On Morality

I've always had what could be considered morally gray disposition. Like most people I tend to think of myself as a generally good person, but I know for a fact that I won't be getting nominated for any humanitarian awards in the near future. And I'm ok with that. My philosophy has always been to try and be good and do good where you can, but occasionally I listen to the voice in my head that says "Take what you can, when you can". Now that may sound a bit greedy. I tend to think of it as opportunistic. The universe sometimes provides you with an opportunity and it's up to you to take it or leave it. It's at moments like this that there may be a bit of moral dilemma where your conscience may start yelling in your ear that you should or shouldn't do something. Now of course it depends on the situation, but I often treat these situations like I do with food. It's generally best to accept food when it's offered because you never know when it may be offered again. I admit that type of thinking may sound like someone who lived on the streets of a Dickens story. I'm not out to hurt anyone and I try to be somewhat socially conscious of how my actions may impact others. These can be little things like not littering or putting my shopping cart back in the cart corral. They can also be bigger things like doing what I can to help those who need it. Still I would say at least on a weekly basis I do things that a part of me knows is wrong.

We all attempt to justify our actions. Leaving work early even though you came in late. You worked extra last week or will work more tomorrow. The salesman forgot to ring up an item. Given how much money they make it won't hurt them to miss this one thing. You burned that guy's shed to the ground because he had it coming for that thing with the guy that one time. Granted some of our justifications are more rational than others. In the end though it's just how we tell ourselves that our actions are ok. I would imagine that most socially functional people know the difference between right and wrong. It's just that we tell ourselves that because we had a good reason to do something that we are in the right for doing something wrong. We like to label those people who don't seem to care about right or wrong as sociopaths (actually I read an interview from a psychologist who said that term is incorrect and the proper term should be psychopaths) because it helps to separate us from those people who are socially "broken".  The thing is that to an outsider a lot of our actions could be considered psychotic bordering on self-destructive. Now maybe you're not sitting in a bathroom cutting lines into your thigh or taking drugs that slowly burn away the bad thoughts, but let's face it, we all do things that we ourselves look back on and wonder why we thought that was the right thing to do at the time when it seems obvious that just the opposite action was probably the better choice.

I guess the question really comes down to what is the basis of our morals?  Who or what is really the moral authority?  I tend to believe that we allow society to somewhat dictate what is moral, even though it really comes down to the individual to decide. Very few of us get through life without letting those around us influence our behavior. Even those people who claim they don't care what other people think are often bound by the general rules of society. In the end though we are our own moral authority. We decide what we believe to be right. Now those beliefs are shaped and built by everything in our lives. While society may say it's wrong to commit murder, you may believe that in some circumstances murder may be necessary, if not justified. Does that make you wrong?  I've often wondered what our morals will look like a thousand years from now. If we as a species are still around will we still even have a concept like morals or ethics?  I suppose it depends on our situation at the time. Morals are a lot like civil liberties, in times of crisis they can be considered a luxury that can get you killed. Some people though feel that no matter the situation you shouldn't compromise your ideals. Doing so only compromises your self. It's hard to know if those people are right or wrong because while their moral code may ultimately cost them here, there may be a much greater picture to consider than just what happens in the here and now. Is the possibility of a giant cosmic tapestry enough to prevent people from doing whatever they think they can get away with or at least feel bad about it when they break their own moral guidelines?

Bumbler

On the War Within

Sometimes it's possible to have two conflicting thoughts in your head at the same time.  It used to be a rarity that this would happen, but it seems to be happening more and more lately.  For as long as I can remember I've always been hit with two different ideas of what would potentially make me happy.  A part of me wants the simple life.  Maybe a nice country house out in the middle of nowhere.  To be surrounded by nature and mostly left in isolation.  The idea of a more quaint kind of life has always been appealing to me.  Now I know that a farmer's or rancher's life is pretty hard work, but at the end of the day you always knew what you accomplished.  Maybe it's the dream of being somewhat self-sufficient that was the draw for me.  In stories there would always be the main character who had escaped the craziness of the outside world and lived in isolation.  A cabin in the woods where they hunt for their food and keep a garden.  A faithful dog and horse and the ability to live off the land where all they needed.  Some days that sounds like absolute heaven.

The problem is for all the trouble that comes with being around people, there is a lot of good from them too.  By nature we're social creatures and crave interaction with others.  Granted some of us have a shorter tolerance than others, but being around other human beings can bring out some of the best of us.  When we're alone there is little to push us to be more than we are.  Sure a person may strive to be better.  It's just that when we're by ourselves the only measuring stick we have is what we come up with.  Now a great many things can come from being alone.  You can really learn about who you are if you ever give yourself a chance to just sit and be alone with yourself.  That may sound strange, but try it sometime.  Turn off as much external stimulation as possible and just be with yourself.  At first your mind may feel as though it's starved for input, but eventually you'll settle down and that's when you'll start getting to know yourself a bit more.  You may finally start facing certain things about yourself that you didn't know where there.  This can be both good and frightening as sometimes it's easier to brush things under the carpet.  There is a reason why solitary confinement is considered a punishment.  After awhile we need other people in much the same way that we need food and water.  There is something about having people around that we simply have to have.  Like anything else, moderation is key.

So there is that part of me that wants to go off and live like Jeremiah Johnson, before the whole being attacked constantly by Indians, surviving off the land and just being left alone.  Then there is another part of me that wants something completely different.  This part wants to be surrounded by people of various relationships.  Friends, family, wacky neighbors, and plenty of that-guy-you-know type people.  This part of me also is fascinated with possibilities.  Technical advancements.  Scientific discoveries.  Medical breakthroughs.  Our place in the global community.  The future of all mankind.  This part of me is excited to hear about what new greatness exists just around the corner.  I want to be a part of it, even if only on the sideline as an amateur enthusiast.   Trivial things like movies, art, literature, and video games are all sources of potential greatness and joy.  I see these things and it's like being a kid again, just stunned with happiness that they exist in my time.  Not only do I see these things I want to share my experiences with others and have them do the same with me.  This is where our craving for interaction with other people really comes into play.  I could read something and think one thing and then someone else reads the same thing and thinks something slightly different.  We talk about it and we both realize we never would have come to those thoughts without each other.  It makes what we read that much more enjoyable because it takes on additional meanings.  To me that's the best part of people.

Not very long ago it felt like I woke up one day and it felt like much of the world was annoyingly bad.  The things I liked once were now stupid to me.  My tolerance for this spreading stupidity was shrinking quickly.  Watching TV I'd see more and more signs that we as a society are embracing mediocrity and celebrating the dumb while complaining about how it's not fair that those people over there have it better than us.  I was starting to feel very much disenchanted with just about everything.  How come I couldn't find joy in the little things like I used to?  Things couldn't really be as bad as they seemed.  There had to be some good out there in the world.  How come I couldn't see it?  This is where the two conflicting sides of me start going to work.  If the world is full of stupid crap and there aren't any signs of it getting better, then maybe it would be good to extricate myself from the world.  It's probably a pretty natural feeling by many people.  They see the world seemingly running away into a chaotic mess that has lost all sense of meaning.  Why let yourself become a part of this ever increasing problem?  Maybe it's just best to escape while it's still an option.

The thing is that even if you don't see the good in the world it's still out there.  You're just not looking hard enough.  It can be difficult to break out of the assumption that everything is stupid.  Sure there will always be stupidity and people who seem to have the sole purpose on this planet to get in your way or make you seriously question our future as a species.  For every stupid person out there exists someone brilliant.  Someone trying to do good and overcome the idea that the lowest common denominator is good enough.  You just have to look for them with a little more effort.  It's too easy to accept what's presented to us on a daily basis.  That the world is in disarray.  That we should be afraid of our neighbor.  That we should accept the cheapest possible version of something and be thankful for it.  Instead maybe it would be best to stop taking the version of someone else as the truth and go out and see for ourselves.  Not everything is going to be wonderful, but not everything is going to be horrifying either.  We've gotten to a point where it takes a lot to get our attention so in turn only extremes can catch our eye.  Maybe by turning off the so-called filters that actually act as amplifiers we can start to get back to what's real.  For me the hope is that by doing so I can hopefully figure out if the two parts of me can come to some kind of agreement on what would make them happy.

Wooden Pathway

On the Web of Life

I was watching a nature special the other day.  The thing I've noticed about nature specials is that they're really ever about two things.  The first is animals eating other animals in the struggle to survive.  The second is animals making baby animals so they can eat and make further babies.  So the purpose of life in the animal kingdom is really just to keep on living.  We as humans tend to look for meaning beyond simply where our next meal comes from.  In the end though we're bound by the same rules as all other lifeforms on the planet.  We must consume life to maintain our own.  Even a vegetarian has to eat something that was alive so that they may live.  It got me thinking though about life and the world as a whole.  As I've mentioned before, with energy it's impossible to destroy it, only transform it somehow.  What if all life is connected?  I don't mean in some vaguely spiritual way, although that could also be true, but rather in the sense that we're not individual lifeforms.  What if we're all just pieces of a greater life web?  If that were true then when a lion eats a gazelle it's simply moving part of the energy from one area to another.  Now I know that some could argue against this idea because not all life coexists peacefully and it would seem counter to us being a part of something large.  Look at our own bodies though.  There are cells that mutate or grown out of control that ultimately destroy other cells for their own survival.  If it happens within us then what's to say that we're not a part of something larger where the same thing is happen, only on a much grander scale?

This is where people start to look for a greater meaning to life since it seems like an almost pointless exercise to be struggling to maintain whatever energy we can grab for no other purpose than to hold onto it for a little while.  A beetle has the instinct to live and reproduce and that's its whole purpose in life.  Why though?  To what end does it do this?  The beetle exists only to exist.  What if that beetle exists because it must consume a plant; who's own existence is there to serve as food for the beetle, and in turn the beetle must eventually become food to something larger than itself.  This life web grows forever outward.  Given enough time we all become food for something else.  Our own purpose is to finally give up our own bodies so that something else can live.  It can seem bleak since all of our experiences and memories come to an end.  No matter how important we think we are, there will come a time when we simply don't exist as we do now.  And in a way that's a good thing.  If we are made up of energy that cannot be destroyed then what we are has to carry on somehow.

In the end it doesn't really address the overall question of what's the point of life?  Most life on this planet strive to exist for the sake of passing on their genes to the next generation in a seemingly endless cycle.  Maybe we as humans feel the need for there to be something greater behind it all.  That being alive for the sake of living just isn't enough.  If we are somehow a part of something greater then it's possible our purpose in life is more than we imagined.  We live and die like everything else because we're a part of something.  What that something is may be unknowable because we're talking about not just life on our planet, but possibly the entirety of the universe.  We may be the equivalent of a single cell in this overall life, but each one is important, otherwise it would have no reason to exist in the first place.  Then again maybe the idea of a grand life web is just another way of rationalizing all the dizzying randomness of life.  Our purpose here could potentially be nothing more than an innate need to continue living.  Life itself could only be a chance encounter of proteins that met in just the right environment.  Still we are alive and we are aware of it so maybe it doesn't matter if it was all random to begin with.  Maybe the first step to something greater is being aware that there is possibly something greater.

Northern Lights

Painted Redwood

On Fractions

I heard this theory in a movie once that maybe our souls are only fractions of the original souls.  Not all that long ago there weren't even a million people on the planet, each supposedly with their own unique soul.  Fast forward to today where we've crossed over seven billion people on the planet.  Where did the souls for all these people come from?  If you believe that our souls are just some form of energy then you probably accept the idea that energy cannot be destroyed, only transferred or transformed.  The same is true about the creation of energy.  It had to come from somewhere.  So either we're drawing our soul's energy from some seemingly endless cosmic vat or we're cleaving off a piece with each new person.  In that situation then wouldn't it stand to reason that those of us born in the last 50,000 years are a fraction of what the people before us were?  If we're born incomplete then that may explain why many of us feel scattered and lost.  We're looking for something that makes us whole again.  It could also be why we seek out companionship so much.

If you were get a chance to read about some of the alien conspiracies out there you'll eventually come across the one that believes our race has been infiltrated by lizard people who look like humans, but aren't.  It sounds like something from a bad science fiction story (that they've made into a TV mini-series).  It's strange that some people truly believe this is the case and that these lizard people are here to do whatever lizard people do, all of it bad.  Now I don't believe there are alien lizard people hiding in plain sight, but I do think it's a somewhat interesting tip of an iceberg.  There is an idea that each of us has something called a Reptilian Brain.  This part of our brain is all about survival, with no consideration for emotion.  Instead its only function is to worry about fight, flight, food, and reproduction.  Basically pure instinct.  What if instead of lizard people there are those who are controlled by their reptilian brain more than anything else?  Combined with the idea that we're already fragments of souls, incomplete and constantly hunting for a sense of wholeness, you have a person who by many standards wouldn't be quite human.  Sure they may look human and a majority of the time they may act human, but it's a mask they wear.  We call those people sociopaths.  Someone who doesn't know (or care) about right and wrong.  They simply do whatever they want regardless of consequence or impact on other people.  I've talked about how people with Asperger's tend to lack empathy.  This doesn't make them a bad person.  Their brains simply do not work in a way that processes something like empathy.  Does that mean another part of their brain is more dominant?  Now I'm not saying that sociopaths aren't responsible for who they are, but I wonder if maybe they're simply people whose reptilian brains are in charge.

It's sometimes hard to imagine what's really controlling who we are.  From one perspective we're simply a bundle of electrified chemicals that course through a body, simulating a sense of self and awareness.  Reality as we know it could just be chemistry working overtime to make sure that we keep on existing for the sake of existing.  Our whole lives could be nothing more than a feeble attempt at trying to create perpetual motion.  If that's true then what we think of as a soul is really just our power source.  It's that thing that animates those chemicals and nothing more.  If you were to damage the system everything that we are could be lost.  Someone with massive head trauma may never fully recover, meaning the person they were is gone forever.  That kind of goes against the idea that we have souls since all it takes to fundamentally change who we are is interruption of a few key chemicals for a short period of time.  It doesn't even take an injury to change our personalities.  Add alcohol or drugs to the system and some people become someone else.  One could argue that they've always been that person, but it's hard to say since a person may never know what they'd become if you introduced them to a foreign chemical.

On the other side though is the idea that our body is just a vessel for our soul or spirit.  We are greater than the sum of our parts.  While our bodies may be precariously held together the thing that makes us who we are will never change.  The vehicle that carries us could become damaged and we may find ourselves trapped inside ourselves, we will never change.  That is of course assuming that we were ever whole to begin with.

The Light

On Commerce

When I was a kid they made us watch these educational movies about how commerce worked.  It was a series of cartoons about these islanders who were essentially creating an economy.  People would do services so that they could get shells, which represented something of value.  It was a great way to show kids kind of how things were supposed to work.  The money in your pocket doesn't really have value, but the gold behind the money does.  So really the dollar bill you carried around was like having a note from your mom saying it's ok to give you something of value because we promise we're good for it.  I don't really remember how far along the cartoons got, but I'd like to think eventually those islanders would go through some of the same stuff we as a real society face in today's world.  Now I get the basic idea that everything has to have value.  Nothing comes for free.  There is a cost associated with all things and we've chosen to assign monetary values to most things in our society.  It seems to be one of the easiest way to keep track of things.  At least on the surface anyway.  The deeper you get into how things really work, the more you see that it's all precariously held together.

When you're little your parents more or less pay for everything.  The food you eat and the clothes you wear.  Even where you live is paid for by them.  From a strictly financial standpoint it seems odd that people would randomly say "Hey let's add another 25 year's worth of new bills to our lives!"  When we leave home we start to see just how much was covered for us.  You want to eat, you need to come up with the money to pay for the food.  You want to live in that small one room apartment that smells like feet, you need to gather up a month's worth of rent for the luxury of not sleeping outside.  The way we've dealt with this is going out and getting a job.  We provide a service, and mostly our time, and get some money for it.  It sounds good and it makes us feel like we're contributing.  Contributing to what though?  Most of us do a job that is little more than a cog in a giant machine.  That's not meant to be demeaning or anything, it's just the simple facts.  I do my job so that guy can do his job so she can do her job and they can do their jobs.  Our jobs have become this weird hamster wheel of disconnectedness.  Each one requires the other in order to keep functioning, but they have nothing to do with each other.

While we're on the subject let's talk about as a society we're mostly just become a group of individuals, all working towards our own goals.  Now I have no problem with people looking out for themselves and the people they care about.  I do it.  Everyone does it.  Communists would like you to believe that everyone should work together for the betterment of everyone, but in most real cases it's just an elaborate way to make sure this group has more than that group.  We like to believe that capitalism (what we call democracy) is the better way.  The idea is that if you work hard then you'll be rewarded.  If you are lazy then you'll be punished or at least less rewarded.  Still most of us will never move beyond our current class standing.  If you started out at middle class, then it's very likely you'll stay at middle class.  Sure you may become Upper middle class, but let's face it, that's just another way of saying you're in the middle with the pack.  If you're poor you'll probably stay poor and if you have money you'll probably continue to have money.  Again this isn't meant at some cynical look at the world.  It's just how it is most of the time.  So if we're working our jobs and we're basically in it for ourselves then as a society what are we working towards?

Sometimes I like to imagine what the world would be like if we stopped focusing so much on what we could get right now and start looking at what we could get in the future if we worked together.  It's hard to do because many of us are chasing that dollar.  Our whole society seems to not only be built around it, but actually encourages it, sometimes to the detriment of society.  A patent was originally designed to give the inventor time to recoup their expenses and make profit off their invention.  A limited time.  It was never meant to be a lifetime patent.  A pharmaceutics company will spend millions of dollars creating that first pill.  The second pill will cost them eighteen cents.  The patent is a way of rewarding their effort and making it so someone else doesn't come along and start cashing in on what they spend money developing.  That makes sense to me.  Somewhere along the way though it became more important to make money than actually achieve anything of substance.  Now I know that's not true for all companies, but it's very common for a company to worry more about making money for its shareholders than it is about contributing to the overall betterment of society.  Look at what's known as intellectual property.  It's now become ok to patent an idea.  Not an actual invention, but just the idea of an invention.  This is what happens when more and more work is being done in the computer world.  Programs are running the world.  Those programs were developed by people and took a lot of effort to created.  Someone should be rewarded for their work.  Again, for a limited time.  Companies now are making it their business to keep renewing copyrights and patents in order to keep squeezing every bit of money out of them.  In fact some companies make it their business to sue people who infringe on their intellectual property.

So rather than working together and building something that will make us all greater than we currently are, we work as individuals to make sure that at the very least we're going to get everything we want.  I know it's a hard concept to embrace because let's face it, there is a cost to everything.  Unity and contributing towards advancing society doesn't exactly pay the bills and there will always be bills (although there shouldn't be).  I've talked before about how shows like Star Trek show us a world where people actually all truly contribute to society in hopes that it progresses us as a species.  It's a fantastical idea and we may never achieve, but I have to hope that someday we'll look beyond our immediate gratification and see there is more out there.  Until then we'll continue to be cogs in the machine, slowly earning the money we need so that we can survive long enough to come in tomorrow and keep the machine running.

Second Leaf

On Good...or Good Enough

What makes a person good?  I've talked about evil before and it's sometimes fairly obvious why something is evil, but even then it's all really subjective and based on the point of view at the time.  So what makes someone a good person, if there is such a thing?  Maybe it's in the things they do.  People are often judged by their actions so it's the most apparent indicator that someone is good.  Maybe it goes deeper than that.  What if the actions are only what's on the surface?  It could be that true goodness is tied to intent.  I've talked about cheating before.  Some people think that cheating really only occurs when sex is involved, or at least physical contact.  I personally think it's something more.  If you enter a situation with the intention of cheating, but something prevents it from happening then you're still a cheater.  Just because you didn't or couldn't act on it doesn't change what you intended to do.  Some may think that's a little harsh and if you were to apply those kind of standards to other aspects of life then we have a lot of cheaters, killers, and thieves walking around who simply haven't acted on what's in their hearts.  That actually brings up the question of:  Is good just the absence of evil or is evil simply the absence of good intention?

If you were to ask the average person if they thought they were good, most would probably say for the most part they are.  They may say that they're a bit of an asshole at times, but most people have moments where they're not exactly nice.  More to the point, most people think what they're doing is right, or at least justified.  So to them their actions, and in turn themselves, are good.  Or at least good enough.  Now for the most part there are some general accepted forms of being good.  Helping people, thinking of more than just yourself, and actively trying to spread love/joy/happiness to the world around you.  In most societies those things are considered to be virtuous.  However, to someone who would rather see the destruction of a people, place, or thing would the good person really be good for them?  For them it would likely run contrary to what they ultimately want and while you may not be able to go as far as to say for them good is evil, you couldn't exactly say that a good person is held in good standing.  This goes back to the argument that maybe good and evil is only in the eye of the beholder.

Still it doesn't really answer the question of what makes a person good.  It also kind of circles the point of what makes us different from the animals or a machine that could emulate our behavior.  One might say what differentiates us is the fact that we use rational thought and logic.  That we sense the world around us and understand our place within it.  I can tell you right now if that's what separates us from the animals or a machine then I'm next to failing as a human because I rarely know my place in the world and am even less likely to use rational thought.  One may also say that rational thought isn't enough to set us apart.  It takes something more.  It takes love, compassion, or empathy to be a truly good person.  Without these traits then we're no better than some reptile or robot.

I won't get too much into love because I've talked about it before, but I will talk about empathy.  I'd like to believe that most people are at least somewhat empathetic when it comes to people around them.  Now I know it's hard with so many people on the planet and life moving so fast.  If you allow yourself to empathize with everyone and everything you'd drown in a sea of emotion.  Still with the people closest to us we understand how they're feeling or how something impacts their life.  It's when we use that understanding to guide our own actions that we start to get closer to the idea of being good.  Now before I get too far I want to mention something.  When a child is growing up the first few years of their life they're in their own little self-contained world.  They have no real comprehension of the people around them.  They can only really understand their own experiences and needs.  This can be a hard concept for some people to accept because for an adult it looks like the child is being selfish.  And in a way they are, but they have no idea that there's anything else out there that matters.  As they get older they start grasp the concept that the world isn't all about them, but they are a part of something larger.  Now it's true that some people never really learn this because they still somehow believe that the most important thing is themselves.  To be fair, for the strictest sense of survival, they're right.  Assuming we only get the one body and one life then you should always be the most important thing in your world.  If you cease to exist then your world also ceases to exist and all the other things you care about go away, at least as far as you can perceive.  So if a child for the first five or so years lacks empathy what does that mean as far as the whole good thing is concerned?  Most people would argue that a child is innocent and thereby good by default until something causes them to stop being good.

I've read a bit about Asperger's and some of the main traits with it are a lack of understanding social cues, extreme self-involvement, and a lack of empathy.  If you tweaked things a little bit one way you'd have someone that would be considered a sociopath.  One of the things several people with Asperger's have done to help them fit in and behave more 'normal' is to copy what other people are doing.  It may not ever enter into their mind to ask how someone's weekend was, but after awhile they may train themselves to ask because they know it's kind of a social awareness that many people have come to expect.  So for the person with Asperger's they're not asking how the weekend was because they want to know, they're asking because they know they should want to know.  You can't throw out a blanket statement that says anyone who lacks empathy isn't a good person because someone with Asperger's or a child couldn't rationally be held to that standard.  Still it does bring up the question though what is the standard?

We've all seen movies or read stories about someone who started out with the best of intentions and somewhere along the way they paved their own road to hell.  I said before a cheater is based largely on their intention.  So what happens when the intentions were good, but somehow the actions get corrupted?  Arlo said there aren't any good guys.  There aren't any bad guys or innocent guys.  It's all just a bunch of guys.  Meaning no one can be really classified as good or bad.  Everyone is just sort of doing whatever whenever.  It's almost cynical to think about, but probably not that far from reality.  So you may think of yourself as a good person and maybe on most days you are, but if you're honest with yourself, you know there are days when that goodness takes a backseat and you do something that isn't even in the same zip code as being good.  Does that make you a bad person?  Not necessarily.  There's an old question about if people are mostly good and sometimes do bad things or generally bad and occasionally do good things.  How you judge the world also shows a bit about who you are.  I'd like to think that if a person tends to try and do good and be good and has generally good intentions towards the world that we could go ahead and say they're a good person.  Still my standards for what is 'good' may be different than yours so maybe there is no real way to know, except what's in our own mind.  Then again, maybe that's all that ever matters.

Crest

On Jobs

I've had a lot of jobs in my life.  Notice I didn't say career because while many of the jobs were in related fields, I don't really think of myself as having a coherent career.  That could be because each job was simply what I did at the time.  Sure many of them involved a computer and built on the knowledge I may have learned from school or even the previous job, but they were connected to each other in the same way that hand-gliding and riding in a commercial jet are related.  The biggest issue I've found with my jobs is that they don't really matter to each other.  My previous experience helped me get the job I have now, but I could have done this same work ten years ago with little difference in overall performance.  What does that say about my so-called career that my jobs are all interchangeable?

Now I know several people who were fortunate enough to find a job they enjoyed early on and turned it into a career.  It seems with my generation it's becoming more likely that people will not only switch jobs, but change fields.  Sometimes it's out of necessity and other times it's forced upon them.  Thirty years ago it would have been strange for someone my age to have as many jobs as I do.  It used to be you find a job that pays you well enough and stick with it until you were too old to work anymore.  Twenty to thirty years later you called it a day and collected your pension.  The idea of me working anywhere long enough to generate a real retirement fund seems unlikely.  Not just because of the economy, but because of who I am.  I tend to have the attention span of a puppy when it comes to work.

For much of the time since I graduated from college the economy has been in a recession and in some cases I think it's been a depression.  I'm not an economist or anything.  I just know that for as long as I can remember people have worried about layoffs, downturns, and unemployment rates.  One has to wonder if the trend for the last ten to fifteen years has been overall negative then maybe it's not a trend, but just the way things are.  Of course everything is cyclical and I have to believe that eventually things will turn around.  I've just never seen it since I've been old enough to really care about it.  There are people graduating from college that can't find a job.  It's not because they are unqualified, well some of them are, it's because there's simply not enough jobs to go around anymore.  The whole situation is strange too because there's still work to be done.  I know several industries that are swamped with work, where their people are working well over forty hours a week.
One of the most hated phrases thrown around in corporate America is "do more with less", which is really just a buzz worthy way of saying that they expect the same level (or higher) of service but don't want to pay for it.  The company just laid off three hundred employees because they couldn't afford to keep them on anymore.  That doesn't mean the work those people were doing goes away.  Instead it gets redistributed to whoever is left standing.  Often times those people still with a job are just thankful they still are working and will take on the new responsibilities because if they don't, they too may be out the door.  Eventually though it just becomes standard operating procedure for people to keep taking on more work.  Their salaries or benefits don't go up because the company is trying to save money.  I get that a company's primary function is to make money. They may make computer software, or shoes, or save babies, but they need to make money in order to continue doing whatever it is they do.  So I don't think that most companies set out to screw over their employees by taking from them and giving nothing back in return.  That's not usually their intention, at least not at first.  What probably happens is that the higher ups see that they've been able to save X number of dollars after "trimming the fat" and that overall productivity and/of quality hasn't gone down, so they figure everything is fine.  What they most likely don't ever see is that the person who was already swamped with their own work now has to take on extra work from one of the people who were walked out the door.  The employees do this because what's the alternative?  If they aren't able to meet the new demands they know that the company has no problems with letting people go.  Essentially the employees are held hostage in their jobs because the other option in a recession is to join the unemployment line.  Companies know this and have a tendency to take advantage.  Like I said, things haven't been good for as long as I remember, so they know that it's unlikely there will be a sudden explosion of new jobs that people could flock to.

I think my fundamental issue with jobs is that I just don't understand how our society has gotten to the point where we're defined by what we do for a living.  My job is just the thing I do to make money so I can buy food and pay my bills.  While I'm not some kind of anarchist who thinks we should do away with jobs and bills, I do wonder why is it that we think we're so advanced and yet we still behave like ants or cavemen.  Many people think it's an unreasonable dream to do a job that you love.  They believe that you should be happy just being able to make money to survive.  What if you want more than to survive?  What if you wake up one day and realize that this is the only life you're going to get and spending forty hours a day doing a job that you loathe is a waste of your life?  Are you supposed to just accept it and sell more widgets because anything more is just a dream?  There are people out there right now who have their dream jobs.  They wake up in the morning and get excited about going to work.  They don't even think of it as work a lot of the time.  If they can do it then why can't others?  There has to be more involved than just blind luck.  Maybe it all comes down to personality where one person simply will not accept tedium for their life.  Everyone eventually gets to a point in their life where they start looking back and wondering if it's been spent wisely.  The jobs we've had should be footnotes in the story of our lives, not the defining moments.

Canals of Mars

On the Way It Is

I once read a bumper sticker that said "If you're not outraged then you're not paying attention." At the time it really struck me as being totally true. All around me there seemed to be injustice. The world was out of whack. It seemed as though the world was worse than it had ever been. I couldn't figure out how people could walk around smiling and being happy when there were so many terrible things going on right outside our front door. It was exhausting being that outraged about everything, even the little things. My anger at the world gone wrong showed that I was paying attention. The thing was that while I was apparently angry with the stupidity of it all, I don't think I ever actually did anything about it, other than complain about it. It's one thing to realize that the house is on fire. It's another to actually fight it and try to save what you can. Most people are more content with announcing there is a problem rather than do something about it.

Each of us has an idea of what the world should be like. Hopefully as we make our way through life we do what we can to shape things so that they resemble something like that idea in our mind. All too often though we find that everyone else has a completely different idea of how things should be. This could run contrary to your own vision and that's where the real problems start. I used to think that somehow someone managed to get their way and that's how we got into this mess. It took me a long time to realize that most of the time it's less about someone getting their way and more the fact that everyone eventually just agreed to let one slide. The whole world seems to be an elaborate compromise.  Or maybe it's just that most people figure it's always been this way so why fight it? 

It's a hard concept for a lot of people to accept, especially those who could be classified as idealistic.  For them it's never going to be acceptable.  In a way I have to admire the ones who never give up the fight.  Not because I happen to agree with them, but because they'd rather fight against a world they disagree with than sit by and let it roll over them.  I suppose one could argue that eventually the fight exists for the sake of existing.  That some people will never be happy with reality and they've fought for so long that even if they were given exactly what they wanted, they'd keep fighting for something else.  That may be true for some people, but I'd like to think that in a lot of cases once the battle is won they could enjoy it.  All too often though the battle just keeps going, with neither side willing to give up the ground they've got.

So what are the choices with life?  There will always be things that will bring outrage.  The world will never be totally in our favor.  Is it our place to simply accept certain things will be against us?  Everything has a force. You embrace it or deflect it. Why oppose it?  Should we stand up for what we believe in, even if the cost is to never truly know peace?  Maybe for some it's simply our nature to rage against the dying of the light while others just accept that it's the nature of the world for there to be darkness.