Friday Pragmatism | Natural Change

I still don’t want to write about Mirror’s Edge just yet as I’m still discovering new joys and frustrations with it. Also, specific talk of games are only of interest to gamers.

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For as long as I can remember, I would have said I was a Winter person, and while I did eventually stop hating Summer, there was a time when I was vehemently opposed to the season.
I always ate Dark Chocolate.
I always drank my coffee black, which I still do, but never would I have even sampled a frappe on a hot day.
Anything on the radio was immediately abhorred by virtue of being on the radio.
One of the few things in life that I maintained an open mind for was film; I love my David Lynch, my minimalist Japanese and surrealist European films, but I’ve always been able to watch something like Transformers or the recent 2012 without too many hassles. They are what they are and if I have a bit of a laugh (or laff, depending on your country of origin), I had no problem watching them. The only films I continue to take issue with are what I perceive to be the mediocre middle-ground pieces such as Danny Boyle’s Sunshine, exacerbated by the instances of people – including some I know who should know better – comparing it with Soderbergh’s Solaris, a favourite of mine. Even then, as worked-up as I like to get simply as an exercise in expending energy, even Sunshine didn’t feel like a waste of time. Like most films, it did have at least a sprinkling of great moments be they visual or conceptual, and that’s never a waste.

Of a sudden, or perhaps so gradually that I have not noticed it as obviously as I might have, I’ve changed.
While I still have my ‘coffee’ strictly black, I do enjoy frappes now in the warmer weather. I treat coffee beverages as unique ceremonies and there are certainly times when the granita-style milky taste is great to indulge in, even when it’s saturated with chocolate syrup. It’s like a Slurpee with slightly less sugar, and not tasting of artificial colouring (which, mind-you, is a favourite designer-drug of mine).

I’ve taken to eating such pedestrian chocolates as Kit-Kats and even Twirls which are essentially just made of basic production chocolate. It still surprises me sometimes just how much the sugar can be tasted – it’s almost raw, but there are times where I do simply like the taste of it, perverted as it is by all the additives.

Tolerance for radio-fodder pop music I can easily pathfind; it’s come about as a result of not listening to the radio for ten odd years. I simply don’t. Not ever. Of my own volition of-course. So when I go shopping or hear the radio somewhere, most of it is more-or-less new to me. I don’t mind that it’s as much a product as refined sugar and artificial colouring; that’s what it’s for. Some of it has some remarkable production in it and in a way I’m glad that engineers are still taking care with what they work on, regardless of its cultural context.
The only time I take issue with pop-music is when one of my colleagues has the radio on all day at her desk, and the commercial stations play pretty much the same roster of fifteen to twenty songs and repeat ad nauseum. I think even if I heard my own selection of twenty songs five times a day I’d go batty. I don’t mind so much that the lyrics are vapid and often the music and engineering amateur and juvenile, but hearing them over and over again is grating.

Summer happened last-summer, the one notorious for what is now called Black Saturday, a day of 45°C heat that exacerbated bushfires across the country, particular here in Victoria. I distinctly remember getting out of my air-conditioned car on that day and walking down the street to have my hair cut and simply accepting the heat. I had no trouble sleeping during that summer and am not having any trouble now. The heat just doesn’t bother me. I still sweat as much as I did but I just accept it as part of nature, and perhaps that’s the crux of it. I’ve just begun embracing natural things, perhaps going a long way in explaining the increasing nature of my naturalist approach to many things in life.

It’s appropriate that at some point in our lives we fight against everything. We undergo such turbulent changes through puberty and youth, resisting definition from any perspective and trying to shoulder-out our own space in society and life, the desire to feel that sense of rightness as a human being that we continue to aspire to personally and in our intimacies with others. It’s healthy at some point to feel that everything in the world is wrong in order to point out a few things that eventually become obvious;

– It will never change.
– It isn’t actually as bad as you think it is.
– It’s important to develop the ability to separate what is actually bad from what is actually good.
– To understand on what things you can effect change personally.
– To understand that regardless of what you can and can’t change in the world, you will always be able to change yourself.

As I’m fond of saying, that sounds like Zen bullshit, and to a certain degree it is (the term ‘Zen bullshit’ referring to the pop-culture misinterpretations and perversions of classic spiritual principals), but even in pop-psychology there can be an element of truth, even if the intention through pop is horribly distorted and the meaning misapplied. It’s not easy, and it shouldn’t sound easy. Changing one’s self is bloody hard, and often brings about much awkwardness and humility.

Perhaps though, even when our approach to self-assessment is pragmatic, we’re still in combat; we’re just going into battle with ourselves. We have a habit of having very high aspirations, particularly for emotional change or change that we hope will bring about emotional reward. This means that our approach to the changing of the self can be quite aggressive which while perhaps may be commendable, may not be the best course of action. I’m sure there are many issues on which an aggressive approach is useful, but overall I believe that naturalism can be a valuable governing factor when directing the entire (and on-going) process. There are some things that can come about naturally – that’s a fairly large topic which I won’t go into great detail, it’s fairly personal to me, but some of the things I’m fond of saying come from this approach, such as the concept of thinking slowly.

It sounds very new-age which is a great synonym for absolute bullshit. It’s not meant to, just the nature of the language makes it appear so, and also the lack of detail in which I’m willing to write in today. At first glance it seems like a very passive thing, this naturalism, and that it’s some vague idea of letting floaty spirits dictate the course of life and to just go with the flow. This couldn’t be farther from the core of what I’m saying, but without a great deal more exposition it’s hard to capture the essence of it.

Ultimately, for myself in my notes, I am recording my observances of my behaviour in the last two years and how my personal culture has evolved. The way I interact with my friends, with whom I am willing to interact, the things I will and won’t do with and for people, the living habits I engage and the way I perceive my experiences have all changed dramatically, but the change has been gradual. I’m quietly delighted with these changes, and perhaps it’s a little of what we like to call maturing. I certainly hope that it never stops, as I was speaking with my sister on the weekend, we’d hate to become close-minded in our older age. I’m encouraged by the fact that such a natural process can be ongoing and never cease, my hope is that I remain agile and willing enough to engage it.

Another thing I’m fond of saying is that regardless of how much better you get at things, specifically things like self-assessment, apologising, humility and conflict-resolution as specific examples, the awkwardness, pain, embarrassment and disappointment aren’t eliminated or even diminished in any way. What does change is our ability to understand those things, or accept what we don’t or can’t understand about them and navigate them in due course. Nothing eliminates pain, it is an inevitability of life, and more-so, it has a very important and valid role in the human experience. All of this Zen bullshit, this naturalism, this embrasure of imperfection and ability to accept awkwardness, perhaps goes a little way of remembering that even when we are failing at something, that the very nature of the failure is something to be proud of, a part of being human, and a part of dynamically evolving, learning and broadening our emotional vocabulary, amplifying and increasing in number the experiences we’re capable of having in our lives.