I've been doing a lot of rumination on the topic of men deciding, in the last few years, to paint their fingernails, and on the reasons I initially revile slightly at the act. Aesthetic choices rarely bother me, and I have no problem with people dressing in drag or with the transitioning of wardrobes that a transgender person has to undergo. But straight men of a particular ilk have created a new trend within their niche, to paint their fingernails, which, as you know, is connoted with the female gender. But I'm trying desperately and futilely to figure out what message is communicated about gender and sexuality through the painting of a male's nails? And I need to determine whether my discomfort from seeing painted mail fingernails is an initial culture shock that I'll need to over come, or if I have any moral or just basis for my adverse feelings.
I'm staring to pin down the demographic of men who gravitate toward the choice to paint their nails. This may be overly generalistic, but the straight, cisgendered men who choose to paint their nails are typically substantially to the left politically, and lacking in nuanced opinion. At least, that's what I initially assume, since an aesthetic choice lacks the ability to communicate a detailed point or a reasonably researched stance regarding a complex issue. An aesthetic choice like the color of one's fingernails is even more restricted from nuance than the 140 characters you were allowed on old school Twitter. That's probably why I'm struggling to figure out the impetus for a man to paint one's nails: the simple act of adding color to your cuticles cannot possibly translate to a position detailed enough to mean anything. Cosmetics are frivolous; the fight, endeavoring to give women the rights and resources they need to be at the same level as men, is much more serious and involved. The men who paint their nails appear to want to show solidarity with this movement, but they may not necessarily understand much about it.
Before I get to anything else, I have to mention that my first reason for feeling discomfort about men's painted nails is that nail polish was always strange to me. Having no sisters in the house I grew up, I was bewildered to find that some girls had unnatural colors on their fingertips when I was in kindergarten. I had no idea why some girls in my kindergarten class had blue, purple, or pink spots on their hands. Maybe it was a skin condition? Were girls just born this way sometimes? I found it very strange as a five-year-old. I was getting to know what colors I could expect to see on people--varying shades of light and dark brown. But purple? Hot pink? Nail polish was bizarre to me as a child, and it still seems strange to me today. From a purely biological standpoint, I don't see how it attracts mates. Men interested in women are not looking at a girl's nail polish for sex appeal. Straight men, more than likely, aren't looking at your nail polish at all. I personally don't see how it could possibly enhance the beauty of a woman. Nail polish is one of those cosmetic attributes on which women compare notes only with each other-- it isn't something worn to affect the interests of men. This isn't to say that any choice made by woman should be made on the basis of whether it attracts men-- but the intent to attract mates certainly doesn't explain the existence of nail polish. My point is that nail polish is a thing that exists solely because of a cultural precedent-- a frivolous cosmetic cultural precedent that could just as easily not exist in another culture. And it isn't attractive to me personally, so maybe I just have a bias against the whole activity in general-- in which case, take the rest of this as a grain of salt. And this stance I communicate in this blog post has nothing to do with LGBT men or trans women who feel an innate interest in drag or female flavors of sexuality. I'm talking about cisgendered males here.
So what is the painting of men's fingernails supposed to symbolize? And what's the message conveyed by the men who do this? These are the real important questions, not my frivolous squabbling about appearances and how I think purple looks strange on a person's body. The intended message has to stem from the fact that in our culture, nail polish is a cosmetic intended only for females. It's definitively feminine to paint one's cuticles with that smelly colored liquid, and people want to challenge that notion. I'm usually one of the first to jump for joy at any attempt to subvert presuppositions of what people are "supposed" to do because of their race, gender, or sexual orientation. I love breaking stereotypes. So why does this bother me?
For one thing, a revolution against gendering certain behaviors and actions should be fought most vigorously in favor of the gender most maligned by the status quo: women. Men painting their fingernails is an addition of a freedom afforded to men, not women. If men are approved by society to start doing a thing they didn't have approval for in the first place, men are scoring a point for their own gender-- not for women.
In addition, the message of revolution against heteronormativity is kind of reinforcing it, since your nail polish brought it up. I wouldn't have been reminded of how strictly feminine nail polish was until I saw it on your male hands. You may think that we can get to a society that's beyond gender roles, and that your male nail polish is proving that we're getting close to that; however, all your male nail polish did was shock me into remembering that nail polish is so strictly feminine. Your nail polish is basically a bumper sticker you wear on your hands to suggest that we can stop gendering aesthetic choices, but you need the intense gendering of nail polish in order to illustrate your point. Otherwise, the symbolism is lost on everyone. There's something about that that seems defeatist to me.
Probably the most concerning thing about men who paint their fingernails though, is the intensity and tackiness by which they try to symbolize solidarity with women (this isn't even mentioning the clumsiness and misguided nature by which they do it). If you're a woman alone in an elevator with another man, and he tells you out of nowhere that he's not a sex offender, how do you feel? If a man talks at you for dozens of minutes about how not-sexist he is, do you believe him? And after how many minutes of this blathering do you decide to stop believing him? To me, men who choose to sport nail polish seem like they are on step 2 of many, of trying to counter their inner sexism. (Step 1 is admitting you have a problem.) When you're new to addressing your own inner prejudices, you may struggle with communicating your new stances that are more ethical and equitable than those from your sexist past. Painting your nails as a male can look like an attempt to pander to women or LGBT folks, and pandering can come off as insulting or disingenuous to some people. It's a cumbersome gesture that indicates a person who's either new to love and tolerance, or failing to understand that a complex issue can't be boiled down to a cosmetic choice. It kind of looks like a symbol of solidarity with women and/or potentially the LGBT community, but nobody is really sure which, and nobody is really sure which of their movements is advocated. But in any case, signaling some kind of disdain toward gender norms isn't enough to convince anyone you aren't still sexist--especially when nobody else was discussing that elephant until you brought it into the room with your fingertips. Just as I cringe when someone says that they aren't racist since they have a white friend, I also am bound to cringe when someone says they're not sexist because they did a feminine thing to their hands. The act of a man painting his nails doesn't seem like a sign that he wants to make meaningful progress on the battlefields of women's rights or LGBT rights; instead, it seems like a man's protest against people who call him sexist, and when man doth protest too much, I get skeptical and uncomfortable.
Saturday, December 8, 2018
Friday, January 19, 2018
Top 10 Reasons I Hate Sports
Living in an ex-urban setting on the brink of rural countrysides, I have been surrounded by sports talk. It's pretty much unavoidable in any setting, anyways, from the dense urban cores to the middle of nowhere. But in rural settings, it's THE cultural centerpiece, rather than in urban settings, where it's A cultural centerpiece. There's seemingly nothing to talk about in any town with less than 40,000 people, besides what a collection of distant people accomplished by moving. I just wish I could explain to these people that they, too, can accomplish things in life as well-- more meaningful things, too-- if they decided to start moving.
These are the top ten reasons I hate sports. Yes, there are actually MORE than ten reasons. These are just the ones that make it to the top of the list.
1. Siphoning school resources away from academics. For your student, an investment in academics is much more likely to yield benefits that pay off through adulthood. Don't throw a ton of money at the kids' ability to become a football star, because they're not going to be professional athletes, unless they're a genetic freak. Give kids what they need to further their education and make a stable income-- it's a much more solid investment. The odds of a career in professional sports are 100,000 to one. The odds of a fulfilling career that pays the bills is almost guaranteed if you get a degree. Use your statistical knowledge that you got from sports betting, and choose the better odds.
2. Insane parents creating the absurd expectation that their child becomes a professional athlete. This is so appalling, and yet so common that it occupies its own slot on this list. I feel extremely fortunate that I didn't have a father obsessed with making me the next Pelé, the next Sammy Sosa, or the next Wayne Gretzky. I feel like it was almost the majority of my other male friends who weren't so lucky, though. Invest in your kids, and encourage them to try new things and develop new skills. But if I were a parent, I'd push my kids toward interests that are more likely to turn into a career. Sports and the arts aren't likely to prove lucrative in the real world. There are literally hundreds of other occupations that are easier to enter.
3. You can play sports yourself, you know-- and you should. Why would you watch someone do something, when you could go out there and do it yourself! I'm all for people playing sports. Games that encourage kids and adults to get exercise do a lot to benefit our health and happiness! Have fun with your friends! Compete, and try to win! Get involved, and you can feel a REAL sense of fulfillment, where you actually have the RIGHT to say "we did it! We won!" Abandon your false sense of accomplishment, and feel a real sense of accomplishment. Even if you don't win the game, you will feel the physical benefits of fitness, and you will feel the confidence in your body to get things done. It sounds odd, but if you don't get exercise, you never find out the capabilities of your body and you don't trust it to accomplish physical feats of any kind. We all know that, with exercise, you prolong your life, increase your strength, agility and endurance. But you also improve your mental perception of what your body can do, such as proprioception, reflexes, and trust in yourself, that you can accomplish a myriad of tasks without someone else's help.
4. You could be doing something, instead--in general. Aside from sports, you could spend time talking to people or learning something. You could strengthen your body, soul, or mind-- or even find something more entertaining, if you're bold enough to break your sports addiction. If you're a certain type of person, you could get a job; that would be a great idea. It's insulting, but the words "get a life" come to mind. I watch TV very rarely, because when I do, I'm just thinking of what I could be doing instead. I could be thinking, dreaming, creating, talking to people, advancing my career. I don't have much time on this Earth. And I certainly don't have the time to waste, investing my emotions, time, and attention in people who will never recognize or appreciate my investment. Don't waste your time on people who won't recognize you or validate you-- there's plenty you can do to earn the love and admiration of real people! Eli Manning will never love you. Instead, support your friends and family who will love you back for what you add to their lives.
5. The unbridled, destructive capacity for fans to obsess. Screaming at the television but having no standards for your own success. Caring more about the score than the social function where you're currently sitting. Parents who know the names of every athlete but not their child's birthday. Recording the Packers game over the video of your engagement. Getting fired because you skipped work to watch March Madness. Betting the money you could have saved for a new car. THEY ARE GAMES. THEY ARE NOT IMPORTANT. When I ask what you did, do not tell me you caught up on sports, because that is not something you "do." It is not an action. If the thing you "did" is something a vegetable can also "do," it is not suitable to say you did that thing. I'd rather you just told me you did nothing, because that to me would be more honest.
6. The false sense of accomplishment people have when their favored team wins. Stop saying "we did it" when your team wins something. You didn't do shit. Use the pronoun, "they." You deserve no credit. This is the same problem I have with massive online computer games like World of Warcraft. Continuous online games are crafted with one thing in mind: giving players the constant opportunity to reach the next goal and thus feel like they've improved. That's why the system of "leveling up" exists-- so players can always press the lever to receive the next food pellet.
7. It hurts the players. For all the times I laugh at an absurd dogpile of men in tights on a football field, there's another time when a football player gets hurt, and I cringe and suck the air through my teeth from imagining the intense pain he's feeling. On a selfish note, it's a turn-off for me that makes me want to stop watching. But more importantly, these people are losing their ability to function later in life. The immensely high rate of concussions will compromise the brain function of a player way too frequently. And once an athlete retires, what else does that person have to keep them occupied? Your body is broken, and your brain doesn't work. Just to catch a ball.
8. It's not entertaining, especially not baseball or football. If you're trying to stave off boredom, why would you watch a TV show that doesn't consistently show action? During a typical two-hour baseball game, motion occurs during only eight minutes, on average. The only impetus I could imagine for watching a baseball game, is that you really just want an excuse to veg out for two hours. And I could understand that, because life can be exhausting; sometimes, you need to relax your mind. But if you're relaxing your mind and entering the vegetative state required to sit down in front of the game, you cannot honestly refer to it as a hobby, an interest, an activity, or entertainment. So don't.
9. The false sense of security you get from doing something "cool." If anyone analyzes the statistics of demographics, real-world issues, or video games, they're a geek. But for some reason, analyzing strength of schedule, pitching statistics, and playoff standings is all A-OK. It's the same meticulous focus on varied esoteric details, but because it's in a hyper-normalized setting, NOW it's permissible?
10. Blind, consistent loyalty is a terrible thing to teach as a virtue. If you learn from your adherence to a particular sports team that it's positive or even permissible that you always stick to certain people all your life, you could end up in an abusive relationship. Never expect yourself to stick to a person or group of people no matter what, because they could turn into abusive, loathsome, toxic people later on. You always need to leave yourself the option of running away from anyone who poisons your life. Blind loyalty should never be the standard. Choose the associations that are the best for you; consistency means nothing compared to your happiness and safety. Becoming a "fair weather fan" is a much healthier choice when it comes to anything outside of sports.
There are more reasons. I might even be able to write a sequel to this, listing reasons 11 through 20, though these would be more anecdotal, parochial reasons. But there really are few things in life that pique my disinterest more than sports. Hopefully, you have somewhat of an understanding of why i have such a distaste.
These are the top ten reasons I hate sports. Yes, there are actually MORE than ten reasons. These are just the ones that make it to the top of the list.
1. Siphoning school resources away from academics. For your student, an investment in academics is much more likely to yield benefits that pay off through adulthood. Don't throw a ton of money at the kids' ability to become a football star, because they're not going to be professional athletes, unless they're a genetic freak. Give kids what they need to further their education and make a stable income-- it's a much more solid investment. The odds of a career in professional sports are 100,000 to one. The odds of a fulfilling career that pays the bills is almost guaranteed if you get a degree. Use your statistical knowledge that you got from sports betting, and choose the better odds.
2. Insane parents creating the absurd expectation that their child becomes a professional athlete. This is so appalling, and yet so common that it occupies its own slot on this list. I feel extremely fortunate that I didn't have a father obsessed with making me the next Pelé, the next Sammy Sosa, or the next Wayne Gretzky. I feel like it was almost the majority of my other male friends who weren't so lucky, though. Invest in your kids, and encourage them to try new things and develop new skills. But if I were a parent, I'd push my kids toward interests that are more likely to turn into a career. Sports and the arts aren't likely to prove lucrative in the real world. There are literally hundreds of other occupations that are easier to enter.
3. You can play sports yourself, you know-- and you should. Why would you watch someone do something, when you could go out there and do it yourself! I'm all for people playing sports. Games that encourage kids and adults to get exercise do a lot to benefit our health and happiness! Have fun with your friends! Compete, and try to win! Get involved, and you can feel a REAL sense of fulfillment, where you actually have the RIGHT to say "we did it! We won!" Abandon your false sense of accomplishment, and feel a real sense of accomplishment. Even if you don't win the game, you will feel the physical benefits of fitness, and you will feel the confidence in your body to get things done. It sounds odd, but if you don't get exercise, you never find out the capabilities of your body and you don't trust it to accomplish physical feats of any kind. We all know that, with exercise, you prolong your life, increase your strength, agility and endurance. But you also improve your mental perception of what your body can do, such as proprioception, reflexes, and trust in yourself, that you can accomplish a myriad of tasks without someone else's help.
4. You could be doing something, instead--in general. Aside from sports, you could spend time talking to people or learning something. You could strengthen your body, soul, or mind-- or even find something more entertaining, if you're bold enough to break your sports addiction. If you're a certain type of person, you could get a job; that would be a great idea. It's insulting, but the words "get a life" come to mind. I watch TV very rarely, because when I do, I'm just thinking of what I could be doing instead. I could be thinking, dreaming, creating, talking to people, advancing my career. I don't have much time on this Earth. And I certainly don't have the time to waste, investing my emotions, time, and attention in people who will never recognize or appreciate my investment. Don't waste your time on people who won't recognize you or validate you-- there's plenty you can do to earn the love and admiration of real people! Eli Manning will never love you. Instead, support your friends and family who will love you back for what you add to their lives.
5. The unbridled, destructive capacity for fans to obsess. Screaming at the television but having no standards for your own success. Caring more about the score than the social function where you're currently sitting. Parents who know the names of every athlete but not their child's birthday. Recording the Packers game over the video of your engagement. Getting fired because you skipped work to watch March Madness. Betting the money you could have saved for a new car. THEY ARE GAMES. THEY ARE NOT IMPORTANT. When I ask what you did, do not tell me you caught up on sports, because that is not something you "do." It is not an action. If the thing you "did" is something a vegetable can also "do," it is not suitable to say you did that thing. I'd rather you just told me you did nothing, because that to me would be more honest.
6. The false sense of accomplishment people have when their favored team wins. Stop saying "we did it" when your team wins something. You didn't do shit. Use the pronoun, "they." You deserve no credit. This is the same problem I have with massive online computer games like World of Warcraft. Continuous online games are crafted with one thing in mind: giving players the constant opportunity to reach the next goal and thus feel like they've improved. That's why the system of "leveling up" exists-- so players can always press the lever to receive the next food pellet.
7. It hurts the players. For all the times I laugh at an absurd dogpile of men in tights on a football field, there's another time when a football player gets hurt, and I cringe and suck the air through my teeth from imagining the intense pain he's feeling. On a selfish note, it's a turn-off for me that makes me want to stop watching. But more importantly, these people are losing their ability to function later in life. The immensely high rate of concussions will compromise the brain function of a player way too frequently. And once an athlete retires, what else does that person have to keep them occupied? Your body is broken, and your brain doesn't work. Just to catch a ball.
8. It's not entertaining, especially not baseball or football. If you're trying to stave off boredom, why would you watch a TV show that doesn't consistently show action? During a typical two-hour baseball game, motion occurs during only eight minutes, on average. The only impetus I could imagine for watching a baseball game, is that you really just want an excuse to veg out for two hours. And I could understand that, because life can be exhausting; sometimes, you need to relax your mind. But if you're relaxing your mind and entering the vegetative state required to sit down in front of the game, you cannot honestly refer to it as a hobby, an interest, an activity, or entertainment. So don't.
9. The false sense of security you get from doing something "cool." If anyone analyzes the statistics of demographics, real-world issues, or video games, they're a geek. But for some reason, analyzing strength of schedule, pitching statistics, and playoff standings is all A-OK. It's the same meticulous focus on varied esoteric details, but because it's in a hyper-normalized setting, NOW it's permissible?
10. Blind, consistent loyalty is a terrible thing to teach as a virtue. If you learn from your adherence to a particular sports team that it's positive or even permissible that you always stick to certain people all your life, you could end up in an abusive relationship. Never expect yourself to stick to a person or group of people no matter what, because they could turn into abusive, loathsome, toxic people later on. You always need to leave yourself the option of running away from anyone who poisons your life. Blind loyalty should never be the standard. Choose the associations that are the best for you; consistency means nothing compared to your happiness and safety. Becoming a "fair weather fan" is a much healthier choice when it comes to anything outside of sports.
There are more reasons. I might even be able to write a sequel to this, listing reasons 11 through 20, though these would be more anecdotal, parochial reasons. But there really are few things in life that pique my disinterest more than sports. Hopefully, you have somewhat of an understanding of why i have such a distaste.
Monday, January 8, 2018
Four Years Gone By
It's weird. All of the years since college have felt pretty much the same. If you asked me about something that happened in the past four years, I would find it difficult to discern which of the four years was the distinct one when it happened. 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017 have been host to the same process of self-improvement for me. During those years, I wanted to develop a sense of pragmatism and self-sufficiency, because, prior to those years, all I had ever learned was theoretical "book-smarts." The brand of knowledge propagated by schools really only serves adults in a professional setting, but the professional side of adult life is only one place of many in which an adult needs to succeed.
The last four years have been dedicated to making up for my lack of practical skills, with the object being self-sufficiency. It's the specific approach I had to take to reach the goal everybody has, of reaching health and happiness for oneself. I did a really good job of school, but life proved to be something where I don't have a lot of useful knowledge. Why is that?
The stark difference between your status as a child and your status as and adult is whether or not there is someone outside of yourself who claims responsibility for you and your welfare. The defining trait of an adult is self-sufficiency. If you are dependent on parents, guardians, family members, or other people, for anything other than your social well-being, you have yet to fully reach adulthood. In the modern world, where the diversity of people's resources are all conceptualized as a single monetary value, self-sufficiency in the practical realm translates to the single, simple goal of making money. This is contrasted with the pre-modern world, where self-sufficiency required the production of food, the extraction of water, the construction of shelter, the strength to provide security, a heat source to last through the winter, and various other provisions. Thankfully, we are privileged enough to live in a world where all we need is a marketable skill and an opportunity to receive compensation for its use.
The act of making money, and thus satisfying our thankfully single requirement for practical self-sufficiency, is usually enough for an adult to survive. However, as you know, there are other needs people have, aside from just money. Other than monetary well-being, humans have a social well-being, a mental well-being, an emotional well-being, and physical needs that are sometimes overlooked or even damaged by one's workplace. Therefore, a childhood like mine, where knowledge of the professional world is acquired as if it's the only priority, fails to prepare a young person for the totality of his or her future. Since I'm full of theoretical knowledge, I've been trying in my adulthood to counteract my lack of practical knowledge. The real world requires theoretical understanding and practical knowledge; in fact, it requires the latter more than the former. Of the four letters in the Myers-Briggs personality phenotype, the preference toward different types of knowledge is the second letter, meaning that the mother-daughter pair of psychologists saw this distinction as one of the four most impactful facets of one's personality. And analysis has shown that 25% of people tend to prefer abstract ideas, innovative dreams, and a theoretical understanding, where as 75% of people tend towards literal, practical interpretations of exactly what's happening. This makes sense, because humanity needs grounded people who keep the world running as it exists today, moreso than we need innovators who dream up new things with an abstract, extrapolating mind. I look at myself as someone who's received a lot of ability to dream and extrapolate, but hasn't received the tools necessary to physically keep himself alive or to acclimate to the concrete, actual world. Adjusting to this world is very difficult to someone who knows a whole lot of holistic shit but doesn't know how to balance a budget, handle household chores, or establish healthy habits. You can't make an impact on the world with your ideas if you don't have the skills to survive.
I don't really have anyone to blame for my lack of practical knowledge. I have a natural tendency toward taking in the world around me and learning all I can from it. I like to learn and dream about the world. But most of the useful knowledge in the world comes from trying to do things, and failing at first. In a classroom setting, an instructor relays to the students a bunch of knowledge which is assumed to have significance. The instructor is assumed to have more knowledge than you, the student, but furthermore, the instructor is assumed to have a better understanding than you of which knowledge has significance. You have to take the instructor at his or her word, that the information shared in the classroom will have a use or implementation later in life. In the practical world, though, as you're diving into a new task for the first time, your attempt to understand the knowledge needed for that task, will immediately have use. As you dive into something you're trying to actually do, you immediately get confirmation that the knowledge you're acquiring will be used; however, in the classroom, you never receive that guarantee that what you're learning will ever amount to anything. This is why some people have a real aversion to classroom learning, but they will pick up skills as they venture out into the real world and eventually thrive. Some people require that promise, that a thing they learn will have to use to them, or else they aren't going to waste their time listening to the knowledge someone tries to relay. As I went through the late stages of the educational system, I became more and more like that type of person. Now, when someone tells me anything, I demand an explanation of how the words I hear will be any kind of asset to my life, or else I'm just going to tune that person out. I have too much that I want to do with my time; now that I place so much value on the time I have, I refuse to waste it on listening to words that do nothing for anybody. I will even listen to a person who just needs to vent, because that has benefits for the speaker even if it has no direct benefit to me. But, if I'm not convinced that someone's words will result in anything positive for any party, I will regret that my time was wasted.
I've always had the reputation of "the smart kid," but I feel like I have profoundly lacked practical knowledge in my life. I have felt that I need to play catch-up with the rest of world when it comes to learning how practical knowledge works. I had no idea of my own sensitivities and how to get along in the world by myself, but by golly, I knew multi-variable calculus! The way we prioritize knowledge in our education system is so unbelievably stupid, and I feel victimized by it. We need to teach children how to take care of themselves, how to eat right, how to maintain their mental health, how to vote responsibly, and how to balance a checkbook. Particle-based thermodynamics and parochial categories of literature can fuck off.
I'm doing a better job at the whole adulthood thing, now. I can handle life without the assistance of my parents, and that's mostly because I forced myself to. It turns out that, in the practical world, the most effective way to learn how to do something is to force yourself to just start trying it. You learn best when you jump into just playing with stuff. You learn the most about music when you just sit down in front of a keyboard and start messing around. You learn math the best when you just sit down and start playing with countable objects. So I resolved to learn life by saying "fuck it" and jumping in. And once you've done enough stuff, you learn the benefits of taking the risk of venturing into something new.
Making any kind of foray feels like taking a risk, because, with anything that you foray into, there is always the chance of finding out that that thing sucks. You might find that either the new thing makes you feel bad, or that you really suck at the thing you're trying out. But if the worst that can happen is just an adverse feeling, and your health is strong enough, that adverse reaction isn't going to change your life significantly for the worse. If you're well enough in touch with those things that keep you going and keep you happy, it won't damage your psyche much to learn that this thing you're trying sucks. But making these forays is the only effective way to learn anything and become a richer person.
As of the last year or two, I have become confident in my ability to secure a stable level of happiness for myself. I'm doing okay; I can say that now. Without a doubt, I couldn't have said that truthfully in 2012 or 2013. But the phase of stable adulthood just all feels the same. A lack of tragedy is ideal and a great objective, but tragedies create defining moments that divide the story of my life into chapters. Tragedies have the greatest impact on my growth, and they change me in the most profound ways. I'm not really defined by discovering pleasure, like finding a girlfriend who makes me very happy, because getting rewarded for doing things correctly doesn't do anything to really change the nature of my being. So nothing defining has really happened to me, but I should not wish to change that. Sometimes I have to ask myself: which do I crave more-- change, or happiness? I think the best outlook is to change as much as you can while still maintaining happiness; this is to balance your time between your happy place and the adventurous world outside of it. My existence is dedicated to discovering this balance.
What have I done in these last 4 years? I've been working and living in the same place. Getting a new job, residence, family, and stuff would make my life feel like it's changed. But I don't know if I want those kinds of changes, more than I want my living situation to remain the same. The things I remember most about these last 4 years have been my travels, because those are the things that change me the most. People remember what makes an impact. In addition, I remember the people who motivated those travels, because those impact me profoundly as well. I also remember the meaningful restorative feeling of my new bed, which I acquired in April 2017. Sleep well! Invest in your sleepytime, because Christ, it's a third of your life. I think I'll do another post talking about specific things about the last four years. This post was more metacognition about deciding what I should even write in a reflection.
The last four years have been dedicated to making up for my lack of practical skills, with the object being self-sufficiency. It's the specific approach I had to take to reach the goal everybody has, of reaching health and happiness for oneself. I did a really good job of school, but life proved to be something where I don't have a lot of useful knowledge. Why is that?
The stark difference between your status as a child and your status as and adult is whether or not there is someone outside of yourself who claims responsibility for you and your welfare. The defining trait of an adult is self-sufficiency. If you are dependent on parents, guardians, family members, or other people, for anything other than your social well-being, you have yet to fully reach adulthood. In the modern world, where the diversity of people's resources are all conceptualized as a single monetary value, self-sufficiency in the practical realm translates to the single, simple goal of making money. This is contrasted with the pre-modern world, where self-sufficiency required the production of food, the extraction of water, the construction of shelter, the strength to provide security, a heat source to last through the winter, and various other provisions. Thankfully, we are privileged enough to live in a world where all we need is a marketable skill and an opportunity to receive compensation for its use.
The act of making money, and thus satisfying our thankfully single requirement for practical self-sufficiency, is usually enough for an adult to survive. However, as you know, there are other needs people have, aside from just money. Other than monetary well-being, humans have a social well-being, a mental well-being, an emotional well-being, and physical needs that are sometimes overlooked or even damaged by one's workplace. Therefore, a childhood like mine, where knowledge of the professional world is acquired as if it's the only priority, fails to prepare a young person for the totality of his or her future. Since I'm full of theoretical knowledge, I've been trying in my adulthood to counteract my lack of practical knowledge. The real world requires theoretical understanding and practical knowledge; in fact, it requires the latter more than the former. Of the four letters in the Myers-Briggs personality phenotype, the preference toward different types of knowledge is the second letter, meaning that the mother-daughter pair of psychologists saw this distinction as one of the four most impactful facets of one's personality. And analysis has shown that 25% of people tend to prefer abstract ideas, innovative dreams, and a theoretical understanding, where as 75% of people tend towards literal, practical interpretations of exactly what's happening. This makes sense, because humanity needs grounded people who keep the world running as it exists today, moreso than we need innovators who dream up new things with an abstract, extrapolating mind. I look at myself as someone who's received a lot of ability to dream and extrapolate, but hasn't received the tools necessary to physically keep himself alive or to acclimate to the concrete, actual world. Adjusting to this world is very difficult to someone who knows a whole lot of holistic shit but doesn't know how to balance a budget, handle household chores, or establish healthy habits. You can't make an impact on the world with your ideas if you don't have the skills to survive.
I don't really have anyone to blame for my lack of practical knowledge. I have a natural tendency toward taking in the world around me and learning all I can from it. I like to learn and dream about the world. But most of the useful knowledge in the world comes from trying to do things, and failing at first. In a classroom setting, an instructor relays to the students a bunch of knowledge which is assumed to have significance. The instructor is assumed to have more knowledge than you, the student, but furthermore, the instructor is assumed to have a better understanding than you of which knowledge has significance. You have to take the instructor at his or her word, that the information shared in the classroom will have a use or implementation later in life. In the practical world, though, as you're diving into a new task for the first time, your attempt to understand the knowledge needed for that task, will immediately have use. As you dive into something you're trying to actually do, you immediately get confirmation that the knowledge you're acquiring will be used; however, in the classroom, you never receive that guarantee that what you're learning will ever amount to anything. This is why some people have a real aversion to classroom learning, but they will pick up skills as they venture out into the real world and eventually thrive. Some people require that promise, that a thing they learn will have to use to them, or else they aren't going to waste their time listening to the knowledge someone tries to relay. As I went through the late stages of the educational system, I became more and more like that type of person. Now, when someone tells me anything, I demand an explanation of how the words I hear will be any kind of asset to my life, or else I'm just going to tune that person out. I have too much that I want to do with my time; now that I place so much value on the time I have, I refuse to waste it on listening to words that do nothing for anybody. I will even listen to a person who just needs to vent, because that has benefits for the speaker even if it has no direct benefit to me. But, if I'm not convinced that someone's words will result in anything positive for any party, I will regret that my time was wasted.
I've always had the reputation of "the smart kid," but I feel like I have profoundly lacked practical knowledge in my life. I have felt that I need to play catch-up with the rest of world when it comes to learning how practical knowledge works. I had no idea of my own sensitivities and how to get along in the world by myself, but by golly, I knew multi-variable calculus! The way we prioritize knowledge in our education system is so unbelievably stupid, and I feel victimized by it. We need to teach children how to take care of themselves, how to eat right, how to maintain their mental health, how to vote responsibly, and how to balance a checkbook. Particle-based thermodynamics and parochial categories of literature can fuck off.
I'm doing a better job at the whole adulthood thing, now. I can handle life without the assistance of my parents, and that's mostly because I forced myself to. It turns out that, in the practical world, the most effective way to learn how to do something is to force yourself to just start trying it. You learn best when you jump into just playing with stuff. You learn the most about music when you just sit down in front of a keyboard and start messing around. You learn math the best when you just sit down and start playing with countable objects. So I resolved to learn life by saying "fuck it" and jumping in. And once you've done enough stuff, you learn the benefits of taking the risk of venturing into something new.
Making any kind of foray feels like taking a risk, because, with anything that you foray into, there is always the chance of finding out that that thing sucks. You might find that either the new thing makes you feel bad, or that you really suck at the thing you're trying out. But if the worst that can happen is just an adverse feeling, and your health is strong enough, that adverse reaction isn't going to change your life significantly for the worse. If you're well enough in touch with those things that keep you going and keep you happy, it won't damage your psyche much to learn that this thing you're trying sucks. But making these forays is the only effective way to learn anything and become a richer person.
As of the last year or two, I have become confident in my ability to secure a stable level of happiness for myself. I'm doing okay; I can say that now. Without a doubt, I couldn't have said that truthfully in 2012 or 2013. But the phase of stable adulthood just all feels the same. A lack of tragedy is ideal and a great objective, but tragedies create defining moments that divide the story of my life into chapters. Tragedies have the greatest impact on my growth, and they change me in the most profound ways. I'm not really defined by discovering pleasure, like finding a girlfriend who makes me very happy, because getting rewarded for doing things correctly doesn't do anything to really change the nature of my being. So nothing defining has really happened to me, but I should not wish to change that. Sometimes I have to ask myself: which do I crave more-- change, or happiness? I think the best outlook is to change as much as you can while still maintaining happiness; this is to balance your time between your happy place and the adventurous world outside of it. My existence is dedicated to discovering this balance.
What have I done in these last 4 years? I've been working and living in the same place. Getting a new job, residence, family, and stuff would make my life feel like it's changed. But I don't know if I want those kinds of changes, more than I want my living situation to remain the same. The things I remember most about these last 4 years have been my travels, because those are the things that change me the most. People remember what makes an impact. In addition, I remember the people who motivated those travels, because those impact me profoundly as well. I also remember the meaningful restorative feeling of my new bed, which I acquired in April 2017. Sleep well! Invest in your sleepytime, because Christ, it's a third of your life. I think I'll do another post talking about specific things about the last four years. This post was more metacognition about deciding what I should even write in a reflection.
Tuesday, January 2, 2018
On Abandoning Idealism
I remember when I reached the stage of my adolescence when I learned how flawed and fragile everything is. I remember when it hit me, that authority of any kind is rife with failure, and that the global issues of war, climate change, and destruction of the environment threaten the entire world. It's difficult to cope with the realization that you're alive during a mass extinction event brought about by your own species, and to watch the hapless beings in positions of power as they not only hinder progress, but promote the damaging behavior. When you learn of the problems of the world and focus on them, it can feel like you're watching the world descend into chaos and despair, and you just want to scream out to everyone.
A world rife with flaws and problems gives us purpose, though. If everything was already perfect, and there was no room for improvement of this world, what would be the point of any individuals' existence? What would be the purpose in gifting individuals with sentience, if it cannot be used for something productive? Humans each want a life that feels meaningful, with the exception of a few deadbeats. That cannot be achieved in a perfect, or an ideal, world.
Why, then, do people propose solutions as if the world operates ideally? Why do we propose plans, scientific theories, and economic systems that operate as if nature, human intent, or the mechanisms within will operate in an ideal way? Capitalists wantonly believe that a purely capitalist system will help every market just by the equilibrium of supply and demand, but it leaves education and healthcare systems in shambles. Communists wantonly believe that human nature will allow for a complete extinction of competitive drive, and that people will somehow abandon their natural tendency to try and take more than their fair share. Why do we publish the ideal gas law, which erroneously assumes that gases will behave in ways that suit our limited understanding? Well, I guess that's just it-- our limited ability to understand things leads us to draw simplistic conclusions that might be partially or mostly correct, when the truth is much more nuanced. Sometimes the truth is more nuanced than we can understand with the current extent of modern science; other times, it is more nuanced than we care to understand with our limited effort, which is to say that the culprit is intellectual laziness. Humans love to generalize, and settle for an inferior understanding even when a complete understanding is within reach.
Assuming an ideal world leaves incomplete generalizations that fail to assess an entire situation. People love to propose short-sighted equations about people: all women are crazy people; all Mexicans are hard-working; all African Americans are fans of rap; all homosexuals are disenfranchised. Generalizations like these at their best possess only partial accuracy, and actions built upon them can be very harmful to a wide array of people. But generalizations like these are the result of an idealist assumption, that a law you propose about the universe can boil down to a simple equation. People who live by these generalizations possess a kind of wanton arrogance, an entitlement to a simple world with simple conclusions. We don't live in a simple world, and we don't deserve to live in such a place. If we learn all the knowledge in the world, we exhaust the possibilities to learn more, and the quest to learn more concludes, depriving us of our purpose. If we run out of information to learn, and we run out of problems to solve, the hope of a being to give its life meaning dies. When we are born with the purpose to leave the world's lifeforms healthier, happier, and smarter than they were, we are deprived of our purpose by the existence of complete health, complete happiness, and complete knowledge.
Perception is the input to the human brain, and judgments are the output. Our brains take in information, and then make decisions and allegories based on what we've observed. And from incomplete analyses, incomplete judgments are born. People love to tell the world how it works, spitting out judgments limited in their scope, because of how limited their understanding has become. How do we expect to reach an adequate conclusion about the state of the entire world, when the world bears complexity that is impossible to completely grasp?
Don't you see the idiocy in telling the world what's up, when the world IS what's up?
At this point, this post is another ode to skepticism, as you can see. It's also an ode to cutting down on intellectual arrogance, when the entire body of human knowledge is a fraction of a percent of what we can learn about the universe. But my point here is to remind everyone that the world isn't perfect, but it's good enough to grant you the ultimate gift of all: the gift of life. In a world that gives us the gift of a complex mind, a capable body, and the opportunity to do all we can do with these things, we have to remind ourselves that we have received the best gift known to us, of everything in the entire universe! No other beings documented in the entire universe have the capabilities that we have. No other creature has a mind powerful enough to organize civilizations, create language, or give birth to institutional systems that help people. We could have been given the life of a rabbit, a snake, a scorpion, or even a protozoa, yet instead, we were given this!
With the ability to write, carry things, and grasp things with our hands, we possess the most dexterity of any animal on Earth, making us incredibly lucky. And the existence of such a model as this was not intently crafted according to some design or ideal image, as far as science as concerned. After billions of years of entropy, the right ingredients somehow came together to allow for the existence of an organism, with enough complexity to accomplish all we can accomplish today. In much the same way that an infinite number of monkeys with an infinite amount of typewriters can randomly generate the complete works of William Shakespeare, a universe, after a nearly infinite number of tries, allowed for the gift of a lifeform with this much complexity. As far as we know, we were not created intentionally; we just randomly formed after quadrillions upon quadrillions of attempts. And the universe did not make quadrillions of attempts, just for us to fail to sanctify this ultimate gift of life as a human. We must cherish our lives, and each other's lives.
The act of cherishing life on this planet comes at odds with idealists, because idealists will consider the discrepancy between a human's viability and its perfection, before they will consider the discrepancy between its greatness and its nonexistence. That is to say, idealists will consider how far something is from perfection, before they consider the progress it has made since being born from nothing. Thus, in the context of human evolution, an idealist will scorn human life due to its inability to reach supernatural perfection, before they will give a human life credit for how much it has grown since its birth. Demanding perfection from a human being is harmful, and it leads to an unnecessarily dissatisfied perspective on the world at large. Billions of years of happenstance created us from nothing; we cannot take this for granted.
Compare this to the Christian notion that we were created in the image of an ideal, all-powerful god, to fall from the perfect realm called Heaven to Earth, where we now roam. This idea is a useful tool for rulers and leaders, in that it motivates people (or subjects) by convincing them that access to the ideal realm of Heaven is attainable, through service to your fellow humans, or in historical contexts, service to your ruler. But this notion misleads people by convincing them that a perfect existence is somehow attainable in the afterlife, when we know that perfection does not exist and cannot exist. What does Heaven look like? Everyone has a different idea of what Heaven is like, and in the first place, no one can fully flesh out their image of Heaven, since it's impossible to imagine any plane of existence without imperfections and problems that require solutions.
If we stick solely to science, the plane of existence as a human is the best plane of existence we have discovered. We have more opportunities and capabilities than any other lifeform discovered on Earth, which is the only place we have detected any life. Yet, idealistic people like my former self somehow demand more, and often they spend so much time demanding more that they forget to feel gratitude for what they already have.
Despite what I just said, there is no reason to feel shame for demanding a better existence. Those who demand a better existence are the ones who help humanity to secure a better existence, and the act of improving a human's existence is what gives our lives purpose. An idealist is a person who has set his or her eyes on the prize; an idealist who puts plans into action to reach that prize is a purposed individual. If ideas plus action results in progress for humanity, then an idealist has half of the equation correct. The idealists who deserve scorn are the ones who demand progress but do nothing to exact it, whether the progress is intended for another person, the scope of humanity, or for themselves. Don't just dream-- reach for your dreams. You were given more capability to reach your dreams than 99.9% of the organisms living today. What a shame if these capabilities were ignored. Furthermore, if you settle for an incomplete knock-off version of your dreams, feel free to keep going, but still make sure to revere your achievement to that point. Do not expect perfection, from yourself, or from others; instead, expect each human to perform the perfectly noble task of inching toward it. You will not push yourself or another individual to perfection, nor will your actions result in a perfect world, for your breadth is that of just a speck among the vastness of the cosmos. But if you impact the world in even an incrementally positive way, you have done the work of one of many other specks pushing the collective toward a better place. That better place will not be Heaven, nor will it be any other manifestation of the ideal; but, it will be a vast improvement on what is already the most perfect plane of existence ever witnessed by any lifeform in the universe.
A world rife with flaws and problems gives us purpose, though. If everything was already perfect, and there was no room for improvement of this world, what would be the point of any individuals' existence? What would be the purpose in gifting individuals with sentience, if it cannot be used for something productive? Humans each want a life that feels meaningful, with the exception of a few deadbeats. That cannot be achieved in a perfect, or an ideal, world.
Why, then, do people propose solutions as if the world operates ideally? Why do we propose plans, scientific theories, and economic systems that operate as if nature, human intent, or the mechanisms within will operate in an ideal way? Capitalists wantonly believe that a purely capitalist system will help every market just by the equilibrium of supply and demand, but it leaves education and healthcare systems in shambles. Communists wantonly believe that human nature will allow for a complete extinction of competitive drive, and that people will somehow abandon their natural tendency to try and take more than their fair share. Why do we publish the ideal gas law, which erroneously assumes that gases will behave in ways that suit our limited understanding? Well, I guess that's just it-- our limited ability to understand things leads us to draw simplistic conclusions that might be partially or mostly correct, when the truth is much more nuanced. Sometimes the truth is more nuanced than we can understand with the current extent of modern science; other times, it is more nuanced than we care to understand with our limited effort, which is to say that the culprit is intellectual laziness. Humans love to generalize, and settle for an inferior understanding even when a complete understanding is within reach.
Assuming an ideal world leaves incomplete generalizations that fail to assess an entire situation. People love to propose short-sighted equations about people: all women are crazy people; all Mexicans are hard-working; all African Americans are fans of rap; all homosexuals are disenfranchised. Generalizations like these at their best possess only partial accuracy, and actions built upon them can be very harmful to a wide array of people. But generalizations like these are the result of an idealist assumption, that a law you propose about the universe can boil down to a simple equation. People who live by these generalizations possess a kind of wanton arrogance, an entitlement to a simple world with simple conclusions. We don't live in a simple world, and we don't deserve to live in such a place. If we learn all the knowledge in the world, we exhaust the possibilities to learn more, and the quest to learn more concludes, depriving us of our purpose. If we run out of information to learn, and we run out of problems to solve, the hope of a being to give its life meaning dies. When we are born with the purpose to leave the world's lifeforms healthier, happier, and smarter than they were, we are deprived of our purpose by the existence of complete health, complete happiness, and complete knowledge.
Perception is the input to the human brain, and judgments are the output. Our brains take in information, and then make decisions and allegories based on what we've observed. And from incomplete analyses, incomplete judgments are born. People love to tell the world how it works, spitting out judgments limited in their scope, because of how limited their understanding has become. How do we expect to reach an adequate conclusion about the state of the entire world, when the world bears complexity that is impossible to completely grasp?
Don't you see the idiocy in telling the world what's up, when the world IS what's up?
At this point, this post is another ode to skepticism, as you can see. It's also an ode to cutting down on intellectual arrogance, when the entire body of human knowledge is a fraction of a percent of what we can learn about the universe. But my point here is to remind everyone that the world isn't perfect, but it's good enough to grant you the ultimate gift of all: the gift of life. In a world that gives us the gift of a complex mind, a capable body, and the opportunity to do all we can do with these things, we have to remind ourselves that we have received the best gift known to us, of everything in the entire universe! No other beings documented in the entire universe have the capabilities that we have. No other creature has a mind powerful enough to organize civilizations, create language, or give birth to institutional systems that help people. We could have been given the life of a rabbit, a snake, a scorpion, or even a protozoa, yet instead, we were given this!
With the ability to write, carry things, and grasp things with our hands, we possess the most dexterity of any animal on Earth, making us incredibly lucky. And the existence of such a model as this was not intently crafted according to some design or ideal image, as far as science as concerned. After billions of years of entropy, the right ingredients somehow came together to allow for the existence of an organism, with enough complexity to accomplish all we can accomplish today. In much the same way that an infinite number of monkeys with an infinite amount of typewriters can randomly generate the complete works of William Shakespeare, a universe, after a nearly infinite number of tries, allowed for the gift of a lifeform with this much complexity. As far as we know, we were not created intentionally; we just randomly formed after quadrillions upon quadrillions of attempts. And the universe did not make quadrillions of attempts, just for us to fail to sanctify this ultimate gift of life as a human. We must cherish our lives, and each other's lives.
The act of cherishing life on this planet comes at odds with idealists, because idealists will consider the discrepancy between a human's viability and its perfection, before they will consider the discrepancy between its greatness and its nonexistence. That is to say, idealists will consider how far something is from perfection, before they consider the progress it has made since being born from nothing. Thus, in the context of human evolution, an idealist will scorn human life due to its inability to reach supernatural perfection, before they will give a human life credit for how much it has grown since its birth. Demanding perfection from a human being is harmful, and it leads to an unnecessarily dissatisfied perspective on the world at large. Billions of years of happenstance created us from nothing; we cannot take this for granted.
Compare this to the Christian notion that we were created in the image of an ideal, all-powerful god, to fall from the perfect realm called Heaven to Earth, where we now roam. This idea is a useful tool for rulers and leaders, in that it motivates people (or subjects) by convincing them that access to the ideal realm of Heaven is attainable, through service to your fellow humans, or in historical contexts, service to your ruler. But this notion misleads people by convincing them that a perfect existence is somehow attainable in the afterlife, when we know that perfection does not exist and cannot exist. What does Heaven look like? Everyone has a different idea of what Heaven is like, and in the first place, no one can fully flesh out their image of Heaven, since it's impossible to imagine any plane of existence without imperfections and problems that require solutions.
If we stick solely to science, the plane of existence as a human is the best plane of existence we have discovered. We have more opportunities and capabilities than any other lifeform discovered on Earth, which is the only place we have detected any life. Yet, idealistic people like my former self somehow demand more, and often they spend so much time demanding more that they forget to feel gratitude for what they already have.
Despite what I just said, there is no reason to feel shame for demanding a better existence. Those who demand a better existence are the ones who help humanity to secure a better existence, and the act of improving a human's existence is what gives our lives purpose. An idealist is a person who has set his or her eyes on the prize; an idealist who puts plans into action to reach that prize is a purposed individual. If ideas plus action results in progress for humanity, then an idealist has half of the equation correct. The idealists who deserve scorn are the ones who demand progress but do nothing to exact it, whether the progress is intended for another person, the scope of humanity, or for themselves. Don't just dream-- reach for your dreams. You were given more capability to reach your dreams than 99.9% of the organisms living today. What a shame if these capabilities were ignored. Furthermore, if you settle for an incomplete knock-off version of your dreams, feel free to keep going, but still make sure to revere your achievement to that point. Do not expect perfection, from yourself, or from others; instead, expect each human to perform the perfectly noble task of inching toward it. You will not push yourself or another individual to perfection, nor will your actions result in a perfect world, for your breadth is that of just a speck among the vastness of the cosmos. But if you impact the world in even an incrementally positive way, you have done the work of one of many other specks pushing the collective toward a better place. That better place will not be Heaven, nor will it be any other manifestation of the ideal; but, it will be a vast improvement on what is already the most perfect plane of existence ever witnessed by any lifeform in the universe.
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