Are We Happy?

The prompt for this blog was that I found my old cell phones stashed in the back of a drawer. For grins, I decided to power them up and surprisingly, they all buzzed and beeped to life. What made me smile was scrolling through the address books and text messages. It was like discovering a forgotten box of letters in an attic. I missed the simplicity of these old phones. Our newer smart phones and their apps make them supreme data collection devices, always eavesdropping, scanning our photos, marking where we are, who we communicate with, what we communicate, what we shop for, etc., etc., etc., We're truly in the age of 1984 but that's a topic for another post.

Every technological leap forward is couched as progress, as a rung on the ladder to utopia. Apple is great at marketing this idea. A bright shinier tomorrow. Happy! Happy! 

But are we? On the individual level, while only speaking for myself, and that makes me the expert, I say yes. Those who are not happy, it's their own fault. In social media, people are always grouching over the imperfections of this and that, mostly in politics and culture. Sometimes, when I point out the need to be positive, especially in your personal life, I get dumped on as either a partisan troll or a delusional fool.

If anyone in this world had a reason to not be happy, it was Helen Keller and here's what she said:

Your success and happiness lies within you. Resolve to keep happy, and your joy and you will form an invincible host against difficulties.

Life is of course, the struggle against difficulties. Though some are seemingly born under a rainbow, nobody gets a pass. One of my favorite Scriptures is from Matthew 5:35 "... for He maketh His sun rise, on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust." In other words, God, the Creator of the universe, is telling you, Life is not fair, so suck it up and smile.

However, there is a rising tide of despair in the developing world and the culprit is the very technology that promises to make us happy. Our interactions with these devices has been engineered to make them addictive and like all addictions, there is a dark side. The advice for good mental health is to unplug and seek affirmation with in-person interactions.

Yesterday, I started thinking on this post and then unexpectedly dreamt about it last night. In this dream I had been invited by the mayor of Denver to participate in a working group in how we could make the city a happier place. The replies turned out to be more practical and less woo-woo. When it was my turn, my suggestion was for everyone to do better at their jobs. We all benefit when things work as they're supposed to, when the busses and trains run on time, to take pride in what you're doing, to be happy as you do so, and if you don't like your job, then find something better and move on. If that advice makes me a troll, then I like my place under this bridge.

Making a Better Human

After his time in Tombstone, Wyatt Earp and his common-law wife, Josephine Sarah Marcus, set out for Alaska, where they ran the Dexter Saloon. What intrigues me about this photo of their saloon is the humor, a hundred years after the fact, which still holds up.

Humor is an integral part of human nature, and though we are a civilization centuries old with many differences in customs, languages, and shared experiences, I'm amazed when jokes manage to transcend the ages. One of my favorites is from ancient China and discusses the origins of the house cat. The story is that cats had been sent by the Gods to watch over us, but the cats don't do a very good job of it because they sleep so much.

This interest about human character stems from panels at science-fiction conferences where we discussed future developments involving humans and high-technology. One favorite topic addressed the human-computer interface and potential changes to human biology. For example, connecting our brains directly to computers would allow us to access information from vast libraries and process that data at incredible speeds. The eventual goal would be "singularity," where every mind would be wired to the Internet to create one global super brain. What a schizophrentic mess that would be. Who would set the agenda? Proponents of that technology argue in purple prose that such a development should be hailed as the next step in human evolution. Homo-Google.

That ability would surely make us smarter. Right? And by extension, better. What's missing in this talk of becoming more advanced humans is any discussion about what truly makes us better. I've yet to see a software app that'll make anyone more honest. Or more empathetic. Or wiser. Conversely, I haven't seen an app that would prevent dishonesty, theft, treachery, or even murder. Human nature as expressed through humor, or doing good, or doing bad, won't change. To that end, here's one of my favorite quotes from Scripture, Job 5:7 Man was born into trouble just as surely as sparks fly upward. 

And that trouble is what keeps us crime writers busy.

Dreams, Inspiration, and the Muse

I pride myself in being a nuts-and-bolts type writer, meaning I'm not much for the woo-woo stuff. Having said that, I do admit that I've had story ideas come to me in dreams. I know that dreams are seen as the interpretations of our subconscious, but I'm convinced they're more than that. Some insist that dreams are another form of inspiration given to us by the Muse. Most dreams we forget, unfortunately, but once in a while these sleep visions stick with us. If the images were particularly strong, sometimes upon waking we're confused about where we are and what's really happening.

The Bible mentions dreams and the most famous sleep vision in Scripture comes from Genesis 41, when the pharaoh dreamed of seven fat cows being eaten by seven emaciated cows, and seven plump stalks of grain being swallowed by seven thin stalks of grain. Joseph (he of the Technicolor Coat) is summoned to interpret the pharaoh's dream, which he does by explaining that seven good years of harvest will be followed by seven years of famine. So forewarned, the pharaoh appoints Joseph as his second-in-command and is tasked with storing and managing surplus food to prevent disaster.

As writers we're cautioned against using dreams in our work because dream sequences are regarded as narrative cheats. What happens is that characters wake up and nothing has changed. However, dreams in stories can be useful to build tension and foreshadow plot twists. We know that dreams can be symptoms of a troubled mind and in a story, an immersive dream sequence can illustrate the interior turmoil of our characters as they contemplate danger.

A dream that I used for a recently accepted story was one in which women suddenly stopped getting pregnant. I have no idea why my subconscious stewed on that horrific notion, but the takeaway was the global terror upon realizing that we as a species now had an expiration date. Lately, two other dreams had to do with me getting older, so it's pretty obvious what's behind that inspiration.

Another source of dreams are hallucinations from drug use. Here in Denver, we have Initiative 301, in which we get to vote on decriminalizing the use and possession of psilocybin mushrooms. I've known people who've indulged in "magic" mushrooms and then shared their mind-blowing experiences, which by the way, included plenty of vomiting. None of these psilocybin tourists ever got around to writing anything, so the best way to cultivate inspiration remains to sit at the keyboard and hammer out what the Muse delivered.