Monthly Archives: January 2012

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SOPA and The Difference Between Boycotting and Stealing

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Readers of this blog know that I don’t write a lot about politics. I think my politics category has less than five posts. Friends of mine will know that I’m bit of an enthusiast, though. I’m not a straight up fanatic, but I love talking politics with more politically-minded friends.

Yesterday, I was talking with some friends about SOPA because of the whole Wikipedia blackout thing. SOPA is an interesting bill. It was introduced in order to crack down on piracy – the illegal downloading of copyrighted material online. That’s a problem. But SOPA gives a lot of power to the government to censor sites, and that strikes a chord with some people. And not a minor one, a major chord.

I don’t know enough about SOPA to have an intelligent opinion on it. But I do know enough about piracy to have an intelligent opinion on it. I’m going to be honest. Not everything I do on the internet is entirely legal, but I try to pay for my music and my streaming when I can. But in the end, I think piracy is wrong. At least legally. Piracy is no different from copying an entire book for yourself. What is important about the book is not the physical shell it’s in; it’s the intellectual property.

People who pirate have a couple of arguments.  First, they argue that the people they pirate from are much wealthier than pirates are. True. But so are the people who own IKEA, and it would be stealing to take a chair from there. I don’t know if this is much of an argument.

Second, they argue that pirating is a way of pressuring record companies and big corporations to be fairer to the artists. I was walking listening to an album that someone had let me copy (ironic, right?) when it hit me. This argument sounds legitimate, but it’s not. In no other realm do we allow this kind of behavior. If we dislike something a corporation is doing, we have a right to disagree and there are actions we can take to pressure them. Boycotting is one of those actions. Stealing is not. If we are so fed up with the music/television/movie industry, why don’t we boycott them, listening to only independently produced artists instead or only watching independently made films? It’s because our moral reasoning is really just justification for our actions. We want to be able to watch movies or listen to music for free. So we say we are doing it in reaction to the big bad corporations. Boycotting would do the same thing. And it wouldn’t be stealing.

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My Fisher King Wound

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There is a Chinese story about fish. It begins with fish overhearing two fishermen talking about water. The fish decides to quest in order to find this mysterious substance. After many years he comes back to his fish friends who ask him if he found it. And he says “Yes, but you wouldn’t believe what I found.”

I found a version of this story in a book called He by the psychologist Robert Johnson. Johnson is a Jungian psychologist and his book is all about how the myth of the Holy Grail can be used to explain male psychology. He theorizes that every man is like the Fisher King. The Fisher King, according to Arthurian legend, suffers from a wound that cannot be healed except by drinking from the Grail. He is unable to drink from it, though. In such a condition, he must wait for an “idiot fool” to come and ask the question that will save him – “Whom does the Grail serve?” For Johnson, every man has a Fisher King wound. We all have something that is broken that we are seeking to fix.

I know that I have a Fisher King wound. Mine is a sense of inadequacy. I seek others’ approval. I want to feel loved and needed. And because I cling to this wound so hard, I make it impossible for others to love and need me.

A lot of traditions have a name for this wound. Christianity has the concept of original sin or of sin, more generally. Most of my struggles with sin come out of this wound, I think. For example, I struggle with pride because I think if I put on enough of a confident show, people will like me better.

I am often convinced that if I just searched harder for love, happiness, or God that I will find what I seek. But there is no searching. The fish does not need to search for water. He is in water. The answer comes when we approach it from the perspective of the idiot fool. If we ask, more than likely, we will see that the answer has been before us all along. We do not need to search for love/happiness/God; we are in it.

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An Announcement

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I’ve written over 100 posts. That’s quite a few. They range quite a few topics. Some have been more popular than others. Some have been picked up by other sites. I have more subscribers than I could have ever imagined three months ago. My blog has been viewed around 4000 times in the past four months.

There has been dialogue. Sometimes people disagree. Sometimes people agree. Sometimes people encourage. It’s been really positive.

For the past four months, I have posted nearly every day. That’s pretty crazy. I still don’t fully understand how I managed to do that. With your support and patience, mostly.

But here’s a confession. I want to be a writer. I legitimately want to have a book someday or be an essayist or something like that.

This blog has gained much momentum. But I also recognize that I am not doing anything crazy here. I’m making some observations and trying to write about them honestly. Book deals don’t magically fall out of the sky for that sort of thing. Other, more popular blogs, do it better than me or have been doing it longer.

And so here’s the announcement: I’m going to try my hand at submitting to other blogs. Other popular blogs. What that means for this blog is that I will generate new content Sunday through Thursday, post an oldie but a goodie on Friday, and then take Saturday off. That gives me Friday and Saturday to work on posts for other sites.

Here’s what I think you should do. On Friday and Saturday, I think you should work on making your dreams come true, too. Because that would be cool.

If you want to keep up to date on what I am doing on the internet (and want to know when and where I am guest-blogging), you can follow me on Twitter! Thanks for coming on this journey with me.