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I have a Canon A410 camera for more than 4 years now, and I have used it for everything. It is a small silver camera that can fit into most pockets easily. This camera results in me getting unwanted attention. I went to a mall a few weeks ago with that camera to take some pictures. The security guards felt that it was their life duty to not allow me to take pictures without them in the background. After about 20 minutes of me walking around in the mall looking for a good shot of either some object or a store, I was approached by a security guard and was told that “You’re not allowed to take pictures in the mall.” Every day you see dozens of tourists coming to malls and taking pictures to which no one objects. However, if you are not a tourist and have a light-looking silver camera, you probably cannot take a picture.

Last week I went to the same mall with my new Sony A300 DSLR camera. It is a big black camera that gets unwanted attention itself and makes sure that I get almost no attention at all. At the mall, I started taking a few pictures with it. During the course of an hour, I noticed no security guards shadowing me. I walked around for a while to look for some security guards, and as I found them, I took pictures of them and things around them. Interestingly, none of the security guards had any problem with me taking pictures with a black camera. Even the same security guard, who had previously told me that I was not allowed to take pictures in the mall, looked and carried on with his job, as if I was going to publish his photo in a magazine called “The people who keep our malls safe from silver cameras.”

Example 2: Only non-free software is good

We can apply the same small-silver vs. fat-black camera to the idea of using software online. Someone told me last year that anyone who uses free products in web development is not a serious professional in the online field. I do not understand the logic behind such a claim, though I do understand the flawed notions that probably amount to such claims being used: something that is being offered for free is not good enough to be sold, as people will not buy it. Thus, in such a logic, inferior software is given away for free while superior software is sold.

So what happens when a cheaper or a free software is used? For this article, please forget the mass hysteria after being open-source¹. The concept of something you take for free, by paying through time and other actions, and not by paying actual tender cash for it, has not been yet understood correctly by many people. If you upload files to your site server with a free FTP² software, and I upload files to my site server with a paid FTP software, would my site be considered better than yours based on the fact that I paid cash money for that FTP software? It should not, since if you want to judge, you judge based on the end result, which would be the site, and not on the monetary value of the tool being used.

Paying for a tool results in a better perception?

The above mentality is a form of a separation where those that can afford a higher priced item can differentiate themselves than those that cannot or will not buy a higher priced item. In fact, those that do not have more complicated or sophisticated tools and pursue a hobby or some kind of other work, have more passion and sincerity than those that have a hobby that is made simpler, easier and possible only due to a more expensive tool. It should be noted that this stereotype is also applied to the concept of feelings, emotions and relationships on a massive level: maybe I will discuss that in a future thought.

Give an idiot a high tech 8-megapixel camera and tell him or her to go take pictures. Many of pictures, if not all, will come out looking superb in many forms. In contrast, give the same idiot a 1 megapixel or a 3.1 megapixel with no auto-focus or other built in functions and tell him or her to go take pictures. Then see if many or even any of the pictures look cool.

Today someone online asked me to show him pictures from the new camera, since “the canon was just ok not that good.” I thought about it and showed him a few pictures taken a few years ago with my Canon, but I told him they were all from the newer Sony camera. His reaction? He said the pictures definitely looked better than my previous pictures and finally showed my real talent. I am actually thinking of not sharing my pictures directly with such or many people anymore, or to hide the identity of the tools used so that the focus can be on the actual process and the result itself and not just the tool, since it is a waste of time to have a passion for something like drawing and then have people praise you not for the drawing but for the expensive pencil you used. Better to have a secret passion than to expose the passion and listen to people praise it based on things they do not understand and for things that should not be praised.

What do you think?

What is your opinion on this? Does the monetary value of the tools define the worth of an action? What if someone cannot afford a higher priced item and wishes to use a free alternate? What if someone is focusing only on the actual process and maybe the result and not on the tools being used? The tools may very well be the right tools, but does the rightness of a tool depend on its price? Or is it the mentality of the society, that wants attention and differentiation through means other than actual work or intelligence or passion, that depends on the actual monetary cash price of an item to try to show itself as being superior or to show someone else as being inferior?

Thank you for reading about this thought, which was written in a free text editing program and then in a paid text editor program, then edited on a free online software, on a very strange website³, on a $499 operating system, on a $700+ laptop filled with both free software and software that costs more than $5000. And on a table that if I wish to sell one day, would probably require me to pay the buyer some money for him/her to take the table away.

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Being inconsiderate offline

Almost every week I talk to some friends who tell me about how they ran into some people who had no manners because they did not respect the culture, religion, political view or something else that my friend believed in. However, people usually do not talk about their own character not having any rules or views on how one should be accommodating of other views. For example, if a certain culture dictates how someone should eat, it can be very hard to find any rule or cultural characteristic that dictates how one can let someone eat anyway they want, if they did not subscribe to certain cultural trends.

If a culture, religion, or any other guideline view about something in life about is not accommodating of people who want to do things their own way while not hurting others, why can we ourselves not be more considerate to and of others and still follow our culture and our rules? If our culture or religion does not consider other conflicting views, does that mean our culture and religion is not good? Why can people not be all right with others doing the same thing in different ways? Does everyone have to have the same religion? Does everyone have to have the same culture? Does everyone need to have the same political view? Does everyone need to do everything in the same exact manner? As long as someone is doing something and not hurting others directly and intentionally, why can we not be happy with them, coexist with them, and even incorporate them and their views into our own lives?

Being inconsiderate online

I run into many blogs daily where people get upset over someone having differing view about something then them. A blogger may get upset and feel offended if someone else talks about contradictory views on religion, politics, or even blogging. However, should we not have the quality of being considerate to other views? Why can our own online views, such as blogging rules, dictate something like “We will treat and deal with the people who have the exact same views as us, in exactly the same manner as the people who have different views“?

Why is it that I cannot write something, like saying that blogging is just a stupid fad, without getting people to attack me without any reason? Being inconsiderate does not mean that you do not disagree with others. Being inconsiderate means that you cannot live normally while knowing that people have different views. The only reason we may be upset at others online, and thus be inconsiderate to them, is because those other people are going after ideas that we ourselves have either not thought of, or we have decided not to utilize them. We do not disrespect and disagree with others people because we believe we are right; we disrespect and disagree with others because they have a different view and because they do not subscribe to our views.

This mentality creates a little dilemma, if one believes in the concept of applying a theory to different things; does everyone then, when following the concept of being considerate to others, need to follow the same standards online? Why can we not have more blogs without any RSS feeds? Why can we not have nonstandard, and strange, labeling around a site, like the word “Backroad” instead of “Archives“? Why can we not have more blogs without the comment feature? One of the grand questions of all: if we want to be considerate to others, why can we not be comfortable with blogs that deliberately aim to be inconsiderate?

Do you think the concept of being considerate to others has any value for you?

What is your view on this? Do we have to criticize or hate every instance of something that we disagree with? Could that be the reason why many married and dating couples look like brothers and sisters, because many people want to find someone who not only acts like them but also looks like them? Can human beings, as a whole, ever have a mentality where they not only respect different views and people, but they also make it a part of their own character to revolve their own views and character on such a thing? We we, as individuals, easily have a mentality where we are not only considerate to others, but where we also revolve our own ideas and beliefs around the idea of letting other ideas and beliefs prosper within our own life domain?

I am touching the introduction of this touchy subject very lightly, as this subject probably defines the lives of many people out there, and deserves more than just a single post that was written while Bes was hungry. Do you agree or disagree with this?

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