endless replica of self

it's crazy, what a little "for" loop can do...

writing the code for this web app that i've been playing with for a little while, i decided to create a log file to monitor system activity. i finished up on the code, opened a browser window and entered the URL of the script on my server [i'm running apache on my local machine]... i expected the process to take a few minutes, so i left the computer to its devices for a bit.

i came back, and the computer was still cranking away; i found that odd since i'm still developing the site -- there's not much data to be parsed. suddenly, i get a system notification that i'm running low on disk space, and i know exactly what's happened. a conditional looping contstruct inside one of my code objects had gone mobius [a.k.a -- a piece of code gone psycho and was repeating itself endlessly]... and i was losing disk space very quickly. not a big deal, i just shut down the server [which actually didn't stop the perl interpreter] and then rebooted the machine. and now i've got a 140 meg text file sitting on my hard drive.

it's funny though -- i've never unleashed a virus on myself before ;)

unintentionally, anyway.

at first, when i entered college, i wanted to study computer science. i felt teachers had too much subjective control over the interpretation of my writings and thoughts, and that the concise logic of computer programming would take out alot of the guesswork as far as grades were concerned. the teachers weren't always right, but the education system gives teachers near-absolute power over the graded outcome of students' work in their classes. the problem lies in the fact that there is very little necessary investment on the part of the teacher -- the teacher can decide that only students who conform to their expectations will pass, and the others will be branded as failures. the teacher naturally perpetuates the system of which he or she is a part.

an analogy: the average office worker is motivated by payment, promotion and prestige. these things give the worker the money to buy his daily bread, to feel as sense of connectedness to his work and a feeling of worth among his fellow workers. the old myth is that the harder you work, the farther you'll go. of course, i have been working in the white-collar world for nearly six years by now and i have seen any number of excuses used to dismiss some of the most hard-working, motivated people i've ever met: bad management, lack of higher opportunities for hard workers, and internal politics, to name a few.

organizations are self-perpetuating. although there is a great deal of merit within the traditional educational system, it fails to rate well as a meritocracy as far as teaching standards are concerned. by teaching standards i mean the standards by which teachers are judged in terms of doing their best to adapt to students' needs. most teachers that i have encountered have a set way of doing things and expect the student to conform to that way. the issue that i take with that approach is that some students have ways of expressing their views that may not conform. if one person views a piece of art as superfluous trash, does it invalidate the work of the artist?

this issue becomes critical in the case of a young person who has relatively little guidance. if a teacher seeks to merely instruct, that is, to set down a curriculum and run pupils through the grist mills of mental exercise, then very few students will emerge from such a system having internalized the information in a meaningful way. cramming for exams is an example of the failure to relate to material in anything other than the most shallow of terms. is this the fault of the student? no. the student is merely searching for an efficient way to navigate through the morass of seemingly meaningless obligations that is being leveraged onto his back by the mechanistic educational system. the representative of this system is the teacher whose main desire is not to teach in a way that is meaningful to the student, but rather to earn a salary.

the key to learning is the relationship of the student to the material being taught. the communicative medium, in terms of the classroom setting, is not the books, the pens and pencils, or the chalkboard. it is the teacher. if the teacher has no personal stake in teaching [ aside from the rare altruistic desire for the betterment of students ], how can the students be engaged by the material? unless there is a prior interest in a subject, very few people - young or old - will submit themselves to the dry, terse language used by the vast majority of textbooks. the creation and sustenance of interest is the key to effective education, and the teacher serves the necessary function of the catalyst. the reaction of the student is a spark of inspiration, or at least vague curiosity. if this is not accomplished, all of the grades in the world will make little difference in the intellectual success or failure of the student. young people are not self-motivating machines, and since profit motive is not an immediate satisfaction, there must be an equivalent sense of attainment to be gained from the educative process. what is this motive?

the desire for knowledge must be the motive.

the role of the teacher must be to nurture that desire in his or her students. an educational system based solely on dishing out grades, detentions and expulsions neglects the fact that not everyone has a primary support system outside of the institution to give and maintain in them a sense of direction and purpose. if the teacher has little incentive to work for the students' benefit other than a paycheck, the qualitative value of teaching is reduced to a game of numbers - how many passed, how many failed, what were the demographics? enter socioeconomic variables into the equation and quite an interesting picture emerges. the difficult students, the ones who habitually think for themselves, the ones who don't fit the mold, are easily swept away. in the world of business, competition is an essential component of a capitalistic economy. in the world of education, competition for grades and egotistical merit is both a false indicator of learning capacity and quite a perplexing darwinian twist. in some sense, the treadmill of standardized learning churns out graduates who are prepared not for creative thought, but rather to more easily succumb to dull existences as lab rats in corporate hierarchies. turn the wheel a bit faster, and you get more a few more grains of food [or better grade, nicer car, bigger house, etc.]. but what happens when you step off and realize that you are not, in fact, going anywhere? what happens when you realize that your potential as a human being has been completely "repurposed" and repackaged into a gray facsimile of the cubicle junkie sitting next to you? it is frightening to me that i have met as may people as i have whose lives have been perverted into the search for a "safe" lifestyle, but the only thing that they find is stress, a lack of self-fulfillment and angst about years wasted in lives they didn't want. whose fault is that, i ask? i believe the core answer lies within the ways that we are taught to learn. the ways that we are taught to think.

i believe that the self-made man is a myth... taking responsibility for oneself is only part of a much larger picture.


rebellion is fashionable.

creativity is something else.

blogger just ate my blog and spit it out all screwed up... i wonder what happened.

Google uses pigeons!

For real, yo.

Google uses pigeons!

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entropy versus the microstate: everything is of equal value

i have been reading about information theory in my free time. although not a textbook or a book that i have to read to pass a course, this is by far the most relevant knowledge that i have gained in quite some time. interesting that i have trouble passing a psych 100 class but i absorb information theory like a sponge.

in my readings, i have come across the concept of entropy. entropy is the quantity of information that is generalized into what is called the macrostate of a system. take temperature, for example, as the average measure of the caloric energy produced within a space in time. the temperature is the macrostate - however, there are thousands, maybe millions of molecules bumping into each other to create the agitated state that is expressed by the idea of "heat". the speed of an individual molecule is the microstate.

i write all this as an introduction to a reinterpretation of that idea... life experience, to be exactly vague. so then: in life, there is the mainstream of thought. nine-to-five lifestyle is accepted, gray suits, grey faces, "fun" vacations followed by more drudgery, followed by eventual retirement. being a businessman is rarely frowned upon. that is the accepted norm. the educative path is the same:

elementary->secondary->postsecondary->possibly graduate

stumble through, eyes closed, hands open to what is given, go into debt, let "society" own you. it'll be okay, just leave the thinking to us.

life in greyscale.

on the other hand, you have "alternative" lifestyles: body modification [tattoos, piercings, etc.], artistic expression as a way of life [being an actor, sculptor, tattoo artist, martial arts teacher, etc.], homo/bi sexuality. these lifestyles are outside the scope of the cookie-cutter protestant work ethic that is so falsely attributed to what it means to be "american". self-education is synonymous with "too lazy to go to school". "artist" means "touchy-feely new age never-grew-up type".

life in true color.

we have both sides of the scale, described from the standpoint of mainstream society. the greyscale lifestyle is what is well-known, already explored. most people understand this way of life because it is a routine - authoritative, authoritarian, dry and simplistic. pain is minimized, but then, it is very easy to lose sight of happiness as well. the smell of coffee and a newspaper wakes you up in the morning, and thoughts of unpaid bills and tomorrow's lunch break at an expensive restaurant lull you to sleep [sometimes while still sitting at your desk]. understanding of the microstates involved in this system obviates the need for generalization and negative stereotyping. there is very little entropy, and very little information that is not already categorized and neatly packaged. a life of situational familiarity in which you are moving but always through the same spaces.

life in true color is something very different. having lived outside of situational repitition, basing life on learning and adaptation rather than rote memorization, creates a dynamic awareness that is characterized by primal familiarity - understanding of oneself in the state of consciousness rather than a particular time and place. meditation, sexual climax, and creative inspiration come to mind as states of mental absorption that are all similar in the experience but disparate in outward appearance. without having a direct appreciation for these things, it is a simple matter to prejudge and dismiss them. these lifestyles are symbolic of entropic systems, full of information that is in the continual process of realization. and yet, from the outside, capoeira is nothing more than an elaborate dance. from the inside, it transforms into rhythm, movement, response, and technique.

this concept applies to one's choice of profession as well:

actors? all they do is pretend to be someone else. it looks easy - i can do that. but look a little deeper, study it - you find the genius of stanislavsky, the noh theater, greek drama, and a whole world of skill, craft and artistry.

tattoo artists? all they do is stencil tattoos onto the skin and copy over them with ink. but if you actually sit down and talk to an artist [not a scratcher, but someone with skill and experience] you will see that there is a lifetime of learning, interpretation and refinement involved.

so then: what is truly valuable? is it the opinion of the world or the inspiration of the self? everything can be seen as positive or negative, true or false, good or bad. i am starting to see that perspective means much more than absolute judgment. the problem here is how not to dive into solipsism and declare oneself the arbiter of real and unreal. but how far to compromise before losing sight of the original truth?

it's a beautiful day outside. time to strap on the skates and wear down my grind plates for the first time this season ;)