What is the difference between a good life and the life you want? Does a life have to be the one a person wants for him to consider it good? Is there an objective measure of how good a life is? How often were we told as kids to be thankful for what we have because it is great compared to most people’s lives in the world (those of starving kids in Africa, for instance)?
A good life for one person is not necessarily good for another. In the roughest of times for middleclass Americans, their lives are still immeasurably better than those of most people in the world. This doesn’t make the frustration and anguish of an individual any less real. Were a person able to take the hype about how great his life is and transform it into matching, feel-good emotions, it would lead to complacency. Would this complacency not stop a person from striving for something better? Which is a more inhibiting factor, complacency or fear of failure? After all, if a person fails on the road to trying to attain greatness, he could lose everything, or at least wind up sores off than he was before.
I’ve been thinking, obviously, about what separates a good life from the life I want and how significant future decisions of mine are going rely heavily on my perception of it all. I don’t now why there should be a difference between a “good life” and the “life I want.” Yet it is as clear to me that I have a good life as it is that this is not a life I want years from now. I love many aspects of my current job and situation (most notably the travel) but it would drive me crazy to never pursue my life-long dream of writing for a living. At this moment, I see myself as working towards this goal by earning money for college, so I guess this is part of a life I want. If I never meet my goals, though, I still see this all as a life I wanted? Will it matter whether I see it as such or not?
At some point in my life I made the decision to never bow to complacency. Everythign about my upbringing suggests I would make such a decision. It is a very American decision. Pursuing the “American Dream” and all that. The fact that mankind rarely fails to build a better life for himself convinces me I hold the right attitude, but failure is always a possible outcome. I think every middleclass American is eventually faced with this decision: follow his childhood dreams and risk failure or keep “the good life.” Maybe the average American does have a good life but what separates it from the life he wants is that it is not a GREAT life. In a few years’ time I expect to get out of the navy, enroll in college, and major in journalism. At some point during my time at college, or shortly after, I will be forced to turn over my cards and reveal my hand. I’ll take a long, comparative look at the hand I’ve been dealt. At this point, of course, I’ll have already gone all in.
Speaking of writing for a living, how about that writers’ strike, eh? I’m not going to lie, I typically dislike strikes and unions. It’s a dislike that runs through my capitalist, big-business loving blood. Unions might be the only way to deal with the immense power large corporations hold over their works, though. My main gripe with Unions is the way those who wish to continue working are ridiculed. In a world that places so much weight on tolerance, I’m revolted that a union should expect the views of the majority to align with the views of every individual. I’ve yet to see any writer disagree with the WGA strike, however. I’m pretty torn about the whole thing and I’ll you why.
What’s right about the writers’ strike: The cause is just. As an aspiring professional writer and capitalist, I would want royalties on anything in which my work is used. The internet is clearly big business and the writers deserve their slice of the pie. I can understand companies trying to make up for money lost on piracy, but any successful show is going to profit and as long as a show has profits, writers deserve to see some of that money. There is simply no good reason to not give writers royalties on something that brings in profit.
What’s wrong about the writers’ strike: The decision to strike seemed a bit brash. The people taking the biggest hit from this strike are not the writers, and certainly not the stars or business executives. The hardest blows go to the guys and gals behind the scenes: people like the make-up artists and the techies. The people who handle all the miniscule details that the average audience member hardly notices. These people aren’t rich television/film stars and they have no cause to fight for. They are now out of work. All’s fair in love and war, and the writers are fighting for a just cause, as I mentioned. However, I’ve heard nothing about steps taken to negotiate a deal before the contracts were up. Why was nothing mentioned about this a few months ago? Contracts have an expiration date printed on them; it didn’t just sneak up on everyone. Maybe there were some minor, non-publicized talks, I don’t know. But the WGA should have given an ultimatum months ago, saying they would strike if an agreement was not met before the contracts were up. As a result many people are out of work, which brings us to tonight’s wørd: Hypocrisy.
The level of hypocrisy running through the members of the WGA is unbelievable. They love to point out the hypocrisy of their bosses (ex: Viacom suing Google for $1 billion due to copyrighted videos on YouTube while simultaneously claiming there’s not enough money to be made on the internet to give writers royalties*) as much as they love to ignore their own. Much of these writers’ material often champion the “little guy,” the poor, or middleclass American who can’t catch a break and is constantly screwed over by “the man.” What was the last show or movie you watched with a rich businessman as a “good guy.” There aren’t any Ayn Rands or even any Robert Heinleins in the world of television. That’s okay, though, and I expect a writer’s work to reflect his opinion. What I don’t expect is for a person to champion the working class American in his work then go on strike, putting tons of people out of work, to demand more money when he already makes a six digit income.** Six digits!? I would love to make that kind of money from writing. I don’t hold any delusions about being the next J.K. Rowling. It’s O.K. for the writers to demand more money because they deserve it, but don’t call out other people on their greed and ignore your own. And don’t write about the middle class getting screwed out of money and work opportunity then cause tons of layoffs. The WGA stinks of hypocrisy. I’m calling you out, WGA. I hope you get your extra royalties, but you deserve a good bitch-slapping to accompany that extra dinero.
As for the tearful viewers everyone loves to talk about… Well, I don’t care about them because I am one, and if there’s one thing I’m never hurting for, it’s entertainment. Dear god, what will I do without American television? Open a book or something? The horror! The fact is, I’ll always have novels, comic books, short stories, blogs, music, YouTube, and, of course, foreign television. Yes, it’s true: Canada, Britain, and Japan all have (some) fantastic television. IN fact, if you’re not watching BBC’s Robin Hood, I recommend you do so now. Or at least as soon as all your favorite U.S. programs halt production and run out of episodes to air.
Another point to make is that the best writers in television often have income from other sources, most notably novels and comic books. If a writer thinks he’s good enough to go on strike, perhaps he should try his hand at something in which he’s already entitled to royalties on all forms of his work. If he doesn’t think he’s that good, then maybe he should quit bullshitting everyone and find a new line of work.
There you have it: the good, the bad, and the ugly. I can’t pick a side in this debate because there is no bad guy. Everyone is the asshole.
*What isn’t mentioned in this ridicule is that much of those damages being sought are likely due to the presumption that YouTube takes away from TV viewership and DVD sales, but I think that’s a stupid argument.
**The average income of a WGA writer is $200,000.
One last thing concerning books: Go watch Neil Gaiman talk about the Amazon Kindle!
I would buy this thing. I would pay the whopping 400 bucks for this device if it weren’t for a few issues. The main reason I haven’t put in my order yet is that I bought the Sony Reader just a few months ago. That set me back $280 just before Sony came out with their updated model. It is clear this is going to become a competitive market, so it makes no sense to continually spend money on every new fancy ebook reader that catches my eye. I would love to have Wikipedia at my fingertips wherever I travel, but the Amazon Kindle relys on Sprints EVDO network, which, to my knowledge, only works in the U.S. The problem here, of course, is that I don’t live in the U.S. at the moment. Even when I return to the states, I still have to deal with the fact that I don’t get to use the EVDO network whenever I travel abroad. I can deal with the limitations of the EVDO network, though, but only once I’m back living in the states.
Another fatal flaw is that it doesn’t read any of the widely used formats such as rtf, doc, txt, or even PDF. Failing to include the ability to read pdf files is the Kindle’s biggest failing. This would be such a huge selling point for me and many other readers. You can convert files into Amazon’s file format, but there are formatting errors that come with this.
The second largest failing is charging for material that is free on the web. Amazon charges for subscriptions to any news source and any blog. Yes, blogs. I love reading blogs, but there is no blog on the web I would pay to read. The New York Times just ended their Times Select program, making almost everything on their site free to access. Why would I pay Amazon to read the NY Times? Even if I did think it was worth the price (and the Times definitely isn’t), I wouldn’t give that money to Amazon. I’d give it to the people writing and publishing the material. I think these companies should figure out how to format their papers and blogs for the Kindle and allow people to sign up for the material for free using their Kindle email addresses.
Needless to say, I’m holding out for the next version of either the Kindle or the Sony Reader. I’m interested to see what Sony does in response to the Kindle. The Kindle appears to be superior in many ways, but its lack of PDF support is keeping me on Sony’s side for now.
