Life Will Never Be The Same, But That's A Good Thing!

"My life has changed

Where do I start

Since Aladdin came in

And conquered my heart."

--the Chinese princess in Chichester Theological College's panto Aladdin, 1985

In 1985, I played the part of the Chinese princess, and the lines above were the beginning of my first speech. I delivered them in a Southern (U.S.) accent. Don't ask.

But I was thinking today that my life, particularly since last December, has been changed incredibly because of Google. And where do I start?

Of course, before last December, like so many people, I Googled daily. I can't even remember the last time I used a different search engine. Google was it for me pretty much from the time it launched.

I loved stuff like http://lmgtfy.com/ -- I really annoyed people with that, actually, but we won't go into that here.

I downloaded and used the Chrome browser pretty much from the first day it was available. I used Rockmelt for a while, too, as it incorporated lots of great Chrome features along with other sites.

I worked in Google Docs -- several clients were happy to work that way, and I found that it made things easier most of the time. I was still tied to hard drives and Windows, but I was committed to investigating what working in the cloud could mean for me.

Then, one day last December, I was tootling around on Facebook and saw a post from . . . well, I can't remember exactly what it was. But I took a survey and was promised some Chrome stickers. So what the hey, I thought, I can do this.

I was shocked, and I mean shocked, to find a Cr-48 on my doorstep a few days later. This was before people had started posting about this, so I had no idea what was going on. And the minute I started up the Cr-48, I was in love.

And then Google launched Google+. And I have finally found people on the Internet who are asking questions, involved in meaningful discussions, interesting to interact with, and I am loving it!

And now Google+ has enabled Circle sharing. The possibilities are infinite. I've already seen people from my Circles connect with each other, and they might not have found each other if I hadn't been able to share.

I can hardly wait to see what's next.

It's A Fine Line Between Killing Off And Dying

"I wish more people would consider culture like sports: that it is really there to keep you more physically fit than you actually need to be to drive to the supermarket, and to give you an image that there is another type of fitness possible." -- Peter Sellars, 17 March 2009, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

I am constantly hearing how classical music is dying; how it no longer has any relevance; how it is not important to continue to teach children to play instruments in elementary school because it will not play any part in their lives as adults.

It's easy for something to die when it has been systematically threatened, tortured, strangled, and killed off in every way possible. What is more surprising -- heart-warming, even -- is how classical music refuses to die. But that doesn't mean that it won't, eventually, and this should be of much more concern than it is.

Even the most intellectually challenged politician understands that it is much easier to teach something to the young than the old. But that doesn't mean that they recognize the impact of shutting down music education in elementary schools. Whoever decided that all that mattered in schools was the three "Rs" (a problem in itself, as it's really an R, a W, and an A!) sounded the death knell for the arts in general, and music education in particular. The Kennedy administration tried to incorporate physical education into the three "Rs" curriculum, but arts education was not invited to the party even then (I'm not sure who was meant to provide the entertainment . . .).

The ancient Greeks got it right: they had the arts as well as the Olympics because, as Peter Sellars put it in the lecture quoted at the beginning of this post, they "were raising the level every year for the whole society and creating a future." Even the ancient Romans seem to have understood that music was important; otherwise, how could Nero have fiddled while Rome burned?

Seriously, though, if we want to explain why our society is so sick, we need look no further than the cuts in arts education in the past few decades. What is so confusing to me is that we continue to fund the football team but we don't want to fund the marching band to play at the games. And we don't expect the quarterback to just walk on the field one day without daily training; why would we expect the clarinetist to play without daily training, either?

Thoughts On An Upcoming Anniversary

"In 1961 a copywriter named Shirley Polykoff was working for the Foote, Cone & Belding advertising agency on the Clairol hair-dye account when she came up with the line: 'If I’ve only one life, let me live it as a blonde!' In a single slogan she had summed up what might be described as the secular side of the Me Decade. 'If I’ve only one life, let me live it as a—!' (You have only to fill in the blank.)" --Tom Wolfe, "The 'Me' Decade and the Third Great Awakening," New York magazine, August 1976

When was it that people stopped caring about anyone other than themselves? Was it in the so-called Me Decade, the 1970s, as Tom Wolfe thought? Or was it something that slowly gained momentum throughout the postwar years, during the years of affluence and (relative) peace (the Vietnam War notwithstanding), and just reached a peak in the 1970s before the oil crisis and recession halted its progress?

There certainly was a resurgence of "me first" in the 1980s and 1990s. A lot of people got very rich by looking out for themselves first. "Wealth hoarders" grew in numbers; there were some of us who wondered why they needed so much money. Just how many houses, cars, wives, husbands, . . . did they need? But they were all looking out for number one, and who cared if other people were falling way behind?

And now we are all being told by the media to reflect on the 10 years since 9/11. All I can see is that what was a life-changing event for many people, one that should have ended "me first" once and for all, has been pushed to the margins, and we've become even more selfish and "me"-thinking than we were in the few days, maybe weeks, following 9/11.

We are a nasty, vitriolic, selfish nation -- and we're not the only one on the planet. Globalization, which was meant to bring people all over the world together in a spirit of cooperation, has just made everyone more inward-looking and concerned with themselves.

And the ones who are hurt most by this are the children, the youngest generation. We have systematically destroyed their education, most particularly their cultural and creative education, and given them nothing to look forward to or hope for. The oldest generation thinks, "Why should I support education? I did that for years when my kids were growing up, and I'm done with that." The middle generation thinks, "Why should I care about anyone but myself? I'm struggling to survive!"

If we did care about each other, maybe the struggle for survival would be lessened -- or at least we'd have some company in the struggle! And if the oldest helped to look out for the youngest, there would be all sorts of benefits for both.

Every day I come up against people who are blatantly looking out for themselves, and to them I say (viz. Howard Beale [Network]): "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" I will continue to fight to make people wake up and think about other people; I am putting you all on notice.

Takin' It To The Streets

You don't know me
but I'm your brother
I was raised here in
this living hell
You don't know my kind
in your world
Fairly soon the
time will tell

You, telling me the things
you're gonna do for me
I ain't blind and I don't
like what I think I see

(Takin' it to the streets)
Takin' it to the streets
(Takin' it to the streets)
Takin' it to the streets

-- Doobie Brothers, "Takin' It To The Streets"

So, finally, the underclass in Britain has had enough. The surprise is not that these riots have happened now; it's that it hasn't happened since the mid-1980s.

I lived on the outskirts of Brixton in 1981, and even in those pre-BlackBerry, pre-Twitter days, it was not difficult for a mob of angry people to get going and create havoc in no time at all. I can remember streets being closed off, helicopters flying overhead, and the smell of smoke in the air for weeks afterwards. I knew people in Lewisham, Peckham, and other places where the rioting in 1981 spread, and everyone was frightened then.

But what has been done since the 1980s to address even some of the problems that led to those riots? From where I'm sitting, it looks like absolutely nothing has been done. The distance between the rich and the poor has grown even wider, and it's no secret that there are entire council estates populated by people who have never had a job, never had a chance to get a proper education, and have in many respects become more and more invisible.

And here's a news flash: the same conditions exist in the United States. And what will happen when the underclass in the United States rises up?

This You Must Learn To Do

"This you must learn to do. To live without." -- spoken by Dr Anna Klaus, in The Jewel in the Crown by Paul Scott

Over the past weeks, pretty much all we've heard about is the debt ceiling and the problems that the United States would face if Standard & Poor's downgraded the U.S. rating. Well, that's happened now. Everyone has their own ideas about how this happened, how we got here, and who is to blame for it. But it has happened, and instead of pointing fingers we should now be addressing the real problem.

The real problem is that everyone wants everything and they want it now. No matter if we haven't got the money to pay for it; that's what borrowing is all about, isn't it? And if the bill comes due, we can just borrow from somewhere else to pay that off, yes?

The U.S. attitude has always been -- particularly since the 1980s -- a pretty careless one where money is concerned. The number of applications for credit that appear in snail mail and e-mail boxes is obscene. The exhortations to pay off this card with another one mount up constantly. And the notion of refinancing seems to have become another unalienable right.

And the U.S. government is not immune to this way of thinking. Officials at all levels respond to offers to extend credit in the same way as ordinary citizens.

So, now everyone is distressed because things are going to get tougher. And this is another failing of all political parties, and all politicians. None of them seem to get it: We are going to have to stop this never-ending cycle of borrowing and living off someone else's dime. Things are going to have to get tougher, and that should mean for everyone.

If the government -- all of the departments and officials -- really gets it and devises a way to live within its means, then just maybe there is a possibility that the citizens will learn to do this as well. But if they continue to allow the rich to escape the consequences of this downgrading, people lower down the financial food chain will never learn, either.

"Live within your means, never be in debt, and by husbanding your money you can always lay it out well. But when you get in debt you become a slave. Therefore I say to you never involve yourself in debt, and become no man's surety. If your friend is in distress, aid him if you have the means to spare. If he fails to be able to return it, it is only so much lost." -- Andrew Jackson (1767–1845), U.S. president.

Partial Power Corrupts Partially

“All power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.” -- Lord Acton

Schwarzenegger, Weiner, Wu; just a few of this year's poster boys for taking advantage of position to misbehave. When news breaks about a scandal involving a politician, the first thought most people have is, "What was he thinking?" (I am not being sexist here; yes, there are women who take advantage of position as well, but it seems that are not nearly as many, so I am going to stick with "he" in this thought-dump.)

The question we should ask, however, is "Was he thinking at all?" What is it with people? What part of "Think first, act later" don't they understand?

In 2011, it's all about instant gratification. "I want this and I want it now, never mind the consequences" is the mantra. I can't think of any major scandal that didn't have that at its root. Even the financial crisis is all about that.

The old adage "Give him an inch and he'll take a mile" is also apt. (Ah, those pre-metric days! Somehow, "Give him a millimeter and he'll take a meter" doesn't have the same je ne sais quoi.) We make allowances for misbehavior, and we don't think about the consequences we'll suffer. So much time and media space is taken up with all this nonsense; when are people going to get real, and serious, and deal with the big problems we have?

Standards: Where Would We Be Without Them?

"And really, I think what we're talking about is standards, basically; very, very specific, rigid, you could say, but in this world where would we be without them, I think. And notice where we are." -- Best in Show

I'm not sure that I can improve on this quote from one of my favorite films. Why doesn't anyone care about anything any more? People appear to be willing to settle for mediocre service, and customer service is no longer about customers or service. This is not my view alone; plenty of other people have commented on this, blogged on this, ranted about this.

And it's not just customer service. Schools all across the United States are lowering standards so that students appear to be doing better than they are. The recent scandal in Atlanta shows how this can be taken to extremes. WHAT were the teachers and administrators thinking? Did they really imagine that just because a student got a high grade on a test that it didn't matter that they didn't actually know the subject matter? The mind boggles.

I remember a saying (paraphrased) from my youth: Let's make this accessible to the lowest common denominator. The entire world seems to have taken this to heart. Don't make people work to understand things; dumb it down, and in the process get it wrong, but, hey, who cares? We'l just move on to something else.

But it all DOES matter. If everyone really began to care about standards, and really aimed for the stars rather than settling for "just getting through it," just think about how much better the world would be.