GotstaHandleMy.Biz

Somone commented to my last post with some very thoughtful rebuttals.

I still have to stand by what I said, though: that life is better now than it has ever been (for most of us in the world). I would like to rebuke the author’s comment, point by point.

Firstly, the author denied that life expentancy was a good measure of life being better. Instead, he/she insisted that happiness and satisfaction were better indicators. The problem being, that life expectancy is easy to measure and happiness isn’t. Your happiness and satisfaction are relative to how you felt a minute, hour, day, or however long ago. A millionaire who lost $1000 might feel a little bummed out, but a starving child in a war-torn country could find some extra rice one day and feel happy. Life expectancy must be a more accurate measure of life being better than this example of happiness. Life expectancy could increase happiness if you have a grandparent or parent who can live a longer life to enjoy themselves and increase the joy in your life. Or you, yourself, living longer could give you a feeling that you have time to make changes to your life; this again could increase your happiness. Infant mortality rates have gone down. That’s less babies dieing. That could also increase your happiness, if you are an expecting parent. A dead child could go a long way to making you unhappy, surely.

The second point raised was that travel doesn’t improve quality of life much. I would have to disagree. People who travel a lot often do so because, they say, it makes them happy. Travelling also gives you a better idea of where you are geographically, politically, and socially. You could indeed move to somewhere you feel you would be happier, and being able to travel around the world would give you a much better idea of where that would be. My own mother was born in India. She moved from India to England, and then again to Canada. This, in itself, is proof of my case. She moved from a developing country with famine, poverty, and violence to a developed country, and then again to one she enjoyed even more. I’ve had friends who were refugees from Somalia and Cameroon. They and their families were able to come to Canada and they would argue that their lives are much better here.

The author questioned where I got my information about people’s families, around the world, having more than they previously did, regardless of how their neighbours are doing. In my own experience, relatives of mine, in India, do not have much money at all. They generally have the same lot in life as their parents did. They fit in, socially, in the same place that their parents did. They do, however, have a television and a phone, and even a refrigerator. They don’t have more money than their parents, and their stuff is terrible compared to ours, but because of older technologies becoming cheaper, they can gather around the television, as a family; they can call the ambulance if someone gets injured; and my relatives can get, and keep food, for longer than a couple of days. They certainly seem happy when they show us these things.

The commentor also raised the point that people are more alienated now than they used to be. I don’t know if this is true. The internet must be the clearest example of connecting people again. A person who may have felt alienated in their village, in the past, can now hop into a chat room and meet with someone who can identify with them. No matter your interest, with a shrinking globe online, you can find a page or person to connect to. Now, like the Goths, we can all be alienated together.

The commentor’s final comment was that people should be paid based on their effort and sacrifice, rather than skill and ability to sell themselves. I think this is a terrible idea. You could sacrifice a whole lot, and expend a lot of effort creating a stable house from feathers, but should that really make you more money than someone who stumbles upon a cure for AIDS? Clearly, I’m picking an absurd example, but it’s only to illustrate that your effort can be meaningless if there isn’t someone who wants to buy what you (or your company) sell. I can’t even imagine how being paid for effort would work. My expertise in design and ability to sell myself in interviews should clearly allow me to win a position over someone who makes something that looks much worse, pixel by pixel–despite this person spending a year on it and me spending a day.

Again, none of this is to say that we shouldn’t work hard to make life as fair as possible for everyone. I’m simply pointing out that life is better now than it used to be because life is easier, we live longer, and we can pursue our interests, no matter what they may be, because of shrinking costs due to globalization.

My final arguement is that anyone who finds themselves unsatisfied with how things are nowadays, doesn’t necessarily need to time travel. You can achieve the same basic effect by moving to a developing country. You could move to some country in Africa, selling your belongings, and buying a farm. You could also move into the woods and hunt for your own food.  Of course, with this freedom and newfound happiness, you might have also have to take an early death, no food without an exhausting hunt, no advanced medicine, perhaps a few stillborn babies,  no change of scenery, the violent advances of your jealous neighbour without protection of the police or military. Being part of the developed world indicates to me that you’ve already chosen which lifestyle you consider to be better.

I was part of a discussion, at work, about if life is better nowadays, for most people, than it was at any other given time in human history. Given the huge time bracket – any time between becoming well postured cave-people and yesterday – it can be hard to generalize. This being said, I contend that things are better in almost every single way.

Things are not perfect, to be sure, but ‘better’ is a relative term. Relativley better is a powerful phrasing, despite its redundancy, because it empasizes the metaphor of scales and demands objectivly quantifying abstract scenarios.

We live longer today than any other time in our history. My arguement about longevity does not apply to the Bible or some other religions, of course, which say people lived for hundreds of years. Depending on the importance you place on years of life, longevity may decide for the debate for you, already. The largest contributing factor, in written history, has been the advent of sewers. There has been an almost continuous improvement in the availability of cures for previously incurable diseases. New surgical advances are made everyday. People who have handicapps, on the whole, live more empowered lives because of technology with inventions like glasses, wheelchairs, hearing aids, cataracts surgories, speech devices, and prosthetic limbs.

We have cars and airplanes and transportation that allows us to move with unprecidented freedom. Being able to migrate across the world gives even more meaning to that freedom. Refugees are being taken on in many countries. If you feel strongly enough about the laws somewhere, you can move elsewhere.

The average person (worldwide) has more possessions now than ever before. Relative to one another this may not be true, but it is true relative to where we were in previous generations. Technologies that only the very rich could previously afford are now available to us because of mass production. Despite differences in affordability in different countries, there is still trickle down of aging technologies that continue to serve their purpose to those who previously didn’t have them, making their life relatively easier than it was before. Conceding that we should work towards minimizing unjust inequalities, in most free societies, you make more money based on the money you can make someone else. A basketball player makes lots of money because of the numbers of paying customers he brings in. A movie star makes what they do because of the numbers of people their name draws. Expertise determines the tradesperson or professional’s actual ability to earn. If you’re skilled enough in any sort of a trade, you can sell your services to the highest paying bidder. Besides paying you the highest, it is probably closest to what you’re actually worth to them. What fairer way to be paid if not for your expertise and ability to sell yourself. Money is exchangeable and a person can move their family to wherever they can make the most.

CEOs of major corporations often make a huge amount of money compared to those below them. They have incredible responsibilities to many people’s investments, and have to qualified to make decisions that will affect thousands of people. Companies that have made billions of dollars are in competition with each other for the best leaders who can continue to make them (and their workers) more money so they can lead relatively more comfortable lives than what they had before. I’m not saying that the pay descrepancy is fair, but I still haven’t heard a realistic option. Shareholders have their own best interests at heart and will only hire someone who they think will earn that salary.

Some areas are now very polluted but people who live there have already decided that living there, for whatever reason, will be relatively better than living a simpler, cleaner life somewhere less populated or built up. Of course I support all advances  in environmental studies and think the governments should agree to constantly tighten environmental controls, with the country with the greatest advances setting global targets.

Despite our lapses in environmental stringency, I feel that because it most affects our health and longevity, it has been offset by tehcnological advances, if we are simply deciding if “now” is better than “then”.

I remember reading an article a while back in GQ Magazine. Tom Ford, a fashion designer, was on a bit of a rant; he was going on about how designers used to set trends but have now become trend whores. I can only assume he was talking about fashion designers, but this really struck a chord with me. The field of graphic design is a collection of thick framed glasses, Puma shoes, clothes with that fake worn look. And they have the same work repeated over and over again. I was at the Rideau Centre, today (a mall in downtown Ottawa) and  these trend whores were EVERYWHERE. Lately the look has changed a little with the advent of the Emo style. Things were no better when I was in high school–when Grunge was in. I went to Toronto, where people supposedly dress better. Same shit. The exact same shit. In Toronto, as it is in London, the only difference is that there’s more peer influence and ego competition so it’s even more widespread. You can apparantly buy taste now. I’ve been forced to adapt to these style ‘changes’. I’ve started using dirt brushes and pimping the 70s as if it was going out of style. And it is… Fuck the 70s. Screw the ironic t-shirts, and everything that goes along with them. As an unknown designer, I don’t have much of a choice. I’ve had to revisit all my old design books and magazines to keep from losing faith in my choice of occupation. Well… that didn’t work either. It turns out that Tom Ford was wrong and this type of thing has been going on forever. I’ve always defended the prevailance of art in Graphic Design and now I’m not so sure. I understand that the system has to work this way. I understand that the paying client HAS to always be right or we don’t get paid. And the paying client wants what he sees the other big players doing. Everything’s extreme. Everything’s hip with snowboards and paint splatters. Almost everything. The exact opposite is out there an I hate that almost as much. There’s no in between. Nothing feels fresh. So maybe there’s another way for me to come to terms with my work. The only thing I can come up with is to be happy with slowly becoming the master of my craft. I know I’ll have to continue pimping styles I hate. I can only try my best to make them look authentic and I think that’s the trick. As more and more of the same crap gets recycled the harder it will be for us to make it look good. Where there’s a challege you can aspire to, and an almost visceral need to be better, you have contentment. Perhaps it’s my hatred of other designers and a need to outperform that will keep me intersted and happy. I know… I’m sick.

My name’s Ram Kanda and I’m a 25 yr old Designer living in Ottawa, Canada.

For months now I’ve been talking about having a website - a blog or portfolio site, or… something. I’ve been something of a procrastinator and, in this case, procastination became very expensive. I decided that I wouldn’t have the right inspiration until I got a new computer; that computer, of course, had to be a new 17″ glossy screen Core2 Duo Macbook Pro with 2GB of RAM and a 100GB 7200RPM hard drive. No shit. I’d been telling everyone about my dream laptop, and how undecided I was about the whole thing; about how mysterious Apple is with releasing products and how that could affect my buying decisions–after all, as Apple’s website has been showing, the newest operating system is just around the corner. Anyways, long story slightly shorter, I got my laptop and it. Is. Amazing.

Before I start off, I’d like to thank my friend and co-worker, Aaron Pepper for all his help getting me set up. You see, I work at a company called Fuel Industries. I’ve been working as a Designer, Illustrator, Texture Artist, Flash Animator, and Colourist (it’s a thing… I swear) for the past 4 years. My official title is now Senior Artist/Lead Texture Artist. I haven’t had to do anything technical, outside of navigating graphics applications, (even as simple as uploading or cutting up a website) since college. I’ve apparently become something of a retard. Needing my hand held through setting up Word Press has made me realize my skills need some updating. I intend to start updating my skills by maintaining and improving this site.

A BABY IS BORN
I was born in Hillingdon Hospital in Uxbridge, England, where my mother worked as a Registered Nurse, on October 21st, 1981. Uxbridge is close to Southall, where we lived. Southall is called Little India because of the number of East Indians who moved there after the British occupation of India. My parents moved from Southall to Jalandur city in the state of Punjab, India. It wasn’t as non-violent as they had hoped and they decided to move back to the UK… except this time to Wolverhampton. It used to be quite nice. I have 2 older brothers and an absolutely huge extended family.

FAST FORWARD to 1989
Ottawa, Canada was in need of nurses and that allowed my mom to get our family immigrated. I was a little skeptical at first, but Canada rocks. I’ve since gone to school and become a designer. I have a lovely girlfriend named Carrie. We work AND live together and she’s given me a bouncing baby French Bulldog named Louis.

THIS BLOG
I’ve always voiced my opinions to whoever would listen and now I find myself at the base of a giant megaphone. I try to remain receptive to opinions from all walks of people, but I should admit that I do, of course, have my own biases that I intend to explore fully.

A TEASER

• I’m in support of child labour
• Despite my insistence that I am politically independent in my thinking, I tend to swing away from what I consider to be ‘The Right’. That said, my friends can often be far too Left for my liking and I enjoy watching Glenn Beck.
• I am staunchly Atheist.
• I’m in support of a free market economy
• I feel that despite HUGE shortcomings, I actually appreciate that the US is the no.1 superpower in charge.
• Gay people should be allowed to get married - fabulously.

Anyways… that’s it for this post. Thanks for Reading!