awesome things and suffering

[alexr_rwx]

Today's Dorkbot was a presentation by Mary Flanagan, artist, writer-about-digital-culture, professor of film and media studies, and computing educator person! She spoke about her latest art project, which involved taking images from America's Army and embroidering them onto clothing and textile-y things (all found at Wal*Mart), a step into the real world for a usually-virtual artist. She used a BERNINA sewing machine that hooks up to a computer!

And that was pretty cool, but I think her most interesting thing is RAPUNSEL -- a game-environment-thing that helps kids, especially girls, learn about programming by putting together funky dance moves with code! Hopefully this will help bring great awesomeness into the world.

(previously mentioned: Scratch, a related project from MIT, and the excellent Alice, from CMU. Art and programmering for the childrens!)

Also: why do we put up with suffering, y'know, as a species? Can't we do better than that? Given the choice between suffering and not-suffering, I choose not. I posit that it doesn't necessarily make you a better person, more noble, more spiritual: sometimes, it just makes you spiteful. I think more often than not, those made to suffer end up inflicting it on others when they get the chance. Nobody needs it.

Comments

[reality-calls.livejournal.com]

We put up with suffering because we are students, and it is a part of our education.  By the time we become professors, we will be sufficiently spiteful to feel the need to inflict it on others.

      "Live from the People's Republic"

[sault.livejournal.com]

Onward and upward, yes? Proleptic goals. The endgame, if you will. Or as you once told me: we put up with suffering so that we may move from a local maximum of some 'state' to either another, higher local maximum, or the much-vaunted absolute maximum of that same 'state.' Assuming that the slope of the 'state'/'state value' curve is not always positive and you are not currently already at the absolute maximum for a given 'state,' isn't suffering necessary in order to increase the 'value' of one's 'state' (wherein we assume this is actually something we wish to do)? It's built into achieving goals.

Taken another way: if we assume that all things have some opportunity cost, exacted on attention (I am typing now, which means I am not sleeping now, for example; or, When I am on the phone, I it is more difficult to concentrate on defusing nuclear weapons), then we must suffer then loss of the things we are not doing and take as our comfort the thing we chose to do.


But I get the impression you were talking about pain inflicted on people by others, or by themselves, resulting in no gain. It seems that those who make themselves suffer for no good reason are doing so in their heads for something like one of the reasons outlined above--they are carrying worthless values out to their logical conclusions. As for those injured through no fault of their own (examples in third world countries and on your street abound), there is no reason they /should/ suffer. They only do because their 'states' are not valued by those who could help them.

Ah, yes. I am going to sleep now so that I don't have to read through the tergiversating pseudo-philosophical vomit that, if you are reading this, you have somehow suffered through.

[laurapatt.livejournal.com]

We don't realize we're suffering, or it seems worth it? In the sense of beauty, all the waifish, painted young ladies of Milledge Ave seem to think suffering in the heat in Sandford Stadium on a Saturday afternoon in September while wearing polyester dresses, high heels, and big hair seem to think that's worth it to be seen and fit in. I think the community of the sousas is worth suffering in much the same conditions, only without the aid of alcohol and with more clothes on.

If you don't know you're suffering, is it still suffering? If you've been emotionally abused or starving your entire life and that's the status quo, do you realize how bad it sucks? Is suffering measured by one's own standards, or someone elses? I don't know!

[reality-calls.livejournal.com]

It can be measured by either one's own standards or someone else's, but usually it's one's own standards that count most.  From a psychological perspective, suffering is related to trauma or stress.  If you don't experience those things, then you can't really be said to be suffering.  There are even reports of people in concentration camps that still managed to have a good attitude, somehow.

That being said, environments that tend to cause high levels of trauma or stress generally have a large degree of suffering associated with them, and that's probably the sort of thing that Alex was talking about.

      "Live from the People's Republic"