Memeverse

A thought I just had is about setting a new framework for developing future projects - let them all break some rules! What is needed first is to find a rule that could be broken in the meanest sense possible and then start a project online that will shamelessly break it in everybody’s face!

The rules, to be more specific, are not necessarily laws here, but rather those stupid social norms that often develop among people. I think a lot of them may be just stupid. There are such norms pretty much wherever you turn, in every community of any kind about any topic or profession. From web building to marketing to software development to various facets of culture… there are some norms to break.

What fuels this kind of thinking is pretty much a mixture of dissatisfaction with what I’ve done so far, a bit of anger about unmet expectations and a bit of rebellion towards.. the world.. who care what. Sometimes I feel it all sucks so I might as well plot a way to, one by one, ATTACK those freaking suckages.

And what better way to do it, maybe, than to go break some rules SHAMELESSLY and IN YOUR FACE, but in a domain of my own, where people can either join me or decline and remain in their precious status quo. We move along. They stay and lose. Haha!

There’s a meme for you.

Cheers

Let me get one thing straight. I’m nothing really special, nothing too admirable. As much as my starting of Libervis.com and Libervis Network can be attributed to ambition and enthusiasm for something it may be attributed to laziness and desire to avoid a harsher and less fulfilling, less enjoyable, way of life. Yes, in a way, starting Libervis.com was about taking the easy road.. and it somehow always ends up being portrayed as the high road.

I gotta give it to people who work eight hours a day five days of the week, living the routine. They are at least disciplined and they usually have a way better social and love life than I do. What’s there to miss? Ah right, the independence, the freedom of pursuit. Indeed, but obviously such things come with a price, and I think I already started paying mine.

But on to the issue at hand.. how hard is it to be the news? This is something that I have, thanks to discussions I’ve had with my friend Taco (tbuitenh) realized to be perhaps the fundamental principle behind something like Libervis Network, something that promotes freedom and participatory culture. What else is it to be free and involved than to be the news yourself rather than just its consumer, to be the one who makes waves instead of merely riding them.

Regardless of this fundamental idea having so much in common with what we promote on Libervis, most of the time we simply discuss what’s going on, sharing our thoughts and helping each other formulate opinions, or helping each other just run software that is based on this freedom that we promote. In other news we aren’t “the news” very often.

And there comes the latest project on Nuxified.org, this Freedomware Gamefest 2007. It is actually something that is making news, something that we can submit to the news publications as real *news*, not just a commentary, a review or a tutorial. And it really started to feel like that in the last couple of days. I’ve actually been asked to notify of new press releases. That doesn’t happen often.

However, at the same time I feel slightly insecure. Perhaps, I’m thinking, I underestimated the size of this project, the requirements of experience with the gaming world and organization of tournaments etc. I find myself, at the same time, struggling with the ongoing lack of motivation (a chronic problem, on some level), an incomplete social life (which may be part of the cause of the former) AND the organization of an event of the kind I never done before… Does anyone still think I’m the right person for the job?

Time will show, but in any case, I’m just a guy trying to keep himself together (actually just find ways to improve things on a personal level), and incidentally a little network of sites and organization of a sort of ambitious project that might become an annual event. Woohoo. What a ride.

Being the news, it’s sometimes a thrill, but it’s a challenge too.

“Thank you very much Mr. Obvious.”

Confusion is like a pot of disorganized, incoherent thoughts and ideas. It is like a pile of “memes” which have not been connected into a coherent understandable whole. It relates to chaos more than any kind of order and it isn’t pleasant to be in that state for too long.

Luckily there are things that inspire. Inspiration is really the key to a lot of things in life. It has the power to motivate, to spark enthusiasm and consequently create mental energy needed to “unfuzz” the fuzzy to organize the disorganized, to connect the dots - to explore, learn and practice wisdom. Exploring is an act of seeking out the unknown in order to observe it and its surroundings. The next step is its consequence - the learning - an act of acquiring facts (or perceived facts) - an act of making the unknown known. What is left is to “practice wisdom”, the ability to connect the learned facts into a whole which provides deeper understanding of the object in question (physical or non-physical) and the context within which it exists.

On my old blog I sometimes talked about the thing that I believe was one of the greatest sources of inspiration and enthusiasm for me. In fact I count it among things that influenced my life and myself as a person. Because of it, among other things, I am who I am today.

This “thing” is a story and a fictional universe. It is an idea and an ideology. It is a vision and it is a culture. It is a phenomenon called Star Trek.

Trek has made me look beyond. Period. Beyond “what” exactly doesn’t matter as much as the fact that it is “beyond”. The object being super-seeded will always change, but what shouldn’t change is being open towards the beyond.

Some of these “beyonds” include thinking beyond the context of:

• racial, national, cultural, sexual and other differences between sentient beings.
• our Earth and an immediate space we know.
• the universe as we know it, including the laws that we know about it.
• reality as we perceive it.
• our nature as we currently understand it.
• anything that we believe in, anything that we sense, anything that we know and anything that we think we know.

Thinking beyond is a fundamental idea which we also often call “being open minded”. It entails the ability to accept change, most importantly the change in our understanding of the reality around us.

Without being exposed to Star Trek as much as I have I doubt that I would hold on to this value as much as I am today. And I think this had a profound effect on my life.

Trek has emphasized my optimism. I think everybody has a dose of optimism in themselves and so did I. I am not sure if I am genetically or in some other way predisposed to be more optimist or pesimist and I am not entirely sure that I was prior to having significant contact with Trek largely an optimist or a pesimist. But it doesn’t matter. What matters is that, just as it made it easier and desirable for me to look beyond everything it has emphasized the value of optimism.

It has basically encouraged me to embrace a vision of a better future and a better world rather than a vision of a cool, but cold and dark “cyberpunk” world where the fittest survive in a constant violent war, as some other modern action packed scifi stories present it. While I enjoy even such dramas and find certain values in them as well, I prefer an optimistic vision of the future any day. We have enough of the dark drama in the real world as it is.

Trek has encouraged my idealism. Gene Roddenberry deliberately envisioned a show which will promote certain moral standards and ideals. This is why he set off to do what no TV show did before, like feature an african-american woman on the show in a time when both racism and sexism were still raging. This is why most stories depicted in Star Trek deal with moral issues and dilemmas and why starship captain’s usually are idealists. In fact, the very future depicted is idealist, with many wrongs we know in the world today having been set right.

This significantly encouraged me to appreciate certain ideals as something worth standing for and pursuing. It has, indeed, a lot to do with my involvement with Free Software and Free Culture.

Trek has fueled my interest and passion for technology. It is almost a perpetual past time of mine to look at the world I am surrounded with and compare it to the world presented in Star Trek making me fascinated when I see things in the present day world be like in Star Trek. Just the same I am looking forward to the future in which all of the things presented in Star Trek will be real and this anticipation fuels my interest in technological advancements. And that’s where most of my fascination with technology really comes from.

Coupled with the open mindedness (tendency to think beyond), optimism (envisioning a positive future) and idealism (standing up for something) technology largely becomes the means used to manifest the above values - used in a positive way for positive purposes. The reason why some may perceive Star Trek promoting technology as inherently good may be because in the above described bigger context of values promoted by Star Trek, it really is, in its world, used largely for positive things.

However even in Star Trek, later series, it has been portrayed what could we face if we do not use technology in a positive way promoted by Star Trek. The Borg may be the best example. They are an example of technology abuse.

So it is not that Star Trek promotes technology as inherently good. It does not. Technology is just a neutral tool. It promotes the idea that technology can be used to create a better world IF we learn to be more open minded (think beyond), be more positive thinking (envision the better future) and care for certain moral and ethical standards. Otherwise, we are in a world of trouble.

And that’s really what sums it up for me. Those are the ingredients that have “infected” my personality. I love technology assuming that it can be used for good and I love the fact that someone in the 60s had the guts to tell the world a message that even today the world deserves to hear: better world is possible, we just have to care and then evolve upon, which includes building the means to build that better world, advancing technology.

And why have I, after that last post portraying a bad and confusing state I am sometimes in, writing this blog entry? Well, I just felt the need to express this. When feeling disoriented and disordered it is good to look for something to grasp on to, and something that inspires me so significantly seems like a good choice.

Writing to this blog is my way of getting something off my chest. All of the entries so far were exactly the result of that, including this post. I am occasionally watching the episodes of Star Trek lately seeking for nothing but inspiration and a source of enthusiasm that I’ve felt evading me with regards to the work I do on the web (Libervis Network). And as I watch it I just feel this urge to, yet again, express why exactly do I love and appreciate it so much.

Mind you, I don’t really know nor care if I should be called a trekkie or a trekker because of that. I don’t particularly care for branding myself as anything. I am just a guy whose life has been affected and whose personality has been inspired by a Star Trek vision and the universe which it created.

Thank you for bearing with me.

Mr. Libervisco Out.

To those who may consider me to be a bullsh*it speaking “smartas*” with all these philosophical posts here is your chance to gloat. I mean, go on! If you’re out there please gloat! I’m not sure you’ll get another chance.

Of course, considering how little readers this (new) blog has these people may very well be lacking here, but I can imagine them. It’s not hard to do it. I’ve encountered people who may, after reading some of my posts, say that I’m thinking too much, that I really went overboard and that I’m maybe even a bit crazy in the head.

I’m talking about the kinds of posts like the last one. You might laugh out loud at this, but I managed to pretty much confuse even myself with it. Do LOL.

Since getting this notion into my head that everything we see as true around us is just true within the boundaries of our own perception and that it may not always match exactly with the absolute truth, I’ve lessened my ability to evaluate my own “true” problems based on the “real” evidence. Because, if it is all just in our heads and so changeable, who can guarantee me that the conclusion I come to today is really the right one. I basically lose the ground on which my opinions can stand on, cause by doubting everything I even doubt whether that ground is real or not.

I suppose I just introduced more variables into my analytical thinking than I can efficiently handle. And it’s crazy. I mean, rationally I know that the perceived reality we are living in is all we’ve got and that it isn’t very smart to confuse our thinking by introducing the fact that there is a reality beyond the reality we see into our equations, yet I feel a weird urge to do just that, effectively putting myself into a limbo.

…

Just now I just wrote a sentence which announced an example of what I mean above… and then deleted it. I can’t even come up with a proper example! The next thing I knew was that I was literally laughing at myself thinking “gosh you’ve really lost it”.

I don’t even know if it’s worth saying anything more here than “help!!!”.

Danijel has lost his mind and is looking around to find it..

Um.. is that real.. now.. surreal, no.. maybe, it’s all in my mind, but does a mind really exist, yes it does just like problems I am trying to tackle, but may not be problems because my mind created the perception of them and that perception may be wrong.

Hah.. I’m chasing shadows because that’s what perceptions are, just shadows of reality. Maybe it’s better to assume perceptions as reality itself than as perceptions of one, leaving the latter conclusion merely for philosophical debates, not real life.. er.. living.

Time to take a deep breath and for once go to sleep early. Maybe if, after weeks, I finally wake up rested in the early morning (rather than going to sleep at that time) and then dedicate some quality “thinking time” to what’s bothering me, I’ll be less confused and be able to find more energy and motivation to do what I do.

I sometimes feel that there is such a thing as a justifiable suspense of certain modes of thinking based on an impulse. This feeling is what can push for actions that would otherwise be avoided. It is, however, just a feeling and more a feeling than a rationale.

I am a rather impulsive person so this does not come as a surprise to me nor should it surprise anyone else who knows enough about me. I get inspired and pushed and then I want to ride on that wave immediately or otherwise it will just pass me by and I will be left waiting for the next time something like that happens.

I want to make music, the kind of music I may be listening to at a given moment in time. This want is inspired by that music, in fact. Shall I pass it by or act on it?

In such moments I often find myself choosing between what I here call the “suspense” and perhaps, the patience, the hard road ahead. I have a Windows installation left on dual boot. It has FL Studio installed in it, a full scale easy to use music production environment which I know how to use because I made music in it years ago. The choice between suspense and patience here is a choice between booting into Windows, starting that program and drafting my first music track in a while, and, downloading Studio 64, waiting for a download to finish, install it and then try to re-grasp how all the programs in it work to start making some tunes, definitely harder and more time consuming.

The first choice requires a suspense of one particular thing, perhaps the only thing I care about that can be counted as its disadvantage, the fact that both Windows and FL Studio are proprietary software.

The moral high ground seems obvious. Do not, ever, boot into Windows and use proprietary software if you have even the slightest chance of doing the thing you would do with it, using Free Software.

Well, that’s why it is called a suspense. It is a suspense of that particular part of rational thought. So where is the justification for it? I don’t know, but I can guess.

If I go the easy road, choose the suspense, boot into Windows, I can get a track draft made in hours, hence potentially restarting my music making, something I’ve been longing to do for, well, perhaps even years. The track that could come out of this would be a Free Work, licensed for free use, sharing and remixing by anyone.

If, however, I go the hard road it would take a lot more time to get to that stage and will put me through various demotivating stages on the way. Whether this will, or if it will result in a restart of my music making is a big question. No freely licensed work in sight and my perpetual creative urge still remains un-addressed.

There is just one little thing left to consider, however. There is a certain pleasure in being able to create a new music track using only Free Software, one which would be denied if the track was made using proprietary software. The question is, will that satisfaction outperform the satisfaction I would have with a track done in far less time and possibly even with greater quality due to the quality of the tools I used to make it?

So.. we are back to the feeling. Perhaps, the suspense, can sometimes be justified. The suspense is an entirely personal compromise, made quietly and with conscious knowledge of the facts whose consideration was suspended, perhaps swallowing a small bit of guilt in the process.

Choosing between short term benefit and long term… uncertainty.

I haven’t made my choice yet.