Reason #39 to Live Nebulously

I CANNOT be the only one who has a problem with this on a fundamentally philosophical level...

Time for a refresher course on the concept of 'living nebulously' - what it means, and what it doesn't...

So once again, I've been asked what 'seeking the nebulous life' means, and this most recent inquiry got me thinking there might be some confusion about the extent to which I think someone can, or should, live nebulously.

First, some review:

From Dictionary.com:

'NEBULOUS: hazy, vague, indistinct, or confused'

'Confused' can just go away....yes, it's true; sometimes I am confused, but I'm surely never seeking it. Sometimes it just crawls up and bites me. :-)

The other three descriptions, though, are precisely what I'm talking about. A road trip, any vacation really, is first and foremost a move to feel, for a little while at least, 'hazy, vague, and indistinct', disconnected from everyday life. And for me, it doesn't require driving 14,000 miles. I enjoy the nebulous sensation even on the short two-hour road trips I take nearly every week, from which I return home the same day. I love how it feels stopping for gas in a town where I am a stranger. There is something almost sensual about that kind of anonymity.

Don't get me wrong, I want to engage people on my road trip, I don't want to be invisible. In fact, a big part of 1/48/50 (which also for review, means: 1 road trip through 48 states in under 50 years...that is, before I turn 50...) will involve not being aloof, going out of my way to talk to people. But I want to remain on the periphery nevertheless, basking in that sense of spirited weightlessness that makes any and all travel so pleasurable. And I'll certainly revel in the old familiar feeling of being the kid on the school bus. 

But that's just on the road, for a finite period of time. When trying to apply the word 'nebulous' to day-to-day life, one is likely to get a vastly different result. I would never tell anyone to try living nebulously in the real world; it's a recipe for alienation and loneliness, the surest way to accumulate regrets.  I've said it more than once: I don't think of myself as the loner I once did, I put no stock in the drama and romance I used to find (or believe I was finding) in the lives of my lone-riding heroes. Seriously, engage your day-to-day life head on; make friends, keep friends, preserve family ties while you can. In the end, that really is the stuff that matters, and it's later than you think.

The 'Reasons to Live Nebulously' that show up on this page from time to time are not to be taken all that seriously. They're mostly just a way to fill space and pass time (that's what happens when you start a blog about a road trip that is still years in the future), but at their most pointed, I guess they are things that make me step back and take a good, hard look at myself and the world around me, assess where I've been and just where I'm going, before I make my next move.

But I do always make that next move.

It might be said they are things that could get me wanting to disengage from my life completely, or wishing I could, even though I know I never will. Admittedly, I admire people like Tim Treadwell and Christopher McCandless for the choices they made.  And further, sometimes the choice doesn't seem all that hard. What would I be leaving behind if i just stepped out of society?  Honey Boo-Boo? The Dumb Ass Housewives of Wherever, Whenever? The Kardashians? Dash Dolls? Drones in the sky? Cameras being worn as glasses? The predatory marketing of prescription drugs inevitably leading to the predatory marketing of law offices, when those drugs are found, as they almost always are, to have injurious side effects? Processed food feeding billions? Those billions at best getting in my fricking way at Wal-Mart or in line in front of me at the post office, at worst overtaxing the planet's resources?

There's no denying our modern society is kind of an agitated freak show. There's no denying the sorry state of our news media, our tread-worn political process, our lowered standards in every facet of Life - entertainment, education, politics, even finance. There's no denying our eroding privacy, our allegiance to corporate brands that control how we live by manipulating the decisions we make as consumers.

I can't be the only one who has been pushed to the fringe of his thoughts by the monstrosity our collective culture has become. I can't be the only one who occasionally gets set to wishing he could live out in the woods, totally off the grid, gardening and fishing in sun-lit (and wholly insightful) silence for the remainder of his days.

Everyone has some sort of fantasy about living nebulously. Nobody's okay with how things are all the time. To quote Louis CK: Everything's amazing, and nobody's happy.

But the answer, I think, is not to disappear; the answer lies in learning how to cope, how to embrace the good and manage the bad. It would seem Treadwell and McCandless could not cope. For both men it was demons, rather than a sense of adventure, that drove them into the wild. And while it's true their stories are fascinating, it's equally true, and glaringly so, neither ended well.

As to last week's post, Reason #34 to Live Nebulously, I'm sorry, I just don't like the thought of robots, or artificial intelligence of any kind. To be perfectly honest, a proliferation of cyborg beings, to the point where they walk and talk among us, become integrated into our daily lives with the ability to intuit, might be a real reason to live nebulously, to actually take the leap.  C3PO and R2-D2 are delightful on the silver screen, safely in that galaxy far, far away; I would not find them so enchanting in real life (nor, I suspect, would they be so enchanting). It's my one true prejudice; I do not like robots. I do not think any (further) foray into such technology will lead anywhere good, and when I see something as surreal (but real!) as 'robotic cheetah' lumbering clumsily along the grassy grounds of MIT to the cheers and applause of its madly intelligent and gifted creators, it makes my skin crawl.

Almost as much as the Kardashians do! ;-)

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While I'm at at, and on a related note, here is Reason #35 to Live Nebulously:

It would seem I'm in good company...

CLICK HERE

14,000 miles worth of late winter thoughts...

Recently, I've become interested in people's sailing videos on YouTube. The last couple of years I've had a burgeoning interest in the ocean overall, its vastness and depth and the creatures inhabiting it. Where before I was always kind of repelled by it, or bored at the very least (always the least interesting of nature shows), now I'm held fast by many of the vlogs people post of their adventures in the Keys or crossing the Pacific or Indian oceans. Sailing's not something I'd have the patience for; I don't want to work that hard to have a good time. But it's fascinating to watch nevertheless, and it occurred to me that these videos, some of them quite well produced, wouldn't be available were it not for the technology, and attendant mindset driving it, I complain about. Since last week's post, I've taken a long, hard look at all that noise, and admittedly, a legitimate question has come to the fore: for all my indignation over what I see as the completely fabricated need to treat our lives like a reality show, the need to believe that all eyes are on us and something monumental hangs in the balance of what we say or do next and that it must be captured on camera for posterity, to what degree might I nevertheless get thinking that way on 1/48/50, and employ the very technology I find so objectionable?

The answer (still): not at all.

Er, okay, maybe: it's complicated.

Unless I make the decision to 'disconnect' during the trip (a separate discussion), yes, I will likely blog about my travels on a semi-daily basis, and a camera will almost certainly come out now and then.  But I can say beyond a shadow of a doubt that I will never, ever walk around with a recording device installed on my person. It will never be pinned to my hat, or clinging to my glasses. I will hold my camera at arm's length (like any good annoying tourist) and never videotape anyone without their knowledge, nor fail to hide their identity should they happen to breeze through a shot.

So to be clear: it's WEARABLE technology, hidden in plain sight, that I find objectionable, its overly vigilant application to the most uninteresting moments of our lives that I find depressing, and a little absurd, and frankly, the beginning of a slippery slope into a dystopian future once found only in the pages of pulp science fiction.

But ultimately, I think I can say in good faith there won't be a lot of videotaping on 1/48/50, for a couple of reasons. Fact is, nobody wants to see what are essentially my vacation videos any more than they may have wanted to see their grandparents' vacation slides back in the day. Yes, if I come across something interesting, I will start taking pictures, and maybe some video, and if any of it turns out worth a smidge, I might post it on this page. I'm only human, certainly not 'above' anything (including wanting to regard my life as a reality show...;-). And in last week's post, I conceded that there's nothing wrong with 'logging' your life if you're doing something worth logging. I cited crossing the equator on your way to the Marquesas as worthy. The Grand Canyon too. And yes, a few personal moments perhaps, the odd marriage proposal, or birth, or graduation. These are the things that punctuate our lives.

But philosophically speaking, discovering a new restaurant or lying in a hammock (as presented by the Lifelogger corporate video) and other like banalities no more deserve to be 'logged' than 99% of what goes on in our daily lives deserves to be 'posted'. And therefore, it just doesn't warrant so potentially sketchy a practice as wearing one's camera.

Driving 14,000 miles across the country is worth 'logging', I'd say. And I would hope to encounter moments that prompt me to start videotaping. But I'm a writer; that's what I do. I'm not a movie maker wannabe or makeshift cinematographer; I have a face for radio and a voice for newsprint. If I do anything in the way of sharing the trip, especially once its over, it will be largely by writing about it. Truth be told, I want it that way. Posting photos and video is too easy. Anybody can do that. Everybody is.

Of course, on another of my blogs, Northbound Thoughts, I've frequently said I might consider a 'hat-cam' while I fish.  But fish don't mind. They like to be filmed.

Er, maybe they don't...but I know for a fact people don't. Unless they are the ones holding the camera.

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Celebrating my 100th nebulous post! Time for ice cream!

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There are many others, but I found this film posted on YouTube. Before GPS, before GoPro, before any means by which to share it with anyone (least not like is done today), this British couple, Erin and Susan Hiscock, filmed their three-year sailing trip around the world in the mid-1950s.

Erin was a noted sailor in his day, and this film is truly extraordinary. Narrating with bone dry wit, a sharp knowledge of what he's talking about, and keen appreciation for the lush color that certain details add (though perhaps not as much cultural sensitivity as might - and should - be employed today), he makes the trip (this 'vlog') interesting - fascinating - from beginning to end.

Now, of course, I'd say it's historically significant as well.

It's got nothing to do with my road trip, or anyone's road trip, but it makes me want to go, just the same....go anywhere.

Do we really need to 'log' our entire life? When did forgetting (certain) things fall so out of favor?

So some readers tried to call me out over last week's post, Reason #30 to Live Nebulously, questioning whether the product that I provided a link to deserved such a negative distinction. A few felt the need to defend Lifelogger, one of them in a point-by-point evaluation, as though I were writing (or he was) for Consumer Reports.

Frankly, I don't give a shit about the product one way or another. It might be the niftiest thing since sliced bread, might blow all similar products on the market out of the water. My point was not to single out Lifelogger, as such, but rather to assert that the 'wearable technology' phenomenon, set to ramp up this year, is also set to become much more than a string of latest gadget fads. We are no longer talking about useless items we pick out of the Sharper Image catalog so we can one-up friends and family, be ahead of the curve in our never-ending quest to add to our collections of shit we can't take with us. No sir, this is something else; this is nothing less than an evolutionary step for our species, one that is not going to lead anywhere good.

My complaint comes in two parts:

1) Wearable technology can and will be used to invade people's privacy, there's no way around it. Yes, laws are being enacted in certain areas, intended to guard against sketchy behavior, to prevent creepers from peering through windows or up skirts. But ordinary people - the victims - really have no way of telling when and where something like that is happening, so these 'laws' are essentially ineffective. Having them in place might fast-track a legal response, but they take no preventative measure, or even posture, whatsoever.

Privacy, in this society, has been taking a beating for quite a while, and it doesn't have to be something skeevy going on to be wrong, or at least very annoying. Even I'm guilty of this. When I was fifteen, I was annoying as all hell, visiting my older brother in New York City for the first time, innocently going around snapping pictures of people with my disc camera. I fancied myself a photographer-at-large...er, something like that...was not content with just landmarks and skylines in my photos; I wanted people, 'New Yorkers', and went out of my way to get the shot. 

More than a few people did not take kindly to this, including a cabbie who actually climbed out of his ride to confront me. At the time, I had the temerity to be indignant, even (ignorantly) invoked my 'rights'...but I get it now. Those people didn't want their pictures taken, nor should they have had to endure it. I didn't have the right to do what I was doing.

I'd be the same way now, were I aware of it going on. You'd be pretty damn pathetic, traveling to my town and considering me worth taking a picture of, but in theory, I'd protest strenuously if you did. And furthermore, I don't want to be an 'extra' in someone's lame movie, don't want to be captured strolling unawares through the periphery of their GoPro moment. Chances are, I already have. Chances are, most of us have.

I shudder to think of a world, already becoming reality, where everyone is a paparazzo. If I were a celebrity, or an attractive woman going about her day, minding her business, I would be concerned; I would be watchful, especially as these wearable devices become harder to spot. When Google Glass (Reason #1 to Live Nebulously, actually...) was introduced a couple years back, it was big, clunky and ugly, hanging off the user's face like a tumor. Now, as I predicted, its successors are sleeker and less conspicuous. You might not even notice that the individual across from you in a restaurant has pushed record, and is now sitting stock still, filming you as you eat, and as he eats. :-/

2) Just my opinion, I know, but there simply is no reason whatsoever to video/photo document every living, breathing moment of our waking hours. Yes, if you're doing something magnificent - if you're base jumping in a wingsuit off a high rise in Sao Paulo, or crossing the equator on your way to the Marquesas, or even if you drove all the way to the Grand Canyon and want to try to quantify the depth of its beauty with imagery (though everyone pretty much knows that never seems to work out so well...), then by all means, Go Pro it up, dude (or dudette).

But as it's said that the modern Valentine's Day is really a fake holiday concocted (or perpetuated) by greeting card companies, it might be said with equal confidence that the desire to document our lives, or notion that we should, or must, has been manufactured (and perpetuated) by companies who make products like Lifelogger, and GoPro, and Google Glass. These companies are preying on, rather than servicing, that potent desire - gripping each and every once of us - to feel as though our lives matter, that they will be remembered, and cherished, first by ourselves and then others after we're gone. In the Lifelogger 'corporate video' I provided a link to, we are led, with schmaltzy dialogue and sickly sentimental nursery rhyme music, to picture ourselves in some static tableau of the future, an elderly individual sitting in a comfy chair in a comfy living room, reflecting on a life well-lived with an approving smile and misty eyes.

"Imagine recording eight hours of footage without holding up a camera..." the narrator intones.

Why would anybody do that?

"...live streaming your memories with friends and family, or capturing all the simple ones you might forget." 

What's wrong with forgetting? Having everything - everything - in a virtual continuum of photos and videos to look back on when you're 80...concocting your own Truman Show...I don't know, it gives me the creeps. Yes, there are certain things, truly special moments, signposts on the road of life, that deserve to be captured in picture or video; but most things don't really need more than a totemic symbol (the classic 'leaf pressed in a book', if you will), they actually keep better stored solely in the mind; and some things, a lot of things I hate to say, just don't deserve to be remembered, or immortalized, at all.

If we 'capture' and remember everything, that is, if we engage the largely clinical practice of 'logging' our life as though it's the reality TV show we feel it's worthy of being, nothing stands out. Life becomes just a sick obsession with the past, an opiate addiction for days gone by, which is not healthy.

According to Dictionary.com, 'cyborg' is defined as: "person whose physiological functioning is aided by or dependent upon a mechanical or electronic device."

We are witnessing the beginning of this. It's still in its infancy stage, but a couple of our key senses - sight and sound - are already being 'aided' by technology that we can now wear, place as part of our person, and I truly believe the ramifications of doing so have yet to be revealed, or even imagined.

Ahhh...makes me really long for the highway, the open road, out beyond the reach of cameras...

Oh wait, the sad truth is 'the highway' is no longer beyond the reach of cameras either.