Smartphones are good, but they aren't great.

Hello, readers. I recently got a smartphone, a cheap android phone. It's my first smartphone. Here are some general thoughts upon the first time ever having a smartphone. 

Going from never owning a smartphone to now owning a smartphone is like going from black and white television to colour television. It really is that much of a big difference. The ability to have a mini computer in my pocket on the go is much needed for the 21st century. 

However, we must beware of the 21st century schizoid man [king crimson reference, from the first album, great album-In the Court of the Crimson King and song-21st Century Schizoid Man]. I've already noticed some good AND bad elements of owning a smartphone. First the good.

1) Mini-computer always on your person. If I need to go online to check literally anything from emails, Twitter, Facebook, and apps like Instagram, the smartphone is always there for you. The ability of WI-Fi literally changed the world and made life for the young modern person that much easier. Data too is like virtual energy, like a spell by Tesla.

2) I can use the Lyft app to call a ride in case of an emergency. If I'm ever super late at night at someone's house and end up without a ride, Lyft is always there for me. 

3) I can use the transit app if I want to take the bus, anywhere, and know what time the bus will arrive. 

4) I can go on social media and dating apps and potentially meet people. 

Now for the bad!

1) Always having a mini-computer on your person is terrible. You'll be compelled to always be on your phone, literally at all times: upon wake up, at work, on work break, on the walk back home, late at night, before bed...It begins to take a bad toll upon you. It is very toxic and most people are like this.

2) Overusing apps is terrible. I started off on a bad start by calling 4 Lyft rides in one week. That's such a waste of money. There was a way I could've got home via transit, or even asked a friend.  

3) It's a time waster. Get hooked to it and you'll forget about real life. You'll go on it on a date, you'll go on it while talking to your girlfriend, you'll go on while talking to your kids, you'll be on it while on the job at work, the time it will take away is virtually unlimited. 

So yeah having a smartphone for the first time is quite the experience. But if anything, being connected online all the time doesn't feel good, it feels like people can get to me much easier because of it. These things have their uses but relying on them too much will lead to idiocy, the likes of which we see everyday when somebody's in public glued to their phone when the moment would be better off without it.    

The Plague

The Plague (French: La Peste) is a novel by Albert Camus, published in 1947. It's about the plague sweeping the French Algerian city of Oran. It raises questions about destiny and the human condition. Throughout the novel, there are existentialist ideas that reverberate. The novel is said to be based on a cholera epidemic that killed many people in Oran back in 1849 but the novel is set in the 1940s. Likewise, it is based on real plague outbreaks that really happened in Oran back in the 1900s, but these outbreaks were very small compared to the devastation seen in this novel, which is apocalyptic, a word seen in today's NYTimes headline. 

Camus objected to the book being considered an existentialist classic yet it has that sort of tone. It is also seen as an allegorical treatment of the French resistance to Nazi occupation in World War II. Lastly, the novel brings up the philosophical notion of the Absurd, "the conflict between the human tendency to seek inherent meaning and value in life, and the human inability to find any in meaningless, purposeless, or chaotic and irrational universe. 

Let's start at the beginning. This is my first Camus novel although I have heard of The Stranger, which was recommended to me by my father and my friend, a master's degree student from CSUN. The Stranger and The Plague are terrific novels but for entirely different reasons which we won't go into here. I went to the local library book sale initially looking for The Stranger, because I'd seen it multiple times at other book sales, only to find they didn't have it this particular time, but they had The Plague, so that's what institutes my introduction to Camus. 

The story told therein isn't complicated nor long. On the contrary, this is a very simple story, but with deep meanings and notions. There are only a handful of true actions. But again, deep meanings within them.

The story is told from a narrator's point of view. We don't know who the narrator is until the end of the book, where we learn that the narrator is the doctor himself, who had been treating all the victims of the city, possibly exposing himself to the plague, his friends/associates who are workers of the city, helping him in fighting the plague. The fact that the narrator is nameless/faceless until the very end is a great literary device used in some other novels that I've read, especially in science fiction of the 50s and 60s. It's quite an imaginative plot device because the reader is always in a sort of suspense. Who is really telling the story? Well, you don't know until you find out. You don't find out until you keep reading. It's not difficult to guess that it was the doctor but it's rewarding to find out that it's him. Why? Because the doctor has such a personal relationship with the town, the citizens, his friends, the workers, the plague itself. His point of view is important to the telling and conclusion of the story. Even if he isn't the only character that the novel focuses on. Rather, there are a couple of characters in the novel. Although none as important as the doctor because he's the narrator. 

Then, the plague itself. The plague is the worst disease known in the history of mankind. Camus displays fantastic writing ability in the way he describes the symptoms, the victims, the deaths, the burnings, the burials, the quarantined, the panic buying, the lockdown of the city. This is where I get to make a comparison between this novel and what's going on today. 

Today we have the coronavirus having gone viral across the world, and today 13 people died in N.Y.C, but overall something like 1,000 people have died from coronavirus in America. Twenty-six states are on quarantine/lockdowns. Most people are out of jobs or working at home, or they might be like me, they're grocery store workers [essential workers like healthcare workers] on the front lines, battling an invisible enemy, with nothing but gloves and a mask, if they're lucky enough to have PPE [personal protective equipment]. Life today is somewhat like life in Camus' novel. The absurd has already happened: People are panic buying hundreds of rolls of toilet paper and canned goods. Like the novel, people have made a fortune off selling items in a black market sort of fashion, selling toilet paper, hand sanitizer, even foods. Existentialism is more popular amongst my more literary and/or more articulate friends. There's a definite sort of dread, confusion, disorientation, in today's climate. The individual has come apart from the whole, not just objectively, but literally. We literally have been ordered by local, state, and federal governments to practice 'social distancing,' a 2020 buzzword that states we shouldn't gather in groups or get too close to others because we could spread the coronavirus to each other more easily that way. And this is just the beginning! 

So it's easy to see how a novel like The Plague holds such important intrinsic, historical, philosophical, and emotive value because what happened in the novel happens in real life so to speak. This novel is so realistic and spot-on, in some ways it's absolutely terrifying and ultimately unforgettable. A lot of book reviewers like to say this a lot but I mean this; this is one of the greatest novels I've ever read, will read, or will ever want to read again. 

Lastly, this novel portrays everything that a pandemic will and should. The horror, the death, the spreading of the disease, the removal of the bodies, the burning of the bodies [in some cases], the funerals, the lovers being split apart, the non-discrimination of the disease killing everybody including men, women, and children, the human compassion and support especially from doctors, healthcare workers, city officials, police, volunteer workgroups, the love, emotion, isolation, the absurd, the existential angst, it's all there really. What's really comforting to see is that even having gone through the plague this fictional tale has one thing that humanity will always need, crave: hope. For if there is one reason why we should get up out of bed in the morning it's because of hope. That's why this is such an important, great novel.

Good and Evil

 
Lately I've been inspired to write about living in a more positive mindset. How do you stay in that mode, that form of thinking? Here I'll explain. 

There's no point in positive thinking and having good 'energy' (I'm a hippy psychologist now) unless you can stick to it. I understand that sometimes people get tilted (even me), bad things happen, they get fired from work, their girl friend leaves them, they have illnesses, they're tired all the time from lack of sleep or partying, or possibly they just get in a funk randomly for no reason? No matter what happens its always difficult to stay positive. I didn't say it was going to be easy. If it was easy everybody in the world would be nice and there wouldn't be any mass shootings. But we don't live in an easy world. Nothing is free, not even your own positive thinking in your mind, it comes at a cost (time, willpower, energy), and you must work at it.

Moving forward, you could say that being a nice person is work. Being a positive person is work. And sometimes you'll stray off track, for whatever reason. The important thing is to be so self-aware that you're conscious of yourself when you stray from the path, a path I'll call the path of good and evil for the general day laborer. There are many decisions in life. Well, think of it this way. Every thought, action, and word you say can lead you in whatever ways you want, or none. Choosing to stay positive is a choice many people don't think about, or underestimate.

Why not make lemonades out of lemons? If you're in hell why not flaunt your angelic halo to the demons? If you're unhappy why don't you do something about it? Everything comes at a price, and money isn't even the most important part. People can be quite primitive and detached from a good reality, and miss the great things in life, from the smallest minuscule level to the biggest and most important things. I see this everyday in retail work in the customers as well as my co-workers. Sometimes they try to relay their primitive tendencies unto me, a sort of projection of bad content. To this I can refute them easily with simple statements. But to be a contrarian to anti-intellectuals or low educated persons isn't fun, even if its very easy to troll them. Instead its best to let these people believe what they want, even to their own detriment. Only you can save yourself from yourself and from others, people bent on their own whims and desires. Staying positive will deflect these bad actors out of your way, even if you have to work with them everyday.

Stay on the hidden path, the path that leads to thinking in a better framework, to see with lens unclouded by evil and hate. The world needs more people like this, to bring light to the darkness.