We Tend To Reflect Our Surroundings

Majestic Nature Matters

Here's a photo that shows how a society with a greater focus on the natural world approaches art.  It shows my mother's father's hand-painted birth announcement from Osaka, Japan in the late 1880s.  It projects a natural balance.

It also illustrates a point.  Our unconscious, from childhood, reflects the world around us.  And as the world has modernized, it's lost the perfectly locking puzzle pieces that are wilderness.  Instead, arbitrary straight lines and flat urban surfaces have taken over.  Likewise, societies have gradually switched over from nature-worship to institutionalized, man-made beauty in the form of religion, ceremony and art.  Its as if we were squaring a circle that, as a guide, is gradually fading.

At first this was likely successful, since wild remnants could always be found and revered, giving rise to hybrid forms of wild and human beauty like the above birth announcement.  Here, for example, are what look like two puzzle-pieces in a single landscape: forest and grassland.  On closer inspection we find that they're actually two types of moss on a forest floor.  So the original old-growth forest and flowering prairie may be gone, but if we look hard, even in this modern era, we find interlocking puzzle pieces to remind us of original wilderness.

Unknown, is what'll happen if natural inspiration becomes ever rarer.  And, worse yet, if the institutionalized, man-made order found in modern civilization is ever over-taken by over-crowded excess, disease and destructive conflict; what then?  In that light, the past few hundred years seem almost like an unwieldy experiment whose outcome is unknown and potentially disastrous.

Here's a visitor to Patriarch's Grove under Mount Rainier in Washington state, a place I visited on that same day.

What I'm proposing in these few paragraphs is that being with such splendor--in this case, ancient Douglas fir--would impact default patterns of unconscious / conscious reflection in a visitor's mind.  Instead of dwelling on disjointed minor details, the visitor would aim for the big-picture, and in a bold manner.

All of which might suggest that there's truth in Thoreau's line: "in wildness is the preservation of the world".

A final note: A recent study has found that the single biggest determinant for success in life, for those born into poverty, is not parenting, but whether the poor get lucky and grow up in a community with good schools and nice neighbors.  Which would suggest that we actually do, to a certain extent, reflect our surroundings.

My Little Twitter Idea

No, Not The Big One

That's right, I've got a big, especially interesting idea for social media.  I wrote about it on Feb. 25th, '15 with my 171st tweet:

Q: Will my 'next-social-media' idea pan out?  A: Can't say or it'd no longer be mine.  No Catch-22, just write a teaser check; teaser reply.  

This thing I've just thought up is instead my little twitter idea.  'Little' in comparison, and best used on Twitter, though it might work on another platform.

Actually, wait a minute, why am I writing this?  If the idea is good enough, and I think it is, and it's not going to save or improve lives, other than being fun, challenging and strangely addictive (in a status-driven context), why not hang on to it and maybe I'll be able to use it in some fantastic future that I couldn't possibly imagine in present-day 2015?  

Why not?  Because it might be the door to that fantastic future.  After all, you have to start somewhere.

Yeah, maybe so.  Hey, wait, what if I reveal an even teensier idea--an appetizer to the appetizer?  Surely that's all very possible since it's likely not an original idea.  So here goes:

Woe is the newspaper business.  The classified ad section (formerly a big money-maker for the industry) has been downsized thanks to on-line versions.  And the younger generation gets its news in other ways.  And... I know.  I follow the number of free, all-ad tabloids distributed to non-newspaper-subscribing households in my town from one week to the next (that's because I deliver them in mailboxes and the bundles I receive each week have a total for my route that I can track).  Many borderline subbers tend to let their subscriptions lapse, then wait for a 'special offer' from the publisher to re-subscribe.  Others read a copy at work and are not subscribers.  And while the slide in subscribers may be leveling off in our town, as our newspaper learns how to fight back, the future doesn't look good.

Lately, I've noticed our paper containing considerably more local stories.  "What's that construction project on such-and-such street"; the kind of thing you might call your local, lowest-rung elected official about.  So, they're on the right track.  My idea is simply a furthering of that trend.

Here it is: 
Have an on-line address that accepts ideas for stories that contain opinion.  There'd be two categories.  One for short, tweet-length observations:
* "That photo on page #1 was so good; did you see the little doggie?" 
* "Saw a young kid at the Mall; is there something about holes in pants that makes sense?" 
* "I don't like that billboard on such-and-such street"
* "You've got to see the community theater doing X...."  

The other category would be for longer pieces tied to the current issue, or to a topic fresh in the public mind.  These would be several paragraphs, and unlike the shorter, brief bits, could earn the writer more than his/her name in the paper, though the amount paid would likely be but a token, maybe an extension on one's subscription.  

And because opinions can be dangerous for a publisher, these longer pieces would be on-line only, accessible with a subscriber's password.  They'd thus generate interest in the paper, yet not require space, per se, while also avoiding any question of advocacy, since they would qualify as something like a letters-to-the-editor section.

As with the comments in most on-line fora, writers would have their opinions ranked by 'thumbs up', 'neutral', and 'thumbs down', with the ups appearing first in the reader's feed and the 'downs' buried for all but the most dedicated reader.  These opinions would also be categorized, with Sports, Personalities, Community, Politics, Education and The Arts, being possible categories.

Trusted writers who reach a certain level of output are posted immediately.  Others are vetted, problems are flagged, ...the usual.

Ideally, a subscriber reads the newspaper, then heads for the on-line version where opinions are offered and chatter enhances the original reading experience.

Initially, newspapers may have a role in encouraging their on-line chatter--getting the ball rolling.  Eventually, though, there'd be very little to do, as natural leaders would likely emerge to fulfill a moderator's role.

Yeah, I know, that's not very exciting.  But I guarantee you my 'little' and my 'big' ideas are many times more interesting.