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Published: December 9th 2006
Every time I sit in one place for more than a day, my mind gets turning and I get to ranting. I spent 5 nights and 4 days in Koh Kong, so there were bound to be some rants generated. Since there was no reliable or inexpensive internet in the area, I put most of these down in my journal. Here is a sampling of brief synopses.
Martial Arts Movies In America, we've got action movies, sports movies, crime movies, gang movies, fight movies, war movies, historical epics, comedies, etc, etc. In Asia, a martial arts film can be
all of these. The martial arts style gives storytellers a broadly popular genre to work within, and a great deal of freedom to create within that genre. Thus, the martial arts film has become ubiquitous in eastern Asia.
This has granted butt-kicking role models to generations of young men out here. However, unless they are trained competitors, none of these guys can fight worth a damn. That's because the stuff they watch in the movies is completely make-believe... and they never get any practice!
The Music Industry I kind of just figured out how the
mainstream music industry works these days.
Essentially, they figured out that if you play the same song often enough--and in enough places--people will grow to tolerate it and eventually enjoy it, no matter how terrible it really is. People form emotional bonds to songs on a totally subconcious level, so repetition can render a real stinker into a hit.
This requires none of the science of synching up heartbeats (as in the Abba legend), none of the musicianship of creating moving melodies, none of the cleverness of writing a catchy chorus, and none of the random chance of striking a cultural chord with today's youth. No, all that this guaranteed hit-making strategy requires is a big bucket of money and a marketable star property.
Please direct further questions to Dr. Dre, today's true master of turning awful clowns into respected musical and cultural figures.
Eras of Nic If I ever write a biography, these will be some of the names of chapters:
"Infant Flower-Child"
"White Trash Wunderkid"
"Pre-Teen Rage-Nerd"
"High School Revolutionary"
"Conflicted Skinhead"
"Health-Obsessed Writer"
"College Entrepreneur"
"Haggard World Adventurer"
Those pretty well sum
up the major stages of my life so far...
A Conversation of Ideas I was thinking a little bit about the shape of human history.
Esssentially, what we see int he big picture is a long drawn-out conversation about ideas. In every interaction between them, cultures are constantly telling one another what to think (and how). Force and various other kinds of influence are typically used to do the convincing.
At every time in history, every culture in the world is engaged in this behavior to some degree: from world-spanning mega-cultures to national sub-cultures to local community cultures and group micro-cultures. Peaceful coexistence and mutual ideological agreement only really exists on a very small level with human beings. A group of 4 or 5 or 10 might be able to maintain cohesion with their worldview, but a group of 50 or 70 or a hundred might work even better.
Get any larger and you'll start to have clashes and interactions between cutlural groups, and two major things will happen:
1. People will attempt to spread their way of life (and worldview) through whatever means available.
2. People will embrace, learn, and adopt others'
ideas.
Both of these things are happening within any interacting cultures, they are happening on a large scale, within sub-groups, and these activities are occuring in different degress amongst individuals. They never happen in any balanced fashion. It is the chance of history that determines whether one culture will proselytize to or choose to embrace another.
When you peruse the history records, looking at the cultural mergings and battles and trade-relationships and conquests of all human history, you find it riddled with euphanisms for these two things: "converted on the sword", "adopted the ____ way of life", etc.
The entire record is like an epic historical opera of the spread of ideas: through force, through jealousy, greed, and pride, through all of the sins of mankind.
So that makes human history a history of sin and of ideological rape and violence. But history's only guilt-free occupants are the ones who embraced, the ones who rolled over, who adapted and changed with the times, who joined their enemies and made them friends, who married amongst the strangers, who recognized wisdom. The only nobility in our history are the people who you never hear about in it: the un-influential, the un-important, the unknown, the very failures of history as judged by history's standards.
The truly wise and victorious people of history are not the ones who sought wisdom or victory. They are the ones whose worldviews overwhelmingly sought love and peace and understanding of one another.
The most important voice in the conversation of ideas is the one who doesn't feel the need to speak.
The "Biggest Asshole You Know" Game It started out with me and a Frenchman engaging in what I term the, "Biggest Asshole You Know Game." This is how I refer to that most peculiar of social interactions wherein two people each subtextually attempt to prove that they are a bigger jerk than the other.
Later, when the French customer left the bar, I had to explain to John and Cat just what it was that had happened. We were watching the French Plantation scenes in Apocalypse Now Redux, and me and the frog had talked about history.
I began by building a long and elaborate oratory around the contention that the French were the worst people in history, and the world's worst offenders. This was detailed, logical, and convincing (relying on examples from the French aristocratic tradition, French methods of colonialism, and modern French politics), though--admittedly--total bullshit.
Then he countered with his own subtle, considered, evenly-delivered diatribe about how the Americans were history's most severe, and current-reigning, ultimate jerks.
And the thing is, we were both a little bit right. I guess that must be the true nature of the strong cultural rivalry and powerful long-time bond between the Americans and the French. In some way, we really are both the world's biggest assholes.
My Life's Purpose "Tonight I have discovered that the meaning of my life is..."
That's how my journal entry began. I'm not sure if it's true, but I guess I came up with some pretty good ideas of how to apply my talents and interests. Here's the rest:
"...to describe to other people the shapes and patterns and activities of human history, in simple but accurate terms, to systematically explain the meanings of life.
"This is the ultimate humanist voice, the culmination of the researched, felt, believed humanist perspective.
"Broad, but pointed, understandable, but academically credible. No shortcuts.
"This is about evidence, discoveries, conclusions."
"It can be semi-autobiographical, historical, artistic, one work--truly free of genre or media restriction.
"All message, all the time, all of my time, always unfinished, growing, developing, learning, evolving, and teaching.
"This combines everything I love about life and my every ambition:
-Thinking
-Learning
-Arguing
-Talking
-Creating
-Writing
-Crusading
-Studying
-Cooking (with ideas)
-Coaching
-Teaching
-Entertaining
-Convincing
-Organizing
-Exploring
-Adventuring
-Describing
-And even
Fighting: when it comes down to sticking to your ideas and to your words and to standing up for them, and to walking away when you have to.
"This combiines everything. And they aren't jsut hobbies or drives or quirks or interests or activities, not passtimes.
"Now all of these things of life are one contiguous, continuous, pursuit.
"The meaning of my life."
Fear People often tell me that I seem to have no fear. In different cases this has reffered to social fear, physical fear, or fear of disagreement, offense, or violence.
But I actually have a tremendous amount of fear, I'm just good at recognizing it, conquering it, overcoming it, and pushing past it.
And every time I get past a fear, I have pushed the boundaries of fear out even farther, hoping someday that there will be nothing in the world left for me to fear.
This is something like Maslow's heirarchy--the human being's constant battle to overcome all fear, by either conquering it or eliminating everything that causes the fear.
That's why suicide is a part of the human condition. It is a falilure in self-actualization, resulting in the elimination of the very self that one fears and cannot overcome. Or, in an ealrier life-stage, it is a reaction to external fear so extreme that is results in the elimination of one's entire external world (eliminating the viewing glass onto that world--the self--in the process).
In fact, this may be the basis for the pattern of all human social interaction, as well as cultural and historical action, civilizations and religions and ideas.
As ontogeny recapitulates philogeny, so does philogeny recapitulate ontogeny. (Though attempting to explain philogeny to someone
through ontogeny goes completely against the paradigm and could be considered very presumptuous, I think it is precisley what I'd like to attempt.)
Talking to Women I love talking to women.
I see women as sources of wisdom and holders of power and genuinely intelligent and interesting people--which is not a common male viewpoint. They are also so different from me that it is always exciting to learn more about them.
This is the ultimate hetero-eroticism: the life-long quest to explore and understand and to profess about women.
And I will write a book about the historical legacy of my fellow women-worshippers, while trying to contribute my own work to their cannon.
The Value of 50 Baht If you told me I could pay 50 baht for a hot shower and a little TV, what would I say?
At home, 50 baht is about $1.40. There are hot showers at home--everywhere--and TV is almost oppressive. I'd say no.
In Thailand, hot showers are rarer, as is TV in English. The place where I've been living has neither. But, 50 baht is roughly the price of two cheap meals, or 3 bus rides into town. I'd still say no.
Here, in Koh Kong, I've had only one hot shower in a month and I've just seen my first English-language cable in weeks--which is just about to be turned off. So I certainly said yes.
Slasher Movies The real point about most classic slasher movies is simply that parents have an unparralled ability to screw up their kids.
Texas Chainsaw massacre is about the scars of family legacies.
Friday the 13th is about the mother-son bond (as is Psycho).
Nightmare on Elm Street is about parental responsibility.
Most horror movies since have been about imitating these themes...
In many of these kinds of films, the killers kill because of the impact of their parenting, while their victims die due to the poor manners and lack of survival skills bred into them by
their parents.
All Founding Fathers are Not Created Equal Many of America's critical historical figures (and national heroes)--in the way they lived and the principles they stood for, believed, and acted on--were completely despicable characters.
I think it would be an interesting challenge as a writer to make a historical personage, who has been traditionally glorified, look completely awful. This would be much more challenging as a biographer than making them look good.
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Arty Nakis
non-member comment
Future era of Nic!
Hi Nic - your Mom and I are hoping that one of your future eras will be "Wealthy Writer/Producer Graciously Supporting His Loving but Aging Parents"!! I liked this one a lot - your rants are becoming more tempered and mature all the time (that is a compliment!) Take care - Dad