Why Constraint Is Good

The amount of information available to us on the Internet is limitless,but how often do we actually take a look at a totally random site? When do we ever go on a trawl through hundreds of disparate pages, unless it’s for the purposes of research? On the other hand, sites like StumbleUpon and Digg are hugely popular, and becoming moreso.

Why are these filtration sites so popular? Don’t they somehow fly in the face of the random beauty of the Internet? Well, maybe from a technological perspective. But true chaos is not generally desirable to the human experience. We enjoy being held back, and it works in our favour.

Illustrations are readily evident in the creative arts. For example, the first Matrix film was a hugely ambitious project that drew in discrete elements of Manga, existentialist philosophy, martial arts, technology etc. It should have been a total mess. It wasn’t. The second and third Matrix films, however, used the exact same elements – and were total messes ( Come on, what the hell what going on in the third one?). The difference? Personally, I think it may have been the lack of constraints on the directors (the Wachowski brothers) after the monumental success of the first film. With their debut, they were taking a huge gamble and absolutely had to at least make it a little audience-friendly to guarantee box office returns. After that, Warner Bros said, “Hey guys, do whatever you want.” And the Wachowskis indulged, throwing everything and the kitchen sink into the sequels. Filmmaking with no restraints resulted in films that made no sense.

“Donnie Darko” is one of the most beautiful, rich films I’ve seen. The director, Richard Kelly was given a much bigger canvas and budget to make his second film, based on Donnie’s success. The result was “Southland Tales“, a free-jazz-on-film film that makes very little sense and, to my mind at least, is intensely boring.

Indeed, constraint is a wonderful thing when applied properly. It gives you something to prove, something to rail against.

Every self-help book worth its salt tells the reader that they absolutely must set out their goals. This may be via a process of writing them down, of intensive visualization, of telling your friends and family of your deadlines so that you will adhere to them. The common element with every goal that is set is that is immediately enforces a set of constraints. It focuses the mind like a laser, pushing out other, irrelevant thoughts. If you have one thing to do, and one thing only, the chances are that you will do it.

Constraint often equates with brevity, which can be a wonderful tool for effectively conveying information. Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code“, which was an international publishing phenomenon, was notable for its concise chapters. Readers loved that; it made for a fast-paced read, which, though it heavy with religious and historical symbolism, was sectioned into easily-digested portions. One of my favourite books, The Lucifer Principle, does the same with an elaborate theory on the relationship between science and religion.

I think that’s why someone like Kurt Cobain or Bob Dylan will always be more appealing to the masses than guitar virtuosos like Steve Vai or Joe Satriani. Cobain and Dylan were and are much more restrained in terms of their musical ability, and that can be a good thing. There’s a scene in the Nirvana film “Live, Tonight, Sold Out!” where a music journalist described Nirvana’s music as being like nursery rhymes that you can’t get out of your head. I always thought that was very insightful; for example, “Come As You Are” is based on a slow riff that consists of 5 notes. Vai or Satriani, on the other hand, could easily play 10 notes per second on one of their tracks. Which is a fantastic ability, but complexity doesn’t necessarily mean quality. And it’s those nursery-rhyme, 5-note melodies that invariably seep into public consciousness and convey their message most effectively. I guess that’s why it’s ‘popular’ music.

I suppose the ideal is to have all of these creative tools at one’s disposal, but to still be able to maintain that popular sensibility when you want to use it. A great example of one such musician is Jeff Buckley; his technical abilities were second to none, but he was consistently able to distill them down to something subtle, refined and accessible.

And that’s a difficult thing to do, because having too many options can be crippling. It goes against the classical idea that more choice equates to more freedom, which equates to more happiness – but there it is. In his book “The Paradox Of Choice“, author Barry Schwartz argues ‘why the abundance of choice in modern society is actually making us miserable’. He says that it actually creates a state of paralysis; that having too many things to choose from makes it very difficult to actually make a choice. Not only that, but even if you do make a choice, and a good one at that, but the idea that you could have made a better decision in the first place can make you regretful.

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Here is Schwartz’ short lecture from the famous TedTalks series:

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Schwartz makes the example of clothing; when he was younger, buying a pair of jeans was simple. You went into the store and you bought the one type of jeans that was on the rack. And you were happy with them, because there was no other choice to make. Today, you go to buy a pair of jeans and are confronted with hundreds of varieties; faded, stone-washed, designer, boot cut, torn, brand-label etc etc. So while you may find a pair that fits and looks pretty good, the unrealised potentiality of choice still hangs over you. And if you do happen to find something – anything – wrong with those jeans, it can only be your fault. Why? Because the choice was all yours.

This may seem trivial, but if you expand that phenomenon across millions of different products, combined with the incessant psychic pummeling of advertising (which tells us explicitly that we will be unhappy if we make the wrong choice), we can imagine the rate of misery generated growing exponentially. We are told that we need the products to be content; then the range of choice makes contentment, even with the product, impossible anyway.

Henry Ford said about his cars, “You can have it in any colour, as long as it’s black”. And that was coming from one of the most successful industrialists of the twentieth century. That’s not to say that “the good old days” of one choice only were perfect. But having one choice certainly makes things a lot simpler, and seems to promote contentment. Even if that one choice is far from ideal, it still gives the chooser something to complain about and fight against; a goal of sorts. But limitless choice means that the burden of responsibility is totally on the shoulders of the chooser. There is no constraint, the individual becomes a veritable island of personal responsibility – and that can lead to a great deal of misery.

Evil Advertising 2: Suzuki Saves Africa

My jaw hit the floor when I saw this ad. Car companies have been one of the most blatant culprits to the destruction of the Earth’s environment since the Industrial Revolution. Because of their links with fuel companies (like Shell, who, by the way, made a record profit of 27.6 billion dollars in 2007) , they have purposely delayed the release of all non-fossil energies, in spite of their myriad advances. All this sanctimonious Toyota Prius stuff seems pathetic when you know that electricity and even water alone can be used to power modified engines efficiently, and without any of the rancid emissions that accompany Shell’s product – but companies like Shell won’t allow that to happen.

But for a car company to suggest that their vehicle has something to do with saving African wildlife?? Multinationals like Suzuki have been raping third-world countries, Africa included, non-stop for a good century now. The history of human rights abuses committed by unscrupulous companies is long and gruesome.

Even to give a recent example: Countries like the Sudan cannot afford to harvest their own oil reserves, and so are farming it out to Chinese and US companies who have exhausted their other resources. These companies will gladly purchase fuel from corrupt governments, while at the same time turn a blind eye to genocide and ethnic cleansing in these same countries.

But, no, forget all that. We’re saving the world now. We’re protecting rhinos. Yes, that’s why Irish people buy SUV’s. To tear across the Serengeti with Tony Fitzjohn, looking for nasty poachers. It’s not the Soccer Moms with one lonely child in the back, driving around streets in Cork that are about half the size of the vehicle itself. It’s not the emasculated fathers whose brainless rationale is usually, “Well, I want to keep my family as safe as possible” (and let’s not forget the unspoken addendum to this delightful morality; “And if I crash into some lower-class family driving a lesser car, to Hell with them. I’ve got bullbars, for Christ’s sake.”) No, it’s none of those. We’re saving rhinos, people.

How dare anyone compare owning a gas-guzzling, street-hogging, brat-freighting, tailgating SUV to saving the lives of endangered species in Third-World countries. It’s an insult to your intellience and mine. And doe-eyed Soccer Moms nothwithstanding, I’m hopeful that at least some Irish people are informed enough to be angry about this – and to tell Suzuki to cop on to themselves.

Evil Advertising: Specsavers and Edith Piaf

Has anyone seen the new Specsavers advert “featuring” Edith Piaf? 

In it, she sings probably her most famous song, “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien”. The subtitles show an incorrect translation of the French lyrics, saying that her only regret is not having bought glasses at Specsavers.

This is a song about and performed by a chronic alcoholic and drug user looking back on her life, and saying that she regrets nothing; that all the pain was worth it for her to become the person she now is. It is poignant and heartfelt.

Specsaver’s hijacking of the song and the woman to offload a couple of pairs of glasses is, in my opinion, beyond reprehensible. Aside from the fact that it takes the personal, emotional core of the song and castrates it for the sake of corporate “humour”, did any of the firm’s copywriters do any research on the woman whatsoever? If they had, they would have known that from the ages of three to seven, Piaf was blind as a result of the disease Keratitis. That’s right, Specsavers have tastefully chosen to parody a dead alcoholic who had no sight as a child.

How could this ad have been passed as suitable for broadcast? How could noone have objected to it? Using a dead person to sell a product is tantamount to graverobbery. It’s just as classy as Benetton’s ad featuring a young man dying of AIDS.

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I think that controversy is a wonderful thing. But in the hands of advertisers, it is always suspect. There is always the ulterior motive, the hidden agenda. Everything they show you is designed to get you to do something. To not only buy a product, but to buy into a lifestyle (as Naomi Klein brilliantly argued in “No Logo”). Slogans like “Drink Coke” are not suggestions; they are orders, screamed at you from every poster and billboard, every television, every radio.

I feel embarrassed if I am watching a movie or programme with someone and the ads come on. It’s like a group of corporate idiots have marched into the room and started barking commands at you and yours. I find ads depressing in general; when the local companies have Christmas “all wrapped up” (brilliant) and multinationals are using Edith Piaf, there is little creativity in the divide.

I’m not getting my anarchist on; far from it. I know that advertising is a necessary evil. Much brilliant creative work is funded by it. But when it’s so evil it can reanimate the corpses of our dearly departed, it must be stopped.

It brings to mind Bill Hicks’ famous words about advertisers :

Practice Epicurus – 1

Epicurus was a philosopher who lived in ancient Greece in the 3rd century BC. He is famous for having come up with a series of tenets that describe the essentials for human happiness.1: We need friends. We should surround ourselves with them at all times, eat with them, even live with them if possible. He himself at one stage bought a house specifically to do this.

2: We need freedom; that is to say, self-sufficiency. We need to be able to make decisions for ourselves, and be free to depend on ourselves for our livelihoods.

3: We need to contemplate our own lives when we can. Epicurus believed that periodic examination of one’s own life would reveal the rational paths to follow that will lead us to happiness. This should be done in quiet solitude.

Epicurus believed that the importance of each of these was virtually self-evident. We all know in our heart of hearts that money and all financial matters are inferior to these pursuits. However, day to day living made this truth very hard to follow; not because of any pressures as such, but rather because they become so difficult to remember in the face of constant desires created by advertising (yup, advertising was a scourge even in Ancient Greek society).

This seems to exemplify one of the major obstacles associated with any type of positive lifestyle; it needs to be reinforced every day. Practice makes perfect, but even perfection evaporates unless it is polished and renewed frequently. Perhaps that is the benefit of prayer; it reminds the individual every day, or at least once a week, that their life has purpose.

David Lynch, the visionary director of films like Mulholland Drive and Blue Velvet practices (note the term “practice”) Transcendental Meditation twice every day, a method which he describes as diving into the unconscious and returning with ideas. The point is that he does it every single day, and has done for the last 30 years.

That seems to be a universal human trait – that in order to maintain something we want, be it a way of thinking, the ability to sing or play music, read or write, whatever – that we need to make a habit out of it. If we don’t, it becomes replaced with the negative habits that cause us to doubt ourselves, to believe that we somehow need more than our friends, our thoughts and our freedom in order to feel happy; and that a product will fill that gap.

Here is the video lecture, “Consciousness, Creativity and The Brain” in which Lynch describes how daily meditation can positively affect every aspect of the person who practices it.