The Camera as a Weapon

I am guilty of taking more than my fair share of photos. I am guilty of training hard and working hard to try to achieve maximum impact with the photos I take, whether they be portraits or landscapes. Here are some examples of my portraits (you might notice my self-portrait among them):

Here are two of my landscapes from recent years (Rocky Mountain National Park and the Blue Mosque (taken from Hagia Sofia, in Istanbul, Turkey):

As I already mentioned, I'm driven to create photos that have maximum impact, whether it be portraits, landscapes or (beginning this year) my abstract digitized acrylic paintings that I about to begin marketing under the name of Digicrylics. I have been working hard to become the photographer I am, until I was stopped in my tracks--for a few minutes--by Maria Popova's article, "Aesthetic Consumerism and the Violence of Photography: What Susan Sontag Teaches Us about Visual Culture and the Social Web."  Here is an excerpt from Popova's article, which comments extensively on Susan Sontag's 1977 book, On Photography:

The aggression Sontag sees in this purposeful manipulation of reality through the idealized photographic image applies even more poignantly to the aggressive self-framing we practice as we portray ourselves pictorially on Facebook, Instagram, and the like:

Images which idealize (like most fashion and animal photography) are no less aggressive than work which makes a virtue of plainness (like class pictures, still lifes of the bleaker sort, and mug shots). There is an aggression implicit in every use of the camera.

Online, thirty-some years after Sontag’s observation, this aggression precipitates a kind of social media violence of self-assertion — a forcible framing of our identity for presentation, for idealization, for currency in an economy of envy.

Even in the 1970s, Sontag was able to see where visual culture was headed, noting that photography had already become “almost as widely practiced an amusement as sex and dancing” and had taken on the qualities of a mass art form, meaning most who practice it don’t practice it as an art. Rather, Sontag presages, the photograph became a utility in our cultural power-dynamics:

It is mainly a social rite, a defense against anxiety, and a tool of power.

She goes even further in asserting photography’s inherent violence:

Like a car, a camera is sold as a predatory weapon — one that’s as automated as possible, ready to spring. Popular taste expects an easy, an invisible technology. Manufacturers reassure their customers that taking pictures demands no skill or expert knowledge, that the machine is all-knowing, and responds to the slightest pressure of the will. It’s as simple as turning the ignition key or pulling the trigger. Like guns and cars, cameras are fantasy-machines whose use is addictive.

Popova's article challenges me. What is my purpose when work hard to take high impact photos? I'd like to think that I am merely creating works of art, but is it that simple? I know deep down that I'm doing some expensive signaling, working for a "wow" out of people who view my photos.  Can I any longer claim that my obsession with photography is innocent?

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How to Avoid Getting in our own Way

I'm a longtime fan of Eric Barker's blog, "Barking up the Wrong Tree." He opens a recent blog post with this incredible story:

George was late again.

It was 1939 and math PhD student George Dantzig arrived to find he had already missed much of the lecture. The two homework problems were already up on the chalkboard. He scribbled them down.

But this day only got worse. When he got to work on the problems that night, he realized they were hard. Really hard. George was a super smart guy but these problems were insanely difficult. They took him days to complete. So now he was going to be late again, this time turning in his homework. Yeesh.

He delivered them to his professor, Jerzy Neyman, apologizing profusely. Neyman’s eyes went wide. George worried he was going to be in a lot of trouble. But that’s not why Neyman was reacting so strangely…

The two problems on the board hadn’t been homework at all — they were two issues in statistical theory that had been deemed “unsolvable” by the best mathematicians in the world. Far from being angry, Neyman was blown away.

Yeah, George was a genius. And, no, the lesson here is not “show up late.”

Point is, if George had known what he was up against, he never would have even tried. His amazing potential might never have been recognized.

Barker springs off this anecdote to offer five tips for getting more done. The title of his article: "How To Stop Being Lazy And Get More Done – 5 Expert Tips."

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What Motivates Trump Voters?

Many people who call themselves liberal have written on FB that (and several told me in person) that they despise Trump voters and that they need not ever have a conversation with anyone who voted for Trump. Why? Many of them give this as the entire reason: "Trump voters are racist."

This reasoning is distressing to me because I (I identify as an independent) communicate with more than a few people who voted for Trump. I voted for Clinton and Biden. I acknowledge that there are some racists in the Republican party (I also believe that there are many racists among woke liberals), but to sum up that the entire motivation of every Trump voter as "racism" is over-simplistic and usually false. That's why I found this Tweet Thread by Darryl Cooper interesting. Is there any reason other than "racism" for being a MAGA voter? Cooper offers many such reasons. It's too bad many liberals refuse to take time to consider these before launching attacks on Trump voters. Glenn Greenwald offered an introduction to Cooper's thoughts. Here's an excerpt:

[W]e asked Cooper to elaborate on his influential thread, with a focus on what led him to these observations about prevailing MAGA sentiments and why he believes they are important for people to understand. As Cooper notes, he does not share all of the perceptions and beliefs he is conveying, although he shares many of them. Instead, based on the recognition that most media outlets are incapable of understanding let alone accurately describing the views of a group of people they view with little more than unmitigated contempt, condescension and scorn, he believes it is imperative that people understand the actual reality of what is motivating so many Trump voters in their views, perceptions and beliefs — regardless of whether each particular belief is accurate or not.

We also believe this understanding is vital, which is why we are happy to publish Cooper’s essay. It should go without saying that, as it true of all of our articles published on Outside Voices -- which we treat as an op-ed page -- our publishing of this article does not signify agreement with all of its claims, but only our belief that it is a viewpoint worth airing.

Here are a few excerpts to Cooper's analysis. You can read the entire thread here and here. You can listen to it here:

Trump supporters know - I think everyone knows - that Donald Trump would have been impeached and probably indicted if Robert Mueller had proven that he’d paid a foreign spy to gather damaging information on Hillary Clinton from sources connected to Russian intelligence and disseminate that information in the press. Many of Trump’s own supporters wouldn’t have objected to his removal if that had happened. Of course that is exactly what the Clinton campaign actually did, yet there were no consequences for it. Indeed, there has been almost no criticism of it.

Trump supporters had gone from worrying the collusion might be real, to suspecting it might be fake, to seeing proof that it was all a scam. Then they watched as every institution - government agencies, the press, Congressional committees, academia - blew right past it and gaslit them for another year. To this day, something like half the country still believes that Trump was caught red-handed engaging in treason with Russia, and only escaped a public hanging because of a DOJ technicality regarding the indictment of sitting presidents. Most galling, conservatives suspect that within a few decades liberals will use their command over the culture to ensure that virtually everyone believes it. This is where people whose political identities have for decades been largely defined by a naive belief in what they learned in civics class began to see the outline of a Regime that crossed not only partisan, but all institutional boundaries. They'd been taught that America didn't have Regimes, but what else was this thing they'd seen step out from the shadows to unite against their interloper president?

Cooper is not making a case that all of these things are true. His mission was to understand the mindset of MAGA advocates. It's too bad that so many people who identify as "liberal" would rather simplify MAGA voters as racist without considering any of these things. They would rather attack straw men. For those people like me who fear for our democratic project, this approach is dysfunctional and unproductive.

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National Crisis of Smartphone-Inflicted Loneliness Hurting our Teenagers

Jonathan Haidt and Jean M. Twenge warn that we need to separate teenagers from their smartphones:

Teenage loneliness was relatively stable between 2000 and 2012, with fewer than 18 percent reporting high levels of loneliness. But in the six years after 2012, rates increased dramatically. They roughly doubled in Europe, Latin America and the English-speaking countries, and rose by about 50 percent in the East Asian countries . . . All young mammals play, especially those that live in groups like dogs, chimpanzees and humans. All such mammals need tens of thousands of social interactions to become socially competent adults. In 2012 it was possible to believe that teens would get those interactions via their smartphones — far more of them, perhaps. But as data accumulates that teenage mental health has changed for the worse since 2012, it now appears that electronically mediated social interactions are like empty calories. Just imagine what teenagers’ health would be like today if we had taken 50 percent of the most nutritious food out of their diets in 2012 and replaced those calories with sugar. So what can we do? We can’t turn back time to the pre-smartphone era, nor would we want to, given the many benefits of the technology. But we can take some reasonable steps to help teens get more of what they need.

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Sam Harris’ Thought Experiment to Induce Gratitude

I heard this recently on Sam Harris' Waking Up App:

I noticed this at dinner the other night with my family. Everyone seemed to be in a fairly mediocre frame of mind. We were all in some way disgruntled or stressed out. I had a million things I was thinking about and I suddenly noticed how little joy we were all taking in one another's company. And then I thought, "If I had died yesterday, and could have the opportunity to be back with my family, I thought of how much I would savor this moment right now." And it totally transformed my mood. It gave me instantaneous access to my best self, and to a feeling of pure gratitude for the people in my life. Just think of what it would be like to lose everything, and then be restored to the moment you're now in. However ordinary. You can reboot your mind in this way. And it need not take any time.

This is spot on. It reminds me of a thought I often have after a near-catastrophe (e.g., someone almost running their car into your car on the highway). I tell myself:

This is the same result as if the accident DID happen and I suffered great bodily injury with no hope of fully recovery. But then a magic genie appears and offers to revers time, making sure the accident didn't happen. Two versions of the same result. This helps me appreciate my good fortune of almost being maimed in an accident rather than being angry that a reckless driver almost caused me to be badly injured.

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