcross went there in a few ways–from the general insanity of an entire nation willfully living under fascism, to blind military obedience, to the extreme example of a demon-possessed horde.

I have a certain amount of hostility towards groupthink. And to me, groupthink is at the root of the social problems kids deal with right now.  The very same social issues that sparked this pink shirt thing. And, according to some, a few suicides, but I won’t touch that one right now.

The way I remember it, it was pretty rare to have a lone bully capable of chronic abuse. Often those wouldn’t survive socially for very long, because strong “good” kids will inevitably put them in their place. The real social problems come when a kid butts against the herd mentality. And the herd is comprised of normal people, not bullies. Only they don’t seem like bullies because they’re on sports teams and smoke cigars and drive Mustangs.

It sounds far-fetched, but hold on. Kids don’t know how to think. That’s why they’re in school and that’s why they can’t vote. The overemphasized importance of team sports basically cuts their “learning how to think” short before it’s had any time to develop. Why? Well, let’s see. You’re in a situation in which you’re conditioned to respond to a whistle, you repeat phrases en masse on command (where else have we seen that? hmmm), and where your individuality is dissolved under the blurry flapping banner of a sports team, because there’s no “I” in team, right?

So given that the most valued aspect of the adolescent world is that particular situation, is it a wonder that certain kids get picked on?

Now, of course nothing stays the same. In a wonderful Hegelian twist, it’s the same old story again, only now it’s “wear a pink shirt . . . or else.” Not literally. I hope not, anyway. But in reality, an “awareness campaign” and mass symbolic gesture just amount to more groupthink, more pressure to do what everyone else is doing, and probably doesn’t help anyone very much in the end. The anti-bullying campaign ends up as just the same morality-by-committee as what happens with hazing and so on, only with an ever so slight adjustment of subjective coordinates.

I’m not saying all team sports are bad. But they’re unfortunately far too important in our culture. It’s strange because back when I was a stupid ultra-leftist in my early twenties, I whined about how far too individualistic and “autistic” and selfish western society was, just like any raging leftist douche would. But it’s the opposite–the bad things in our culture happen because people simply aren’t thinking and are incapable of defining themselves regardless of what any one group around them is doing.

Let’s look at the dreaded phys-ed situation in high school. At least when I was in school, almost no emphasis was placed on becoming a strong, healthy individual. They taught nothing about actual fitness! What did they try to instill in us then? Well, one teacher had a heartfelt speech for us about how if we didn’t learn team sports, we’d be “sitting on the sidelines, missing out.” Really?

That speech made me feel extremely uncomfortable, but I did give it a try anyway. It was awful and I didn’t last long. The part that pissed me off the most was that they still pumped you up when you sucked, just because you were on “the team.” It’s so bizarre that these teams are responsible for a lot of torment outsisde their group, but within, like I mentioned, they have no identity or personal responsibility or expectations.

After that, I may have been “on the sidelines,” but I didn’t miss out on much. Those sidelines were actually the out-of-bounds markings of stuff that mattered to me.

And about that teacher who tried so hard to get misfits like myself to just join in and be part of the group? I actually ran a 16k race a year ago and happened to pass the guy on a hill. Never saw him again.

Now, I didn’t suffer any bullying, despite having failed at fitting in. I think it was because I just didn’t care about the people who might have otherwise bullied me. They weren’t on my radar at all, and if anyone said anything hurtful, it made about as much sense to me as “cheese” and “wednesday.” But other people did, and I think it might have been because they actually cared about the group.

I’m unfairly targeting sports teams, and people I know are going to hate me, for sure. Where else is this nonsense perpetuated? The corporate world. Especially this myth that Steve Jobs became a millionaire by encouraging groupthink.

This is a pretty good article that goes into how individual thought is increasingly being unfairly curtailed in favour of groupthink, and it delves into the example I just mentioned.

I could rant on and on about this subject but what I really mean to address is the real cure for a lot of problems like this. The real cure is simply for people to be taught to think independently. That’s all. And while a lot of people mistake that for precious-snowflake-syndrome, that’s not it at all. It is not an encouragement of contrived idiosyncratic personalities or being intentionally argumentative. The reality is that any kind of group activity suspends critical thinking skills, and we’re increasingly giving more and more of our lives to the group.

Group actions will degenerate, regardless of how great its original intentions are. The way to combat widespread (insert problem here) is to be an indepenent, critical thinker. And you can’t teach that in a group or with a campaign.