On the Downward Spiral

I don't know how many people wake up in the morning thinking that today could be the end.  I doubt someone gets out of bed and wonders am I going to be murdered by a random act of senseless violence?  Is my mundane trip to the grocery store going to end my life?  It feels like today there are so many external threats to our safety, even though if you look at the statistics, it's technically safer now than it's ever been.  Somehow I can't shake the ever-present feeling that I shouldn't get too comfortable and should always be prepared for something horrible to happen.  It's not because my life has a history of terrible incidents.  I doubt someone who finds themselves in the middle of a mass shooting or forest fire could have seen it coming because they just faced that same kind of problem last year.  I try to not give into fear mongering, however, I can't help but wonder how is my story going to end.  I'm old enough now that death is not some vague thing that could possibly happen at some distant time, but instead it could be literally around the corner.  This of course starts the runaway train of thoughts that has me wondering will I be ready when it happens?  What will happen to my family?  Granted when it does happen, I'll be dead so most of my Earthly concerns will no longer be anything I have to worry about.  The thing is, I'm still alive, so I'm still worried about what the consequences of my death will be on the world around me.

The whole thing got me thinking about not just my own end, but the end of things in general.  For instance, what is going to happen to my car when I'm done with it or the next person after that?  What happens to the things in our lives when they're no longer in our lives?  Maybe they end up in a festering pile somewhere.  If you live in a fairly green place, you may have a vision that all the stuff you use will somehow magically get recycled and put back into the perpetual loop of usefulness.  I recycle, but I'm pretty confident that most of the stuff that goes int the bin ends up rotting away somewhere out of sight and mind.  For the most part I've been one to try and pass something along if I'm no longer using it.  Eventually though, everything comes to its end.  What is that though?  Most of us probably don't get to truly see the final destination of the things in our lives.

If you were to go back and talk to people from the different eras, it's very likely that they all shared similar fears about the world seemingly spinning out of control.  Each one convinced that things had never been as bad as they were right then.  Today is no different.  The country feels increasingly divided on fundamental issues.  Each side is convinced that they are right and treats anyone opposed to them as the enemy.  It's gotten to the point that I have to wonder if there is any empathy left in the world beyond the initial shock of sadness as you look at your phone and see that heartbreaking headline with numbers that represent people impacted by some tragedy.  I've said before that you have to mentally and emotionally shield yourself otherwise you can drown in the sadness of the world.  Still, it seems like the constant barrage of disasters and violence has gotten us to the point that we willingly forget until the next time something happens. 

Mass shooting, we argue about gun control and the Second Amendment and how it wasn't the weapon that killed those people, but rather the mentally unstable person.  Never mind that we've created a society where it's just accepted that if you want an instrument of death, you just need to go to the store and pick one up.  If someone questions that ability, it immediately devolves into a screaming match between two parties who don't want to hear the other side, much less change their mind.  So while we argue endlessly, the people who have been hurt by gun violence get drowned out by the rhetoric and posturing.  It's easy to debate theoretical ideas in the abstract.  When you're running for your life while someone is shooting at you or hearing that someone you love was a victim of unspeakable violence, it must seem that much more hopeless knowing that regardless of outcome, nothing will change.  The next person this happens to will experience that same hopeless terror of being a statistic in some debate.

Hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, mudslides, and forest fires all remind us that the Earth doesn't give a shit about our petty little problems.  Storms are more frequent and stronger, but as a nation we still can't agree on the scientific facts because doing so would mean some major changes have to happen.  That could cost someone money or force them to abandon what they've been doing their whole life.  It's one thing to be skeptical of something you don't fully understand.  It's another to dismiss it outright because it doesn't match with what's already in your head.  It's another thing entirely to purposefully work against the greater good of people and the planet in order to appease those who profit from harmful industries.  It honestly feels like our country is being run by cartoon villains.  The problem is we don't have Captain Planet or The Avengers protecting us.

Some of the worst aspects of all this is the affect it's had on me internally.  I find myself more likely to stay away from people.  I'm constantly concerned that people are in it for themselves and will take what they can, when they can.  The logical part of my brain keeps trying to remind me that most people are good.  They want what's best for their family and the people they care about.  Still, as I'm driving down the road, I just see the opposition.  Everyone is trying to take.  There isn't enough for everyone and someone is going to get left behind.  The whole world is not the enemy, but it sure feels like it's not a very hospitable place right now.

On Today

As a species we seem to hate ourselves.  It's almost as if we are pre-programmed to be self-destructive.  Even when faced with overwhelming information that is contrary to our beliefs, we still manage to barrel forward into harm and then cry out about how the world isn't fair, that we weren't warned.  I often wonder how we've made it this far when literally every day you can find examples of people falling back on their base instincts to mistrust and hate things they don't understand, including others.  It scares me to think that at this point we are the most enlightened than we've ever been in all of human history and we're still having debates about the very nature of our species.  How can there still be people who believe that a person from a different race is less than someone else?  How can there be men, who are so afraid of women doing anything, that they would threaten them with death?  I'm not talking some developing nation that hasn't figured out electricity or clean drinking water.  This is happening here in America.  This is happening in my town.  How can we still be so backwards in our thinking?  The most frustrating part is that no amount of logic is going to change their minds because they don't want their minds changed.  I've talked before about how perception shapes our reality.  So if someone comes along and says or does something that upends that reality, we tend to react with hostility and even violence.  I sometimes wonder if mankind just needs a different thing to focus on hating.  It wouldn't exactly fix the fundamental problem we have, but it could potentially push off our eventual extinction at our own hands.  Sorry alien travelers, but humans are a bit like determined toddlers, we need to be distracted and redirected otherwise we will put our hands on that hot oven burner, even though someone smarter than us keeps saying "No, that will hurt you".  We need something or someone to focus our anxieties on.  Someone to blame for our troubles.  Because obviously it's not our fault.

I'm still trying to figure out how to explain to my daughter that our society will likely be working against her in ways I've never experienced.  How do I tell her that even walking down the street means being careful because someone bigger than her may see her as an object rather than a person?  Which is at the heart of the problem, we stop seeing each other as people.  There are so many humans on the planet that we can't possibly know them all, therefor most of them are strangers and not people we can care about.  I don't know if there were less of us if it would be any different.  Maybe it is all a matter of scale.  Numbers too large lose all meaning to most people.  Picture a million people in one place at one time.  The individuals stop being a person and just become part of the mass of people.  If a million people die, it's hard to really comprehend what that is like.  Instead think of everyone you know and love.  All the people you like and interact with on a daily basis.  All your Facebook friends, even the ones you don't really know why you're friends with.  All of those people would still only be a fraction of a million people.  Now imagine all those people just died.  That is what's happening around the world.  People, along with everyone they know, are dying on a regular basis and our brains can only register a number.  Because if we were to try and truly empathize with that level of suffering, I think we would break.  We read about disasters, accidents, and attacks with the number of people dead as a highlight of the story.  Dam breaks killing 48 people.  Shooter kills 12 people in a shopping mall.  I can't imagine losing 12 people I know in a single event and yet when I look at the headline, I have to somehow disconnect the reality that those were people.  They have families and stories that came to an abrupt end.  Their lives end and the people left alive will potentially use their deaths to further promote their agenda or try to prove a point.

I've taken a break from writing because I really haven't anything to say.  And in rereading this post, it feels like our world is rather bleak.  Then I remember that we as a species are miracles.  The fact that the universe aligned in such a way that we are able exist should be celebrated.  It's taken for granted that we're here.  Think about what has to happen just for you specifically to exist and continue living.  Maybe the meaning of life is living.  Maybe it's trying to find hope and joy among the sometimes overwhelming sense that the world and our own species doesn't care about you.  Will we ever be enlightened enough to stop hating ourselves?  It's possible.  I think it just takes not giving in or giving up.  Maybe it takes standing up and knowing that your purpose is to make the world better, not just for yourself, but for everyone around you.  Maybe then we have a chance.

On the Rollercoaster

There are a lot of people claiming that 2016 is a terrible year.  I suppose I can get why they feel that way.  In some cases it had some pretty low moments.  Without doing too much research into the bleakness that is previous years, I wonder if it's roughly just another average year with ups and downs.  The thing is that 2016 probably means a lot of different things to different people.  For me it will always be a great year because my daughter came on the scene right near the beginning and she's pretty much set the tone for me ever since.  With that said, almost right after she was born I lost an old friend very suddenly.  I had no idea that the weird dichotomy of joy and sadness would pretty much be how I'd end up describing the year.

We may as well talk about the election.  I've kept my opinion offline because honestly the internet really doesn't need yet another extreme view, which only serves to further divide people.  That's the part that makes me sad.  I've never been a very political person to start with so maybe I've been blind to this kind of divisiveness in elections and politics in general.  Like some kind of idealistic fool, I always thought that the things that divided us were smaller than the things that brought us together.  And while I initially wasn't a fan of our current President, I eventually came to the conclusion that he was trying to do good, even if he wasn't always successful.  For the most part my life in the last eight years hasn't really changed all that much because of anything he or any other elected official was doing.  Apparently that can be seen as being wrapped up in my own little white blanket of privilege.  Because even though I've worked hard for what I have, there have always been advantages that I've taken for granted, blissfully unaware of many people out in my country who struggle every day in a system that seems to be actively working against them.  A lot of those people see the President as someone who doesn't represent or care about them.  And this is one of the many reasons why the election results came as such a shock to someone like me.

I live in a pretty liberal state and a very liberal city.  It's the kind of place where people are well off enough that they can be concerned about the name of the cow that supplied the steaks in the artisan butcher shop next to their favorite organic juice bar.  People tend to be socially conscious of the world and while I don't know if there is a lot of actual activism, there is at least perceived activism about issues.  Granted, like many Americans, we have a very short attention span and move on quickly to the next moral outrage or internet meme that is trending today.  So many of us gathered around our cable-free televisions to watch what was going to be an obvious victory for the seemingly obvious choice to run the country.  When it became obvious that things were going in a different direction I, like many others, were trying to figure out how it was possible?  How could this have blindsided me, when 24 hours before I would have been pretty confident that we'd have our first female President.  I hadn't taken into account the sheer amount of hatred for the Democratic candidate.  She was a politician and their very nature means they are going to do some shady things, but somehow she had managed to have normal people foaming at the mouth when they would even say her name.  There had always been a part of me that wanted to sit down with some of these people and get a real accounting of what it was they disliked about her.  By now, the term 'echo chamber' has been tossed around a lot and it makes sense.  We tend to surround ourselves with comfortable things and that includes information.  If someone or something challenges our ideas or beliefs, it's natural to shy away from that.  Toss is some good old fashion misinformation (or propaganda) and you've got millions of people who believe something that isn't always based on fact.  Or worse, based on a portion of fact, that has been isolated to prove their point.  Somewhere along the way we start to villainize people who disagree with us.  Social media was full of people who were saying not only did they disagree with the other side, but the other side was now bordering on evil, stupid, or brainwashed.  I found myself even falling into the trap of taking my disagreement on one thing and making it seem as though I was fundamentally opposed to these other people, who may as well been aliens because their beliefs were so different from mine.  I'm sure there are some truly awful people out there.  People who are excited to see hatred making a comeback.  Maybe it stems from fear or jealousy or ignorance.  Maybe it's simple greed.  I don't know at this point.  I would have thought in 2016 that pettiness and racism would be something we talk about as a thing of the past.  If not the past, then something that was getting better.  If anything, this year has made me wonder is the world really as good as I thought it was.  Then again, maybe that's what certain people want.  They want you to be afraid.  Afraid of the people around you that aren't on your side.  If you're not with us, then you're against us?  One has to ask, who benefits from us being afraid and hating those who are different from us?

As we close out this year, it feels like the nation is divided more than it's been in recent history.  Or maybe it just feels that way because I started paying attention.  There is a whole group of people in our country who have felt left behind.  I've been very fortunate to not know what that is like.  I don't know if those same people felt that the Republican candidate was the best candidate, but it was the one that they got.  The alternative being more of a government that wasn't listening to them.  In the end there was a massive shift from the status quo, which is how things tend to go after eight years with one party running the show.  People were bound to be upset either way, but now it seems to go beyond that where the winning side is taking victory laps and the losing side, still in disbelief, is doing anything it can to halt the inevitable reality that is coming in 2017.  It feels like a fight with a loved one.  Lots of things were said and done.  It seems like everyone now has this emotional bruise that's still tender.  I don't know how long it will last with people still holding their animosity towards each other.  Maybe like many things for our country, it too will pass.  At least right now it seems to be the capstone on a year that felt a bit bleak.

So as I think about this year, I have to remind myself that there has been some pretty great things as well.  The Cubs broke a 100+ year streak to finally win the World Series, giving the people of Chicago something to cheer about.  Our good friends had adorable babies, that will hopefully become friends with my daughter as they grow to be adorable together.  A private company, headed by the closest thing to Tony Stark, has successfully landed a rocket vertically, getting us one step closer to leaving Earth.  Doctors and scientists have created cybernetic implants that helped a man move his fingers for the first time.  Stem cells have been injected into stroke patients allowing them to walk again.  Someone with a lot of time on their hands discovered a new prime number, although I don't know how that helps us, but it's more to prove that we can keep finding new things, even when we think we've seen it all.  By the way, they've confirmed (again) that there is a ninth planet in our solar system.  I remember growing up with Planet X as a possibility so it's good to know that we've got people staring out into the cosmos and seeing things that have been hiding from us for longer than we know.  And finally, we got a new Star Wars movie.  Being the same age as Star Wars, I will always be thankful that I get to go back to that galaxy far, far away and see if the good guys and overcome impossible odds to save the day.  Maybe with the perspective of time, we'll all look back at 2016 as just another strange year in a long weird journey.  I'm excited to see what happens in 2017.

On Fatherhood

As with many things in life, it's hard to know how it's really going to be until you experience it.  No matter how much preparation you think you have, when the actual time comes, you are just along for the ride and hope that you don't mess up too bad.  People would say how you don't know how you'll be able to love someone as much as you do your children.  You think, I've experienced love before, this must just be more of it.  It's amazing how much of an understatement that really becomes once you look into the eyes of your child.  For a father it's a little different because it takes a few months of looking into their eyes before they start to show signs of recognition and understanding that you as an entity are going to keep showing up.  Also after a few months they transform so much and into the start of a person.  Plus it doesn't hurt that my daughter thinks I'm the most hilarious shaved ape out there.

The part that they don't really talk to you about is the sheer terror that's constantly in the background.  It's a bit like that low level hum you hear when near power lines.  Even when things are going well and you've had a good dad moment, I feel it in the back of my mind.  If you read the news for even a minute, you get the impression that the survival rate of the average person is pretty bleak.  If you are lucky enough to avoid some random tragedy or bout of senseless violence, then there is a whole host of parasites, viruses, and cancers that are willing to eat you from the inside.  Then again it seems like the whole point of the news is to keep you paying attention to the news for just a little longer.  Is the world really such a terrible place?  Is life really that hard?  I know that for some people it's harder and shorter than it should be, but we've been blessed with a fairly safe and happy environment.  Still, I look at her and don't like thinking about there being a moment when she figures out that the world isn't as magical as I've made it out to be.  Sometimes I wish I could just take her out of this reality and off into cartoon land.  The logical part of me knows that this isn't fair to her as a person, but I don't know how to handle when they find out that the world as a whole doesn't really care about them in the way that their people care about them as an individual.  I wonder about what lies I'll have to tell to keep her safe a little longer.

I've found myself looking at everyone very differently.  Seeing my daughter experiencing the world for the first time, I wonder how any person becomes what they are today.  Even the asshole who cut me off this morning was once a child.  Once, a long time ago, they had a world of potential, where they could dream of doing or being anything.  They still may be on that journey, but that route went directly in front of MY journey.  Granted it doesn't always change the way I interact with people because I'm still me.  There are moments where I can't help but wonder how someone's life brought them from being a wide-eyed child to a cynic.  I suppose one could ask the same of me and I had a pretty good childhood.  I look differently at various forms of entertainment too.  Movies and television where characters are killed or hurt make me wonder what would it be like to be their parents.  I still enjoy the things I always have, it's just now there is an added bit of empathy that intrudes in on everything.

I worry about what she's going to be like when she's old enough to realize I'm not the funniest person on the planet.  There will come a time when she doesn't want to hang out with me, which only makes me want to spend that much more time with her now.  I want her to be smart and clever and funny and able to exist in the world without me because if everything goes according to plan that's how it's going to be.  I worry about being around for as much of her life as possible.  I worry that all those stupid cheeseburgers have quietly stolen years from me.  I worry that one day I'll be driving and look right when I should have looked left and have my story with her end.  I worry about her life and all the things that could happen and won't even say them here, in some superstitious belief that I don't want to give them power, in the event that there is some malevolent entity controlling our reality that would find humor in taking my daughter from me.  I worry about how she's going to handle love.  I wonder if she'll find a partner in life like I did.  I hope it doesn't take her as long to get there as it did me, even if it was worth the wait.  I worry that I may never get to see her own children, if she decides to have them.  Basically I worry about everything.

Even with all that being said, I've been rewarded with this tiny happy, crazy, curious person in progress that looks to me like I'm the expert on life.  It would be silly to say I hope I don't screw up because it seems impossible to not make mistakes along the way.  I just hope that she's able to forgive me for not having all the answers.

On the Island

The world is full of great things.  Full of terrible things.  Mostly it seems to be full of things I know nothing about.  I like a lot of different things: movies, television, comics, art, books, trees, toys, video games, the outside in general, travel, music, good beer, somewhat good beer, and of course delicious food.  It would seem like I'm fairly diverse in the things I like, but it's becoming increasingly apparent that for every interest I have there are glaring blind spots.  Someone will tell me about a television show or album that they enjoy and I wonder how is it that something like that has escaped me?  Maybe it's become easier and easier in today's world to customize our lives to the things we like.  You go to a webpage and tell it your interests and it will start building you a feed of information.  The better ones will help you discover new things, but most of them really just let you reinforce the wall of our own tastes.

I'm not saying it's bad to like what you like.  It's more that it feels a bit overwhelming when there is so much content out there.  How is one expected to keep up?  Maybe we're not supposed to.  Maybe it's alright to miss out on that one thing that you'd probably love, but just don't have space for in your life.  How do you know when that's OK though?  How do you know if you're spending too much of your time on the old standby when there are so many other options out there?

Like music?  You could listen to new music every day for a year and not hear the same song repeated, if you didn't feel that compulsion to re-listen to old favorites.  Hey I like Zeppelin as much as the next person, but seriously it's been forty year.  Maybe it's OK to see how music has grown and changed since then.  You never know, you may find something you like that was made after 1973.  It's got me wondering how it happens.  At one point the world was full of new and wonderful things.  Everything felt fresh and exciting.  Then we find something we like and say to ourselves "This is it.  My search is over."  This also leads to that feeling that certain things are now sacred and anyone or anything that attempts to build upon that is seen as an affront to the original.  The problem with this is that most of the world is a remix.  Everything is an iteration and for the generation that creates it, it feels like the source.  My daughter is going to grow up in a world where Ninja Turtles and Transformers are these loud, garish, obnoxious movies of explosions and silliness, whereas I grew up with them being something completely different, while still being fairly annoying to my parents.  It took me awhile, but I've gotten to a point where it's OK for the next generation to have their versions of stuff.  It doesn't take away from my version.  The remakes are made for me.  They don't care about me or my old ass opinion, even though the property was originated when I was their target audience.

The whole thing has me wondering about the things I like.  Do I like them because they are still interesting to me?  Or do I like them because for as long as I can remember I have liked them?  It's OK to ask yourself why you're interesting in something.  It could be the previous version of yourself found it compelling, but the current version of you doesn't get the same thrill as you used to.  For me it's caused me to reconsider how I spend my time because it's becoming increasingly valuable to me.  Sometimes that means picking up something I put down years ago and seeing it with different eyes.  Sometimes that means putting something on a shelf because it doesn't provide the same value it had in the past.  Maybe by doing that I'll be able to open myself up to being able to see the new things out there that could blow my mind and make me ask myself how I've lived this long without knowing about them.

On Object Permanence

Throughout most of my life the decisions I've made have been fairly reversible.  That's not to say that they weren't big or even life-altering decisions, but the vast majority of them have been decisions I could ultimately change my mind about later.  Sure it could cost me a large some of money or time or even a bit of humiliation.  There could be a cost and if I wanted to pay it, then I could potentially undo what I just did.  Part of this has been because my decisions have only had an effect on just my own life.  If I wanted to move from Colorado to Arizona or from Arizona back to Colorado with only a couple of weeks lead time, then it wasn't really a problem for anyone except me.

Some could argue that there is a sense of freedom to being able to pick up and go at a moment's notice.  The whole world has opportunities just around the next corner, it's just up to you to go off and find them.  While I was young that was both amazing and terrible.  It was great being able to throw everything I owned into a truck, toss the stuff that didn't, and then drive off into the sunset and onto the next adventure.  If I thought about it too much, I'd start to realize that my life was so temporary that I could leave it behind with very little notice.  It felt like I was always just getting started.  The real problem was always my inability to see what I was leaving because I was so focused on where I was going, with hopes that just over the next hill would be the thing I thought I was looking for.  Every place I left, I left people and a life, even if that life wasn't exactly what I thought I wanted.  I think it was easier to leave because I knew that if things didn't work out, then I could easily return.

It's only been very recently in my life that my decisions have started becoming more permanent.  It's not always easy for me to recognize that because my old mindset creeps back in and I think the person I'm being introduced to is just another face in the crowd.  Nope, that's a future family member.  The house I'm moving into isn't just some random apartment that I'll ditch in a year or so when the lease is up.  Even my career is changing.  It used to be a string of unrelated jobs, where as long as it paid well and they didn't treat me like garbage, then I'd stick around for a year or so.  It's been difficult for me at times because living a momentary life meant that while you wouldn't have to deal with anything terrible for too long, it also meant that I wouldn't really feel attached to anything in a meaningful way.  It's only after I had left something/someone behind that I'd realize how good it was for me.

I'm about to have what could be considered the most permanent life event.  I woke up one day and realized that when my child is born, I'll forever be her father.  No matter what else happens in my life, that will always be true.  My life and the choices in it will stop being so fleeting and start becoming more permanent aspects of my world.  It's almost as though all those one-off decisions and events have been leading to this.  The one that matters most.  It's a little intimidating to think about.  It's something I've wanted for a long time, but it's always been an abstract.  Very soon it will be a reality and it makes me want to be better than I currently am.  

On the Center of the Universe

After over a year of planning we were able to come together and make our relationship 'official'.  Mostly it was a chance to have all of our friends and family around us to share in a ceremony that shows our commitment to each other and our future together.  The entire time we were planning I kept thinking to myself that I didn't want to put anyone out.  I didn't want to mess with their Labor Day plans.  It is the last holiday of the summer and that can be important.  Much more important than me.  We sent out the invites and I kept asking myself if I was being too presumptuous to ask people to spend nearly three days hanging out with me.  There were moments when I thought, if no one shows up I wouldn't really blame them.  I mean I'm just me.

Not all that long ago I used to strive to keep my various worlds separated from each other.  I'm not sure why I did that.  Mostly I think it was because I wanted to separate myself.  I could be this way with one person because that's how they knew me.  With someone else I could be somewhat different.  There was also that fear that this aspect would conflict with that aspect and it would call into question if one of them should go.  This weekend all of my worlds collided with each other in a fantastic explosion.  Friends and family from past and present and all over the country came to a single place at the same time.  I was amazed at the people who took the time to come and spend a weekend with me.  Had I somehow tricked them into making Labor Day weekend all about me?

The brothers who I grew up with as my second family.  My lunatic best friend from college.  The quiet man with a huge heart, who made his home my home.  The one who started as a voice over the internet has become a trusted friend.  Someone who is years younger than me, but astounds me with his integrity every time we speak.  The most recent friend, who's joy for life constantly drives me to look at things in new and different ways.  A baby brother, who has grown up to be such an amazing man that I find myself looking up to him.  Having any one of these people in my life would make me a lucky man.  To have all of them with me for one of the biggest events of my life makes me incredibly blessed in a way that I didn't think I deserved.

Saying 'thank you' or 'I love you' didn't seem like enough.  It's not like how it is in movies when the music swells or the moment goes into slow motion so you know that it's important.  Instead all the things I wanted to say in the moment kept getting drowned out by those silly emotions that kept smashing through.  I only hope that my bumbling muttering somehow got the message across.

When I was little I thought the world revolved around me.  Most little kids think this because they have no concept of their place in such a large place.  As I got older I started to realize that I was not, in fact, the center of the universe.  I was only the center of mine.  Over the weekend that changed for me.  The center is now someone else, with a tiny additional center coming soon to a universe near you!  I never thought I'd find something more important than myself to focus on, but now that she's here, I wonder what was I thinking all this time up until now.  I'm just glad everyone got to see my universe realign itself to how it was always meant to be.

On the Binary State

"There are two types of people in this world: Those who like Neil Diamond, and those who don't. My ex-wife loves him"

- Bob Wiley

It's interesting to me how we quickly divide up a population of people into one of two things.  And not just people, but things in general.  Awhile back I was having problems finding anything to watch on Netflix.  While I think Netflix is an overall great service, there have been a lot of times where I wonder what they must think of me.  I've given Citizen Kane five stars as well as The 40 Year-Old Virgin.  For other movies I would give more moderate rating.  While I enjoyed that romantic comedy with the reformed action star who smolders on screen, it wasn't something that I would feel the need to watch again.  Three stars.  The problem with this was that after awhile Netflix found that maybe I would enjoy more three star movies.  I don't seek out movies that are visual smooth jazz.  I want something that I can enjoy and not reach for my phone as something more entertaining.  So in order to stop Netflix from wasting my time I started rating everything on a scale two or four stars.  Three didn't exist anymore because it was worthless as far as making a recommendation.  Don't tell me about movies that I may walk away from saying "well I didn't hate it".  My time is becoming more and more precious.  Since I still want to enjoy movies with a finite amount of time to do so, I can only watch those things which a computer tells me that I'll love.  That has become my movie watching world; love it or hate it.  If you're not one thing then you must be the other thing.  The sad thing is though that seems to be the world in general.

When I was little I knew there were good guys and bad guys.  The bad guys were easy to spot because they looked bad.  Or they had names that made it obvious.  If you grew up with the name Skeletor or Dr. Mindbender then I'm guessing your career choices are really limited.  Plus people's expectations of you would already be colored.  What were the motivations of these "bad" guys?  It didn't matter because they were bad.  The good guys stood for everything right and true.  Even in history class we were taught about how the Nazis were bad (which they were, no doubt there) and the Allies were good.  If you go and read more than your eighth grade history book you find out that not everyone saw things so clearly.  Germany as a whole wasn't full of people bent on world domination and destruction of an entire people.  Sure there were people within that country and within that particular power group that felt it was their duty and right to exterminate whomever they saw beneath them.  We don't want that story though.  We want to know that we're the good guys and we defeated the bad guys.  It helped that they wore uniforms.  Oh you're one of the bad guys.  Here's your black uniform with skulls and lightning.  Most German soldiers were just people from Germany who felt compelled to fight for their country, much like our own people who have served.  To the enemy though our troops are the bad guys.  Most likely though there aren't any good guys or bad guys.  It's all just a bunch of guys (and gals) who are doing things that vary from good to bad.  Even that is probably up for debate.  A soldier or a police officer has to make decisions about that sort of thing in an instant and then live with the consequences, or maybe not if they made the wrong choice.  It's made much more difficult when they are forced to make these decisions so quickly that everything is boiled down to a black and white scenario.

Is everything really black and white?  We encourage people to play games where there is a definitive winner and an obvious loser.  We watch teams, who work together and overcome their differences in order to accomplish a common goal.  That goal is defeating another team, who was doing the same thing.  Only one can be considered a winner though.  The other teams, even if they are working well together, are now considered inferior because we can't allow for there to be something other than a winner or a loser.  Granted I'm not saying we go so far as to give everyone a trophy for simply showing up because that doesn't help either.  Still we're showing our children at a very early age that even if you give your best and work hard that you can still be considered a loser.  For some children that will create drive in which they decide to work even harder so that they can become the winner.  For other children they give up or accept their place in the world as someone who's best simply isn't good enough.  Is it possible to play a game for the enjoyment of it without having there be people divided up into two different camps?  Maybe it's just built into our brains that things are one thing or another.  Our very survival meant being better than the next guy.  While we're not really allowed to savagely murder each other for the sake of our own genes making it to the next round, we can certainly feed that primal urge in our brain by watching a couple teams play for relatively low stakes that feel very important at the time.  Have we not really evolved beyond needing that feeling?

Life itself may not even be as simple as we once though.  Sure when something is dead then it's dead, but now we've learned there is brain dead as well.  Your body could be alive, but there isn't anyone in there.  Are you still alive at that point?  We can barely begin to agree on when life starts or what on our planet is alive in the sense that makes us comfortable.  A virus may not really be alive if all it is is a set of genes that are using another life form to replicate itself.  Somewhere in the vastness of the universe something could look at us and think we're not really alive because we don't meet some lofty criteria that they've set out for themselves.  We don't even have to go into what happens when our physical body dies to have the issue being incredibly nuanced to the point of being vaguely unknowable.  The world is full of nuance.  Most things aren't clearly black or white.  There are shades of...I'm not even going to say it because I don't want some search engine to mistakenly identify my writing with that book/movie.

I think about art or food or food that looks like art.  Sometimes you just know what you like, even if you can't explain why.  This thing is pleasing to my palette (visual or tasty kind) so if asked I'll probably say I liked it, but to varying degrees.  If forced to choose between love or hate then a lot of things are going to get pitched over the side because I don't exactly want to say that I love it.  I never thought I'd say this, but sometimes I wish the world would appreciate ambivalence about most things rather than forcing us to choose between being with them or against them.  If asked about a complex issue one normally can't just say "I disagree" without at least explaining why.  And in doing so we tend to find out that while we may fundamentally disagree with someone or something, there may be a lot of area that we do agree with.  It could be that our brains haven't really caught up to the fact that there is more than two classifications for anything in the world.  Then again maybe it all comes down to if you like Neil Diamond or not.

On the Game Change

For most of my life my primary concern has been myself.  Sure I would care about other people, as much as my programming would allow.  In the end though my universe was centered around me.  That may sound selfish, but if I'm not around then everything else for me doesn't really matter.  It may not have been the best way to run a ship, still it was my way and it was working for me.  Mostly.  There have been times where I'm watching a show or movie and I see people behaving how I wish I could be.  It's an idealized version of friendship.  Almost as though a Norman Rockwell painting has come to life.  I know this and I still sometimes want it for myself and the people I call friends.  That's not to say what I have is bad in any way.  It's just more real.  People can be thoughtless.  I can be thoughtless.  More often than not the thing I meant to say comes out as something else and people look at me like I'm trying to swallow a whole octopus.  Even with all these blunders, I still knew what to expect.

Watching a lot of movies and television I felt like I had seen the story where a character is going to have a baby plenty of times.  Sometimes they're sad, a lot of times they are happy, but almost always they are freaked the hell out.  Just when you think you've got the game figured out, a new player comes onto the board.  These characters would run around doing all sorts of wacky things or go through montages where they buy baby books, find a good doctor after sifting through all the crazy ones, and then going to various appointments.  All this normally happens in the span of like twenty minutes because in the end the movie is still about the characters and not the tiny alien that's gestating inside one of them.  The movie comes to an end with the birth of said alien and if you're lucky they may show a little bit of how wonderful it all is.  Aw that's nice.  I feel like I'm prepared.

We've been having babies since before we could call ourselves human.  While I'm not sure I'd say we are exactly experts at the whole thing.  I do feel like we've learned enough to be dangerous, but not quite deadly.  Honestly it's a miracle that we're alive.  Think about all the things that had to happen for you to be here right now?  If the exact scenario of your conception didn't happen it's likely you wouldn't be around to read this.  Millions of things have to go right for each person to be born.  Change the timing and a boy may be a girl.  Change the environment and maybe the whole thing falls apart halfway through.  Our bodies are these complex mechanisms that we really have very little control over.  Sure we can shovel fuel in the form of our favorite flavors into it in order to keep things running, but we can't exactly tell our kidneys to step up their game.  Most of the time I can't get my stomach on board with the same food I've eaten a hundred times before  Sometimes I wish there was some kind of external monitoring system that told me what the hell was going on inside of me.  I suppose it wouldn't matter because without control that information is useless.  I could tell you my heart rate right now, but that doesn't really give me the whole picture of all the other things connected to that piece of information.  Now think about how inside someone they're building a completely new person from scratch.  Sure I helped in my small way, but it was really a fire and forget.  Somehow it's putting together its own brain.  If it's doing that then it means we did that ourselves at some point.  We really created ourselves.

Knowing this it kind of makes me sad to think how easily we forget about the miracle that is our own lives.  Sure reality means there's more to it than simply marveling at how amazing our bodies are.  As adults we're kind of over the whole magic of life and the world around us.  Now go watch a little kid in the same environment and notice how ensorcelled they are by the smallest things.  I can't quite remember when the world stopped being so overwhelmingly magical to me.  I think with the internet and the world being full of people who are genuinely trying to hold onto or at least recapture that sense of wonder, it's not a lost cause.  Children are the constant reminder that the world can be a wondrous place.  While they're running around being amazed at everything in the world, the adults are running right behind them being terrified of that same world consuming the tiny versions of ourselves.  This means my primary concern is no longer myself.  Instead it's going to be this external portion of myself that is scampering off to go eat dirt and actively put itself into dangerous situations because it has no idea that a mountain lion wielding a chainsaw isn't something you run towards.

On The End of the Preamble

With so many things in our lives there is a build up.  The weeks leading up to Christmas.  Months planning a wedding.  Getting ready for a trip across the world.  We prepare ourselves and look forward to these moments as they approach.  Then they happen and life continues.  I remember as a kid loving the Christmas season.  Watching as everyone got more and more excited by putting up lights and decorations.  The number of presents under the tree subtly getting bigger as we got closer to that big day.  By Christmas morning excitement was at its highest and that's when the bass drops, usually leading to wrapping paper everywhere.  The rest of the day you kind of bask in the afterglow of that level of joy.  The next day you wake up and it's behind you.  Hopefully it hasn't been disappointing, but not matter what experience you have, the moments we look forward to the most will eventually be in the past and on their way to being memories.  A part of me wonders if that's why the idea of heaven is so appealing to people.  It's a place where you get to be with all your loved ones and live your best moments for ever.  I think most people would classify that as wonderful, even if they don't believe such a thing makes any kind of logical sense.  I suppose the natural inclination is to start looking forward to something else, which in itself isn't a bad thing.  It's good to have upcoming things in your life that you are excited to become reality.  Maybe that's what life really is about.  Moving onto the next thing while enjoy what came before.

The world is a strange place when you return to it.  At least that's how it can feel if you've been away for any longer than normal amount of time.  I look around at the things that are familiar and yet somehow foreign.  It's been said that you can't go home again because it's not the place that has changed, but rather you that is different now.  When some people leave the familiar all they can see are the differences in what they see now compared to what they've always seen before.  This isn't exactly a bad thing, but focusing on that can make it harder to appreciate something new.  I'm not saying one should just accept something because it's different.  It's like learning a language though, where you will have an easier time if you stop translating and just start accepting the new word for the old object.

Still it's not until you've been away from something that you really see it for what it is or maybe what it once was.  I remember coming home from college my first year and seeing the house I grew up in.  It was the same place it was six months ago when I had left it, but I felt like I had seen and done so much in that small amount of time that it felt smaller on a fundamental level.  It was still very comfortable.  In the years since then I've returned home several times and each time that house is something different to me.  It still has all the old memories.  The context for me being there changes though, which in turns means I see the entire place differently each time.  It's hard to imagine that one day the home I grew up in won't be available anymore and I'll never be able to return to it.

We often don't realize when something is coming to close.  Sure we can see the last day of school coming or know when it's time to say goodbye to our visiting family members.  There are times when we know we won't see someone again or won't do something again, but more often than not the last of something sails by us without much notice until later, when we realize that we'll never get another chance at it.  People often say live life like each day was your last.  It's when we know that there will never be more that we embrace how special something is, even if it's normally not special at all.  It's next to impossible to lead a normal life living that way.  That kind of sentiment is usually saved for characters in movies and those unfortunate enough to know that their days are limited so it's best to actually live like there aren't a lot of tomorrows, because there might not be.  Most of us though will get up tomorrow and probably not think about how yesterday was the last time that ever was going to happen.  Sometimes that's a good thing though.  That could mean yesterday was the end of what came before and while it's sad that you won't get to go back and experience it again, tomorrow is the beginning of something new.  Maybe it's the first day rather than the last one.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

On Surrounded by Associations

I hate the desert. It's hot, coarse, and generally uninviting. It's the Earth's way of saying "Get out!" And yet there are so many people out there that find the desert to be something more than a bunch of rocks and sand. For them it speaks to something deeper inside. Having grown up in very forested areas, I feel more at home with trees around me. So a place like the desert does the opposite of speak to me, it repels me. So it's understandable why I wouldn't like the desert. It's someplace foreign to me. The really strange part is that this feeling of being at home in the desert doesn't only occur to people who grew up in the desert. Someone living in Chicago could have this unexplainable calling to a place they've only seen in pictures. Somehow how though that's where they would feel the most at home. What is it about these different environments that awaken something inside of us?

I've talked about places that feel like home because of the people who live there. I've even acknowledged that there are people themselves who feel like home. What is it about certain surroundings that makes us feel more at home than others? Obviously we're all individuals and have our own specific desires, but for a lot of people it's hard to fully quantify why one place, like the desert, is more suited for them than another. I have a friend who grew up in Phoenix and now can only go back for special occasions. The idea of living there is out of the question. For as long as he can remember he felt this need to be near the mountains of Colorado. When he first went there he knew it was where he wanted to live, even though it took him several years to make it happen. In that time that feeling never diminished, like so many flights of fancy that come and go throughout our lives.

How is it that some places are colored by seemingly unrelated associations?  When I first moved to the desert it was completely different from anything I had known.  For a time it was fine because it took me forward in life.  Eventually though I found that it was not even close to where I wanted or needed to be.  Combined with several unpleasant experiences over the course of my time there has forever created a negative association with the desert as a whole.  Even the place I currently live has connotations towards very specific aspects of my life, some of which alter how I look at this place.  It's hard to say if we can ever really look at a place without being influenced by the surrounding associations we've built.

Have you ever walked into a room and known something was missing? At first glance you may not be able to immediately spot that thing that's out of place, but somehow the whole room feels wrong due to its absence. Your brain is aware of the change, even if you haven't quite caught up to realizing it. It's interesting how a lot of life can be the same way. A part of us knows that something isn't there. It's figuring out that which is absence that's not always easy. There are some aspects of our lives that when left unfulfilled become painfully apparent. The absence of food, sleep, or even love all make themselves known almost immediately. The complete lack of any of those leaves an obvious gaping hole in our lives. It's when we lose pieces of something a little bit at a time that it becomes easier to overlook their absence or at least not notice until it has become glaringly apparent.  When you're driving down a dark road at night you have to be looking for what you can see, but you also have to be looking for what you can't. Having grown up in a place where large animals could wander out in front of you it got to be second nature to be on the lookout for the absence of what was in front of you. Sometimes what you can't see is more important.  There are places in our lives that seem to supply us with everything we feel we need, while there are places which feel like something is missing.  The question really becomes is it something real that's missing or just those old associations creeping in and painting a picture that may not really exist except in our mind?

On the March Forward

Not all that long ago your grandparents were your age. And not that long before that they were just children, with no concept of you even existing. The world around them was the newest it had ever been. They probably looked back at their own grandparents as ancient reminders of a simpler time. As with anything, what was once new is now considered a relic. Once again today's generation sees what they've created as the best there's ever been. Now I'm not trying to take away from the accomplishments of those who have put their hard work into making today the best it can be. Still, if you think about it we've only really been "technologically advanced" for a little over a hundred years. While that may be a long time in the span of our individual lives, it's a little more than a blink in the span of our species existence. Really we've only just scratched the surface of what we could accomplish.

There was a time when a computer that fit in your pocket was something you'd see in a science fiction movie. I wonder if the people who dreamed up that idea knew what was coming or if the people who watched those movies decided they'd do whatever it took to make it a reality. Today we have our own science fiction, some of which is slowly becoming actual science, while some of it only leads to other ideas. Whatever happens there will come a time when the most advanced thinking will become obsolete. It's sometimes hard to not think that what we do today is futile considering how tomorrow it will seem like such an old concept.  As we progress forward our current notions are changed and sometimes revealed to be completely incorrect.  We're only going on what we know at the time, so it stands to reason that the more we know the more we realize just how much we don't know.  That may be the only constant in this universe.  Some people would like to believe that eventually we'll reach a point of complete understanding, but it seems next to impossible given how big and ancient everything is.  Maybe we're not supposed to know it all.  Maybe we're always supposed to learn so that we know what's next for us to learn.

The world was old when you were young.  Sometimes it's hard for me to really get my head around that fact.  Fourteen billion years is just a number and I know that it's really big.  Still the only way I can really start to understand it is if I went outside and considered each grain of sand as a year.  In order to come close to having all the sand I need to show how old the universe is, I would have a desert.  Considering how short our time is it's not surprising to feel a little insignificant when thinking about how only in the last third of known existence did our planet even exist.  What will it be like when twice that much time has passed again?  Will we all just be some galactic afterthought?  Maybe all that means is that since our duration in this world is so limited that everything we do matters.  Some might argue the opposite, that we're just a blip in time.  Our galaxy isn't in a good neighborhood.  It's out in the middle of nowhere compared to what we know is out there.  If that's the case then what does it matter what we do because in the grand scheme of things we'll just be forgotten or lost.  That's a bit of a hopeless outlook on life.  Maybe the universe won't notice when we're gone, but we'll notice while we're here.  Today we're here and we're alive.  Tomorrow we may go back to being space dust floating out in the abyss, but that shouldn't stop us from screaming to the heavens "We are here and we matter!", even if we're the only ones who hear.  If this is all going to be long forgotten then there is nothing to lose in trying to accomplish everything while we're here.

On Changing Horses

For many of us our path through life is set before we really have much say in it. That's not to say we have no choice but there is a lot of factors beyond our ability to change. Let's say you grew up wanting to be a robotics designer because it seemed like something wonderful. You live in a rural area where the majority of people around you go into trades rather than high tech industries. It's not impossible to follow the path, it's just that you're going to have more influences that steer you towards something else. Possibly something you didn't even think of in the first place.

It's seems that everyone has goals for their life and that's good because it gives you something to strive for. It creates purpose beyond simply existing for the sake of existing. These goals could be as common as graduating, getting married, or finding a job that pays you a lot of money. They could be noble like moving to Africa to help those in need or searching for a cure to a cruel disease. What do you do if you don't have goals? I'm not talking about lazy people who are content with doing nothing for as long as possible. I'm talking about those who just don't know what they want. For them trying to figure out what they want from life is like a baby trying to express the fact that it's hungry, they don't even know how to ask. Looking around it may seem like everyone else has it figured out or at least is on the path to figuring it out. They have things they're working towards or they've accomplished already, meanwhile your own life seems to be stalled as you try and figure out which direction you're supposed to be pointed in.

So you're on your road of life that was set out for you and you start to wonder if where you're going is really the place for you. Everything up until that point could have been working towards something that is now in question. Is it possible to step off the path and go somewhere else? It seems that it's very hard to make the change once you've committed to something. There are those out there who would say something about making a bed and sleeping in it but this life where it's entirely possible there isn't anything afterwards. We don't know how long we're here for so shouldn't every attempt be made to get the most out of it? For some they don't get to change direction until they've already spent a lifetime going down another road. After thirty years they can finally retire from the choices they made a long time ago. That can't be the only option though. So how do we change horses midstream without falling in?

The Essence of Life

What makes something alive? How do you measure that exactly? I'm alive. The tree over there is alive. Those things seem easy to label but why? You cut off a branch or my arm and at what point does the severed limb stop being alive? Maybe it's when the life's blood literally drains out of it. It could be the moment it's separated from the body that it's no longer truly alive. That only brings up the question then of how much of something would have to be cut away before the body dies as well?

Our body is just a biomechnical means to transport our consciousness around. At least that's what it seems like. We may be no better than viruses that adapt to continue their spread. They infect other lifeforms so they can keep living. I guess one could ask what's the point of living if your whole purpose is to keep living? So maybe our bodies aren't designed to carry around our minds. Maybe our minds were developed to help protect our body while it works out ways to keep spreading its own genes as much as it can before the clock runs out.

Going back to the original point, what makes something alive? Is it the same spark that animates our blood and bone as that which brings growth to a blade of grass? Are we alive in the same sense? I suppose if the answer is no then are there degrees of living? It could be argued that no life is more important than another. The life of an ant is as important as that of a blue whale. They are both holding something inside that may not be easy to quantify.

So maybe life is just energy. Somehow that energy has taken the form of something that provides a driving force for otherwise inanimate objects to move about to continue the spread of more energy. If life is just energy though wouldn't that means there are other forms of it that we may not perceive or even comprehend? When the light goes out in something where does that supposed energy go? Some believe that it's transferred to another vessel. In most cases, another person. To me that sounds a lot like a metaphysical virus, constantly jumping from host to host, using it up along the way. If that's the case then maybe the universe is using the Earth as a quarantine zone to halt the spread. It would help explain why there isn't anything else like us or the life on our planet in the immediate few hundred billion miles surrounding us. Maybe we are the infection that has evolved.