Gray Matters

Integrity seems to be the watchword of the day. Though the concept is never far from my mind, it's at the forefront tonight.

I happened upon this blog post from the webmaster of one of my favorite blogs (Laughing Squid), Scott Beale, about photography theft. Beale himself has been a victim of this sort of thievery many times in the past, and it always infuriates me to learn about it. Thievery is nothing new, of course. It happens all the time. You might say a lot worse happens on a daily basis and I would be hardpressed to disagree. A lot more is happening out there that I should be angered by and focused on... and I am. But I suppose the reason why this irks me so is that it's a crime very specific to the Net, and at direct odds with the philosophy and/or spirit of it. Though that's really more about my perception of what the Net is. In reality I know it's not a utopia, but a muddled gray microcosm (perhaps macrocosm?) of the everyday world we live in. But I like to think that it's not. I like to hold the Net and it's community to a higher standard. I expect people to be honorable. To expect anything less would be so depressing, though I'm sure a lot less disappointing. Still I have this idea of what it should be, and how people should act. It goes against the grain. The Net often times, a lot of the time actually, feels more communal than the communities we live in... and that sense is what is piqued when I hear something like this happening. It feels like it's happening to me, when it happens to us.

Later in the day I got word of Apple's iTunes store offering a digital boxset spanning the entire career of Led Zeppelin. And that really set me off. Not the news itself, just the mere mention of Led Zeppelin. I'm not sure if you're keyed into the whole controversy involving allegations of plagiarism surrounding the band's first album, but I'll assume you are and that you've heard the evidence and have no doubts these aren't mere allegations. These guys are plagiarists of the highest (lowest?) order. This situation is all the more sickening when you consider these guys are artists, and that the crimes themselves are so blatant. It's repulsive. I don't know where a person goes to betray that brotherhood and sisterhood of artists.

Just now I finished watching an interesting episode of Law & Order: SVU that mused on the morality of torture during wartime. Earlier in the night The Biggest Loser hinted on the concept of ethics, like so many of these reality t.v. competitions do. So it seems that I'm being inundated with Black, White and Gray today. I especially enjoyed this last instance since a lot of these Law & Order plotlines are so outlandish and hyperbolic. Love the extremes because they provide the perfect ground to test ourselves and our ideas. When I say extreme, I guess I really mean to say Gray. The Ambiguous is the arbiter.

What really pissed me off about Scott's post, and the others like it, is that it brings to mind how easy it is to live correctly and how many people choose not to in spite of that fact. Photography theft is all about attribution. It's nothing more than giving someone credit for something they've done. Given how easy it is to operate and communicate online I just can't understand how someone could do anything but that. There's no reason to steal. As infuriating as it is, I think it's more sad than anything else. Which is the case with Led Zeppelin. I'm a classic rock fan, though I myself hadn't yet gotten around to delvnig into Zeppelin's work, I knew enough about them to know what amazing artists they were... and still are. So it's just disheartening to know that they've stolen when they were more than capable of creating a name for themselves all on their own. It mars everything to know what they've done. And it's sad because I can't forgive an artist for stealing from another.

Instances like those, in my view, are very Black & White. But what exactly does it mean to be right and wrong? Objectively (or maybe Universally?) speaking, I know there is no right and wrong. That's to say there's no Right & Wrong in the typical sense of the words. When I speak of Right... I speak more about Truth. But what exactly is Truth? What I mean to say is that for me, Right & Wrong, is more about honesty and deceit. We could argue about morality for an eternity because I feel there are no absolutes... it's all subjective, except when it boils down to honesty and deceit. There's a definite Right & Wrong here. We all know what it means to lie. Whether we care about what that means in another story. But in that regard it's good to know where we stand. Veering outside of that space is where it gets tricky. And not because there's no definitive answer outside that space, there is. I know what I just said, about there being no absolutes, and I'm right. We're not gods. We have it within ourselves to be, but a lot of us aren't. It's near impossible to see out of our Third Eye. We live in a world of discrimination (at this point I should make it clear that I'm speaking about discernment, not negative discrimination). We just do. We're very judgemental creatures. Which is good. For the most part. It's good to live by a standard; a set of rules. We see in Black & White.

What I love about The Ambiguous is not confronting a situation with no answers, but the exact opposite, the Gray is more Black & White than we'd like to believe. Everyone says it. The world, life, is all shades of Gray. That's a lie. We trick ourselves into believing the world and the situations it presents us are ambiguous; that there are no easy answers. That there is no Right or Wrong. But there are. There is no Gray, that's subjectivism. The inability to see clearly speaks more to our unwillingness to accept the truth about ourselves and who we are as people. The Gray is rooted in fear. We do things thinking, "...there was no other choice". But there is always choice. There are two paths to any one destination. Taking the darker, we like to think it says nothing of who we are. But we don't see things as light or dark, just complicated. At least that's the internal language we speak when there's a fear to confront ourselves in the mirror. Gray is about sussing out our light and dark personalities. The Ambiguous serves as a prism. I like to think of the extremes as opportunities to find out who we are. They're not points at which you throw up your hands and shirk your accountability and responsibility. Seeing Gray is a matter of being unable to reconcile our Light and Dark. You've done something wrong, something bad... what does that mean? Does that make you a bad person? No. This is a growing point. Time for introspection. If there is a lot more Gray in your life than Black & White that's a pretty clear indicator that you fall on one side of the fence, the side you feel most uncomfortable accepting or coping with. Accept who you are. We never like to think of ourselves as wrong of bad people, but maybe we are. And if we're not, the onus is on us to not see Gray, but White. We should always move to do what is right, what's honest. The Gray Matters are always fading. We choose whether or not it fades to White, or fades to Black.

DS333, fading...