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About This Author
My name is Joy, and I love to write.
Why poetry, here? Because poetry uplifts its writer, and if she is lucky enough, her readers, too. Around us, so many objects abound to write about. Once a poet starts with a smallest, most trivial object, he shall discover that his pen will spill out what is most delicate or most majestic hidden inside him. Since the classics sometimes dealt with lofty subjects with a lofty language, a person with poetry in his soul may incline to emulate that. That is understandable. Poetry does that to a person: it enlarges the soul and gives it wings. Yet, to really soar, a poet needs to take off from the ground.
 
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Everyday Canvas
"Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself."
CHARLIE CHAPLIN
Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn
anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.
David Whyte
This is my supplementary blog in which I will post entries written for prompts.
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Do you experience psychological challenges of living with machine intelligence since computing power is woven into everything, and sometimes extremely erratically?
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I have no problems with machine intelligence. If anything, I highly revere the computer technology and its leading us to such new horizons we could never have imagined. Machine intelligence, wrongly named as artificial intelligence, is the intelligence exhibited by machines or software. It is also the name of the academic field of study which studies how to create computers and computer software that show intelligent behavior. What people and especially companies, large and small, do with this technology is something else, however.
As to my psychological challenges with it, I can only mumble the first few words of a song. “Where do I begin to tell the story of…”
To begin with, if you ever called a company and were given the runaround by a computer without even touching the issue at hand, you’ll know what I mean.
This is a computer speaking at the other end:
Thank you for calling (company name)!
Comprimé el número nueve para Español. (A possible full minute of waiting, but only here; for other options waiting period is much less.)
I see that you are calling from (your number, character by character repeated back at you as if that was what you needed.)
Please be advised that this call will be recorded for training purposes.
Let me pull your account. For security purposes please say your father’s first name. (You say-for example-Fred)
Sorry, I didn’t get that.
Another question then. Please say or press on the keys the number of your residence. (You press 355)
3-5-5, Is this correct? Please say yes or no. (You say yes)
Sorry, I didn’t get that.
Another question then. Please say or press on the keys the last four letters of your Social Security. (You press, for example, 1089)
1089. Is this correct?
If this is correct say yes. (You say yes)
I didn’t get that. If this is correct press one. If not press two. (You press one)
Now how may I help you?
Please press one if you are calling for (Whatever option one is).
Press two (whatever option two is) … (additional options and additional numbers are given after that)
And this goes on and on, and if you are lucky, after half an hour or so, you are talking to an agent, most likely from Mexico or India or Timbuktu or Wherever, who asks you the very same questions the computer has supposedly clarified, just to answer a yes or no question or he or she is incapable of understanding your issue, so she connects you to a higher-level agent, but if through her connecting your call is dropped totally, it means you’ll go through the above process all over again. And this is one of the simpler examples. I have some horrible ones, which would have taken ten times longer to write about. But to add some comic relief to the issue, my hubby gets so flustered that he talks back to the computer: "No, you are mistaken. This isn't what I said. I said....) 
It used to be, a few years ago, we were given the option of talking to an agent, but that option is totally erased nowadays, through the inherent cruelty of companies or their programmers. If this doesn’t frustrate a person, I don’t know what does! |
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Prompt: Joseph Campbell said: "A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself."
What do you think makes someone into a hero?
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I agree with Joseph Campbell. It is a valiant undertaking to decide to tackle something bigger than oneself, in other words, to at least attempt to do something about an issue no matter how undoable it seems.
In addition to undertaking huge and sometimes insurmountable projects, a hero is someone who displays courage and resilience when faced with a problem or a hardship. A hero will also rise to the situation when someone needs help or needs to be saved from a dangerous situation. There are heroes in uniform and there are heroes in civilian clothing. What makes a person a hero comes from inside him or her and shows in their actions.
Heroes are people like us and most of the time they are scared, too. Their heroism, however, doesn’t let fear get the best of them. Nor do the real heroes wish to do anything for fame and fortune. If they did, that would cheapen their deeds. A hero performs with the recognition of risk and cost and predictable sacrifice but without the anticipation of external gain.
Why do heroes become heroes? This is a puzzle. It could be that there is a hero gene or the love hormone in the brain, which increases the likelihood of altruism, or it could be just that heroes feel more empathy and compassion to perform heroic deeds in service to others in need, be it for a person, persons, group, country, a moral cause, or ideal. In short, no recipe exists for creating heroes because heroes just are heroes or they become heroes in a variety of quiet ways whether we recognize them or not.
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