Final Proyecto Blog

“We’ve decided. We’re moving to Arden Hills,” 

Perhaps another set of words did not exist to trigger the sinking discontent I felt in that moment. 

Alright I might have exaggerated my disgusted response a little bit but at the time 'Arden Hills' was synonymous with 'nature' and I really wasn't interested in experiencing any more nature than I had to. Today as we explore the evolution our relationship with nature has made we've come to learn that we all experience it in different ways. Those who identify their experiences with nature as physical interactions with the land and organisms of this planet sans technology, social pressures, and the superficiality of daily life will perhaps observe the largest change. In order to survive in the world, the advances in technology we've achieved today are essential. Neglecting the ever changing standards and requisites of our lives can easily end in death very similar to that of Chris McCandless. For those who interact with nature as an ideal will enjoy the strongest resistance to change in the long run. Nature as an ideal is perpetuated through texts that are often heavily influenced by romanticism and Utopian-like descriptions. Our answer to these questions was simply but effective. By using our own personalities, along with the characters people assume of us, we conducted a small scale social experiment that showed our audience the differences between our personal dialogues and the ones we read instead.  
The group process was more abstract I must say than the typical intelligent and organized SPA student however it was this free flowing process that prompted our success. Having experienced tachycardia myself I jumped on the opportunity to write about it. This worked perfectly as we decided to each produce two monologues describing our unique relationships with nature. Once we did this we looked for ways to show how each of our experienced differed from what you may assume. To do this we decided a live presentation of each other dialogues would provide and interesting perspective. If I were to change anything it would be to increase the degree of the project that we conduct as team members and more fluidly integrate the individual parts. All in all the project provided a creative and intuitive conclusion to a creative and (counter) intuitive class. 

McCandless' Journey Exists Only in the Gray

Having a child run away from home - It's every parents worst nightmare, behind perhaps college tuition and   filing taxes. A dense tangle of feelings must rush through your mind as a parent, anger, sadness, regret. However I'd argue a sense of  inadequacy paralalls.  even the deepest anger and depression. Where did we go wrong? What was it we didn't provide for our baby? While nearly  half of childhood runaways cite physical abuse as their reason for running from home the majority of runaways mention some form of abuse or parental limitation. This means most kids run away from their home in attempts to leave behind their past, rarely do they consider what they might be running to.  McCandless is unlike perhaps any other runaway. McCandless was running towards something, reaching for some thing he knew existed however was unsure of its whereabouts. The family, trust fund, prestigious education he left behind was just but collateral that was swept along in his journey. Having said all this, I began to get the sense McCandless' journey was special in some way. In the kind of way where you can't explain all the details, the kind of way where the exclusive group of people able to accurately tell the tale have passed on. But then again, that just adds to the narrative as the story evolves from an accurate re-accounting but rather a journey of our own with questions, hypothetical and skepticism. From just reading Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild I constructed a mystified  impression of the event that actually transpired with an inquisitive thirst yet still a drifting skepticism. Then came the Youtube videos.

"Things you may not know about Chris McCandless"

This video has accumulated over 114,00 views and is completely useless. Others may focus on the narration or the interviewee but I paid special attention to the trees, the landscape, the sky. It was real. Every thing was de-mystified, the awe and wonder of it all drained just like that. The words of the man in the video began to mesh with my disappointing and I began forming a new layer of pessimistic skepticism. This time I considered If McCandless may have been just another privileged kid going through a phrase, experimenting with drugs, bored with life or even mentally ill. Perhaps none of these examples were true but that didn't matter. It was enough to suck the apprehension from the story and along with it much of my interest. The end of the video revealed that McCandless carried a wallet with multiple forms of identification and 300 dollars in cash. Again I questioned the bad-ass impression I had previously composed as I saw that even he was prone to ridiculous looking ID pictures. Furthermore the discovered cash drove the nail into my coffin of belief in McCandless' story as I decided the scene in Into the Wild where McCandless burns all his remaining money may be closer to fiction than journalism/bibliography. 

I would argue the effort expended into telling McCandless's story and the videos/ biopics dedicated to coloring in the areas of the narrative that appear gray are the last things he would want. McCandless deserves to exist in the gray, searching.

Video Trip(7)tych.

Video Trip(7)tych.



Spring Nature:
https://vine.co/v/M5LvFA1MltI/embed

Take me there:
https://vine.co/v/M5L6PEH3xm2/embed


My first vine explores a simple observation we've all made by now. The "nature" we're fed by the big bank corporate america tax loop hole Tobacco industry is quite different from that existing all around us. Perhaps the most important element of this vine however is shown at the beginning with the Google search. Two different narratives begin here. Isn't there something ironic or at least satirical about using technology to "experience" spring nature? Now in Minnesota this simply may be the only way to see a grassy field or a tree ... with leaves until June so i'm giving Minnesotans a pass until then (and again in September). Now the other part of the search is the [inherent] disillusionment expressed after I figure out what is real. I couldn't handle the truth and someone/thing was going to have to pay (get fired). The second vine of the mini-series features many of the same aspects as the first however it includes a couple new integral aspects. The first is a benevolent but subtle English accent. And the second is also the accent.


Who's laughing now?
https://vine.co/v/M5LDznhu5Tl/embed
(Alternate) Who's laughing now?:
https://vine.co/v/M5LDv3XHAKD/embed

This vine explores an issue I often  encounter as a fashion forward but practically minded Minnesotan youth.


Spring Morning:
https://vine.co/v/M5LHUPmVBZ6/embed

" All I want is a life that seems great, i could care less if it is actually great"
Technology (the phone showing the illusion of a beautiful environment) allows us to do that.

Parody:
I say it hates me:
https://vine.co/v/M5LpOvMuDQl/embed

Parody:
No handz:
https://vine.co/v/M5Lttrw2Yra/embed

An Inconvenient Box (that we live in)

              You've all probably seen some melodramatic climate change documentary or presentation, if not Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth.  Chances are you've all felt that rush of motivation and activism that comes alongside the dramatized images of polar bears and rescue efforts. Unfortunately in real life there isn't a full orchestral ensemble and a news crew commissioned to commemorate every effort you put forth to "save the planet." Your "recycling" and "carpooling" efforts won't yield tangible results any time soon and seldom, if ever, will you receive recognition  from others so its hard understandably hard to stay the course right? I argue that the reason many of us are unable to prolong our environmental consciousnesses is not because our journeys are not romanticized [glorified] but rather because its difficult to envision the the world to be anything different than it is right now. We struggle with the scale of the concept that we can actually have an affect on the direction of this planet.

[Al Gore's presentation An Inconvenient Truth, was received with significant indifference]

What Ishmael does so well, and why i believe it to be an effective narrative, is allow me to see that our reality is not the singular possibility. Many spiritual ideologies assert existential explanations for questions without answers and often can do no better than, "This is the way it is," or "This is how god willed it." Now eventually this creates the sentiment that our world is the way it is for a reason, independent of our daily to day manipulations and influences.Barring telepathic gorrilaz,  Ishmael is most likely one of the most unique books I've ever read, in that the message and ultimate take away of the book is not a moral or a message but a conversation. Daniel Quinn wrote Ishmael in an attempt to encourage and incite controversy, to bring about questions and start an on going dialogue.  Allen Downey, author of Ten things I hate about the first have of Ishmael, states in his 9th and 10th grievances that the book [and author] completely ignore any empirical evidence and uses blind assumptions as fact. This he argues is why the book[first half] is ineffective for him. I like to think the complete lack of quantitative values, empirical conclusions leaves room for the reader to believe the world is anything we make it to be; not a bunch of symbols and numbers.

Technology Reform

Technology Reform

Growing up as the eldest child of first generation immigrants weariness and most times resistance have become the commonplace attitude towards, "American Culture" in my household. Today's American Culture is dominated with technology (the latest of it at that) and this further forms disconnect between my parents and I by perpetuating a generational gap alongside the negative (foreign/alien) cultural stigma. Now as I (sometimes) drive myself to school, use my Iphone and Toshiba notebook computer, and watch Netflix on the 60" HD TV in my basement it’s quite clear of late the anti-American culture resistance has been faltering. However, I'd argue these changes are out of necessity rather than results of a slow and gradual acceptance of technology and American culture. Technology moves so fast in the US that in order to stay connected, to stay relevant submission to new age communication is inevitable. As my family looks back to the days of flip phones and VHS (lol) tech firms and the Gov’t look to the future by looking over-seas.  Given the certain topical discretion that a blogpost affords its author I’ve decided to speak on the subject of the technology gap between recent immigrants and their US “native” counterparts. Now it has been well chronicled that the US is always in demand for highly qualified mathematicians and computer scientists and that many of these are young students from foreign countries however the NYT recently published a video that elaborates on the significance of over-seas tech-wiz’s’.

[http://www.nytimes.com/video/technology/100000002218717/high-tech-immigrants.html]

Foreign students at the UC Berkeley share their experiences and cite that immigration laws make it quite difficult to pursue their dreams to eventually start up their own companies. The video shows that albeit all the reform surrounding immigration, especially in regards to highly skilled workers that there is still a lot of room for improvement (Ferrell).  Tech Giants have recognized this and in May of last year taken it upon themselves to push for continued immigration reform by pushing forward a bill proposal. Rob Jesmer is a former Senate strategist who is know spearheading a lobbying campaign backed by Mark Zuckerburg, “It will give a lot of people who are educated in this country who are already here a chance to remain in the United States,” Mr. Jesmer said, “and encourage entrepreneurs from all over the world to come to the United States and create jobs.(Lipton 1) This has been an issue longstanding in our society but now it has escalated to another level due to the exponential growth of the technology industry and the never ending technology job market.  Eric Lipton writes in his NYT article, “The immigration fight, which has unified technology companies perhaps more than any other issue, has brought the lobbying effort to new heights. The industry sees it as a fix to a stubborn problem: job vacancies, particularly for engineers” (Lipton 2). Even established giants like Microsoft and Google have a plethora of vacancies at the top of their development departments. Brad smith of Microsoft’s general counsel spoke to the Senate judiciary committee, “We are not able to fill all the jobs that we are creating,” (Lipton 3).

 [Senator Marco Rubio has recently become the face of new-age immigration reform 

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/05/us/politics/tech-firms-take-lead-in-lobbying-on-immigration.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0]

TL; DR: Immigration reform is coming and now that the rich white dudes are on board its coming fast.