A number of famous and stunning Van Gogh pieces, many from European museums anchor this presentation. After staring at the paintings for awhile, I realized Van Gogh is pretty big on nature. His most beautiful pieces are dominated by stars, sky, and land. If there are humans in this pictures, excepting portraits, they are often small, dwarfed by their surroundings.
It makes sense then perhaps that his life story seems a bit lonely. Though he developed an attachment to fellow artist, Paul Gauguin, it seems Gauguin didn't really return the favor.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam
This longish and data intensive book was quoted in some NYT article, and it sounded interesting and somehow vaguely related to something I've encountered. It's about how Americans have become more disengaged and less social over the generations. Americans now by large measure prefer to spend a quiet evening at home rather than go out and talk or meet with friends or other people. This seems like a bad thing the author points out because we have much less 'social capital' and as well much less desire to interact with points of view differing from our own. There is also less generalized trust.
According to the author there are several main causes: women moving into the workplace (by desire or by necessity) [since women are much more social than men in general, this has a big impact on connectedness], television addiction soaking up everyone's free time, those who are well off working longer, and other reasons.
I haven't finished the book, but I think the observations are generally very relevant even though the book was written in 2000. This is somewhat before online social networking really took off, but online interactions don't seem to have quite the quality of face-to-face friendships. I think it's still a bit unclear whether online social networks will get us all more truly connected in a way that mimics the more social past century where large percentages of people belonged to social clubs or visited weekly or daily with neighbors and friends. One brief observation is that sites like facebook seem to help cultivate so called 'weak' ties, but how many of these put together could ever equal the benefit of even a single more intimate friend?
According to the author there are several main causes: women moving into the workplace (by desire or by necessity) [since women are much more social than men in general, this has a big impact on connectedness], television addiction soaking up everyone's free time, those who are well off working longer, and other reasons.
I haven't finished the book, but I think the observations are generally very relevant even though the book was written in 2000. This is somewhat before online social networking really took off, but online interactions don't seem to have quite the quality of face-to-face friendships. I think it's still a bit unclear whether online social networks will get us all more truly connected in a way that mimics the more social past century where large percentages of people belonged to social clubs or visited weekly or daily with neighbors and friends. One brief observation is that sites like facebook seem to help cultivate so called 'weak' ties, but how many of these put together could ever equal the benefit of even a single more intimate friend?
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