literacy

Murakami On The Elevator

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As I got home, walking to the elevator, I was still pondering the fun, “Which came first, the purse or the lack of pockets?” question in my mind. I don’t really want to know the answer, it’s just fun to consider.

Not everything needs answers.

I’d given up coming up with theories on the ffft-ffft lady.

Not everything has answers.

On the way there, my trains of thought – I never have just one train going – were interrupted by some friendly faces. A newly married couple, I know he sells insurance and is generally a nice guy, while his new wife is still a bit of a mystery to me. She’s nice, polite, and likes coffee, which makes her a better human being than him in my eyes.

He doesn’t drink coffee. That seems sinful after all the wars and empires involved in bringing coffee from Ethiopia to the rest of the world, but what I consider sinful is subjective.

We have polite conversation, and going up in the elevator, he spots my book. I had returned home early because I was thinking of meaning and wanted to get that writing done and didn’t want to get lost in another group of trains of thought, so I had my receipt from the coffee shop sticking out from the pages.

“What are you reading?”, he asks.

“Oh, some Murakami. I haven’t read this book in some years and decided to revisit it.”, I respond.

His eyes blank, he has nowhere to go with that. It’s not something that is standard fare in Trinidad and Tobago, I suppose, so I try to be helpful.

“It’s where that quote about the storm comes from. How when you come out of the storm you’re never the same as when you went in.”

This, according to his facial expression, did not help either, but the idea began to toss around in his head.

“OK”, he says, as I exit the elevator. He never struck me as a reader, but then most of the literati in Trinidad and Tobago have an insane focus on the Caribbean and Caribbean authors, enough so that in some ways Trinidad and Tobago is a tidal pool, where ideas wash in mainly from distilled island authors.

At least that’s my experience, what I have observed, and it’s purely anecdotal. To me, though, if you have not read Haruki Murakami, you’re missing a bit of life.

Suddenly, as I unlocked my door, I laughed to myself.

I had just done an elevator pitch of, “Kafka on the Shore” without even knowing it.

I hate elevator pitches.

You Are Not Alone.

~ taran.a.rampersad@gmail.com ~ Leave a comment

#etmooc @audreywatters asks 'Who Owns Your Education Data (and Why Does It Matter?)'Have you found yourself the person who actually reads beyond the links being passed around on social networks and finding the headline misleading?

Have you found yourself the person who notices posted content, by reading it, is actually questionable?

Are you the person who checks the sources and, if interested, does some research on the topic independently in an age where it’s one search engine away?

You are not alone. When the people using their freedom of speech don’t meet the criteria of basic literacy and critical thought, it will seem that you are, but you are not alone.

Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity. - Martin Luther King, Jr. In this week's issue of TL;DR - wiobyrne.com/tldr/ #truth #honesty #fiction #ignorance #education #perspective #identityOf course, it doesn’t mean you’re right – just as people who talk about the Dunning-Kruger effect often ignore the fact that they themselves are as much of an issue for some as they think others are to them. Basically, stupid people don’t know that they’re stupid because they’re too stupid to know… and that holds true for all of us.

Every. Single. One.

You. Me. That smart person you know who you ask advice from. All of us are not as intelligent as we think. That thing you taste in your mouth when you realize that is humility.

Yet all of us know people who find reading troublesome, who, when you post a link, ask you questions about the information in the link that is contained in the link itself, or worse, express an opinion based only on the headline and accompanying image. They haven’t even put forth the effort to find out.

In my mind, they are troglodytes, too afraid to come out of their metaphorical caves and see what is being spoken of. They shout from the safety of their caves because life for them, outside these caves, is a thing to fear. This isn’t always the case, sometimes the effort doesn’t seem worth the reward, sometimes they’re busy – but if they’re busy, why are they commenting on something that they know nothing about? Great question. When you find the answer, get back to us.

In a world where information is algorithmically spoon-fed to us, where our opinions are easily shifted one way or the other using coded psychology thoughts on distant web servers, we should be more collectively literate. It doesn’t seem to be that way. It seems to be that the more information mankind has at it’s disposal, the less mankind collectively wants to read – but maybe it’s the same percentage of the population. I don’t know.

Maybe stories are just data with a soul. - Brené Brown In issue # 122 of TL;DR. Subscribe at wiobyrne.com/tldr/ #dreams #data #stories #truth #fiction #drama #realitySo the question is, how do we change that? We can’t go off explaining everything to other people all the time – we have other things to do and, sometimes, we’re not that good at it. We can’t bang their head against their monitors, either – and if we could, I’m certain that there would be a Law to protect them soon enough, complete with pitchforks and torches.

What’s the call to action? There really is none except this, if you got to this last paragraph: Stay the course while retaining your sanity. Avoid conversations that are likely to go nowhere. Keep reading, keep thinking. It’s apparent that someone has to.

Unfettered

~ taran.a.rampersad@gmail.com ~ Leave a comment

the weakest linkAs reality sets in about my mother’s passing, I sit considering over my morning coffee how much I felt I could not write about – the unspokens – because I knew that my mother would read some things and think that they were about her, or that they would make her feel sad or even angry.

We censor ourselves – some of us, anyway – and with the understanding that anything on the Internet must exist in it’s own context, it’s difficult to predict how something will be read, if it is read at all.

There’s some humor there; the majority of my family do not read things much longer than a headline, status update or text message. My mother, on the other hand, would read everything and stew. She could be eerily good at reading intent, or reading underlying meaning – and denying things she was right about would be not only dishonest, but an insult. I come by it naturally.

Sitting here, I realize she was the last reason I censored anything. I did so for my father as well. Despite the grief and sorrow, I am unfettered. Free. A final gift from her, of sorts, an accidental good in a bad situation.