RANT: Dorothy Looking Over the Rainbow - Again

It has been about two weeks since my last blog. I was deliberating about what topic to write about - the ongoing crisis in Syria/ Libya/ every corner of the Arab world, the debacle with the Gaza flotilla stuck in Greece, the Greek financial crisis, the looming Portuguese financial crisis, even a rave about how Ferrari finally won a Grand Prix again yesterday...

And then I logged onto Blogger.

And what do I find? A whole new lay-out, a whole new look, new buttons to figure out, everything unfamiliar to me yet again and a whole new bloody reason to get annoyed by yet another turn on this infernal Road from (or to?) Hell known as the Information Age.

Why this need for CONSTANT change in this day and age? Yes, I know it's petty of me and it's just a 'new look' Blogger and hardly life-ending stuff, so what's the big deal, right? It isn't a big deal, in and of itself, of course. But what it is is yet another new quirk, another new kink in the already destabilizing world that is Technology [drum roll]. Cellphones, Internet, apps (schmapps, for all I care), even a simple blogging site - this constant state of flux that never allows one to be at ease, to be in a comfort zone, to have instant recognition. 

Just as I get used to a certain layout and way to get around Windows, so it changes. Just as I get used to a certain version of name-your-pick-of-annoying-must-have-utterly-essential-software, so it changes. Change, change, bloody change. Incessantly.



I hate this constant, neverending need of this often vile, increasingly 'organic' thing called Technology [drum roll ad nauseam] to keep updating, to keep changing, to keep altering, to keep reinventing itself that with which I have become familiar and, yes, comfortable.

It's like this modern era, beholden as it is to Technology, is Sybil with seven different personalities. And that's all seven personalities restless and reinventing themselves every other week. Demented as all hell.

I find myself yearning ever more and more for a time when things don't need to constantly change just to prove their worth or their staying power. And that includes simply how a bloody blog template works. Because I honestly find this relentless chopping and changing exhausting - and so futile.

Is this the mental 'environment' that advocates like Adbusters talk about and contend that we are having violated in this modern 'information' era? That feeling of having your mental space bombarded by so many stupid little changes and images and other clutter that actually add very little, if any, real value to one's life or wellbeing?

I have lived in five different countries and even more different cities, get itchy if I have to commit to a gym membership for more than a year, get bored by routine a trifle easily and can hardly be called averse to change in my life. I know change can be a good thing, even a great thing.

But sometimes change that looks different but actually means just more of the same thing is change that can irk and irritate and ultimately even alienate. It's not change for the better, but merely change for the sake of change.

This empty, soulless change with multiple personality disorder is the epitome of our desperate, perpetually adolescent age - an age that is never content with what is, is constantly having to re-invent itself and that assumes anything new and revamped simply has to be a good thing. Like, it has to be, right?



This empty, soulless change is Dorothy perpetually looking over that rainbow and always wishing it'll be better some day. Pity Dorothy.

Do you get my point?

RAVE: Rise, Internet, O' Powerful One

This was a week when, perhaps more than ever before, it really became crystal clear to me JUST how powerful the Internet has become in the world.



The 'power of the Internet' is stating the obvious, of course. It's a cliche. And I've known it for a long time too, no doubt. But I refer not to the 'power' that is social networking horrors like Facebook (blecchh) or the 'power' that is being inundated with endless, often mindless e-mails on a daily basis. Not even to the more benevolent power that is being able to do research and learn new things on the Internet like never before. No, not at all.

Rather, I refer to the power of an Internet that allows real change, on the global, the national and the personal levels - and more so than ever before:

* Wikileaks: Global repercussions, no doubt about it. Whistleblowing is as old as politics, and it was what made newspapers once exciting, but nothing on the scale that Wikileaks was able to unleash in 2010. And continues to do so in 2011. Hurrah!

* Tunisia: National repercussions, possibly even regional. Tunisia has been oppressed for over twenty years. And it all exploded in a matter of weeks, even days - the old dictator fled to that oasis for all despots, Saudi Arabia, a national government of unity had to be convened, free elections will be held in less than two months - and the old party has literally been disbanded. All due to people power - with online networking as the catalyst. And the rest of the Maghreb and Middle East elites looks on nervously - very nervously.

* A Brooklyn baby: A woman has her baby girl stolen from a Brooklyn hospital in 1987. A full twenty-three years later, the stolen baby girl, now a grown woman, searches online for clues as to why her 'mother' cannot provide her with a birth certificate. The woman is suspicious and turns to the place where she feels she might get answers - the Internet. She searches and comes across a website with a picture of a baby girl missing since 1987 - a baby girl that looks exactly like her when she was a baby. She contacts the authorities, gets a blood test and, like that, is identified as the stolen baby and finally reunited with her real mother.

For all its faults, for all its inevitable abilities to be a platform for the bad, the ugly and the downright horrible, the Internet is still a life-changing, unbelievably powerful tool that, when used right, is simply exceptional.

It is the technological advance of our time, the great leap forward. Akin in the modern era to electricity and the telephone and television.

May it continue to be a conduit for positive, life-altering change - at every level, great and small.

Do you get my point?

RAVE: The Dunning-Kruger Effect

The 'Dunning-Kruger Effect' - ever heard of it? If you have, you are way ahead of me and, yet again, I must sheepishly admit that I am way behind the curve on some important concepts out there in the big, wide world. But, hey, I'd like to think I'm catching up.

I found out about it today. And I'm over the moon. So what is the theory behind it? Well, at this point I am going to pillage directly from Wikipedia (I know, I know - Wikipedia should always be a suspect source of research, it's not true academic research, etc etc - I know, I know. But I have corroborated the following statement with cross-referencing of other, more 'bona fide' references online):

"The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which "people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it".[as per Kruger, Justin; David Dunning - 1999"Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 77 (6): 1121–34] The unskilled therefore suffer from illusory superiority, rating their own ability as above average, much higher than in actuality; by contrast the highly skilled underrate their abilities, suffering from illusory inferiority. This leads to a perverse result where less competent people will rate their own ability higher than more competent people. It also explains why actual competence may weaken self-confidence because competent individuals falsely assume that others have an equivalent understanding."

Basically, the theory postulates that the more incompetent a person is, the more they overestimate their actual competence. And, better still, the exact opposite is absolutely true, i.e. competent people are the ones most likely to doubt their abilities.

I'm over the moon because I am consistently and constantly amazed (and appalled) at how many people I come across who are decidedly incompetent (i.e. plain sub-standard) at what they do or what they say, and yet they're so confident of their abilities. And, even more galling to me, is how often these incompetents are doing very well in life, thank you very much! That offends me to the core. And I can only put it down to the sheer mediocrity that pervades society today on so many different levels. More than ever before, I strongly suspect.

It is also here that I immediately wish to strike down any suspicions that I am just a frustrated wannabe hack who is envious of the success of others (i.e. these pervasive incompetents). I have no holier-than-thou complex nor any instant, knee-jerk rejection of others. Not at all. I am in awe of genuine talent and hard work and perseverance in other people, famous or not. What I'm NOT in awe of and what I DO resent is how much mediocrity and, yes, incompetence I see around me and how often it gets success and the respect of others. I cannot abide by that.

Without wishing to sound pedantic or make myself out to be some 'misunderstood genius' (which I know I am not), I did nevertheless find much comfort in the flip-side of the Dunning-Kruger study, i.e. namely that those who are competent are also those who most undervalue their worth, competence, etc. And I do really relate to that. I am consistently told by others about my talents, potential, etc, yet I do realize that I can often be beset by self-doubt and a real questioning of these talents others speak of. I know that what I do I do with competence and a striving for excellence, whatever my personal doubts. That I do know. Which is why the incompetence of others irks me no bloody end!

I believe that the Dunning-Kruger Effect goes to the very core of what can be so bad and so crippling in modern society, in any given field or human endeavour.

The paraphrased words of the philosopher Bertrand Russell (with whom I share a birthday, by the way ;-) are a fitting way to end this post:

"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.”