The Gravitas of Life

Life isn't serious. I feel bad for people who take it so.

"Ha Ha," you may think.

"What a jokester, but really life is a very important thing."

No, it isn't. Sure, life may apparently be all you have, but that doesn't mean it's all there is. You eventually lose it anyway. Why frantically worry about what you're inevitably going to lose? Life is a game, except there are no winners or losers and everyone quits after 40-70 years. Like any game, life involves a great deal of luck. Where you're born, who you're born to, what lucky events happen are all completely random, or at least unknowable. and yet these things drastically affect your life. When vast swathes of your life are completely uncontrollable, why panic over the few things in life that are controllable? even these things will eventually fall out of control.

For example: You can't make people like you. Research shows that the decision happens well before you even begin to consider it. You may have the illusion of controlling others emotions or reactions, but first impressions really are the most lasting. So if you have little control, why fret about the small attempts to change things?

Of course the real problem here lies in determinism. Free will doesn't actually exist. The idea of universal causality precludes it. If you attempt to disprove universal causality, you find yourself with the conundrum of a completely random world, wherein impossible things might happen all the time. If the universe is as structured as science would have you believe, then complete randomness is an impossibility. Anyway, I feel too lazy to delve further into the proofs for determinism.

And it leads to another conundrum: why do I bother attempting to change people's minds about the seriousness of life? If free will doesn't exist, they would believe or disbelieve regardless of my exhortations. Well, the easy answer to that is because whether I like it or not, I would be exhorting.

Anyway, since you don't have any free will anyway, do what you want. Or, more specifically do what you were going to do anyway.

Self Doubt

Self doubt is like a poison. It usually starts with someone else. They pierce your ego with a barb that introduces the possibility that you may be wrong. From there it can slowly work its way around until at last it has consumed your very worldview. No action you make is free from analysis by your own conscious. Like a cytokine storm, your body works against you. Purging self doubt is a long and laborious process, with varying degrees of difficulty depending on the source of your doubt. The more respected the source, the harder the purge. Complete sublimation of insecurity often requires that the initial source acknowledge their own mistake in doubting you.

What can you do?

Two things: surround yourself with vapid yesmen and support your ego through the lack of complaint from those around you. This is an easy but dangerous method, as it lacks any doubt whatsoever. This may lead to unrealistic worldviews and harmful decisions as a result.

The second method is much harder, but much more healthy. Learn to accept criticism without internalizing it. Discover the truth of the statement: if someone says something about you, no matter how much you respect their opinion, it isn't always true.

Both are a sort of armor against the poisonus effects of doubt. Like all things, however, doubt has a place in the psyche too. Learn to understand your failings, to accept them, to be aware of when your failings are affecting your judgment. Every human has flaws; that is why we are human, however, flaws don't entail correction in every situation. To attempt to perfect yourself, you merely deny your nature and create a perverse mockery of your self. You must embrace your flaws, live with them. Self awareness is truly the path to enlightenment.

However, remember this: self awareness and self conciousness are not the same. The importance of embracing your flaws is not that you attempt to fix them, but that you understand them and know them well, so the next time someone attempts to poison you with self doubt through one of these flaws you can dismiss it as irrelevant, since you're already aware of this part of yourself.

Swine Flu is not a threat

Swine flu panic. Isn't it great? too bad it's completely unfounded. There are so many more ways you can die from simply walking outside than catching a readily curable disease.

Regional Developments

Hey, looks like it's Tuesday again.

This is the picture that should have gone with that other post. It's things like this that make me think "Civil War." The rhetoric is simply getting far out of hand. Far, far out of hand. I mean, I laugh at this sign, but the man holding clearly believes this is true.

Oh, Shit, Today Is Tuesday.

Oh, man, now I kinda regret this idea. Maybe I'll just discuss my creative writing process. I write sporadically, but when I do, I end up writing a whole bunch. As an attempt to get myself to write more, I decided to write a thousand word story once a week. Natch, it didn't pan out. I end up with tons of starts for a story and several longish stories. I've posted some portions of those longer stories here. Anyway, I write a lot of things not a lot of which I'm particularly happy about. I like writing dialogue best and descriptions least.

Unfortunately, I'm not in a writing mood right now. I did just stumble upon a great idea (Japan becomes a communist country in the 50's), but I have no passion for the actual labor of putting words to paper. This has also ended up reflecting on the essays I've done lately. I dunno, it's just part of the cyclical nature of my hobbies. If I had to guess, I'd say I'm into videogames again right now. Hopefully next will be music or something.

This post needs more pizazz. So, Georgia threatens to leave the union (link full of boring legalese, just trust me here) right on top of Texas governor Rick Perry threatening the same at the laughable Chicago Tea Parties, basically an excuse for right wingers to go outside and get mad at the president under pretenses that they don't like taxes more than they don't like the idea that a black man is president. Even better, the site that "spontaneously" popped up to support this was actually purchased in August of 2008. It still worries me, though. Especially all the rhetoric surrounding this sort of nonsense. Articles about Rick Santelli's rant titled, "The Shout Heard Round the World," and the very idea of a tea party theme all suggest the American revolution, as if somehow the current democratic administration is comparable to George the Third's reign. All of this spells upcoming war to me. Maybe that'll get us out of this recession.

Just hosting this image, nothing to see here. If you click on it, you'll notice the high resolution. At some point when I remember, I'm getting this turned into a poster.

Bioshock As a Reflection on Modern Global Politics, Or Why Underwater Genetic Zombies Matter

So, for those of you unaware, Bioshock is a recent, critically acclaimed interactive fiction for several platforms. I finally had a chance to play it a few weeks ago. It was very enjoyable, if not so much for the somewhat generic gameplay, but for the brilliant atmosphere. The game takes place in the year 1960, in an underwater Utopian community called "Rapture," established by a wealthy businessman known as Andrew Ryan to support his Lassez faire ideals, most closely related to Ayn Rand's philosophy of objectivism

Okay, Revamp Time

I read a thing somewhere about blogs and I decided to take its advice, which I'm not sure I remember. Anyway, this blog will now be updated weekly; on Tuesdays and any other day when I think of something. I also changed the layout to move the text an eight of an inch to the right and changed the background color by a shade, to reflect these troubled economic times, when people cannot afford to spend the extra electricity to keep this screen as bright a grey as it is. Hopefully you'll save approximately ten percent of your electric bill, which for me comes out to about $1.50. That dollar fifty can go towards other, more useful applications, like donating it to me.

Anyway. Expect new content from me rather more often. Instead of spending my time trying to be objective and talk as little about myself as possible, I will launch into full on opinion mode. Be prepared, ladies and gentlemen, for THE SPIN ZONE.

I am so totally clever and witty. People should pay me to mumble deprecating things about them.

Blog revamp time, details forthcoming. You may have already noticed the change in layout.