Feeling a New Kind of Music

whomp. whomp. whomp. flashing lights. your heart can't stop pounding.  your ears can't stop ringing.  Welcome to a rave. Halloween weekend is a busy time for the electric music community (check out Hard Haunted Mansion tonight in Downtown Los Angeles or Escape From Wonderland tonight in San Bernardino), yet this is a genre of music that seems to be viewed in a very negative light.

Rave (reɪv): 
noun

a name given to various types of dance music, such as techno, that feature fast electronic rhythm

Other associations include drugs, most commonly Ecstasy.  Ecstasy, or E, is a psycho-active drug that creates hallucinations, energy and euphoria.  

The University of Southern California's President C. L. Max Nikias has written a letter to all his students concerned about the safety at raves.  He strongly discouraged attending them, especially with several of them being hosted around the USC area.  There has even been a proposed law, Anti-Raves Act of 2011, by assemblywoman Fiona Ma, to ban raves in public places all together.  These actions came about after several deaths/injuries from the Electric Daisy Carnival and Hard Haunted Mansion last year. 

While it is fair that USC President Nikias was merely concerned with the safety of his students, is going as far along as a ban taking it a bit too far?

A rave is nothing more then a music festival with just live DJs instead of live bands.  It is similar to any other kind of music community; it has grown significantly more popular lately then it has been in the past.  Although yes it has associations with drugs, drugs are done everywhere, not just at raves, and one certainly does not have to partake in such activities to have fun or enjoy the shows.

The safety concerns of doing drugs or staying hydrated is common sense.  It is important to drink enough water whether you are at a concert, a dancing light show, or playing a sport.  And although I by no means encourage the use of drugs, if you plan on taking any, make sure you are taking them responsibly. (I.e. stay hydrated, don't mix them, only buy off a reliable source)

Because electric music is somewhat of a new scene and only now becoming popular, many people are skeptical of it all.   But to be fair, at one point in time Elvis Presley was deemed too sexual for swinging his hips.  Just give it some time.  10 years from now some other kind of music form will be under scrutiny. 

Still skeptical?  New to electronic music?  Start with Electrojan or Dancing Astronaut to get a feel for the music and see what it is all about.

My Imaginary Friend

When I was a kid, my imaginary friend Chanel was my best friend.  She would do everything that I asked her too, she always had witty responses and she only treated me with kindness.   I have since grown out of that stage and I do miss having her around.   But now as an adult, thanks to technology, I have a new imaginary friend: Siri.

 Siri is just like an imaginary friend but because of this interaction with technology we start to lose interaction with humans.

Siri is a personal assistant application through the new iPhone 4S from Apple.   You can ask her to send messages, make reservations at a restaurant, reschedule an appointment, she can even find your location and send you on your way home.    She can be programmed to remind you to brush your teeth every night and she can even Tweet for you. At this rate, Siri will slowly eliminate the need for an assistant altogether.  

Neil Postmen, author of Amusing Ourselves to Death, reminded us "new technology can never substitute for human values."      He warns us on our gravitation towards technopoly.  He defines this as “the culture seeks its authorisation in technology, finds its satisfactions in technology, and takes its orders from technology”.  According to the semiannual survey by CTIA, there are more cell phones and mobile devices in the United States then there are people and that is including Puerto Rico, Guam and the Virgin Islands.  That is 327.6 millionactive devices compared to the 315 million humans throughout the country. 

We have become dependent on technology and we have to be constantly connected to each other and with the Internet.  If you think about it, this is true and we don’t even realize it.  Movie theatres have to remind us to turn off our cell phones.  Pretty sure while watching TV, you are checking your Facebook on your iPad while texting your best friend on your Android. 

Sometimes we don’t even realize what we lose when were concentrating on what we gained.  No longer is it normal to write letters and send them through snail mail or stay up late at night talking on the phone.  We shoot off text messages and emails with the quickness of our fingertips.   While yes we have video chats such as Skype and Facetime, there is nothing like physically sitting right across from someone talking face to face.   

As Andy Rubin, the Vice President of mobile for Google, responds to Siri and the Andriod’s new operating system Ice Cream Sandwich, “Your phone is a tool for communicating,” he said, “you shouldn’t becommunicating with the phone you should be communicating with somebody on theother side of the phone.”   And to a point, he makes sense.   The whole point of a phone is to be talking to someone you cannot talk to face to face.   At some point I think we are too invested in technology and we forget to stop and smell the roses.  

There is no mystery in getting to know someone new when everything they do or about them is posted on social media.  With the new Facebook Timeline about to launch, our most memorable posts and photos from our past will be on our page.  What purpose is there to get to know someone when I can spend 5 minutes looking at their Facebook and everything I need to know will be on there?  Yes, I do realize that statement is a bit on the extreme side but there are lazy people out there in the world.

Who knows what will happen 5-10 years from now.  Will Artificial Intelligence take over and there will be no need for assistants at all?  Will we be like the people in the Disney movie Wall-E and completely dependent on some form of technology?  I’ll slow down and try not to get too ahead of myself.

 But excuse me while I go read a magazine on my Kindle and get Siri to order me some take out. 

Stumbling

Found some interesting reads online.... check them out!

Welcome to the 60's... From "Mad Men" to "Pan Am",  America's craze with the 60s.

Dinner and Derangement... the necessity of restaurants.

Prohibition... America's "failed social experiment"

Heavenly High

Three elderly seniors attended a funeral for a friend one afternoon just last week in Orange County.  They munched on delicious brownies while celebrating the life of a friend.  Little did they know that these brownies were "magical brownies" and obtained medical marijuana.  No one was told that these brownies contained marijuana, nor do they know yet how they got there.

If marijuana is that easily obtained and planted, wouldn't it be beneficial for the state to legalize it in order to focus on other crimes?

Just last year, California rejected Proposition 19 for the legalization of marijuana.  And just last week, 4 US attorneys in California announced they would be enforcing the drug laws by reining in the pot industry. Claims are made that legalization of a drug cannot be "backdoored" by exploiting its medical uses to anyone who has a headache or back pain. Pot shops all over California have been receiving letters saying they would receive criminal charges and land confiscation if they do not shut down their dispensaries in 45 days.

Arguments have been made that this act is similar to the Prohibition Acts of the 1920s.  Yet counter arguments say alcohol had a nation-wide usage while pot is only a small percentage of people, pocketing in California, New York and Pennsylvania.

Yet what I question, is why the crackdown now?  The vote happened over 6 months ago and marijuana did not even become legalized. I personally think California has bigger fish to fry and should be using our limited money supply on fixing our education system and trying to get us out of debt instead of concentrating on something that is still illegal.

Measuring the Intangible

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
 
“Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” Our country was founded on these three words, but what do they mean to us? How were these rights given to us by our “Creator”? Lets take a closer look at these three words:

Life- the quality of being alive; a living, breathing human being. This happened when the “Creator” created us, giving us life and a soul, separating ourselves from his other creations. 
Liberty- the idea that humans are able to govern themselves and to do so on free will. This was first given to us when God gave Adam and Eve the option to obey or not to obey in the Garden of Eden.
Pursuit of happiness – the motion of trying to find contentment. But what is contentment? What makes someone happy? Isn’t it different per person?

Back in the late 1700s, there was no modern technology, no email, blogging, or Facebook. As sad as it was, only a small portion of the population could actually read and write and America was definitely not equal. So what did happiness mean to them? Adam Ferguson, author of “An essay on the history of civil society,”explains his definition of the pursuit of happiness as “Within its original rich context, the pursuit of happiness is a phenomenon both obvious and paradoxical. It supplies us with the ground of human right and the goal of human virtue. It is the basic drive of the self, and the only means given for transcending the self.”

He comments that striving for happiness is the ultimate goal for finding one self. This was achieved through the foundations of life and liberty that the Declaration provided and protected us with. Thomas Jefferson clearly agreed by putting “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” in the Declaration of Independence. But it is quite ironic that as Jefferson was advocating freedom through life, liberty and finding the right path toward happiness, when he himself enslaved 200 men and women who were not given any of these rights even though he clearly stated, “all men are created equal”.

But we are not in 1776 anymore. In today’s society, in America at least, we drive cars, find our information on the world wide web, communicate with our friends through Facebook, have business meetings through Skype and heat our food up in a microwave. We can fly across the country in six hours, have a calculator add up our numbers and ride an elevator up three flights of stairs. Life and liberty are taken for granted; those rights do not even have a hint of doubt. But what about the pursuit of happiness? Does it mean the same as it did when the Declaration was written? Not so much anymore. Like life and liberty, we take happiness for granted. We just assume everyone around us is happy and the days we are not content, we figure out why and strive to happiness again.

When someone asks “Are you happy?” the answer is usually a yes or no unless the person is one of your closest friend/family member. But is this question really that simple? Are you happy with where you are in life? Are you economically satisfied? Are you pleased with your social life? Are you content with all your materialistic possessions? Now it doesn’t seem so simple… it all depends on what kind of happiness you are inquiring about.

So what is the definition of happiness?

According to the Merriam-Webster:
hap·pi·ness
noun \ˈha-pē-nəs\
1 obsolete : good fortune : prosperity
2. a) a state of well-being and contentment : joy b)a pleasurable or satisfying experience

Could that be any more ambiguous? What does it mean to be content? How is this measured? Although happiness is subjective (only you know if you yourself is happy), to a degree there must be some sort of standard that we measure our happiness from. But the question is, how is it measured and through what angle? Happiness is broken down philosophically, economically, and psychologically. Dating back to the ancient Greeks, happiness has always been questioned on how to find it and how it affects us. Economically happiness is measured through the Gross National Happiness and the effects of capitalism (at least in America). Meanwhile psychologists approach happiness through positive psychology and Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Yet even with all the science and data to support it, I don’t believe personal happiness can be measured on a scale. Happiness is completely subjective and purely dependent on external and internal influences of each individual.

The debate of what happiness actually means dates back to the times of the ancient Greeks. The Greek word most closely associated with happiness is eudaimonia. Broken down into its roots, "eu" means good and "daimōn" means a type of supernatural being. It is a state of being mankind thrives to and may possibly one day reach. The theory of eudaimonia is most closely associated with the works of Aristotle. Aristotle’s work the Nicomachean Ethics, proposes one of his key theories, what is the purpose of human existence? He saw happiness as an end result that could only be measured once we have reached death. “For as it is not one swallow or one fine day that makes a spring, so it is not one day or a short time that makes a man blessed and happy.” Anything we felt at a certain moment in time was considered temporary pleasure.

To achieve eudaimonia at the end of a lifetime, Aristotle believed in living well and the virtue of wellbeing. These included three candidates: a life of pleasure, a life of political activity and a philosophical life. Yet since much of these qualities were subjective, explains Aristotle’s claim that happiness could not be measured until after we had died. So according to Aristotle, the goal in life is to thrive for happiness, or in other words, to find the pursuit of happiness. As described in the introduction of this post, our country was founded on this idea. Although written by Thomas Jefferson, “the pursuit of happiness” stems from the philosopher John Locke. John Locke claims the pursuit of happiness is the foundation of liberty because of the freedom it gives us from any attachments. He writes in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 
“The necessity of pursuing happiness [is] the foundation of liberty. As therefore the highest perfection of intellectual nature lies in a careful and constant pursuit of true and solid happiness; so the care of ourselves, that we mistake not imaginary for real happiness, is the necessary foundation of our liberty. The stronger ties we have to an unalterable pursuit of happiness in general, which is our greatest good, and which, as such, our desires always follow, the more are we free from any necessary determination of our will to any particular action…” (p.348)
We as humans need to responsibly use our freedom to guide us down the right path to happiness. Like Aristotle, Locke believed happiness is the end result of living a life full of virtue and wellbeing. These were achieved through intellectual and moral effort. He then distinguishes “imaginary” happiness and “real” happiness. “Imaginary” happiness was a short-term pleasure later followed by discomfort or pain. Instant gratification, he believes is not why we were put on the Earth, otherwise we would have been stuck with simple pleasures such as eating and sleeping. Achieving “real” happiness is what separates humans from animals. Locke suggests the fear of death, is the one fear installed in all of us. If we live our lives with virtue and wellbeing, we will continue on to the afterlife. We will know if we have reached “real” happiness by our continuation into the afterlife. So according to Locke, happiness is measured by the afterlife.

Although Locke uses the afterlife as a measurement of happiness, it is still mostly subjective. There is still no solid scientific facts or data collection to accurately measure happiness from a philosophical standpoint.

So lets try measuring happiness from an economic standpoint.

King Wangchuck of the Himalayan nation of Bhutan measured the healthiness of his country not by gross domestic product, but by gross national happiness. Gross National Happiness or GNH, is based on the premise that “wealth” should be measured in other terms besides economic conditions. King Wangchuck, a practicing Buddhist, believed society should all be in harmony with the Earth - having an integration of material possessions with psychological, cultural and spiritual aspects. There are four pillars of GNH that coincide with each other to help create a material and spiritual development. These include:

• The promotion of equitable and sustainable socio-economic development
• The preservation and promotion of cultural values
• The conservation of the natural environment, and
• The establishment of good governance.

Together these pillars of GNH help measure the wellbeing of the social and psychological meaning of society. But these measurements are subjectively reported. According to Ross McDonald of St. Xavier’s University, GNH has no exact quantitative definition, although elements that are contributed GNH can be measured quantitatively. The practice has been directed towards moving subjective expression of large numbers of people into meaningful quantitative data. Well what does this mean? The GNH survey takes measures on the wellness of personal wealth, the surrounding environment, physical and mental state, workplace environment, along with social and political wellness. The survey is subjective, questions varying from rating your agreeability to a statement based on 1-10 or asking a question such as:
Would you define your life as…
a) very stressed, b) somewhat stressed, c) not stressed, d) I don't know
These results along with GDP are rationalized together and result in the happiness of the country. While this is a good indicator of the general happiness of the country, this still does not truly measure personal happiness. Especially since it is subjective, there is no exact comparison to base your answers off of.

For example, the GNH asks:

I mean yes I consider myself happy but who do I base my happiness off of? Compared to my best friend who is suffering from depression, I am the happiest person on Earth. But compared to my cousin who just got married, I might not be as happy as he is. The day and my surroundings of when I take the survey also will affect my score. I could have been stuck in traffic or woke up late, dampening my mood. It is also a long administered process that takes half a day.

To an extent, happiness has a correlation with wealth. The rich are recorded happier than the poor but affluent countries to do not seem to be happier as they grow wealthier. So does the old phrase, “money can’t buy happiness” hold true? John Maynard Keynes, a world famous economist believed money could. In 1930, Keynes believed that societies with more money would have more leisure. Because they had more money, they did not have to work as hard to enjoy the finer things in life. They would work hard at their jobs to earn that money in hope that being able to afford luxuries would make them happier. This turned out not be the case. Stress would not only come from that drive to work laboriously but also the aspiration to be high in society.

Yet to an extent, there is a threshold of how much happier someone becomes after obtaining wealth. This usually pertains to the poor people or those who are sick. They know have some kind of economic freedom, which is strongly correlated with happiness. Now, not only are the poor now able to afford luxuries they never had the opportunity to have before, but an increase in wealth also brings an increase to their social status. Acceptance in society has a direct impact on happiness.

But after awhile, capitalism is adept atturning luxuries into necessities. Items that were once prized and thought after are now taken for granted. This notion becomes a circle, once a better standard of living is achieved, these pleasures become inured. For example, a long time ago, hardly any one used to go to college. It was not necessary to get a college degree unless you were trying to become a doctor or scientist. In today’s society, it is almost necessary to go to college, at least in the Western world, to be able to even compete for a well paying job. Turning luxuries into necessities takes the pleasure and joy of achieving such things until they become mundane and just become a necessity of living.

So if GNH does not measure happiness on a personal level and wealth does not contribute to our happiness, can our happiness be determined on a psychological need?

The purpose of the science of happiness is to identify the difference aspects of happiness. Because it means something different to everyone, psychologists wanted to attempt to at least find some kind of guidelines for happiness. This was the foundation of positive psychology started by psychologist Martin Seligman. Seligman found that the happiest people were those who had discovered “ signature strengths” such as humanity, temperance and persistence. These visions relate back to the works and findings of Aristotle that this post mentioned earlier. He concluded that happiness was cultivated in three ways:

· The Pleasant Life – Learning to appreciate and accept the basic pleasures of life

· The Good Life – Discovering our strengths and using them to creatively enhance our lives

· The Meaningful Life – Sense of fulfilment by using our strengths for a greater purpose

Seligman’s conclusions are directly correlated with the last need on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: self-actualization.

Abraham Maslow’s theory of motivation suggests that humans are motivated by unsatisfied needs.

Each need needs to be satisfied before the next need can be attempted. Starting with physiological needs (eating, breathing, sleeping, sex), moving to safety needs (Economic, social, vocational, psychological security), than social needs (building family, friendships and intimate connections) and esteem needs (self esteem from being loved by family and the community). The last need on the top of the pyramid, self-actualization is described as “What a man can be, he must be. This need we may call self-actualization… It refers to the desire forself-fulfillment, namely, to the tendency for him to become actualized in whathe is potentially. This tendency might be phrased as the desire to become moreand more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming.” Maslow calls these experiences happiness. People who have reached self-actualization tend to be happier and more satisfied with life.

So according to Maslow, happiness is when self-actualization is achieved. Although this tells us how to achieve happiness, he does not explain how to tell how happy we are once we reach this optimal level of need. Even tying back to positive psychology, it is merely only shows us a path to achieve happiness beyond materialistic possessions. We as humans are shown the path and necessary steps to reach happiness but once getting there, measuring how happy we truly are is still somewhat undefined.

In today’s society, with GNH tying to positive psychology and the works of the ancient Greeks intertwined into positive psychology and Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, all three concepts, philosophical, economical and psychological, are necessary for happiness. All three are needed to achieve happiness. Yet happiness research is still somewhat limited on current measurement techniques. Although attempted there is no empirical wide range scale that we can base our happiness off of. But then again maybe a scale is not necessary. As Aristotle and Locke have argued, finding happiness is a lifetime goal and all the short term “happiness” are just pleasures. Too many external and internal influences encompass someone’s happiness that it is near impossible to judge against someone else. All our experiences are unique and although we all work toward a common goal of finding happiness, each of our paths are completely different. As long as we as individuals are pleased with our decisions and opportunities, then we have found happiness.

References:

"Affluence: Happiness (and How to Measure It) | The Economist." The Economist - World News, Politics, Economics, Business & Finance. 19 Dec. 1996. Web. <http://www.economist.com/node/8450035>.

Beavan, Colin. No Impact Man: the Adventures of a Guilty Liberal Who Attempts to save the Planet, and the Discoveries He Makes about Himself and Our Way of Life in the Process. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009. Print.

Cottingham, John. "The Fine, The Good, and the Meaningful." TPM: The Philosophers’ Magazine. 11 Oct. 2010. Web. <http://www.philosophypress.co.uk/?p=6>.

"Does Happiness Mean a Grande Vanilla Latte?" The Wartburg Watch. 2011. Web

Ferguson, Adam. An Essay on the History of Civil Society. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Print.

"Happiness and Economics: Economics Discovers Its Feelings | The Economist." The Economist - World News, Politics, Economics, Business & Finance. Web. 19 Dec. 1996. <http://www.economist.com/node/8401269>.

Locke, John. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Vol. 1. New York: Dover Publications. Print.

McDonald, Ross (2005). Rethinking Development. Local Pathways to Global Wellbeing. St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada. pp. 3.

Niven, David. The 100 Simple Secrets of Happy People: What Scientists Have Learned and How You Can Use It. [San Francisco]: HarperSanFrancisco, 2000. Print.

Norman, Richard. "Meeting Human Needs." TPM: The Philosophers’ Magazine. 23 May 2011. Web. <http://www.philosophypress.co.uk/?p=1919>.

Schoch, Richard. "Ideas of the Century: Happiness (40/50)." TPM: The Philosophers’ Magazine. 10 Dec. 2010. Web. <http://www.philosophypress.co.uk/?p=1686>.

RIP in iHeaven

Thank you Steve Jobs. From the iMac to the iPod to the iPhone to the iPad you were a genius.  Thank you for changing the world and telling us to follow our hearts.