Commentary

Too many gender issues going on the last few weeks, but I think that's out of my system for right now. It's been different, lately there's been less going on here. Less and less, everything around here has been slowing down and I am eagerly awaiting the end of summer so that I have company. The other night I hung out with some people that I knew from last semester.

So I'm refreshed and I can get back to what I normally do, right about now I have another issue that I want to discuss. It's been an eventuful last few days, a lot is going on and I have a lot to work through. It would appear that after the events of last semester I'm a little bit more off balance that I first thought.

But I'm not hear to talk about that right now, I'll have to do that later. Right now I think its safe to say that everyone on the internet for any amount of time that's not got a real life and has used the word 1337 has heard of Maddox, the man who owns what some call The Best Page in The Universe.

Over the last few years he has gained a fanbase that is probably somewhere in the millions and with good reason, I mean the stuff he writes is gold. I'm not going to try and diss Maddox, after http://maddox.xmission.com/ is right there in my bookmark folder like I'm sure it is in most of yours.

What I have come to talk about is the internet as a source of media in general, Maddox and many others have become commentators, both anonoyms and well known. When you have seven or eight news stations, an thousands of newspapers doing this every day, but now with the internet around there are millions of comments made a second, as mentioned in Metal Gear Solid:

We've always kept records of our lives. Through words, pictures, symbols... from tablets to books...But not all the information was inherited by later generations. A small percentage of the whole was selected and processed, then passed on. Not unlike genes, really. But in the current, digitized world, trivial information is accumulating every second, preserved in all its triteness. Never fading, always accessible.Rumors about petty issues, misinterpretations, slander...All this junk data preserved in an unfiltered state, growing at an alarming rate.

Anything posted on the internet has the possible to be around as long as there is something to hold onto it in cyberspace, in essecence bulletin boards, fan sites...even this blog will one day be trivial information that will just be hung there in cyber space with no real right to be there except that it justifies an existence that once was.

The digital society furthers human flaws and selectively rewards the development of convenient half-truths. Just look at the strange juxtapositions of morality around you.Billions spent on new weapons in order to humanely murder other humans.Rights of criminals are given more respect than the privacy of their victims.Although there are people suffering in poverty, huge donations are made to protect endangered species. Everyone grows up being told the same thing.

Be nice to other people.





But beat out the competition!





You're special.





Believe in yourself and you will succeed.

But it's obvious from the start that only a few can succeed...You exercise your right to freedom and this is the result. All rhetoric to avoid conflict and protect each other from hurt. Theuntested truths spun by different interests continue to churn andaccumulate in the sandbox of political correctness and value systems.Everyone withdraws into their own small gated community, afraid of a larger forum. They stay inside their little ponds, leaking whatever truth suits them into the growing cesspool of society at large.The different cardinal truths neither clash nor mesh. No one is invalidated, but nobody is right.Not even natural selection can take place here. The world is being engulfed in truth. And this is the way the world ends. Not with a bang, but a whimper.

While I'm not as negative as the above passages, I can say that there is something to them that we should all pay close attention to. This world is changing and has become a lot softer than it used to be some years back. I'm not saying its all bad, a lot of things that are good have happened: rights for minorities, gays, women, and other things like that. But look at the degradation of family, the violence in schools and decline of support for the nation as a whole.

Things that go on around us should make us all aware that people will tell you the good things and hope that you figure out the bad in time. I don't know what you all think, but I think sometimes people unintentionally set us up for failure.

What do you think? There will be more discussion on this later.