In Defense of Harry Potter – The Tao of Self Analysis

Throughout the largest portion of my adult life, I have maintained what can best be described as an air of pseudo-intellectualism. My view of the world can sometimes be characterized by elitist attitudes towards films, books and entire groups of people. I have set myself on a pedestal which has in fact prevented any real growth from occurring within me. One way this attitude manifested itself was through my utter distaste and contempt for the Harry Potter series. I had come to associate Harry Potter with popular culture and had imposed upon that popular culture a value judgement of inferiority. Quite simply, I considered the books beneath me; inherently inferior because of their popularity. I had not read them, disregarding completely the old warning against judging a book by its cover.

This idea of popular culture being inferior is not new to cultural studies. There are many definitions of popular culture itself, but one way it can be defined would be to come to the conclusion that popular culture is all that is left after high culture is removed. The exclusivity and elite nature of this high culture means that the remnants are condemned to the ‘lesser’ category of popular culture. Practices, people, art, texts, and film (and any number of other things) which do not meet the strict standards required will fall into this category, rendering them by definition inferior. The trick about all of this is that all of the criteria involved are merely value judgements which support distinctions in social and economic class as well as an essentially myth-based concept of quality. The problem comes with the additional definitions of popular culture. Obviously one definition is that it is popular. Things which fall under the category of popular culture tend to be favored or regarded by many people. The simple fact is that the popular outnumbers the high by far, and the only barrier to the popular being legitimized is in fact the small minority which is attached to the interests of high culture.

Why I ended up associating myself with high culture, I do not know. An inflated ego, a need to feel that my opinions were more important than those of others – the truth is that it doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that as a result of my interest in Taoism, my ideas began to shift. Through a process of self reflection, I realized how out of control my ego was. While I’m always going to have opinions and I’m always going to value some things over others, I realized how silly it sounds to judge something without really knowing anything about it. I can hear a song and dislike it, but I can’t honestly judge an entire work of fiction by a news clip or a movie trailer. I decided to give Harry Potter a chance.

First of all, the Harry Potter series is obviously intended for an audience of kids, so it is important to bear that in mind when reading it. I tried to think about it in the same way I would have been thinking about the Chronicles of Narnia series as I read it during my childhood. It is also important to think about the film franchise in this way as well. If there has been a huge Hollywood film for every Narnia book as a grew up, there is no doubt in my mind that my heart would have ached to see them. I don’t think that anything which gets kids reading can possibly be a bad thing. How could I think that, when the Narnia books gave me so much joy and eventually lead me down a path to become an aspiring writer?

Since my childhood, I have ready more fantasy novels than most people I know. While this could be considered good or bad by any number of people, it also leaves me in a position to understand the genre, at least to a certain extent. The Harry Potter series is neither the worst or the best I have read. The characters aren’t always extremely well fleshed out, but the use of setting is very good and the plot in the last couple of books is tied up in a very sophisticated way. I enjoyed the series, and isn’t that what matters? Rather than thinking so much about what other people will think of us, whether or not something is up to specific standards and all manners of in-depth analysis, shouldn’t we just live each moment for its individual and unique joy? When approached this way, as a child would approach them, these books have value. Whether that value is above or below you is up to you, but ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are ultimately a projection of the self. Taoism is concerned with the natural balance of things. In the creation of a concept of beauty, one creates the concept of ugliness by its lack, and vice versa. So does this apply to the idea of good and bad in the ordinary things of the world. It is an invention, a product of our own minds. There is no good. There is no bad. There only IS.

Creative productivity

I don’t know if anyone who happens upon my website really knows about my history of web projects. For the most part, nothing has really taken off in popularity. I’ve got this blog, but I’ve also got a blog over at Riding the Wind which is dedicated to spiritual matters, my daily life, my photography and my creative writing/poetry. It hasn’t been updated in a little while because I’ve been busy with this, but I fully intend to continue posting there. I’ve also got another site. HandRooster started out as a little project my wife and I started for fun. We decided to make a webcomic. I wrote the comics and she drew them, and for a while we were pretty productive. It was fun but after a while I found it difficult to come up with new standalone ideas and I didn’t want to have Steph constantly grinding away on super long projects. Some of our comics were much better than others, and we were occasionally accused of ripping off one popular comic or another, but we didn’t really care that much because we weren’t huge comic readers. The only comic I used to read was Penny Arcade and there was no way we could copy that stuff. Anyway, after a while Steph started to find it was taking her a really long time to do these comics and she didn’t really want to do it anymore, so it sort of died out. I didn’t really want it to die out because at this point we were getting some decent traffic and it was the most successful thing I had ever done on the internet. We had actual fans and it was rewarding in that way if not in a monetary way.

I decided to draw the thing on my own, but I think I found it even more difficult than she did, because I am in no way an artist. I can’t really draw, so it took me many hours to create simple stick art. One thing led to another and I found myself lapsing and nothing really got done. That is, until now. I’ve just posted an update on the site and while I make no promises about my reliability in updates, I’ll try my best. You see, I’ve got a new method.

I started to think about how I could adapt my system in order to be more productive in making a comic. Originally, I was creating the comic with Autodesk Sketchbook Pro and a Wacom tablet. Sketchbook is really great software if you can actually draw and I love the way it is designed for a tablet but every line I make is a shaky squiggly line and I have to blow things up super huge in order to make things smooth. Basically, I suck at that. I’m not an artist. I’m more of an idea guy in general. This problem had me looking for other solutions. I tried Photoshop and some other software but I still had similar problems. I tried to draw things on paper, thinking I could scan them in to do coloring, etc but it turns out I’m even worse without an undo button, despite finding it easier to make normal lines. After all of this, I decided to try Adobe Illustrator. I’d tried it before and found it difficult to get used to, but I used to use Macromedia Freehand with some success years ago before the comic. I decided to give Illustrator another try. It was not easy, but I did find a way to use it which was much quicker and less labor intensive for me. The result can be seen over at HandRooster. It isn’t a work of art but it is the basis of a webcomic, in the loosest sense of that word. I’m thinking about starting to create longer story lines after being inspired by a comic written by Mr. John Campbell of pictures for sad children.

I think what I’ve learned through all of this is that creativity is work too. It’s not easy stuff and in order to continue to create, you must give something of yourself. It’s natural to have highs and lows of activity and to find yourself searching for inspiration or ideas. It’s natural to want a break sometimes. It’s also possible to rejuvenate your creative energy and continue to create. Sometimes you’re going to have critics and hatemongers hounding you and sometimes you’ll start to believe that what you’re producing isn’t worth anything but the good thing about continuing to do anything is that you’ll only find better ways to do it and gain skill in the process. Since the whole talent thing has been proven to be nonsense and mastery is really about lots and lots of practice, why shouldn’t your (or my) projects be out there for the world to see just because you’re new to the process?

A more productive Python learning experience

I’ve recently decided that I’ve wasted a large portion of my working life not teaching myself things and learning new skills. This is all too evident when faced with a difficult job market like we’re facing at the moment. As someone with primarily Microsoft experience and having worked mainly in that area and with the software and hardware systems which are common to the US military, I find that I’m often facing a skills gap when trying to apply for jobs in the open market. I left the US Air Force in December of 2007 and worked as a web developer and Linux/BSD server admin for a while and during that time I realized more than anything else that I didn’t know enough and needed to learn more. My goal overall is not to be a developer, though I am interested in doing work of that nature to some extent. Since I enjoy writing but can’t immediately make the jump from IT, my short term goal would be to understand current technology and development enough to be able to write about it with authority in something like technical writing, which is more my style. I’ve dealt with technical writing and documentation some in the past, and I enjoy it.

That being said, I’m not exactly sure how to go about this process. I suppose the best way to write about topics is to understand them and in order to understand them you have to gain some practical real world knowledge of their working. This is where I come up against some problems. I want to be able to understand some of what modern programming is about. I’ve got some experience with HTML/CSS/PHP but I want to delve into something like Python. I hear a lot of good things about it so I decided recently that I was going to take it up. My problem is that I often find it difficult to learn programming languages and have failed several times to learn one or another in the past, due to not sticking with it in the long run. This time, I’d like to avoid that. Here is how I intend to do it:

Initially, I started reading some guides and tutorials on the internet, which is a great way to start learning without having to spend a whole lot of money on a big book. The problem with tutorials is that in order to do the stuff written in them, you’ve got to change windows. This means that you end up switching back and forth between your browser, PDF or text file and your terminal window, IDE, etc. I hate this. Yeah, it’s easy enough to switch on a Mac and I can do it pretty quickly, but I don’t want to have to do it at all, and I don’t always have my other monitor available for the task. Enter Learn Python.

Learn Python is a program which was imagined and implemented by Daniel Jalkut of Red Sweater Software. Essentially it is a shell window and a browser window smashed together. You can have your shell and browser panes top to bottom or left to right according to your preference, and when you close the program, it saves the URL so that when you open the program again you can continue your tutorial where you left off. It brings a level of productivity to the learning process which I didn’t have before and I think it’s great. If you’re thinking of learning a programming language or just want to gain better understanding of the shell, etc. it is a great way to view tutorials on any subject and input commands to replicate the results. I personally wanted to use Python 3.0 instead of the default version which comes with OSX so I installed it and changed the Localizable.strings file (Show Package Contents > Contents > Resources > English.lproj) to read:

"/usr/bin/python" = "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.0/bin/python3.0";

Another great resource I’ve found for learning Python is the site ShowMeDo.com, which has learning paths and screencasts from very beginner levels to more intermediate and advances lessons later on. If you follow the learning paths, the lessons come with prerequisite lessons you should view before you do others and it really starts you off with a fresh (or refreshed) base of knowledge. This includes various linux command line knowledge and using tools such as subversion for source code version control. This method of learning is great for visual and auditory learners, and you can follow along or pause the video if you need a bit more time. It’s definitely worth checking out if you’re trying to learn. They also have paths for Java, Ruby, C and web frameworks like Django.

Lastly, I’ll just list some of the better beginner guides out there for Python. I’m by no means an expert on the subject and I do have a long IT background but I’ve approached this learning process as if I knew nothing at all, so if you follow what I’m following you should be able to pick it up in time, probably faster than I can. As I said, I don’t really aim to be a developer. I want to write about this stuff. I think I’m fairly good at explaining things in writing, but you tell me. If anyone out there has any advice on pursuing the noble path of technical writing, let me know. Anyway, here are the guides.

A Byte of Python
Dive Into Python
The Python Tutorial
Non-Programmer’s Tutorial for Python
Introduction to Programming using Python
Learning to Program
One Day of IDLE toying