According to some guy today is the most depressing day of the year. How appropriate.

To commemorate this day, I might as well write about one of the most depressing topics I can think of. Education. To be sure education shouldn’t be a depressing topic but I find the state and direction in which our educational system to be going to be most depressing.

I’ve mentioned this before but it bears repeating, there were always issues with education, always it seems as if children could be learning more and faster than they are in our schools both public and private. However, in the US it became increasingly clear to people in the last decade or two that American children were falling more behind relatively to the children of other nations. I’m not a scholar of education or history so I don’t know of any studies that conclusively show that this was true and if so whether it was more because of a decline in our educational system or an improvement in the education systems of other nations. Regardless, it certainly entered into the public mindset that there was a crises in education, that the system was broken and that we as a nation were in dire straights.

Well there were many calls for radical change. Some even called for that absolute demolition of the public school system in favor of a private system, no matter how historically successful public education systems have proven to be throughout the world. We all know the drill, “competition breeds innovation”, “government is the problem not the solution”, “trust in the free market”, blah blah blah.  Still, those who argued these things might not be wrong, who knows since we’ve never really seen a truly privatized educational system and for good reason. Our society, and coincidentally most societies around the world have decided that the price for such a system is too high to pay. Free access to a minimal public education is what most people consider the cornerstone of equality. The thought of children who grow up too poor to be able to opt in to the educational system and hence are doomed to a life of poverty with little opportunity and then have children who similarly cannot afford even the most basic education is just too despicable a possibility for most to imagine. There is, at least here in the US a strong inclination to favor systems where upward economic mobility is attainable though opinions differ greatly on how difficult it should be.

So anyway, thankfully I think, nobody has the stomach to try privatizing education, but there was still a sense that people had that education was in a state of crises and a vague conception that “government” and “lack of competition” had something to do with the problem.   For a while I think the nation bounced around on some ideas, a lot of ideas in fact. They would differ from state to state and various education fads would sweep the nation and then shatter once it became clear that whichever canned system will not necessarily work under all different circumstances or when whatever good system was not supported or effected with the level of seriousness and devotion needed to make it successful in a new region.

Time passes, and perhaps things were improving little by little but not enough for anyone to notice. People are inherently impatience and would not stand for glacial pacing.  But then something odd happened, something I never really understood and still don’t understand today.

Somehow, people got it into their heads that the problems with education call all be pinned on one very large and memorable target. No not the government, not the economy, not the inner cities, not poor parenting or poorly written text books, not modern hollywood culture, not the states, not the beuracracy, not the principals, not the lack of money, and certainly not the students.  No, we decided in all of our infinite wisdom that the source of all our ills were of course the Teachers.

I don’t know where this came from. Did people just mentally revert to their old elementary and high school classrooms and remember that one terrible teacher that they hated and used that inner image as the personification of the nature of the teaching industry? Did we remember all of those bad and seemingly pointless projects we did in school and think to ourselves, “damn, if Mrs So and So hadn’t made me make that idiotic dinosaur diarama while I was in third grade myabe I’d be a successful person today!” ?   Or maybe we saw too many feel good movies that depict some extraordinary teacher reaching out and making a difference to troubled students and we thought to ourselves, “I should have had a teacher like that! I’ll be damned if my children won’t have teachers who are at least that good or better!”

Or perhaps the attack on teachers has its roots back in the thoughts of privatization and pro-capitalist leanings. People thought to themselves: “hmm, well if we can’t have children and families competiting over the best schools to force innovation,  what if instead we created an environment where the teachers compete with one another in order to spur innovation?”  It’s actually not a bad thought in a vacuum. One might be wise to ask why the teachers? It is pobably more effective to focus the competitive impetus on administrators and law makers who have the most power to enact large scale change. But to be truthful there is plenty of pressure being put on administrators and law makers in this respect, it’s just that teachers as the lowest “touchable” being in the power heirarchy get pushed a heck of a lot of the burden of the competition. Our schools not meeting the standards, what do we do say the leaders: fire teachers, hire new teachers, make teachers teach new things, create incentives and disincentives for teachers, get the teachers to teach better by whatever means necessary, and so on.

Maybe that’s the real reason teachers were made the scapegoats in popular culture for any negative story about education you might be likely to hear. They were just such dang easy targets. Really, everybody’s a parent so who is going to blame the parents? Nobody would be so heartless as to blame the children or any social influence on the children for fear of being seen as trying to ascribe blame to children. The politicians are likely to do everything in their power to set the terms of the debate so that the thought of blaming them never comes to mind. And when the blame does come their way anyway, its trivial for them to pass the buck on to the school and district level administrative bureacracy who in turn can easily slide the blame on down to the teachers. Who are the teachers going to blame? By rights they should blame the administrators and politicians right back. But that’s just seen as whining by the public. Who is teaching the students, parents are likely to say? Is it the principal? Is it the guidance counselor. No! It’s you, the teacher. You’re the one up in front of the classroom everyday. Any failure of perforance all lies on you.  That’s the kind of attitude you’ll see, and in a sense it’s not wrong. Most teachers are acutely aware of the depth of their responsibility and the profound depth of the public trust with which they are burdened when they choose the non-glamorous life of an educator. But should they every dare to voice just a little bit of the extenuating circumstances that might just might have an impact on their ability to perform the godlike educational feats being demanded of them, who will listen to them? No one of course. They’re only teachers after all.

Well whatever the reason, I think people don’t really understand how radically negative an impact this atmosphere of blame is having on our schooling system. People don’t really see how it is for these teachers and so they assume that it is ok to implement policies and practices that push teachers into doing more and more with little in the way of extra support and even less in the way of praise or respect. People don’t really grasp how hard good teachers strive every day to ensure that these negative aspects of their existence as teachers don’t bleed into the classroom and effect the learning environment of the students.

Here’s how it tends to go. You’ve got teachers who were teaching 5 years, 10 years, 20 years, more even and doing a decent job of it by all old standards. They’ve learned new ways to teach things over the years, tried new methods, gained better skill relating with children understanding the extenuating circumstances that effect how children learn and being able to deal more effectively with various common behavior problems, learning disabiltiies, and other ordinary idiosyncracies that children exhibit inside the classroom that you can only learn how to deal with through the experiences of actually dealing with them. They’ve also gotten used to dealing with parents and principals and all the other orbiting forces vying for the attention of a teacher trying to do his or her job which “technically” only entails teaching children those three R’s and various other talents and abilities that help them to survive in this dark world. These teachers have a wealth of experience and knowledge that can’t be learned from a book or in a university classroom.

Now all of a sudden, may of these teachers are rushing towards retirement or are seeking new jobs. There are many out there who are just plain fed up and what to “get out” as fast as they can possibly safely do. Why? What’s changed?

Well it was a crises remember!  And society decided to blame teachers for it.

So here’s what these teachers saw happening. Testing and testing and more testing. Students would be tested over and over again, at the beginning of the year at the end of the year, in the middle of the year, with bigger tests every three years or five years or whatever. And not just any tests mind you, but standardized tests that are “important”. From the student perspective they are important because if they fail to meet a certain level of achievement on certain tests they will have to get extra help usually during their summer vacation. Nothing wrong with that. But here’s the thing. From the teachers perspective the tests are important because the students performacne will determine their personal salaries, their likelihood to keep their jobs or advance in their careers, and the very fate of their schools. Schools that perform poorly will have their principals and vice-princiapls replaced, will find their students choosing other schools  that have better scores, may even get shutdown or entirely taken over by the federal government. 

So then comes the pressure. Teachers are told they must do this and that and the other to ensure that their students perform well on the tests. Pressured administrators afraid for their careers put more and more pressure on the teachers, pull them into more meetings, coachings, seminars, hold more teacher reviews, evaluations, observations, move teachers around more in hopes of maximizing their utility. At best a principal will try to take as much of the burden of the pressure being put on him or her on his or herself and shield the teachers so that they can try to do their jobs, at worse the principal will be transformed by the pressure into a high strung screaming maniac desperate for results.

And so you have the teachers being told to adopt all kinds of new and innovative teaching techniques. They are expected to adopt these techniques immediately. Do not delay. Have you always taught by standing in front of the classroom lecturing. Well starting today, you better not be! Nevermind your previous experiences. Who cares what you think works and doesn’t work! A lot of smart people have come up with these new teaching techniques so you’d better use them. Don’t you dare try to volunteer your own ideas. After all who are you but just a regular teacher? Certainly not anyone worth listening to.

It get’s worse. An overstressed, over hyped educational staff afraid for their schools very existence is likely to make mistakes. And the mistakes they are likely to make are going to large scale and monumental. I heard a tale of a school where the district sent them a new small set of social studies books for their students meant to supplement the existing social studies textbooks. However, the school thinking that this was a new and innovative kind of educational approach that forgos the old the classic texts for these new smaller texts instructed all of its teachers to teach from the new books and had all of the old textbooks rounded up and thrown out! How much of an insane amount of monetary waste is that? This was undoubtedly a stupid thing to do but I don’t believe that all of the people in that school were just stupid people. This is a breakdown of the system. One in which the folly of the minority can have far reaching impact on the majority.

But that’s not the end of it either. These same teachers are also given more burdens heaped upon them. For it is determined that in addition to their student performance, they themselves must prove that they are worthy of teaching. That means all of a sudden they have to gather together all of this material, basically something like an application for college or grad school and submit it in order to prove that they are “highly qualified”. In some cases the teachers some of whom haven’t been in school for twenty or thirty years will have to go back to schol and take classes again. Some will have to take standardized tests such as various versions of the PRAXIS exams and so on.

How do you suppose a teacher who has  been teaching for twenty years would feel to be told that all of a sudden their job is in danger becaust they don’t meet the standards of “highly qualified”? How would such a teacher feel to know that parents are demanding that their student be taken out of their classroom because they aren’t “good enough” teachers? Nevermind that you were good enough yesterday? Nevermind you never had any reason to feel your job was threatened yesterday? That’s just the way it goes.

Oh and did I forget to mention that on top of all that, salaries aren’t improving. Many school unions don’t even have a negotiated contract with the district so they haven’t even been getting typical cost of living increments in salary. And of course like in just about every career, healthcare costs seem to be a sticking point. Classroom sizes aren’t improving. In fact they are getting worse. How is differentiated instruction supposed to happen in a classroom of thirty+ students, one teacher and no aide? And the funds for tools and equipment isn’t improving, at least not appreciable. Teachers still pay out of pocket for a majority of the items that appear in their classroom. Teachers still work late hours, come in early to prepare and often volunteer their additional free time to help out the school in extracurricular projects so that students can have a school experience that consistens of more than endless book learning.

All of this and then you’d have to come home and turn on the news and hear some bonehead commentator talking about how screwed up our nations schools are and demanding greater “accountability” for the teachers. All of this and you almost can’t talk to anyone about education these days without people effectively accusing you personally for being at fault for all of the  woes of the educational system. Any student who doesn’t succeed. If you are a teacher, then you are to blame! At least in this current culture.

So no wonder teachers with experience want to get out ASAP. And where does that leave us when their experience is gone? Why with a lot of new teachers with little real world experience and no mentors to guide them or help them in any way. These teachers in turn are going to be either quickly burnt out or are going to quickly try to advance *out* of a teaching position as soon as possible or are just going to quit. Very few will remain as motivated career teachers.  Isn’t that just grand?  No doubt schools will at least be happy to not have to pay them as big a salary since they don’t have the years of experience to warrant it.

So yeah, if you think your life is pretty depressing on this the most depressing of days, look at the bright side. At least you’re not a teacher!

And if you are a teacher, please accept my heartfelt condolences. We as a society must honor your sacrifice for the greater good.

I recently read the first twelve volumes of a Manga series that is
quickly becoming one of my favorite Manga series of all. True, I
haven’t actually read a whole lot of Manga, I mostly just watch the
anime and maybe read a little of the Manga after the fact.  Still, this
series, I believe ranks right up there with some of my favorite Anime
as well. It’s just good stuff.

The series is called Negima! and it’s from the creator of Love Hina
(Ken Akamatsu). Love Hina was pretty good too, not my favorite but I
enjoyed it enough. I only saw the anime of that one too so the Manga
might well be considerably better but the anime I enjoyed. I think
Negima!’s even better.

I
really don’t have much to say about the series that wouldn’t constitute
spoilers. Just a small word of warning, if you look up information
about this series you will find a lot of people who have a very
negative reaction to it. Some people even consider it to be “immoral”
and most discussions about the series tend to revolve around
differences in cultural attitudes between the US and Japan. Some people
really really hate this series. Others just think it tries too hard to
be extreme in certain respects and should try to be more mainstream.
The only thing I hate is that this discussion so frequently drowns out
discussions of the merits of the Manga’s story and characters and other
aspects. Why is the age difference between the main character and most
of the secondary characters such a huge sticking point for so many
people?

Largely the parts of the story that garner such
controversy aren’t the parts of the story that I most enjoy. They don’t
bother me at all and I’m not one to tell an Artist how best to present
his or her art though oft I wonder about what motivates artists to do
so. I think in order to appreciate a presentation truly you have to
take into account all aspects of it even if there are components that
you would probably have done differently.

Anyway, I mostly read through that stuff, laugh at the gratuitous
fan-service as is intended and get on to the parts I like more, that is
the parts of the series that are devoted to character development and
the pure action-packed Shonen fight sequences. If you’re just reading
the beginning you wouldn’t believe that it’s going to be such a series,
but trust me it does. Like so many series I didn’t really like it all
that much from the first volume but by the time I got to the sixth and
seventh I can say that I was thoroughly enjoying the series and by the
12 I was in love with it. Although it does share some substantive
similarities to Love Hina, it’s just never exactly what you’d expect.
In the end it ends up reminding me more of series like Naruto and Yu Yu
Hakusho except for the fact that almost all of the fighters are female.

I did hear one weird description of this anime that is probably not at
all useful but I’ll mention it just in case someone contemplating
reading this series as heard the comparison before. People have called
Negima! a kind of “Harry Potter” if done in the anime style story. 
This absolute nonsense so far as I can tell. The only similarities are
that the main characters of both series start off young, wear glasses,
use magic, and occasionally fly about on a stick of some sort.  If
that’s your definition of two stories being “alike” then you must be
reading both stories very shallowly.

Another word of caution must be said about the anime version of
Negima!.  Amongst the forums I’ve read most readers of the Manga don’t
seem to like the main anime at all.  The main anime follows the Manga
but diverges considerably from what I’ve heard and in a manner many of
the viewers didn’t like at all.  There’s a second anime series as well
called Negima!? which is a re-imagining of the story not written by Ken
Akamatsu and thus not really the same Negima at all. It may be good, it
may not, feelings seem to be split, but regardless it is clearly not
what you want to be watching if you want to watch the Manga brought to
life. I haven’t watched anime of the anime versions of the story so I
can’t really give you my personal opinion on them.

I strongly recommend just reading the Manga. Manga is also useful since
you can snag a chapter here and there without having to devote as much
time to it. Thus did I read these manga though after I got hooked I
spent pretty much a full day reading like that last six volumes. 
Still, it *can* in theory be a more efficient means of distributing
one’s time.

The story isn’t complete though. There are 12 volumes available in the
US and one more coming in February and the story is still going on in
Japan so be forewarned if you choose to read this that you will
probably have to deal with large cliff hangers and long periods of
waiting to see what happens next. I think it’s worth it though. It’s
just such a good story.

I heard tell of my old High School teacher the other day. It’s a really
strange thought. He asked for me to get in touch with him and catch up,
say hi. I don’t know if I will.

He was probably one of my favorite teachers and a good one too and
extremely nice… well at least to me. At least I can say that he
clearly meant well in all of is dealings and that’s the best you can
really say about anyone. I have no ill feelings toward him whatsoever.
And yet, it’s just a strange idea to go talk to him again, almost
inconceivable.

Even the way he described me is kind a weird, “one of the smart ones”. 
It makes me wonder… Did he have high expectations for me? Did he have
high hopes? Probably not. No doubt all teachers feel at least a tiny
little connection to their students, but chances are most don’t really
care a whole lot about what you did with your life. Sure they’d be
curious. They’d take pleasure in taking pride in your accomplishments
if you have any and they’d shrug and wish you the best if you don’t.

That’s just it, I’m sure if I were living in a ditch somewhere or on
the verge of becoming President my conversation with my old teacher if
I had it would be pretty much the same. He’d ask wholly natural
questions that you’d expect a teacher to ask his former student, and I’d obfuscate my responses, he’d tell a
few stories and talk a little about himself and be entirely cordial and
polite the entire time. No chance he’d beat me over the head with a
stick or yell curses upon me or anything like that, but no doubt I’d
come away feeling entirely disheartened nonetheless.

Why discomfort?  Because it’s of the past? A shadow. It’s not supposed to bleed into the present.

No that’s not true. Thee are pasts that I wish would bleed more into
the present. Shadows I wish I could live with all the time. The
nostalgia I like, and to be sure I enjoyed sitting in his Math class
back in the day if it was one of the few joys I had back then.

Why discomfort? I don’t know. But there have been other shadows of the
past that have come up of late that have had a similar impact on my
perspective.

The other day I was at a store and shopping for something and someone
recognizes me and asks me if I am who myself. I answered cautiously
yes, and he said something along the lines of “I’ll never forget, black
Valedictorian”. I felt no ill will toward the person who said those
words but for some reason they made me shudder. I just wanted to get
away from there as soon as possible and I did.

Why did it bother me so? I just don’t understand.

The other day I was browsing the web and I unearthed web pages about a
couple of my former high school classmates. We were.. well not close…
but I guess we occasionally acknowledged one another as high achievers.
One of them I was closer to when I was much younger but by High School
well it was as I said we acknowledged one another.. a little. I think I
was more of a subject of study for them than anything else. To be fair
they were little more to me than an object of my curiosity in my
arrogant youth.

It felt wrong reading even this most miniscule amount of information
that they had written, like I was stepping into a world that I had
forsaken.  But no I’ve got no real problem with reading public
information even if the person I am reading it about doesn’t realize I
am doing it. Some people see a privacy problem there, but I think
that’s just absurdity. Anyway, was it that they seemed so damned happy
that bothered me? Sure you can’t really tell anything about someone
from such a trivial amount of data so surely my reason tells me that
they are likely to be living normal lives too having trials and
tribulations and moments of happiness like everybody else.

So why discomfort? What is it with me and my inability to face the past without feeling strange about it?

This is something that really bothers me and something I think that
needs to change. I hate the thought of all my yesterdays falling into
the land of foolish discomfort as time passes and finding myself
increasingly incapable of facing them. There are too many memories that
I cherish too much to let that happen.  I shall have to find the mental
barrier within me that prevents me from finding joy in the
reincarnation of the past and demolish it. I want not a mote of dust of
it to remain.

You know… I don’t think I’ve ever had a story about myself that I thought was worth telling. No achievements worth boasting over, no failures worth letting other commiserate with me over, no funny tales worth joking about. Is that why, when so many others can so easily engage in idle communication I find so often that I have nothing to say? Is that why I need to struggle so hard to come up with little anecdotes or clever responses to fill the endless silences that drag on when in conversation people wait for you to pull your share of the burden of communication?

It’s sort of ironic when so many of my family members seem to be almost legendary in their story telling abilities. When I was little I used to sit on the porch or the living room sofa and just listen to my aunts and uncles, grandparents, great aunts, great uncles, cousins, and other various relations just spin their tales and discuss things far and wide with astounding ease and comfort. I could sit there forever. I loved listening to it. It didn’t have anything to contribute, not an opinion, not an idea and certainly no stories of my own. Sometimes the stories would be silly or trivial. They could spin stories out of the sports, out of television, out of the weather, easily as if it were a natural thing to do. Other times the stories would be funny, hilarious reminiscing of the past but which held deeper meanings or imparted lessons  and knowledge upon the listener. Still other times the conversation would turn deadly serious and the stories they told were all too horrifyingly real. Stories of death, and sickness and injustice  and cruelty and prejudice and suffering and thoughtlessness. When I was little they would only tell those when the kids were upstairs and out of the way, but of course I managed to over-hear my fair share of them anyway as I’m sure did all of my cousins and siblings.

In retrospect some of the stories were quite cruel. As in just about every group I’ve eve been in, conversations inevitably turned to criticisms of certain groups or persons often not fully justified. Most often the cruelty was wrought for the sake of humor. The outsiders folly oft serves to bring merry comfort to the group. Less frequently the cruelty was only masked in humor but underlying was reflective of a deeper shared rage and anger that permeated the group.

Back when I was young I used to wonder a lot about how they almost always managed to hold these conversations without turning to argument or anger and making everyone uncomfortable. To be sure sometimes they did but it was the exception from my perspective not the rule. In my schoolings I observed that children were far more likely to alienate one another should any conversation last more than fifteen minutes. Disagreements would break out and become obvious more likely in the first five seconds. That is, until children found their niche group of entities with whom they were unlikely to find offense. But even in those groups, offense was common, just more likely to be forgiven.

As I am older I see now that my relatives were not all that different really just a little wiser and a lot more disciplined. I look back and I see how they would steer their storytelling to prove their point or use their examples to express their disagreement all without having to directly assert anything. I can see now when relatives would hold their tongue rather than say something that would break the flow and shatter the contentment and happiness of the evening.

This is not to say that my relatives were dishonest or indirect. Quite the contrary. These are very forthright people, direct in their dealings and un-inclined to subterfuge almost to a fault. Some of them would speak their mind forcefully enough that you’d wonder how anyone could tolerate their way of dealing with you.  So why then the lack of discordance in their dealings with one another? It’s really quite simple really. They shared a belief in the importance of the event. Family gatherings were serious business for them. It was important that they get together and important and meaningful to have conversations with their sister and brothers and aunts and uncles and nieces and nephews. It was important and valued enough that they were all willing to sacrifice a little in order to not taint the event, to ensure that it remain special.

I observe this kind of behavior all the time really now that I am wise enough to see it. Nearly all conversations entail people holding back, even those who pride themselves on being brutally honest, you see them hold back if you know how to look for it. All in order to ensure that conversation can occur.

So is all conversation then just a kind of dissembling? Do we with hold our true thoughts in order to ensure that we have can continue to communicate at all?  Probably yes to some extent that is true, but I don’t think it is a bad thing.

Ach! I was supposed to be talking about stories and how I lack any stories not about the inherent nature of conversation.  They are not at all the same thing.

Stories come from a kind of observational outlook toward reality. To acquire stories you must be interested in finding the quirky and unusual and noteworthy things about the world around you. Storytellers are those who want to share the experience of reality with others and talk about it.

So why am I not a ‘storyteller’ in that sense? Because I’m still the little boy sitting on the porch step. I am fascinated with hearing the stories. I love them and want to learn them, but I don’t particularly feel any desire to share them or to discuss them. I just want to listen. I want to immerse myself in them and thus know how fascinating the experiences of humanity really is.  Is that selfish? Probably. I should tell my own stories anyway, however trivial and uninteresting they may seem to me in case someone else can find meaning in them or learn from them.  But then you gotta deal with the questions and the discussions and the sympathetic comments and the offers to help and blah blah blah. I don’t care about that garbage. I just want you to tell me more stories!

In order to be able to converse I have acquired three tactics that I have found effective alternatives to being a story gatherer and storyteller like so many other people seem to be.

One is to simply do something that most people don’t do for no other reason then to be able to tell the story about it. I don’t really care about the story and I don’t even do it for the experience, though I feel all experiences are worth having. I just do it because I can and if nothing else I can tell the story. The more unusual the story the less likely anyone is to question it. More like, they’ll get into a boasting contest and respond with their own more unusual story! Yes! Score!

The second strategy is to tell other people’s stories. Not as my own of course, that’d be evil. But since I enjoy hearing stories so much I do have quite an archive of stories I’ve heard. Too bad my memory stinks so most like I’ll be telling these stories wrong and half making it up as I go along. Still, I enjoy that a lot more. There’s a risk though of seeming close minded or even somewhat parasitic if you tell too many tales of others. People will wonder why you are never a major character in any of your stories! For some reason that tends to alienate people.

The last strategy and by far my favorite is to avoid telling stories altogether and simply talk about my ideas. That’s actually something that is mine which I enjoy sharing and discussing. Someone tells me a story and in it they feature some aspect of the world they wish were otherwise, well now I’ll just respond with my craziest suggestion as to how to make it otherwise. In a lull in the conversation I’ll just randomly bring up some subject matter that I dislike and tell people how I believe it could be made better and exactly how I think we should go about doing it. In less directive matters, I’ll just talk about how I feel the world really works, how people really think, what the great mysteries of the world are. I’ll talk about books I’ve read on these subjects, the thoughts of scholars on these matters, history and science, math, psychology, programming, philosophy. Whatever. Anything I have an opinion on I’ll share that opinion just because I like thinking about it and I think pretty much everyone has something interesting to say about it so I feel that by sharing  these things I’ll learn something from the listeners response. I’m sure I must sound arrogant when I do this or perhaps psychotic, but who cares! There are too many cool ideas to be explored in the world to worry about such stuff.

Usually that last strategy carries additional risks besides the risk of sounding like a ranting lunatic. Recall, earlier I talked about how people “hold back” opinions during conversation in order to prevent discordance in the flow of conversation. People are very careful not to respond with their ideas and opinions when those opinions are likely to upset or enrage someone. You can really cause someone to hate you by saying you think something should be a certain way if that person is morally opposed to that idea. And of course, I am cautious of this as well. If there is some clue that leads me to believe that a particular idea I have would not be well received I don’t voice it unless I think it is really important to do so, but most times since I am spontaneously bringing up subjects not earlier discussed there’s always great risk that I could be entering an area of taboo without realizing.  Who knows maybe one day such a thing will get me in big trouble. But wouldn’t that make an interesting story to tell?

There’s a fourth strategy too that I used to dabble in a little and that is the time honored art of asking questions. It is entirely possible to carry on an entire conversation without volunteering anything but questioning everything. Only deep down this is what I want to do. I want to listen yes, but I also want to ask questions and find out what other people are thinking about matters that interest me. I’m not super super curious because I’ve learned that people don’t often answer direct questions in a manner that is particularly interesting or necessarily truthful. Still, even half-responses to deep questions can be intriguing and even bad responses can lead to an interesting socratic dialogue in which we try to uncover the truth of what is going on.

Still, I don’t do that and although I’ve never been a talkative person, I ask even less questions now than  I ever did before. Why? Because in college I encountered someone who used to carry on discussions with me in such a manner, basically questioning me about everything and every idea and challenging my every word. I discovered that I despised this tactic! It was horrible, no matter how kindly the presentation, it felt like being involved in an interrogation. Every time I felt the need to dissemble or avoid answering I felt terrible like I’d lost some precious part of my honor and morality. I could not in good conscious continue to do this kind of thing to others even a little. Every now and then I’ll catch myself asking two many questions and forcefully stop myself. Fulfilling one’s curiosity isn’t worth causing that kind of harm however important the question. I’ll always love Socrates but I know that if I ever met him in real life, you’d probably have to tie me to a chair and hold a gun to my head in order to force me to hold more than a five minute conversation with him.  I guess I’m just more of a natural listener. 

I hate Final Fantasy XII!!

OK, that’s not true. I don’t hate it, but it drives me mad. I haven’t
completed the game yet, in fact I’m probably somewhere around the
middle of the game having not yet even gotten the -ga attack spells
yet. Probably the bulk of the story still lies ahead of me so I can’t
say whether it will be good or bad or entertaining or boring. I can say
that I like the entire primary cast and I thought the beginning part of
the story was pretty darn good and of course the cut scenes are
beautiful.

The problem is, I’ve only made it that far and yet… I have over 80
hours of play time!  I’m sure there are players out there who are
laughing at this who have cleared the game in thirty hours flat with
utter ease but for me the game seems to be just taking *forever*. It
drags on and on, fight after fight, boss after boss endlessly.  It’s
insanity!

And you know an several hundred hour game doesn’t really bother me. I
can live with such long playtimes provides I remain engaged throughout.
Ideally each time I sit down to play I should get some part of the
story revealed to me thus fortifying me enough to await my next play
sessions which may be days or even weeks later depending on my schedule.

Not so with Final Fantasy XII.  You see in this game I’ll get through
an interesting story scene that intrigues me and then I’ll save and
pick up the game the next day eager to find out what happens next. 
There’s only one problem.  To get to the next plot sequence you have to
travel through the forest of despair, over the burning desert, through
the endless plains, across the dark mountains, through the ancient
ruins, across the swamplands, cross the river, crawl underneath the
dark caverns, sneak past the uber monsters and defeat the boss, and the
other boss, and the other boss, and so on. And you do this all on foot
killing hordes of increasingly powerful aggressive monsters the entire
time.  I’m only exaggerating a little bit.  I’m spent several lengthy
sessions just traveling from one place to another in this game without
getting any more than a ten second cut scene to hold me over in terms
of character development or story.  Worse, when you arrive there might
not be any story immediately available. You may have to talk to
hundreds of people in a city looking for the person who gives you the
information you need to advance the plot. ugh!

It’s just so very annoying.  This is a world where technology and magic
are supposed to be pretty advanced. We see hover bikes and air ships
all over the place, why are we walking everywhere like a bunch of bone
heads? I don’t get it. They try to justify it in story but you know
what, this is a game! The writers invent the story. They could have
just as easily made interesting stuff happen if we are caught trying to
smuggle ourselves in on an air ship or a boat.  Indeed such an approach
would require th writers to write *more* story even if it is only the
tail of how the characters escaped the dungeon or managed to disguise
themselves and not be uncovered during the air ship ride. Character
development could have been interspersed throughout these episodes. 

But no. We walk and walk and walk. You can hire a chocobo sure but
they’ll charge you an arm and a leg and the chocobo will get tired
(Curse you Final Fantasy XI influence!) and leave you probably
somewhere where you can barely survive because you didn’t fight your
way there honestly gaining levels the entire way.

The worse part is the battles through these area’s aren’t nail bitingly
difficult. My group can pretty easily wipe out three or four monsters
ten or so levels higher than us (lure-tanking is unstoppable!). I am
almost never in fear for my group’s life. In worse case you can pretty
easily run from everything though it gals me to do so. If anything I’m
more afraid for my group’s bank account. Because when things get more
challenging or if I mismanage my resources or wander into an area where
the monsters are significantly higher level than my characters, it
mostly just means I’ll have to use more items to defeat them. More
phoenix downs and high potions. Maybe even ethers if I’m too lazy to
run around back and forth and/or use the charge ability over and over
again to recharge my MP.  And all of that gets expensive.  Not to
mention spells and abilities and gambits and armor and weapons and
accessories all cost significant amounts of money. Sometimes you need
to buy particular accessories and/or armor to be able to deal with
particular groups of monsters and bosses efficiently even if you don’t
need those items throughout the rest of the game. Virtually every
treasure in the game is random and I have pretty much no luck
whatsoever with opening a chest with a item that is actually useful to
me so everything pretty much ends up being up to me to buy. Also since
I try to keep all six of my characters well equipped and the same level
since I like them all, I end up pretty much broke most of the game.

Provided I am the appropriate level with the appropriate equipment to
go through an area, it’s pretty much just tedious boredom. I just set
my characters gambits and my characters do all of the work. I only need
to move the analog stick I rarely have to press a button. Worst case is
I run into something like an elemental and have to run for it, or I
just mismanage my mp and have to stop for a tedious mp recharging
session. Mostly it’s just on and on tedious fighting. No challenge,
just fighting.

Now there are times when I find I am not really the appropriate level
or have the right level of equipment for the place I go. I can then
either charge forward, which I usually do, or I can go grind. Charging
forward just means I have to use a lot of items and battles take
significantly longer since my weapons don’t deal all that much damage.
Still there’s little risk of death and I still rarely have to intervene
with manual control. It just takes longer.

But grinding is no better (If I wanted to grind I’d just play an
mmorpg!). You have two choices. You can find somewhere where monsters
are about your level and give you a good amount of experience and start
chaining them (so you get enough items to be able to afford better
armor and weapons) or you can just go about trying to complete the
optional quests and bosses during the course of which if you fight
steadily the entire  time you are likely to gain some levels.  I’ve
done both. During most of the early game I completed pretty much every
hunt close to as soon as I could get them and doing most when I had
optional characters on my team such as Larsa.   Now’a'days I’m more
lazy and just grind. Now the hunts unlike most of the normal game do
get challenging and by challenging again I mean expensive.  I have
gotten wiped out by a few hunts and needed to readjust my strategy a
few times until I figured out what defeated them, but most hunts  I
just end up using a lot of items (which is why I did them with Larsa on
my party whenever I could, he saves you so many items!). The hunts I
think are kinda neat optional content, I just wish there weren’t times
where I feel obligated to do optional content in order to keep my
characters at a level where they can efficiently clear the areas
required to advance the story. I never minded much the classic Final
Fantasy way of putting much of the optional content at the end of the
game just before the last dungeon but Final Fantasy XII scatters
interesting challenges throughout instead. This isn’t a bad thing in
and of itself. If anything I think it’s the right way to do things. I
just think when it is combined with the endless storyless fighting to
get from one plot point to another and the feeling of being broke all
the time that I find no particular joy in succeeding in these
challenges. The rewards you get for most are not even particularly
exciting. Some are more useful later down the line as they help unlock
powerful bazaar goods but who cares about that when I’m trying to
advance the plot right now?

Recently I’ve just gotten tired of the endless journeying and decided
that I’m just going to make my characters so powerful that they can
kill everything in one or two hits thus making the journey from one
story plot point to another as quick as possible.  To do this I turned
to the Power Leveling FAQ on gamefaqs for guidance. I’d be lying if I
said that I hadn’t been using any of the faqs earlier. The game almost
seems to be designed to force you into using faqs if you want to go
through the game efficiently.  For example, weapons and armor don’t
tell you all of their effects when you are buying them. You won’t see
how much mp you’ll go up until you’ve already wasted your had earned
gil. That’s idiotic. Further, he license board system means that if you
want to progress through to the ability to use a particular piece of
equipment or ability as efficiently as possible you need to look at a
FAQ that shows you what everything is. The board itself hints pretty
well at what direction you should go in, but that doesn’t mean you
can’t waste significant LP points going along a more expensive path
foolishly.  Fortunately I’ve always had far more LP than I even no what
to do with in this game so that part hasn’t bothered me much.  

The randomness of the treasure chests means that if you want to get
decent items from an area you have to use a FAQ in order to find out
what chests you should restart your game multiple times over in order
to ensure that you get a good item. I haven’t done this really until I
started reading the power leveling FAQ but again its an area where FAQ
reading will be to your advantage. In order to figure out where exactly
you are going and not waste time exploring these massive terrains FAQs
also provide great utility to you as well by providing better
directions than you get in story and/or actual full maps meaning you
don’t have to waste money to buy it or fight your way to the locations
where the maps can be found.

Not all merchants sell the same goods, so FAQs can provide an advantage
by letting you know where at each point in the story the best equipment
can be bought.  For example early on you can get a signfiicant
equipment boos by going to Nalbina even though story-wise there’s no
reason to go there at this point.

Last but not least, because of the idiotic nature of the bazaar goods
system, faqs are almost required to prevent you from inefficiently
selling items and hence losing out on the best equipment in the game. 
There are no hints as to what recipes unlock what equipment for the
most part and the nature of the system is that if there is a recipe
that requires you to sell 2 of X and another recipe that requires you
to sell 3 of X, if you sell 10 of X today, you’ll unlock the 3 of X
recipe but not the 2 of X if you are missing other components for the 2
of X recipe. If you acquire and sell those other components of the 2 of
X recipe you’re still screwed until you get 2 more of X and sell those
as well. Why? Beats me. That’s just how the mindless system works. So
yeah to earn money you sell what monsters drop but if you don’t use the
faqs you’ll either lose out on money or you’ll miss out on all of the
potential bazaar goods you could unlock. Meaning again, huge advantage
to the players who use the FAQs over the players who try to play
through the game honestly. Also why on earth are some loot used for
other things and others just sold for profit? If you’re going to have a
distinction between items and loot why not actually make it a
meaningful distinction? Teleport stones and Gysahl greens should be
items *not* loot!

And when reading the Power Leveling FAQ I discovered the crowning jewel
of folly in this game. You see the primary tip of the guide is
essentially the get a mighty weapon called the Zodiac Spear
ridiculously early and then breeze through the game one hitting
creatures left and right. Awesome right? Well I actually feel it’s
pretty idiotic to make a weapon that powerful available so early in the
game no matter how challenging the method to acquire it is (in this
case you just have to run through areas where the monsters are way
stronger than you which is lot easier than it sounds actually).   But
anyway  that’s not the real stupid part.  You see the stupid part is
that the way you get this mighty spear is to open a chest that is
guaranteed to have it…. unless you opened any of a number of specific
other chests that appear earlier in the game.  If you open any of these
“special” chests the Zodiac Spear just won’t appear for you. Why? Beats
me. It just doesn’t.  No there’s no riddle or hint or clue in game to
tell you not to open these chests. There no rational reason you
wouldn’t open these chests *unless* you’d read a faq that told you not
to do so. Again the game pushes you into the hands of the FAQ and
Strategy Guide writers. Just as bad is the fact that many of these
*special* chests appear really early in the game so that even if you do
pick up a faq half way through you’re likely to be screwed.  The game
basically rewards you for playing irrationally by giving you one of if
not the best weapon in the game. Why on earth would they make the game
work that way?  There is I hear one other way to get the spear a chest
with like a one in a thousand chance of existing and having it in it.
ugh! I definitely feel that final fantasy X did a much better job with
their method of providing players with the best weapons in the game.
XII uses primarily random chests and bazaar good recipes and occasional
rare steals all of which to me is idiotic.

Fortunately the power leveling faq did provide enough other tips to
improve the speed at which I can go through the game and alleviate my
boredom. I went and grabbed a bunch of death bringer swords plus some
dragon armor, and I bazaar-ed my way to a nice axe, and stole my way to
relative wealth from the Bomb King and I’m grinding on chumpy skeletons
to increase my level at an extraordinary rate. I even contemplated
doing the auto-leveling faq thing to gain levels without having to be
at my playstation at all. I may yet to resort to that but for now it’s
a little beyond my tolerance for cheating cheese.  But if that will
enable me to advance the game and get to the rest of the story at a
nice pace I may yet do it. Hopefully though the deathbringers plus
skeleton grind will be sufficient and I can finally feel as if I am
advancing he story sufficiently each time I sit down to play instead of
wondering if today will be a boring session of endless walking or an
exciting day of good story development.  We’ll see.

My last pet peeve is that certain characters have strictly worse stats
than others, throughout most of the game, punishing players who like
those characters and want to play them even if only a tiny bit in this
case since stats are so insignificant. That’s still really dumb.

So far I find that final fantasy xii has extraordinary graphics,
interesting characters, great monster designs, good challenges,
interesting terrains, and at least parts of an interesting plot (so
far) as well as an interesting and unique combat system, but the pacing
of the game absolutely stinks and the poor design of some of the
advancement systems really bothers me a great deal.

I am still reserving judgment as to whether I think this game is worthy of the Final Fantasy name. We shall see.

I must contradict Nephyo’s last post. It is nonsense.

With regards to writing at least as an art in particular with which I am well acquainted, I do feel that it can fill a crucial need. Oh it’s not a “real” need in that you’ll die or suffer eternally without it but it is “real” enough that people are driven to fulfill it and feel a very real emptiness when  lacking a means to fill that need.

For the most prolific writers most likely it is the need to be understood. Each written word is a struggle to try and project one’s consciousness to the world so that others might well if not appreciate it at least acknowledge it.  The need to know that there are those who will say, “this was a unique individual who lived”, not some shadow who simply persists. The deeper that need the more likely you are to express yourself in art and the more frequently you will go about in doing it.

To say that there is no such thing as people who feel compelled to write disregards the degree to which one’s state of mind can effect their behavior. Even without knowing what it is, many a person just knows instinctively that there is something lacking in them that they realize their expression of art helps alleviate.  To resist this compulsion can be painful and distressing. No it won’t kill you, but let us not pretend that mere pain leading to death is the only kind of suffering we ought acknowledge. It does not take a genius to realize that a single word spoken at the wrong time in the wrong place can destroy someone as surely a rocket or a bullet. If there is a difference it lies in only that there is time and surety of possibility to recover from pain of the latter sort whereas recovery from physical injury is not so certain a thing and death has no do-overs. A single word can shatter your consciousness and make you feel a pain in an instance that seems like an eternity, but then it always passes and you’re still you only hopefully a little wiser and you can heal.

If we acknowledge that pain need not be primarily about the concrete and that insubstantially sourced pain can be as much a detriment to a person as the other, then we should rationally acknowledge that fear of the persistence of insubstantial pain can be as much of a motivator as fear of the persistence of concrete pain. The obvious analog is torture. A person who has a painful emotional deficiency feels a seemingly endless pain and would do anything to alleviate that deficiency, just as a person being tortured beyond a point would feel a compulsion do whatever possible to cause that pain to stop.

And that’s the way for some writers. We don’t choose to write because we want to, nor because we hope to achieve greatness. We do it because we have to, pure and simple. For our sanity and persistence and to escape to continuation of pain, uncertainty, fear, and despair, we write. There is no choice.

-  Clef

Be forewarned. What I am about to say may seem a little on the cynical side at first.

There are two basic takes on the motivations that drive the creation of works of art.

The first is that we create them because we have something *important*
to say to the world through our art. In one sense the artist is trying
to change the world or change individuals perspective on reality by
enlightening them in some way. The mode of change need not be direct.
The artist finds satisfaction if the viewers vision of the world is
shifted or their understanding of some aspect of reality is increased.
In this way the artist sees their work as causing substantive change.
They see this as putting their mark on the world, as justifying their
existence and of leaving something behind that makes their existence
meaningful.

But does it really? Think of all the multitude of works of creativity
that saturate the world these days. The shear number of stories and
images and ideas that permeate reality is beyond the scope that the
mind can comprehend.  Each one a unique work of art by a unique
individual presenting a unique perspective and appealing to a unique
audience? Can that really be true? I have no doubt that each artwork is
at least a little bit different from each other. Nobody can share the
unique experiences of another individual exactly. Nevertheless,
whatever one’s message is, chances are pretty good that someone
somewhere has presented it before. Maybe your work will sync more with
a few people than those other works but its unlikely that your work
will be any kind of a world changing event. Chances are not that many
people will be effected and the ways in which they are effected are
probably not that meaningful. It’s just not necessarily a big deal to
create a piece of art.

Here’s another way to think about it. Look back upon all of the works
of art you’ve experienced. How many can you say have fundamentally
changed your perspecive? How many have caused in you a radical shift in
behavior? How many can you say honestly that if you had not seen this
you’d be a different person, be living a different life, have different
wants and fears and values? For some, there are some works that hold
such a special place, but not a whole lot and many times when we say
that a work is that significant to us, we are really projecting our
wants over the reality of the situation. We found the work beautiful or
meaningful or truthful and we liked it enough that we wish we would
behave differently as a result. But it’s rare that we do so, at least
not primarily because we perceived this art. Eliminate the work of art
from our lives and chances are pretty good we’d be doing exactly what
we are doing now. The catalysts for change of life tend to be
conglomerates of experiences. The sum total of the arts we perceived no
doubt have an impact on our lives. If a person loves works of fantasy
and you eliminate all the fantasy stories that person has perceived
from their life and without a doubt you’ll find a different person, who
lives and thinks differently, but take away one particular fantasy
story and you just don’t get that much of a difference. Indeed
examination of lives tends to show that particular interactions with
individuals even single brief conversations can have a much more
profound impact on what kinds of decisions a person makes than dozens
of perceived stories.  So chances are good an artist isn’t going to
change the world to any large extent unless they have some super power
that manifests itself in their works. Oh there are undoubtedly
exceptions. There are probably some very small few works of art that
have radically changed the course of entire societies. What would the
world really be like if there had never been Shakespeare? Who can say.
But these cases are in the margin, not the mainstream.

What’s worse is the long term perspective of such a motivation. If you
desire to create a work of art so that you can leave your permanent
mark upon society, if you could skip ahead a couple thousand years
there’s almost no chance whatsoever even an echo of an echo of your
work’s impact will remain even if it were the most famous of artworks
of its day. This is the terrifying aspect of time. It simply drives all
things into nothing and not even the most powerful of works can prevent
its impact. Society tries to preserve. It’s one of the great aspects of
human endeavor, but can we even say how well were are succeeding in
preserving the relics of the past?  Would Homer even recognize the
Illiad that students are reading today? Would the discussions being had
about it even make any coherent sense to him?  Maybe those books are
still having an impact, but there is almost no way to know that the
impact is as was intended. Maybe Homer would be satisfied if it was
having any impact at all after so many years, but I should think that
would be a little irrational. If a work survives  millennium only to be
the cause of the destruction of the Universe at the end of the
millennium surely this would not be a thing to be happy about. In any
case, one day the universe will either expand to the point that we all
freeze or re-contract destroying all that exists. In the end no matter
what happens the confines of reality as we understand it seem to
suggest that all works of art can only have limited finite
significance. So too with all things. Nothing lasts forever.

I don’t mean to criticize the artist who dreams of such significance in
their works but only to make observation of the reality of the
situation.  I would recommend that an artist not take radical world
shifting or permanent lasting impact as their only motivation for
creating their works of art. Now if your are sufficiently motivated by
the thought of having just a small group of people are ever so slightly
influenced by your works, well then that’s another matter. You will, in
that case, likely meet your goals with your works and maybe even exceed
your expectations. The world will be a different place due to your
works, just not all that different. 

On the other side of the coin there is the idea of the internal
motivation. Once someone said to me something like this:  “It is not
that I want to write but that I have to write.”  The idea is that the
artist of all kinds is internally driven. That they *need* to create
their work. Or that they could not imagine an existence wherein they do
not create.

The idea is over dramatic. I simply have seen no evidence of anyone
truly suffering from not choosing to create works of art? You will not
die if you do not create. You will not cease unless you choose too. Now
that people have feel deep dissatisfaction, discomfort, or even
emotional pain because they lack an outlet to express themselves of the
truth of that I have no doubt. I simply suspect that there are a lot of
ways in which to satisfy that need or even remove its significance from
their life and deaden its ability to hurt you. I believe a person who
feels this way is not hard-wired to feel this way. I suspect that
humanity is not split into those with the Artist-switch set to on and
those who do not. I could be wrong, but it seems more likely to me that
the motivation to be an artist for self fulfillment probably comes more
from environmental influences on ones life rather than it being
anyone’s inherent nature. And so, I suspect truly that this can be
changed with a simple matter of will. And yes I know that there aren’t
really any simple matters of will and that matters of will are pretty
much the hardest things in the world but nevertheless they are within
the realms of the possible for beings who are possessed of free will.

Even more direct though, I think a lot of people say things like this
as a means of self-justification after the fact. It’s sort of like
“Yes, I probably could have been doing X,Y,or Z which I intellectually
believe would be a more meaningful or safer or wiser expenditure of my
life, but I couldn’t. I simply *had* to be an Artist.” To which I say:
Bull!  You could have as easily done X, Y, or Z and lived with the
discomfort of not being able to express yourself artistically or
snatching what little tidbits of artistic expression here and there as
you could. Devoting a substantive portion of one’s life to the arts is
a choice we make like any other. I think, it diminishes it to try and
make it seem as a fore-ordained matter beyond our control. It
diminishes us to say that we are so constrained in our possibilities.

So if not that, then what value does lie inherent in the act of
artistry that makes it a worthy choice? I’ve already said that the
works of art won’t last, probably won’t be that influential, and aren’t essential to our existence.  So why exactly should anyone engage in creating works of art?

For the simplest reason in the world. Because we want to. Art is a
chosen act of self-expression. Perhaps we choose to express something
in particular because we enjoy the expression, perhaps because we feel
better after we express it, or perhaps because expressing it alleviates
us of a mental burden, or we find that it provides a distraction from
other aspects of life, or because we like to see what it is that we are
capable of.  It doesn’t really matter the individual “why’s”, the
primary reason we act in this is to satisfy our basic desires. And,
like all wants, we satisfy it by acting upon in first and then we
afterwards come to try to grasp an understanding of why we wanted it in
the first place.  Unlike many wants, I think the want for artistic
expression is actually quite a productive want.  Unlike say wanting
good tasting food for example which can often lead us to irrational
acts that are to our detriment and sometimes even to the detriment of
society, wanting to express ourselves artistically causes the
manifestation of a little piece of our consciousness that others can
experience, sometimes find useful, and very often learn something from.
Furthermore it benefits us individually as well. There’s the direct
benefit when a society is structured to provide advantages to creators
of works of art sure, but more significantly there’s the emotional
benefits and peace of mind that self expression can bring that I have
alluded to earlier. Often, creative acts help a person to connect to
the world, to feel more a part of humanity or at least understand
better their differences from others and accept them. And on top of that, if you are lucky you may find fame or glory or you may change the world for the better or you may create a lasting impact on reality that will far outlive you or you may find a greater internal peace of mind or feel better about yourself,  or you may find yourself more self confident afterwards, or any of a number of other beneficial results may come of the creation of art. But these are consequents not causes.

The point here is clear. It isn’t that we say to ourselves: “Hmm, I
wonder what I’ll do with my life. I know! Ill create this work of art
it will surely change the world and I’ll be rich and famous and it will
last far beyond my death making my life meaningful.”   Nor do we say:
“Boy, I wish I weren’t creating this work of art but alas I just didn’t
have a choice in the matter. Poor me I was born with an Artist’s soul
now condemned to spend all my energy creating works of art.”  No.
Rather our very thoughts about the matter are more immediate and
procedural. We think, “Wouldn’t that be cool if I could create such and
such. I could do this and that and, etc….”.  Then we face the
decision of whether we will act upon this desire or choose to resist
our desire in order to engage in other things. And sometimes it’s good
and right to create and sometimes it’s good and right to resist and do
other things. Each circumstance is different. And most times which is more right is in no way clear, making the choice often an agonizing enough one that we often put off making the choice sometimes to our great detriment.

It’s only after the fact
that we start to think about the impact of art on the world or
ourselves. Sometimes we guess that the impact in order to take that
into account when choosing to act toward the creation of the art we
already desire to create or do something else that we may also desire
to do. But these guesses are often incorrect and often irrational in
that they often manifest either our wants or our fears or both but
aren’t based on any cold hard  analytical facts about the likelihood of
a particular creative work having an impact on the world or ourselves.
In any case, at this point you’re already motivated. You want to create
the work of art. The only question lies in whether you want it enough
to actually choose to do it over other possible things you could be
doing. That’s a choice we all have to make and it can be a tough one. 

And then comes the choice of what you should actually do with the work after you’ve created it which can be just as challenging.