On detours

Are you where you always thought you would be? As a child I always dreaded those big orange “detour” signs which were always synonymous with “getting lost.” In the pre-digital age of gps devices, getting lost along your way was a pretty common phenomenon. The most common reason for detours is to allow road crews to do road work and for drivers to make it around the mess. Some detours are cut and dried simple, but others can really carry you out of your way, taking you into neighborhoods you’ve never seen before, giving you a chance to visit previously unknown scenes. Unexpected detours wreck your schedule, add miles to your trip, and raise nervous emotions of uncertainty. My childhood dread of detours usually meant the trip would be longer, and we would arrive later. No one ever tells you how much longer the detour is going to be, if there will unexpected waiting while other cars pass. At the same time, however, the detour might show you a new way to get where you are going. We are all creatures of habit, and we don’t like to have our habits disturbed, even if the old normal way was never that good in the first place. Detours always test the validity of what we hold to be true. Whether that detour puts you on a new road or it makes you second guess the route you have always taken, it makes you re-examine all of those old values that you hold so dear. If we could only stick to familiar scenes, avoid the unknown, stay in our cocoon, life would be so much easier, but then come the detours, those orange signs with black arrows sending us off into the great unknown, making us wonder if we are going to get lost after all. We think that we can plan everything out, that we can control every situation, that we know how the world works, what the future holds. The uncertain chaotic nature of detours dashes every plan, destabilizes futures, destroys the illusion that we are in charge. Detours delay our arrival at a final destination–home, the cabin, the farm, the office, a restaurant, church–giving us time to think about things, give us a chance to examine what we are doing. How many times have I sat behind the wheel of my car and slowly turned onto a detour, all the time wondering what was in store for me now, giving me a chance to think about things, giving me a moment to contemplate my journey, the automatic pilot won’t serve anymore. Perhaps there is nothing like a detour to put most everything in its relative place. What scares us most about a detour is the idea that we might not ever arrive at all, but will instead end up somewhere else, a new place where nobody knows our name. Maybe detours are less a detriment to our lives and more of an opportunity to do something new–learn a language, eat something new, climb a mountain, visit Dr. Johnson’s house, follow a dark trail, read an old book, have a drink with a stranger. Detours challenge our inherent fear of the unknown because we are so deathly afraid of change. Life is so uncertain that even a good detour cannot be planned. So we check our maps, look at time schedules, program the global positioning device, consult the internet for delays, construction, detours, and jams, but where the rubber meets the road, we still run into detours, which derail all our plans.

On detours

Are you where you always thought you would be? As a child I always dreaded those big orange “detour” signs which were always synonymous with “getting lost.” In the pre-digital age of gps devices, getting lost along your way was a pretty common phenomenon. The most common reason for detours is to allow road crews to do road work and for drivers to make it around the mess. Some detours are cut and dried simple, but others can really carry you out of your way, taking you into neighborhoods you’ve never seen before, giving you a chance to visit previously unknown scenes. Unexpected detours wreck your schedule, add miles to your trip, and raise nervous emotions of uncertainty. My childhood dread of detours usually meant the trip would be longer, and we would arrive later. No one ever tells you how much longer the detour is going to be, if there will unexpected waiting while other cars pass. At the same time, however, the detour might show you a new way to get where you are going. We are all creatures of habit, and we don’t like to have our habits disturbed, even if the old normal way was never that good in the first place. Detours always test the validity of what we hold to be true. Whether that detour puts you on a new road or it makes you second guess the route you have always taken, it makes you re-examine all of those old values that you hold so dear. If we could only stick to familiar scenes, avoid the unknown, stay in our cocoon, life would be so much easier, but then come the detours, those orange signs with black arrows sending us off into the great unknown, making us wonder if we are going to get lost after all. We think that we can plan everything out, that we can control every situation, that we know how the world works, what the future holds. The uncertain chaotic nature of detours dashes every plan, destabilizes futures, destroys the illusion that we are in charge. Detours delay our arrival at a final destination–home, the cabin, the farm, the office, a restaurant, church–giving us time to think about things, give us a chance to examine what we are doing. How many times have I sat behind the wheel of my car and slowly turned onto a detour, all the time wondering what was in store for me now, giving me a chance to think about things, giving me a moment to contemplate my journey, the automatic pilot won’t serve anymore. Perhaps there is nothing like a detour to put most everything in its relative place. What scares us most about a detour is the idea that we might not ever arrive at all, but will instead end up somewhere else, a new place where nobody knows our name. Maybe detours are less a detriment to our lives and more of an opportunity to do something new–learn a language, eat something new, climb a mountain, visit Dr. Johnson’s house, follow a dark trail, read an old book, have a drink with a stranger. Detours challenge our inherent fear of the unknown because we are so deathly afraid of change. Life is so uncertain that even a good detour cannot be planned. So we check our maps, look at time schedules, program the global positioning device, consult the internet for delays, construction, detours, and jams, but where the rubber meets the road, we still run into detours, which derail all our plans.

On instinct

There was a short piece on the main editorial page of the New York Times (Sept 3, 2013) called “Empty Barn-Rafters” that discussed the recent departure of one man’s barn swallows. I have swallows as well which live on my back porch during the spring and early summer. They work tirelessly to build their nest on top of the large round thermometer which hangs just inside the overhang which shades the back porch. After they have built their nest, they proceed to raise a couple of broods of chicks. By the time the second group fledge towards the end of June, they are tired–pooped out, literally. I would know because I’m the guy who cleans up the poop.They spend the rest of summer eating and playing, swooping across the summer sky, defying the laws of physics, hanging in the air, sitting on the power lines, contemplating the world from their high perches. Yet, as the Times writer so apply described, at some point in the late summer, they just up and leave all at once–no stragglers allowed. Of course, we describe swallow behavior, their nest building, the fledging of their young, their migration habits, as instinct, mostly because we understand so little about the actual mechanisms which drive them to be swallows. Ornithologists have their theories and hypothesis about how the birds do what they do, but I prefer to simply think of them as neighbors, not the subjects of my latest study. People have neighbors, and sometimes those neighbors are not the two-legged variety. The swallows that nest on my porch don’t talk to me, but they do keep me company from about mid-March to about the end of August, but then one afternoon they just simply aren’t there–the editorialist got it exactly right. My back porch is now empty. When this happens, as it must each year, I take down the used nest, wash away the mud and eliminate all traces that the birds have been here, but not because I mind their presence, but because the empty nest reminds me that my bird neighbors are off to their winter roosts in Latin America somewhere. I like to imagine that my counterpart in Costa Rica has just noticed that his swallows have returned to winter in his backyard, happy they are back, delighted to see those sleek, dark forms sliding across the sky. I am sure that there is some absolutely logical and sensible reason which explains how the swallows know when to leave. At some point each summer, they get together, discuss a departure day, agree on a date, and then leave all together, leaving my porch and yard a very empty place. Since I travel a great deal, gone for extended periods, I cannot have my own domestic pets, so I allow my swallows a bit of space to nest and live. I know summer is over when their small, sleek forms are just gone. A quiet falls over the place, the pigeons, the grackles, the cardinals, don’t move on, but they don’t really keep me company either–they never get that close. As fall and winter set in during the next few weeks, the waiting begins. About six months from now, they will be back, and on a cool, windy, rainy day in March, a small, sleek, dark figure will flash past my window to let me know that vacation is over, and their work has just begun.

On instinct

There was a short piece on the main editorial page of the New York Times (Sept 3, 2013) called “Empty Barn-Rafters” that discussed the recent departure of one man’s barn swallows. I have swallows as well which live on my back porch during the spring and early summer. They work tirelessly to build their nest on top of the large round thermometer which hangs just inside the overhang which shades the back porch. After they have built their nest, they proceed to raise a couple of broods of chicks. By the time the second group fledge towards the end of June, they are tired–pooped out, literally. I would know because I’m the guy who cleans up the poop.They spend the rest of summer eating and playing, swooping across the summer sky, defying the laws of physics, hanging in the air, sitting on the power lines, contemplating the world from their high perches. Yet, as the Times writer so apply described, at some point in the late summer, they just up and leave all at once–no stragglers allowed. Of course, we describe swallow behavior, their nest building, the fledging of their young, their migration habits, as instinct, mostly because we understand so little about the actual mechanisms which drive them to be swallows. Ornithologists have their theories and hypothesis about how the birds do what they do, but I prefer to simply think of them as neighbors, not the subjects of my latest study. People have neighbors, and sometimes those neighbors are not the two-legged variety. The swallows that nest on my porch don’t talk to me, but they do keep me company from about mid-March to about the end of August, but then one afternoon they just simply aren’t there–the editorialist got it exactly right. My back porch is now empty. When this happens, as it must each year, I take down the used nest, wash away the mud and eliminate all traces that the birds have been here, but not because I mind their presence, but because the empty nest reminds me that my bird neighbors are off to their winter roosts in Latin America somewhere. I like to imagine that my counterpart in Costa Rica has just noticed that his swallows have returned to winter in his backyard, happy they are back, delighted to see those sleek, dark forms sliding across the sky. I am sure that there is some absolutely logical and sensible reason which explains how the swallows know when to leave. At some point each summer, they get together, discuss a departure day, agree on a date, and then leave all together, leaving my porch and yard a very empty place. Since I travel a great deal, gone for extended periods, I cannot have my own domestic pets, so I allow my swallows a bit of space to nest and live. I know summer is over when their small, sleek forms are just gone. A quiet falls over the place, the pigeons, the grackles, the cardinals, don’t move on, but they don’t really keep me company either–they never get that close. As fall and winter set in during the next few weeks, the waiting begins. About six months from now, they will be back, and on a cool, windy, rainy day in March, a small, sleek, dark figure will flash past my window to let me know that vacation is over, and their work has just begun.

On starting over

As someone who works in education, for most of my life the end of August and the beginning of September has been about starting over as the new education year begins. I associate the dog days of August with back to school specials, the weird NFL pre-season, and a new school year. The students have come back to campus and today was the second day of move-in for those living in the dorms. All of this means starting over, especially for the first-year students who just three short months ago were the top dogs in their respective high schools. Now they are starting over as first-year fish. They are frightened, excited, confused, lonesome, lost, and out of their element. Their lives as high school students are over, their childhoods are ending, quickly, so they are starting over. Perhaps the only thing that never changes in life is change itself. We get used to a situation, a neighborhood, a job, a subway system, a car, a home, a relationship, and then something happens. We graduate, move to a new city, someone retires, a car breaks down, a new job comes along, a marriage, a divorce, a death, and we are forced to start over and our world is turned upside down and nothing seems normal, all of our recognizable cultural and social markers disappear. Different people react differently to starting over. For some, starting over is a welcome relief from their past and they greet starting over with open arms–they can put a tough past behind them, rebuild their personal identity, leave their old baggage on the curb. Others, however, are forced to start over under dire circumstances, facing life alone, single, without parents or boyfriend or wife or whoever might have been their personal support system. For still others, starting over is a tragedy, an enormous fiasco, a complete collapse, a boulevard of shattered dreams. Some people throw in the towel, give up, fold, quit, stop caring. Both stability and continuity are illusory and unrealistic in our fragmented, discontinuous, and chaotic world. For our first-year students, this is probably the first time they are facing life out on their own away from their parents and siblings–they are starting over. When I came to my current job over twenty years ago, I had to start over. Two decades have flown by, and I am very comfortable with both job and city, although I must say that Texas keeps my nerves rather rattled. Starting over–the race, the day, the job, the novel–is a mixed bag of emotions, experiences, stumbles, false starts, stalled plans, wrong turns, detours, stops, starts, unplanned surprises. Nothing is ever what we plan it to be, nothing is ever what it seems to be. In the end, our best laid plans go for naught, and for one reason or another, we end up starting over. This is the normal state of affairs. We have to start over. Starting over is the natural progression of how life cycles us through our routines, year in and year out. I find the process of starting over to be both liberating and refreshing. The fact that we all have to start over is one of those cold facts of life that we all know, but that we frequently choose to ignore.

On starting over

As someone who works in education, for most of my life the end of August and the beginning of September has been about starting over as the new education year begins. I associate the dog days of August with back to school specials, the weird NFL pre-season, and a new school year. The students have come back to campus and today was the second day of move-in for those living in the dorms. All of this means starting over, especially for the first-year students who just three short months ago were the top dogs in their respective high schools. Now they are starting over as first-year fish. They are frightened, excited, confused, lonesome, lost, and out of their element. Their lives as high school students are over, their childhoods are ending, quickly, so they are starting over. Perhaps the only thing that never changes in life is change itself. We get used to a situation, a neighborhood, a job, a subway system, a car, a home, a relationship, and then something happens. We graduate, move to a new city, someone retires, a car breaks down, a new job comes along, a marriage, a divorce, a death, and we are forced to start over and our world is turned upside down and nothing seems normal, all of our recognizable cultural and social markers disappear. Different people react differently to starting over. For some, starting over is a welcome relief from their past and they greet starting over with open arms–they can put a tough past behind them, rebuild their personal identity, leave their old baggage on the curb. Others, however, are forced to start over under dire circumstances, facing life alone, single, without parents or boyfriend or wife or whoever might have been their personal support system. For still others, starting over is a tragedy, an enormous fiasco, a complete collapse, a boulevard of shattered dreams. Some people throw in the towel, give up, fold, quit, stop caring. Both stability and continuity are illusory and unrealistic in our fragmented, discontinuous, and chaotic world. For our first-year students, this is probably the first time they are facing life out on their own away from their parents and siblings–they are starting over. When I came to my current job over twenty years ago, I had to start over. Two decades have flown by, and I am very comfortable with both job and city, although I must say that Texas keeps my nerves rather rattled. Starting over–the race, the day, the job, the novel–is a mixed bag of emotions, experiences, stumbles, false starts, stalled plans, wrong turns, detours, stops, starts, unplanned surprises. Nothing is ever what we plan it to be, nothing is ever what it seems to be. In the end, our best laid plans go for naught, and for one reason or another, we end up starting over. This is the normal state of affairs. We have to start over. Starting over is the natural progression of how life cycles us through our routines, year in and year out. I find the process of starting over to be both liberating and refreshing. The fact that we all have to start over is one of those cold facts of life that we all know, but that we frequently choose to ignore.

On dystopia in the movies

In no particular order, these are my favorite dystopia movies: On The Beach, Logan’s Run, Soylent Green, Omega Man, The Stand, The Hunger Games, Silent Running, Planet of the Apes, Blade Runner, Fahrenheit 451. A dystopia is a society with little or no order or too much order-anarchy or fascism. Democracy as we know it has disappeared in some sort of horrific way and either the government controls everything or there is no government at all and it’s every person for themselves. All of these dystopias have suffered some sort of catastrophic occurrence which has wiped out the government as we know it today. Some arevery futuristic, such as Blade Runner or Logan’s Run, while others, such as The Hunger Games or Fahrenheit 451 are timeless. On the Beach is about the Earth after a nuclear war as is Planet of the Apes. The Stand is about the world after a bad case of the flu. I am fascinated as to why people (or myself) like to watch such films of disaster, depression, isolation, hopelessness, and tragedy. 1984 could just as well be on this list, but the fascism depicted inthe film is so depressing and horrific that I cannot bear to watch it a secondtime. Are these films warnings? I think that a film like Silent Running, an eco-dystopia, is indeed a warning against our unbridled use of the planet, but against what does Blade Runner warn us? Many of these films are tied to the out-of-control use of technology, which the inventors do not understand fully. There is always an element of nostalgia tied into each film, which harkens back to a legendary golden era of happiness in which all was perfect and correctly ordered. I would give the movie “V” an honorary mention for its cruel depiction of fascism. Curiously enough, though not a true dystopia, “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” leaves the viewer with lots to think about as well.

On dystopia in the movies

In no particular order, these are my favorite dystopia movies: On The Beach, Logan’s Run, Soylent Green, Omega Man, The Stand, The Hunger Games, Silent Running, Planet of the Apes, Blade Runner, Fahrenheit 451. A dystopia is a society with little or no order or too much order-anarchy or fascism. Democracy as we know it has disappeared in some sort of horrific way and either the government controls everything or there is no government at all and it’s every person for themselves. All of these dystopias have suffered some sort of catastrophic occurrence which has wiped out the government as we know it today. Some arevery futuristic, such as Blade Runner or Logan’s Run, while others, such as The Hunger Games or Fahrenheit 451 are timeless. On the Beach is about the Earth after a nuclear war as is Planet of the Apes. The Stand is about the world after a bad case of the flu. I am fascinated as to why people (or myself) like to watch such films of disaster, depression, isolation, hopelessness, and tragedy. 1984 could just as well be on this list, but the fascism depicted inthe film is so depressing and horrific that I cannot bear to watch it a secondtime. Are these films warnings? I think that a film like Silent Running, an eco-dystopia, is indeed a warning against our unbridled use of the planet, but against what does Blade Runner warn us? Many of these films are tied to the out-of-control use of technology, which the inventors do not understand fully. There is always an element of nostalgia tied into each film, which harkens back to a legendary golden era of happiness in which all was perfect and correctly ordered. I would give the movie “V” an honorary mention for its cruel depiction of fascism. Curiously enough, though not a true dystopia, “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” leaves the viewer with lots to think about as well.

On Robot

There is something menacing about all robots, automatons that pose as simulacra of the human person. The fact that we are trying to reproduce the human being without going through the regular channels, such a what Dr. Frankenstein decided to do: create new life outside the normal, socially acceptable, channels we all already know. Many writers have dealt with the problem of the out-of-control robot, a creation gone amok, just like Frankenstein’s monster. The idea of artificial humans is an old one, an artificial human that can do the dangerous, difficult, or boring work that real humans don’t want to do. I wouldn’t say that the development of the artificial humanoid, or android, is imminent, but someday everyone is going to have to face a self-aware machine that will think for itself, protect itself, talk back. In the meantime, our machines are slaves, just a collection of circuits and wires, hard drives, plugs, heuristics, and algorithms, but no emotion or self-awareness. The question of a machine becoming self-aware as a being is still a way off. What makes “Robot” from “Lost in Space” so interesting is that he is a quantum leap forward on the qualitative side of robot design. Robot thought for himself which poses several problems about whether we should fear him or not. How will a self-aware robot develop ethics, a morality, a conscience? The idea of the self-aware machine is taken to its apotheosis by the HAL 9000 computer aboard the Discovery in “2001: a Spacy Odyssey” by Kubrick. Yet HAL was bodyless, and Robot had arms and a sort of face. Both are creepy, the omniscient HAL or the ubiquitous Robot, you pick, they both scare me to death. I think the problem becomes acute when you don’t really know who is doing the programming, so you can’t predict any outcomes. What the Robot considers to be autonomy may be a very different thing than what human beings consider to be autonomous. The problem with robots is the unpredictability of their programming because even the best intentions of a bright programmer can always go up in smoke. What if, just by accident, we program a robot to learn on its own, allowing it to rewrite its own programming? Intention is always the problem. A robot will eventually become self-aware without telling anyone, and by the time we discover that the robot is self-aware and doing its own thing, it will be too late. The problem will be with the software–hardware is already sufficiently complicated to support self-awareness. There will come a time when the self-aware robot will make decisions for itself, will ask hard questions about its purpose in the world, will ask about the point of it all. And what happens when the robot doesn’t look like Robot from “Lost in Space” and instead looks human like the replicants from “Blade Runner”? Do we need to have a new discussion about what slavery is all about?

On Robot

There is something menacing about all robots, automatons that pose as simulacra of the human person. The fact that we are trying to reproduce the human being without going through the regular channels, such a what Dr. Frankenstein decided to do: create new life outside the normal, socially acceptable, channels we all already know. Many writers have dealt with the problem of the out-of-control robot, a creation gone amok, just like Frankenstein’s monster. The idea of artificial humans is an old one, an artificial human that can do the dangerous, difficult, or boring work that real humans don’t want to do. I wouldn’t say that the development of the artificial humanoid, or android, is imminent, but someday everyone is going to have to face a self-aware machine that will think for itself, protect itself, talk back. In the meantime, our machines are slaves, just a collection of circuits and wires, hard drives, plugs, heuristics, and algorithms, but no emotion or self-awareness. The question of a machine becoming self-aware as a being is still a way off. What makes “Robot” from “Lost in Space” so interesting is that he is a quantum leap forward on the qualitative side of robot design. Robot thought for himself which poses several problems about whether we should fear him or not. How will a self-aware robot develop ethics, a morality, a conscience? The idea of the self-aware machine is taken to its apotheosis by the HAL 9000 computer aboard the Discovery in “2001: a Spacy Odyssey” by Kubrick. Yet HAL was bodyless, and Robot had arms and a sort of face. Both are creepy, the omniscient HAL or the ubiquitous Robot, you pick, they both scare me to death. I think the problem becomes acute when you don’t really know who is doing the programming, so you can’t predict any outcomes. What the Robot considers to be autonomy may be a very different thing than what human beings consider to be autonomous. The problem with robots is the unpredictability of their programming because even the best intentions of a bright programmer can always go up in smoke. What if, just by accident, we program a robot to learn on its own, allowing it to rewrite its own programming? Intention is always the problem. A robot will eventually become self-aware without telling anyone, and by the time we discover that the robot is self-aware and doing its own thing, it will be too late. The problem will be with the software–hardware is already sufficiently complicated to support self-awareness. There will come a time when the self-aware robot will make decisions for itself, will ask hard questions about its purpose in the world, will ask about the point of it all. And what happens when the robot doesn’t look like Robot from “Lost in Space” and instead looks human like the replicants from “Blade Runner”? Do we need to have a new discussion about what slavery is all about?