| (no subject) |
[Nov. 13th, 2009|01:54 pm] |
Dear Music Industry,
I listen to music. I appreciate the effort and creativity that goes into making it. I believe myself to be an ethical person, and recognize other people as moral agents. In recent years the phenomenon of downloading music has become pervasive and seemingly problematic. Some regard it as theft, while others consider the idea of intellectual property absurd. I believe in supporting the artists whose music I love. I have no problems at all with parting with my money to listen to the songs I love.
As someone who lives in a country with little or no legal ramifications, I freely admit to downloading music. Almost the entirety of my music collection has been obtained through peer-to-peer file sharing. I would be more than willing to pay for much of this music, but I fear there are a lot of barriers and contentions that I have that prevent me from doing such The following is a list of demands that I feel must be met before I would give any consideration to regularly paying for my music.
1. Allow the artist full ownership of their work and any right pertaining to it. Due to the contracts offered musicians by recording companies, the musicians must forfeit their work and any entitlement to it. They forfeit creative control and distribution, as well as any potential associations.
2. Compensate the musicians fairly. Far too long the recording companies have unfairly compensated the musicians for their work. Many musicians see less than a dollar for every album sold – albums that have often fetched $20 or more at music stores. While I believe that recording companies are entitled to a fair portion of profit from music sales, I believe this amount to be disproportionate to their contribution. The artist is the one who makes the music, and the artist should be the one who sees the majority of the money made from album sales.
3. Get rid of the copyright restrictions on CDs and other portable media. In this modern day and age, computers are being used for many people as their main media center – yet if I purchased a CD today at a music store, I would not be able to copy the files off of the disk and put it onto my computer. This prevents me from listening to the music I purchased in the way that I feel I am entitled to. I would also be prevented from making backups and thus extending the life of the CD. When I purchase a CD, I do not believe I am buying into a lease of any sort, not do I feel that I should be told which medium I should be restricted to, to listen to it. The current Digital Rights Management (DRM) on media makes it so that only the honest get punished. There are ways to bypass the locks that are put on media files, and as long as I have to pursue ways to bypass what I believe should not be there in the first place, I will forfeit the difficulties altogether and simply obtain my music through file sharing.
In a time where outdated models still govern how media is properly distributed, and archaic persons desperately try to smother reform, social rebellion is the only currency I have against a current of unethical policies and practices. You who accuse me of theft and other possible unethical acts do so as hypocrites and only to maintain the obscene profits you have maintained in the past. You claim that you suffer billions of dollars in lost sales due to file sharing, and point to that as the problem. I won’t argue that file sharing is responsible for your lost profits. What I will do is argue that it’s a solution to the problem of business models that essentially rape the musician and discard him or her when they are done. Musicians are not resources to be used for maximum utility and tossed out when that utility has been exhausted. I, for one, hope you continue to see billions more in lost sales, until the day when you are forced to reform the suffocating contracts you offer to musicians.
Until that day comes, and you continue to fight against the evolution of technology, I will download music to ensure you don’t get a single cent from me. The more you seek to reform law around such practices, the more you will see those of us who listen to music and believe in the rights of musicians stand up against your tyranny and fight back. I assure you in a day and age where people know no life without a computer, you are unmatched. Until that day of reformation comes, I will do all I can to prevent further exploitation of artists, and support artists such as Radiohead, who understand the need to appeal to the intrinsic morality that human beings have rather than treating us all as criminals. As an ethical person I cannot condone the actions of greedy corporations whose bottom line is profit by any means necessary. As an ethical person, I express my utter refusal to support such institutions and do so through file sharing. It may be a trivial act, but it’s the only currency I have to communicate my sentiments. |
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| (no subject) |
[Nov. 7th, 2008|10:48 pm] |
I won't be using Livejournal anymore. At least I won't be using it to update - not that I did all that much anyways. I'll still follow the communities and people on my flist. If any of you are interested in keeping up-to-date on the goings on in my life, feel free to check out my new blog site:
http://philomancer.blogspot.com/
I wasn't sure if I was going to use it much. Hell, I started it solely on a whim. But now it appears that I have a lot to blog about, so why not go with it. Anyways, that's it. |
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| (no subject) |
[Sep. 3rd, 2008|12:02 am] |
First day back at school. Still not quite over this depression thing. It kind of just hovers there, and I have some good days and some bad days. Today was a mixture of both. I was actually pretty down emotionally for most of the day, althought I managed to get a few things taken care of. I only had one class today, and it was mostly review as it was one of the classes that I dropped out of in March/April. It was also a short class, so that gave me some time to do some running around.
I set up a couple of appointments, one with a peer counsellor so I can talk with someone about my emotional and mental state; the other with the finances office to figure out some things. I also talked with an old instructor and asked if I could audit one of her classes so I could brush up on my formal logic before I retake the second part again next semester. She was totally fine with that. I'm also considering getting involved in an extracurricular activity like peer support. It involves getting to know international students. Might be fun. I am going to steer clear of the Nexus this year. That's an added burden I don't need right now.
On another note, I think I've finally come to terms with my application to a Freemason lodge and the belief in God requirement. I was lying in bed the other night thinking about the variations in beliefs, namely, the difference between a supreme being, a higher power, etc. I was thinking that I definitely don't believe in a supreme being, and I didn't think I believed in any kind of supernatural power, so I was kind of stuck. The last thing I want to do is follow through with my application dishonestly. Then I started thinking about what I DO believe in.
I believe in intention. I believe in effort. I believe there's a synergism that occurs when intention and effort have the same goal. I believe that I can be better than I am now. I believe that the goal or the person I am trying to become is best understood personified. Therefore, I believe that I can become a better person through the synergism of effort and intention. Therefore, the personification of my synergistic potential is what I believe in, and what I shall hereafter refer to as my supreme being or higher power. This concept lays to rest any remaining inner conflict I have with my Freemason application. Mind you, this is about a week after I discovered what a pantheist was and how much I relaae to that, so this isn't too much of an additional leap.
On another note, my student loan hasn't come in yet, and it's beginning to get worrisome. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 10th, 2008|10:43 pm] |
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Of all the discrepancies I see in my life, none is as great as that of my secular, rational, atheist perspective and my intuitive sense of peace. It seems that no matter which western religion you consider they all claim that there is no peace without god. Now whether or not they claim exclusive peace with their exclusive gods I'll never really know, but they all seem to make the same claim. I find myself experiencing the same kind of peace I did when I was religious, but without the sense of guilt that was attached to it. If I am to be as objective as I was in searching for answers to the inconsistencies I saw in religion, I must admit that there is this sense of someone still watching over me, some entity still guiding me - and I feel like I would be doing it a great disservice by ignoring or dismissing it. I sense a great deal of patience with and interest in me, genuine concern over my well-being. I don't know what it is but it's as real to me as anything I see. If my epistemological position is that I can't know who is right and who is wrong and thereby default to no theism whatsoever, it would be unfair of me to ignore my experiences. Part of me wants to once again consider that all of this is a mental fiction, but another part of me just screams that these experiences are so much bigger than I am. I don't know, maybe there really is a god. That seems to be the only sensible position to take, because if I am on a path to truth, I cannot really in good sense readily dismiss some things. If I do I may very well be missing out on the path to the truth. And that is what ultimately matters to me, and what I am ultimately searching for: truth, in whatever form it exists. It seems to me that I only have two tools by which I can discern truth, and they are reason and experience. I cannot exclusively cling to one at the expense of the other, and so I must find some way for them to be harmonious with one another. I don't believe they can by nature be so contradictory to each other, so I suppose a good way to measure real truth is to recognize when my reason and my experience both tell me the same thing, both lead me to the same answer. Therein lies not the truth but the means by which to recognize it, for truth exists independent of us. One might even argue that truth governs us, and if it does, I want to know it so I can embrace it and serve it. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 3rd, 2008|10:11 pm] |
So with each passing day I find myself embracing the idea of atheism more and more. Sometimes it's hard because some of the people I deal with are not ones I will readily admit such a thing. I suppose over time it will become a natural extension of who I am and what I do. I am still fairly open-minded about many things. I suppose I've defaulted to the idea that I won't reject theism if there is ever a particular model that doesn't result in intellectual absurdities. Since no single theism exists I have a difficult time believing in anything greater than the here and now. We're born, we live, we die - something very contrary to what I grew up believing. Yet amidst all this doubt there is still this feeling of something or someone watching over me, looking out for me.
I had a conversation with my mother earlier today - which, by the way, she seems to be more accepting of things and less judgmental. We were talking about intuition and I guess my position on what intuition really is, is that it's nothing more than a sub-conscious mind communicating what it knows. Again it's one of those intellectual default positions I have to take due to lacking epistemological evidence. One person's intuition might communicate something completely opposite of someone else's intuition, so there can't really be this objective intuition that is somehow above and beyond human error. Knowing such, I can't really say that this feeling of something or someone watching over me is anything other than a lingering projection of a mental fiction that has been years in the making. Sure it's comforting, but is it really real? Who knows.
The other thing I've been noticing is this sense of synchronicity. I'm not talking about cogs in a machine all working together, but about the universal synchronicity that seems to guide people's lives. I sense it, it's there, and it may very well be that mental fiction, but things just seem too coincidental, too... guided from my point of view. It's kind of refreshing to see things like this happen after I've removed my dogmatic lenses and decided to view the world as it presents itself, not my romantic interpretations of it.
You know, if our consciousness is nothing more than an emergent quality of a complex organism, then why would the universe be void of something like it when it is infinitely more complex than we are? Perhaps this thing, this entity that people refer to as "God" is the emergent consciousness of the universe. Perhaps it is just as aware of us as we are of the individual atoms that make up our body. Perhaps it is less intelligent than that; perhaps it is proportionately more intelligent than we are as it is more complex than we are. Perhaps its true intelligence lies not in knowing all things, but in how it responds to existential consequences. Do we view ourselves as being responsible to the atoms, molecules, and cells that make up our body? Do we see them as belonging to us? Or do we have some kind of obligation to them, to keep them safe and healthy?
Not only do many of us neglect this "responsibility" we have to the matter that makes up our body, we neglect the liberty that other bodies have (by war, or negligence, or may other things). Maybe this universal, emergent consciousness is more intelligent than we because it sees itself as being obligated to the parts that contribute to its existence. Or maybe this universal, emergent consciousness has little more consciousness than an infant or an animal. Such, I suppose, is pure speculation, but one could argue that it can be empirically inferred or induced. The bottom line, I guess, is that it's so freeing to no longer be restrained in dogmatic chains, and contemplations such as these, while supposedly futile, are entertaining and fulfilling because it's not really about having the answers anymore, but about the search itself. |
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| Confessions of a closet atheist |
[May. 16th, 2008|08:37 am] |
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If mankind can somehow survive this era of its history, it will no doubt look back and see religion as one of its greatest blunders. So let us be governed by reason – for if all else is but a testament to man’s basest nature, reason elevates and redeems the foulest of earth’s creations. Why, then, should we forsake those who utilize our one saving grace over the perpetuation of a myth? |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 8th, 2008|05:39 am] |
I've done a lot of soul searching the last little while. So many questions with hardly any satisfactory answers. I've decided that I have no good reason to continue believing many of the things that I do. It's difficult - at times impossible - to be an educated person and still subscribe to religious dogma.
There has been for a long time now a niggling in the back of my mind a criticism of Christianity - yet I was somehow able to justify my own Mormon beliefs by separating it from my criticisms of Christianity. No more. My criticisms now extend to ideas such as the necessity of a saviour figure, the idea that there is some grand plan for me, or even that the universe has some higher purpose.
I suppose atheism is the next logical evolutionary step, but I can stomach that about as much as I can stomach Mormonism at this point. To me it's too reactionary; to me it's just as arrogant to claim my dogmatic monopoly as it is to dismiss all dogmas with certainty. The bottom line is that I really don't know anything. I don't know if there's a god; I don't know if there isn't one. No one can know for certain, and I'm okay with that.
I haven't told anyone yet (until now, but it's somehow easier to say this online than it is to tell anyone in person). I know I face some hard times ahead. My mother in particular is going to freak. It really bothers me how much she can turn a blind eye to critical thought for her own religion, yet use that same tool of reason for every other belief system out there. There's a problem with any system which cannot stand up to scrutiny. That's the funny thing about truth: it survives scrutiny.
I think the biggest reason why we have religion is the thought of how insignificant we are really scares us. That's why people refuse to embrace evolution, because it means that we have to accept the idea that we may not be the end result, that we're just some indeterminate, microscopic step amidst a huge continual process. I suppose it speaks volumes of us - and of how much we really are still evolving animals - when we inflate our self-importance. In all the grandiosity of the universe, the billions and billions of systems, galaxies, and possibly universes out there, and we still think we really matter.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not tearing down humanity by any means, at least not in a way that isn't deserved. I think humanity has many redeemable traits, but at the same time it has just as many faults. Perhaps our two greatest sins are arrogance and pettiness. The irony is how large of a scale our pettiness can become. What was probably fighting over food a couple million years ago has evolved into wars over ideas. Instead of killing each other over limited resources, we kill each other because some of us have different ideas of God, nature, or what our purpose here is. In that lies a sin greater than any animal could commit. If there is ever a reason we deserve to be wipes out entirely it would be because of our intolerance. Yet if we can somehow survive this stage of evolution I think that humanity has a much greater destiny waiting for it - and it is in this hope that my lost faith is beginning to find a new home: humanity's future.
I think a lot of people, upon coming to the realization of humanity's pettiness and arrogance, want to separate themselves from our species. Not I. Why would I want to deny what I am? Yes embracing humanity is scary when we look at what we are capable of, but that's only seeing one side. Humanity is nothing more than a collective extension of each of us. We are all capable of love and hate, of joy and sorrow. We separate ourselves from the criminals and social deviants like they are some plague, yet we ask for tolerance for our shortcomings. We judge and ask to not be judged. Herein lies our third fatal flaw I think: our hypocrisy. But really, our hypocrisy is just an extension of our arrogance and pettiness.
Truth is I really don't know if there's a saviour figure or not. I'm not going to claim with conviction that I know there is, and I'm not going to deny with equal certainty that there isn't. What I refuse to believe is that amidst the thousands and thousands of different religions, dogmas, and spiritual systems, I will go to an eternal hell created by a loving, tolerant, and just god should I find myself in the wrong one. What I am okay with is living by correct principles, not a suffocating dogma. |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 11th, 2008|03:50 am] |
Saw m y doctor today. I told him what I have been experiencing, and he pretty much confirmed a bipolar diagnosis. This is both a disappointment and relief. Disappointment that I will proabably be dealing with this to some extent for the rest of my life, and relieved that it is my brain, not me, that has something wrong with it. My doctor was kind enough to sign a medical release form for me so that I could withdraw from this semester. Yeah, I might lose out on a semester's work, but I have no problems doing it over again if it means that the marks I would have gotten aren't included in my GPA. I would most likely have been facing a couple of failures.
On another note, I feel like I'm in Fight Club. You know, the beginning part where Edward Norton's character describes his insomnia? Well, that's kind of like me except that I doubt my mind will split and create a Tyler Durden - I do manage to get some sleep each night. Sometimes it feels a bit like narcalepsy too. Tonight I was watching TV after sending my niece to a church activity at around 5:30, and lo and behold she's standing in front my me telling me she just got home and that she's going to bed because it's a half hour past her bedtime (9:30). I was a bit confused at first. It's a good thing she knows what's expected of her!
So, I have an appointment next week to see a psychiatrist. He's basically seeing me to confirm the diagnosis and to talk to me about medications, medications which I am incredibly reluctant to take. I'd just as soon pursue cognitive therapy or more natural remedies. Perhaps even do some day treatment or something. If nothing else I'm apprecaiting my time away from the stress of school. |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 7th, 2008|12:55 am] |
I'm burned out. I've submitted my request for deposit refund to Camosun, and I've cancelled the Spring and Summer classes I was going to take.
Also, I think I might be bipolar, which kind of explains the first paragraph of this update. I haven't gone to class for the past week or two, and I may not pass one or more of my classes if I am unable to find a way to cope with upcoming finals. |
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| (no subject) |
[Mar. 11th, 2008|09:30 pm] |
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Dropped $300 today on my Spring and Summer courses. I'll be doing Physics in the Spring and Chemistry in the Summer. Hopefully I survive it. Then, it's off to UVic. |
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| (no subject) |
[Mar. 6th, 2008|02:46 am] |
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So, I shaved my head - and not just "I grabbed the clippers and gave myself a close haircut" but a "razor and shaving cream" bald. |
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| (no subject) |
[Feb. 22nd, 2008|08:38 pm] |
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I managed to pick up some notebook memory tonight. 2G for <$80 - notebook memory to boot. I'm a happy camper. :) |
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| (no subject) |
[Jan. 25th, 2008|05:33 pm] |
I gots me a set of Henckels!!!
That is all. |
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| (no subject) |
[Dec. 23rd, 2007|03:03 am] |
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So, finals have come and gone, and I find myself so relieved by it. What a rough semester! I ended up with two Bs, an A-, an A, and an A+ – not my best collection of marks by any means. But, I shall endeavour to do better in the future. This next semester will see my taking Research Methods in Psychology, Biological Psychology, History of Psychology, Introductory Symbolic Logic II, and British Literature 1700-1900; after that, I still need two more Biology courses. Then, I’m looking at three years non-stop at the minimum just to get my undergraduate – mind you, it’s no ordinary undergraduate. |
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| (no subject) |
[Dec. 10th, 2007|11:00 pm] |
So, another final done. Three more to go. This morning was kind of rough. I don't know if my brain was turned off or was on strike, but it took me an hour-and-a-half to answer three questions - questions in a class that has easily been my easiest course. But, I slowly worked through it, and I hope I got 100%.
I got together with some students in my Sociology class. We have been given an option of doing our final test in a group. So a bunch of us got together to study. I wasn't normally going to do that, but it turned out for the best. I don't know if I could have been fully prepared otherwise. This divies up the burden.
I also applied to UVic today - for which I'm $74 lighter. I spoke with an academic advisor. She really helped me to figure out my educational goals. Apparently doing a double honours programs is possible. So I'm going to see if I can do a double honours with distinction in English and Philosophy. I think I only understand the tip of the iceburg as to how much work is really going to be involved with it, but I'm still going to brave it. The good news is that all of my courses will transfer over. I'll be looking at ~3 additional years depending on how many summer terms I do.
So, now I'm going to bed so I can wake up early for my final exam tomorrow. |
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| (no subject) |
[Dec. 7th, 2007|11:59 pm] |
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Well, classes came and classes went. In a lot of ways this semester has gone by in a blink of an eye, and in a lot of ways this semester has taken an eternity. I feel like I've missed so much. Having pneumonia for a month really hit me, and missing four weeks of classes injured my marks a great deal. Of course I still passed, but I am faced with the possibility of some Bs and maybe a C or two. I think there may still be some classes that I get my standard A/A+, but not as many as I would like. In some ways I feel cheated. I feel like I haven't learned anything, even though my marks would indicate otherwise. But memorizing some material at the neglect of other material is not how I learn, it's how I regurgitate. Or maybe it's how I cope with what I had to deal with. Who knows. Normally I would be so frustrated at how this semester has gone down. But the older I get the more accepting I become of things outside of my realm of control. I may not have learned as much as I would have liked, but I am learning a lot more than I would like with being a parent. Wow! Talk about being tested and tried and then tested some more. I just finished writing a 2000 word essay not more than a half-hour ago. I still have four finals to write. Two of them I fear, one of them I'll breeze through, and the other I feel I have enough time to study for. Whatever happens, here's hoping for the best, and a fresh start in January. |
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