A Razor Runs Through It

When you’re unhappy, you can usually catch yourself thinking about how much better life could be. When you’re happy, I mean really joyful, you usually think life couldn’t be any better. So if you want to be happier, the obvious solution is to want less and appreciate more. Which is a start, but is too simplistic an end considering that if you increasingly want less and appreciate more, eventually you’ll become blissfully inert. At which point you can await your death, or you’ve reached enlightenment.

The real question is, how do you reconcile your happiness with what you have and your unhappiness with what you don’t have? Too much of either is hazardous to your emotional health, and neither one is better than the other. How do you welcome unhappiness into your life while staying fundamentally happy?

By recognizing that even though you’re happy with what you have, you’re not going to be happy if things stay as they are forever. If the unhappiness in your life is a catalyst for change, it is what balances you, keeps you growing, keeps you searching, keeps you discovering, and in the end, keeps you happy. Growing in sync with the changes in your life will make you happy with where you are. If unhappiness doesn’t fuel change, you’re miserably inert, and once again awaiting your death.

Like a river, life seems to flow at different speeds depending on how far along you are. As a young person it seems the best you can do is follow your heart, try to sync your life with your growth, and balance what you want with what you have. At least until life slows down. At which point hopefully you’re happy enough with where you’ve ended up to just walk.

Exit Through The Gift Shop

 

A timely Banksy reinterpretation by Jerm and Vegas.

Banksy is the most famous street artist in the world. I think very highly of him, but to be honest, I’ve also been put off at times by the hype orbiting his obviously excellent work. I walked into his first movie Exit Through The Gift Shop not knowing what to expect, and walked out with one thing clear – The man is a fucking genius.

Exit Through The Gift Shop is ostensibly a documentary about Thierry Guetta, a Frenchman obsessed with filming everything. Guetta and his camera stumble into the early days of the street art scene via his infamous cousin Space Invader. After meeting and obsessively filming all the top players in international street art, he eventually becomes an artist himself, known as Mr. Brainwash. With remarkable skill Banksy utilizes Guetta’s entertaining footage to craft a movie that is also a statement about the street art movement as a whole.

Banksy’s movie has two important themes that are illustrated through Guetta’s story. The first is that the fine art world’s embrace of street art is ultimately founded on a shitload of hype. In the movie, the gallery world falls over itself to embrace Mr. Brainwash’s bad art, and couldn’t be a better example of this. The second is that like its older cousin graffiti, street art completely consumes its artists. As the movie progresses, Guetta/Mr. Brainwash’s obsession with his art causes him to mortgage his business, neglect his family and put every last penny he has on the line.

In Exit Banksy flips the bird not only to the fine art world, but also to the haters he accumulated after his leap into it, by portraying that world as bullshit. At the same time he pays tribute to all the real street artists within the movement. All the artists just like him who have dedicated their lives to their craft, indifferent to punishment and financial reward. The artists who will continue to get arrested, neglect their responsibilities, and often sacrifice everything to pursue what they live for.

As always, Banksy has the last laugh. Exit has left audiences wondering if Thierry Guetta/Mr. Brainwash is a hoax. What if the whole thing was elaborately staged? It’s entirely possible, and if anyone is capable of it, it’s Banksy. If it is in fact a charade, it would cement this film as his masterpiece. After one viewing I can’t be sure if the movie is real or not, and I hope we never find out. The mystery is more magical than knowing the truth, and whether or not Exit is a hoax, its message is exactly the same.

Exponential Times

Considering how the generation of people that read this blog get their information, and the fact that this video has over 1.2 million views, I’m going to assume some of you have already seen this, but I want to touch on one of its many points.

“We are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t exist yet, using technologies that haven’t been invented, in order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet.”

The people teaching today’s students cannot possibly prepare them for these exponential times because they are not naturals at adapting to the evolution of technology. The kids they’re teaching are. When it comes to technology these kids don’t need teaching because they are able to grasp most of it on their own. This is the case to a lesser extent with my over-estimated generation, but is definitely the case starting with the generation below mine.

Until, at the absolute earliest, my digital-from-a-formative-age generation is teaching these digital-native kids, students will outpace their teachers when it comes to technology. It is a distinct possibility that the teachers will never catch up again, because the sheer amount and pace of information is simply unteachable.

Yes we are preparing students for jobs that don’t exist yet, where they will use technologies that don’t exist yet, to solve problems we don’t even know are problems. But that’s assuming these children need to be taught everything. Now. Considering the information we are giving them, and the example we are setting, my questions is this:

What will our children teach themselves?

The Perfect Pump

Sometimes you have a perfect pump kind of day. Some days you just have to appreciate the perfect pump.

Slouching Towards Bethlehem

This was a post about the suicide of humanity but I erased it. I’m tired.