8 Clicks from Nowhere ䷀

Dispatches ⌂

Category: [11] Science & Politics

The weight of representation and creating when your identity seems political.

Chapter List

  • Creative Positive Branch · Part Three

    I continue to remind myself that, as a creative, refraining from posting positive things into social spaces not only is a kind of self-censorship but it leaves gaps that are quickly filled by negative things.

    I was more active online in the weeks leading up to the unity referendum that happened here in Alberta, Canada in October.  It was not necessarily about joining into the fray and shouting partisan slogans or reposting dubious information.  I did my share to “get out the vote” and sent numerous reminders to friends and offers of free babysitting (which no one took me up on) but mostly I just posted non-political stuff.

    I kept sending links to my running website.

    I took dozens of autumn photos and shared them everywhere.

    I fired up the frequency of my back posting from this and the other writing project I’m doing about algorithms and technology topics.

    I shared positive thoughts and whimsical aphorisms about all sorts of things that popped into my head.

    And I just tried to fill the space: not necessarily to interfere with the conversation, but because that’s my role. My job, unpaid and often thankless, is to clutter up your social media feed with the mundane. It is to drop art into your apps, pack your photo scrolling with pics from nature, and remind you that real life is bigger than political bullshit, that it continues even when the mouths of politicians stop aren’t flapping and hucksters of every stripe aren’t trying to needle a bit more power.

    Rare moments, but they exist. They need to exist. They need to continue to exist.

    Despite the evidence to contrary, life is bigger than all that.

    Art. Thought. Story. Music. Colour. Trails. Sunsets. All of it must keep going no matter what. When they stop, when we stop being creative positive, then the negative wins and what is there left worth fighting for.

  • Political Abnormal

    I need to remind myself almost every day lately that there is more to making the world a good place than overtly fighting evil.

    We live in complex political times. As I write and publish this initially in late-2026 the political landscape of my home in Western Canada is undergoing a nationalistic push to secede from the Canadian confederation. We are in the midst of a referendum… and this post is not about that, but it is about something parallel: that being someone who makes stuff, writes stories, draws pictures, and posts introspective daily essays on navel-gazing topics can feel monumentally inadequate to the moment.

    Look no further than social media. The click rate on my posts are trivial for my creative works compared to when I go online and start engaging politically. And it can feel like a kick to the chest to try to rationalize that the attention of the population is nearly entirely consumed by a tidal wave of political rhetoric and partisan conversation.

    Particularly right now it feels like the last thing anyone wants is a short story by an amateur science fiction author.

    …or some autumn photography.

    …or screenshots from a video game I’m working on.

    …or a sketch of a funky tree in the park.

    …or—hell, the list could go on forever.

    How do creative people stand up in the undertow of the ebbing and flowing tide and find a role in all this that is more than just another screaming voice.

    But like I said, there is more to making the world a good place than overtly fighting evil.

    A picture of a beautiful autumn scene, or a clip from the latest build of my indie game, or some simple sketch-work passed into someone’s social feed is not a distraction from something good, it is a diversion from the darkness. It is a reminder that among the so-called important conversation there still remains people holding a beacon light for humanity to navigate it’s way back to normality.  

  • Story Mistelling

    Beloved vlogbrother, Hank Green, has made or otherwise alluded to the point in a few videos[1] over the last couple years that sometimes the story is more interesting that the truth.

    Compounding this as an actual issue is that some people value the story—or the value of the story as a political tool, say—more than they value the truth.

    In other words: some people lie and invent stories to serve their own ends. Uh, no kidding, huh?

    I have written about storytelling on this site a disproportionate amount. I am planning on typing the word “storytelling” at least a few hundred more times before I stop posting here.

    So, it makes me wonder: have we reached a pivotal point in history where the art of telling stories is intertwined too dramatically and damningly to think of it anything other than as the dark side of the equation: is storytelling a tool for manipulation, lies, and propaganda?

    Well, yeah. Obviously.

    Though I don’t think Green’s point was meant to be taken as a call to abandon the ship of human tales and interesting fiction.  Instead, it was a call to vigilance.

    After all, I could theoretically bop someone on a head with the hammer and thus use it for dark deeds. I could also fix my fence with the same tool. The former use case does not mean we need to ban hammers. It means that we should teach ourselves and our children to be wary of people who bring hammers into places where hammers are not meant to be.

    In the same way we should teach ourselves and our children to be wary of fiction and stories implanted into places where they are not meant to be: politics, science, medicine, and more.

    Keep telling stories, of course. 

  • Science Politics

    I spent four of my years of post-secondary education studying for (and receiving) a bachelors degree in biological sciences. I studied molecular biology, genetics, and a bit of ecology, cellular biology, botany, and entomology blurred into that mix. 

    I got a job doing computer stuff and never really looked back.

    But you don’t spend four intensive years studying the methods and tools of science without it changing how you look at the world. And it definitely changed how I look at the world.

    Now I find myself right here… and in this moment: we exist in this highly charged political time, a time when truth and reality are constantly being questioned. 

    One half of my very soul and identity often seem political and running against the grain of the populist movements that shape our news each day.

    I figure I could choose to reject it, go against all that I know and understand, or I can do what I’ve always done and embrace it—use it as the backbone to what I make, how I engage with the other half of my soul and identity: the creative artistic writer guy.

    Here I am.  Take it or leave it.

    Science, rational evidence-based thought, and critical thinking are part of who I am, what I make and how I engage with both sides of my personality. 

    Under the category of Science & Politics, I’ll be writing more on this topic as the months wear on.

  • Poets Processing

    Daily writing has a way of losing focus. I dive down metaphorical rabbit holes all the time, and yet I’d be the first to tell you that such things are not just okay, but a kind of magical side effect of creativity. A perk.

    As I collect topics and ideas to fill these pages I have gone down one particular hole multiple times and at times have risked turning this writing project into something else entirely.

    The bad part of that is losing focus on something I care about—creative pursuits—and is not (strategically speaking) the direction in which I want to take this project.

    The good part of that diversion is I that I do in fact have the time, resources and inclination to pursue those topics in another place.

    All this is to say that as of this month I’m going to be (trying to)maintain two daily writing projects—yikes!—and write on two different topics.

    Here, on “Dispatches from Nowhere” I will keep on track with my ramblings related to creative motivation, insights into building skills and habits to make stuff, and write about the interesting (at least to me) hobbies that clutter my life.

    Over on “on poets & processors” I am building a new site around the topic of the dehumanization of art and creativity by algorithmic competition: how AI is invading the creative spaces and simultaneously stealing work while probably, maybe, sort of creating interesting new opportunities… and what’s the deal?

    Advance warning: there may be some cross posting, but as they veer off down different paths I suspect it may turn into more of a cross-site conversation.  Or, whatever: what do I know, I’m not a machine here.

    Check it out.