Work Then Gaming Saturday...


The Day's Colour Game And Philosophy


I watched an interesting short clip of Ayn Rand on YouTube (its always ironic when clips of her show up on a day when there's a big colour symbolism battle going on). I think she's awesome for a great many reasons relating to her ideas, but in all honesty she's one extreme, but her ideas on objectism are wonderful. An idea based upon observations that certain political processes, not specifically Government, but rather entangled discourse itself, stagnate society and actually curb innovation.

On her strongest points in that regard, I certainly agree that there are situations where that can and does occur, and that cliques in society can often collude to make that the case, while burying any evidence of it having occurred. When winning becomes more important than the preservation of the facts and the truth. When winning becomes more important than what's actually being fought for.

However, even someone as clever as Ayn Rand was likely played with the see-saw treatment, which socially would rock her back and forth at the most inconvenient of times for herself, so that she'd appear to be an extreme objectivist. Abhoring taxes and infrastructure, all part of a strategy to make her ideas appear like selfishness, which they really weren't.

Really, you have to read Atlas Shrugged or the Fountainhead to get a grasp on what she's saying. She's not undermining infrastructure or society, only the fact that it appears that our cliquiness and propensity for using symbol in ways to pigeonhole innovators as social obstructions who are often branded as not being team players, when in fact, the problem is that the teams involved are acting with the psychosis or narcissism as a group, in the same way that a solitary person would be diagnosed as such. This is a core phenomenon within Sociology itself and Doctor Briggs of the Butterfly Dragon will likely have dialogue in the near future that will deal with this very topic.

There's this idea in society that the more you are, the more right you are, which couldn't be further from the truth in circumstances involving vision, direction and innovation. It works great as peer revue in the sciences and it works great for democracy and making sure that we're acting in the best interests society along a pre-defined malleable founding set of principles, but when it comes to maintaining the course of a vision, its a disaster.

It's along the lines of T.H. White's idiom, which can have two permutations: might is right, meaning that the more you are, the more right you are, hence the concept of what is actually right and wrong is discarded and can be treated differently even in two different situations with the same circumstances. Then there's the other permutation: might for right, in which the concept of right and wrong is defined in a way that adapts according to the concept of precedence, and the advantage of more people is used to ensure that those ideas are enforced and justice ensues.

Enjoy Life, Help To Live

Even Ayn Rand's ideas taken to their extreme are and could be a disaster for society, and when bright people like her arrive in society and on the stage, they're often played on the see-saw towards their worst extremes, not just of emotional behaviour, but of the expression of their ideas. And so when those ideas have arrived to our doorstep, they've been making their way through resistance that only sharpens them to the point of becoming extreme and even difficult for people. If you really want to know her, Ayn Rand's best contribution in terms of objectivism is the idiom: enjoy life, help to live.

Winding Up The Competitors

During her interviews, as it is obvious of many icons from the same and earlier eras whose words are part of the video and audio historical record, she was definitely struggling against critics of her ideas, whose biggest weapon is polarization. Pushing their opponents to extremes, so that their ideas rather than being rationally balanced towards a common good, are over-extended to an extreme perspective that was often arrived at after much provocation and just in time for the cameras to be rolling. History never seems to catch the part about when the people behind the scenes are stirring up the competitors, much like dog handlers stirring up the dogs before a dog fight. History never records that part. We only ever get the aftermath, so most people never understand that when you see and hear Ayn Rand talking about how its wrong to force the wealthy to pay taxes, she's making that statement after after having been stirred by people over the issue that she's actually talking about. 

That issue being that taxes for the purposes of infrastructure and the greater good (schools and hospitals for instance) are a must in society, but when those collecting such revenues over-extend their reach into the wallets of their citizens - the citizens' paying into a common fund for the greater good can quickly turn into a much bigger problem that stagnates innovation, and leads to business which alongside real estate and union labour is the biggest source of tax revenue, abandoning such a place where that is occurring, and that's a big hit to innovation and the economy. 

However, the same thing can happen on the other side as well. When the futures of big companies become entangled in internal politics and business models that actually hinder progress, possibly even with dire consequences for society [added on March 1, 2024].

Often, politics becomes involved and can be quite damaging when innovators are pit against bureaucracy. When I say politics, I'm referring not specifically to Government, but to the interplay between any groups of people seeking negotiation and discourse with one another. That isn't to say that Government is bad. It is to say though that the nature of humanity to divide ourselves along these boundaries often leads to situations where people that should be working together, are pit against one another in a game of show and tell before an audience (the citizens) they've deified. Truth suffers, and the one with the best public relations and best at sweeping things under the carpet often wins. When that happens, those innovators, will be stifled, and possibly gone for good.

That's exactly what Atlas Shrugged is about.

When I see icons like her speaking on camera, I notice certain things and can relate very much with what it must have been like for such a remarkable woman like her to deal with this constant social tide. Not just her, but many, many others. 

You don't realize how remarkable those people truly were, until you understand the kinds of obstacles they had in their way in getting their message to market, without becoming radicalized weapons of extreme views, but rather carried their message mostly gracefully the entire distance. A thirty second clip though? You're bound to lose a lot of the information and story of what's going on and what she's saying, and so I implore those of you who are acclimatized to the 30 second format, to consume it like a snack to get the taste for, but not the entire meal, of what these people were saying. 

Its like you ask the waiter to give you a sip of the wine and taste it before its served to the table or before you take the bottle. At least that's the way you used to do it when having a dinner at a restaurant. If you try a little 30 second clip, don't form an opinion until you've gone and looked into it much further. A remarkable woman like her deserves and is worth every bit of your time in that regard.

So. I'm off to do some gaming and hopefully, get some time in on PUBG too.

It was a bit of a stressful day during the last part, but I kept it mostly together. I hope that your day was a good one, and that your weekend is great.

I'll see you on Monday :-)

Oh yeah. Here's one with all three rows of the main roster of Shhhh! Digital Media characters. Look forward to more artwork this coming week. 




Have a good one! ;-)

I'm an Atheist that leans toward Buddhism and Taoism. I'm not a security guard and have never worked as a security guard in my life.

Credits and attribution:

Artwork: Amy Wong, Wendy Pusey, Ghastly, Birdman, Brian Joseph Johns, Daz3D, Unreal Engine...

Tools: Daz3D, Corel Painter, Adobe Photoshop, Lightwave 3D, Blender, Stable Diffusion (Easy Diffusion distribution), InstantID, Sadtalker, Google Colaboratory, Microsoft Copilot (Windows 11), Hitfilm, Borderline Obsession...

InstantID by: Wang, Qixun and Bai, Xu and Wang, Haofan and Qin, Zekui and Chen, Anthony. Research Paper Title: InstantID - Zero-shot Identity-Preserving Generation in Seconds.

Sadtalker by: Zhang, Wenxuan and Cun, Xiaodong and Wang, Xuan and Zhang, Yong and Shen, Xi and Guo, Yu and Shan, Ying and Wang, Fei.
Research Paper Title: SadTalker: Learning Realistic 3D Motion Coefficients for Stylized Audio-Driven Single Image Talking Face Animation.

Gratitude: Our Mentors, Senseis, Sifus, Sebomnims, lifetime inspirations, family, friends, the Nomads (ask Stanton about that one), the Music, the Movies, the Theatre, the Arts, ASMR, (both YouTube and Bilibili and the many other creators on those platforms), the Gaming and Developer communities and of course, the audience.

Martial Arts (in the words of real experts and at least one comedian): https://brucelee.com (home of the real Dragon and an entire family of inspirations), http://iwco.online International Wing Chun Organization (International presence of a very scalable intensity martial art, protected and developed by Shaolin Nun Ng Mui), https://iogkf.com International Okinawan Goju-Ryu Karatedo Federation (even Hanshi had his teachers), https://itftkd.sport International Taekwondo Federation (Here there be Taegers), https://tangsoodoworld.com Tang Soo Do World (the path of Grandmaster Chuck Norris), https://www.aikido-international.org International Aikido Federation (how else would Navy Chef Steven Seagal liberate a Nimitz Class Aircraft Carrier from a team of hijackers?), https://www.stqitoronto.com Shaolin Temple Quanfa Institute (The City Of Toronto's own Shaolin Temple), https://www.enterthedojoshow.com Master Ken's Ameri-Te-Do presence (If we can't laugh at ourselves, then we can at least laugh the loudest at others, and other Zen)

Special thanks to Aitrepreneur, Hugging Face and the YouTube educational content producers, including those catering to the AI content production pipeline and of course AlphaSignal.

Something to give you perspective: The very first teacher had no formal education, didn't graduate and was self taught, but only because they had no other choice. We do.

This content is entirely produced in Toronto, Ontario, Canada at 200 Sherbourne Street Suite 701 under the Shhhh! Digital Media banner.