Two days ago I had an online conversation with a friend of mine. Nominally we were talking about anger management and how to cope with strong emotions in general. To that end he mentioned two books that claim to  provide the Dalai Lama’s answer to how to cope with anger.

http://www.amazon.com/Art-Happiness-Handbook-Living/dp/0340750154/ref=pd_bbs_4/102-2559542-5421746?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1191020903&sr=8-4
http://www.amazon.com/Healing-Anger-Patience-Buddhist-Perspective/dp/1559390735/ref=sr_1_1/102-2559542-5421746?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1191020951&sr=8-1

We started off talking about anger management, but soon we veered off into a discussion about a different but related subject: assumptions.  How we got there is pretty straight forward. It happens to be that for many great anger arises from frequently from the making of unfounded assumptions.

For example, if someone cuts you off on the road, what do you think? Do you think this person is a poor driver, a jerk, or an idiot? Do you think that this person did it to spite you or because he or she thinks they are better than you and deserve the right away?

Another example, suppose you hear a group of people laughing quietly nearby? Do you tend to think that they might be laughing at you? Do you tend to wonder if they are making a joke at your expense?  Or if that same group seems angry and upset do you assume that they are angry at you? Does the fact that they aren’t sharing the cause of their emotional state with you lead you to immediately presume that it has something to do with you or is something you wouldn’t like if you found out about it?

If you ever noticed someone with a disgusted look on their face in passing did the first thing that popped into your mind was that it might be something about you that they find disgusting?

All of these kinds of thoughts and many more often lead people to get angry. Irrationally, powerfully angry. People go crazy as the result of feelings of shame and self doubt, especially if it is triggered by the seemingly unpredictable and incomprehensible actions or reactions of others. 

I’ve never been prone to fits of rage.  I have many relatives who do seem to have powerful anger streaks but that never seems to effect me much.  I don’t go around slamming doors or stomping about or shouting or screaming at people. I never have. Nor is it that I have a strong iron will that keeps that rage in check because I know how others will perceive it in me. No. Not at all. I just never feel that way. I never get any pleasure or find any peace from fierce physical demonstrations of rage. If I got the opportunity to connect my fist with the face of a person who has caused me much real pain and suffering whom I despised more than life itself, I would feel no satisfaction from the feeling of connection. Rather I think the only thing  I would feel is a sore fist.

But I am prone to make assumptions just like those I described above. Only for me I think they lead to different feelings, more like sadness and depression. And I make all kinds of assumptions that result in me feeling this way. If someone says a curt word to me I tend to go into full blown terror that they have decided to hate me. If someone seems to be avoiding me, I start to suspect that their opinion has changed and they are starting to be repulsed by the very idea of my presence.  It’s all crazy assumptions.

I supress these thoughts more or less with shear logic and reasoning.  When someone cuts me off when I’ve driving rather than assume the worst about that person  I generally think:  “this person could be a new driver” or “this person could be sick and not focusing straight” or “this person might be in a hurry to deal with a life or death situation”.  Really, how can I know? Any of those things could be true or any of a thousand other explanations could be true. Or there could just be no explanation at all. The person might have just made a one in a life time mistake and you might just happen to be the one who is effected by that mistake.

And then I also think who cares really? So what if I was cut off. If I survived and didn’t get any injury or damage to my vehicle so what? What difference does it make that it *could* have lead to those things. If it had, maybe then I would have a right to be angry or scared or depressed. But it didn’t? So why feel such strong emotions? I’m fine. They’re fine. Big deal.

I go through a similar reasoning with each and every occurrence that tends to lead me to feel strong negative emotions about anything. Just think it through.  Step by step. Rather than think just about the assumption that makes me feel worst, think about all of the possibilities and think about the overall significance of the experience. Even if it is the worst case scenario, does it really matter enough to get upset over?

But of course the emotional response never *really* goes away. Rather I just find myself better able to deal with it and move on and forget it quickly enough. I can’t ever convince myself not to get upset though, I can only convince myself just not to worry about it and let the future work itself out.

Still, sometimes I just have this sneaking suspicion my assumptions are true. I don’t know why, but I just get this sensation that I *know* the thing I am think has to be the case even though all my logic and reasoning tells me that it doesn’t really have to be.  Maybe this is my instincts at work. Maybe on some level I am picking up more information than I am able to consciously process and my mind is taking in evidence that increases the probability of that assumption being true that I am just not aware of. 

Sometimes I wonder even if the reason my assumptions are true is in fact because that thing I suspect is really meant to be rather obvious. For example, someone might actively be dropping hints that they are annoyed with you or don’t like something you are doing or something rather than telling you outright about it. In this case I might, ironically come up with the assumption that the person is annoyed at me and then talk myself out of it. That is, I might, think, well there’s a lot of possible reasons they could be acting that way. Why should I assume the worst? That ends of creating a very weird dynamic where I appear oblivious to something I am not oblivious to at all which would be very confusing to an outside observer.

On a slightly tangential topic, why would anyone act out hints as to their true feelings rather than say them outright? Two words I think. Plausible deniability.  It is so much less risky to get someone to think you are thinking something without saying it that way if you change your mind about it you can pretend like you never thought it in the first place. Or, if you actually don’t want someone thinking you are thinking like you are actually thinking or you don’t like the consequences of them thinking that you are thinking that, you can always if the topic comes up or even if it doesn’t just deny it in the first place.  Ok, maybe that’s too cynical a perspective. Probably more often people are not direct about what they think and feel because they can’t figure out how to say what they think or feel and aren’t even entirely sure of what they think and feel.

Anyway, I think there’s a lot more to say about assumptions. I’ll write more about assumptions some day soon.

Well there’s sort of two ways to thinking about it.

If you succeed in a game it usually means winning the game, scoring the most points or creating the conditions of victory over your opponent. In life under most societies there’s sort of a primary game that we play where we compete with one another over possessions and power and influence. It used to be success only meant winning in this very specific game. That is, having wealth and power.

But in the modern era the definition of success has radically shifted. Why? Because we found out that when you define success in terms of victory in this competitive game it doesn’t cause the winners to feel happy. In fact it wasn’t even correlated with happiness. In other words it’s not like a sports game where you virtually always feel a sort of visceral joy when your team manages to seize the day.  In life, you could achieve all of the things typically associated with a successful life and not feel happy at all while at the same time many who seemed to be ‘objectively’ failures, or at least lower scorers, at this life competitive game ended up being much happier.

It doesn’t generally help to add to the definition additional conditions. I mean you might think that all you have to do is define victory in the game of life as not only being wealthy and influential but also being married or having children or engaging in charity work or whatever. But it doesn’t work. It doesn’t seem  to be the case that there are any special condition that could be added to the definition of success that makes it correlate with happiness.

So instead, clever people decided to start talking about success in a more subjective language. Now you don’t say “are you successful?” or “am I successful?” so much as we ask questions like this featured question, ie soemthing like “what does success mean to you?” 

But this new definition of success really just amounts to a new word for being “satisfied”. Satisfaction does correlate pretty strongly with happiness (although they are still not casually related) so it appeals to us a lot more. That’s what success really means in modern parlayence. Success means satisfaction.

The thing about satisfaction though is that everybody has a different threshold for what makes them feel satisfied. So for example, you have people who are totally satisfied with a 9-5 job and coming home and drinking beer and watching sports in the evenings. It’s unlikely that that will be enough to satisfy most, but for some that’s more than enough.

Others though are virtually impossible to satisfy. They get their dream job and gain wealth and fame and influence, find and marry the perfect mate, raise wonderful children who are themselves successful, wealthy, and happy and yet still they feel unsatisfied. These people will keep adding new things to their definition of success and then achieving them only to find that it still isn’t enough for them. They just can’t seem to figure out what it is exactly that would make them satisfied. They don’t really know what their personal definition of success.

I think more people are closer to the second situation than the first, but maybe that’s just my feeling because I could not imagine being one of the first, though I think many people I know probably erroneously think of me as more like the first.

I don’t ever have very much in the way of outward ambition. I don’t try to get a good job. I never seek out a relationship. I’ve shown no interest in raising children or being famous and I don’t seek out social gatherings that most people associate as being ‘fun’.  I don’t even show much interest in traveling or seeing the world or meeting new people. As far as others see, I seem fully content.to sit and write my blog entries unconcerned about the world around me.

And I am almost content living that kind of life… but I’m not fully satisfied. The real reason I don’t seek out these other things is that I already know that getting them won’t make me any more satisfied. I may get other joys and other pleasures from filling these standard needs, but I won’t feel any more successful for having them. I understand myself that much. There’s something else I need to achieve first in order to really feel satisfied. I’m just not entirely sure what that is yet.

When I think about it carefully the closest I can come up with to a definition of what success is for me is something like the idea of “significance”. To be satisfied I need to feel as if the decisions I make mean something to someone, as if I am not simply wasting space.  That’s part of it anyway. Still I’m not entirely sure what my definition of success really is. 
   

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Star Trek: TNG.   Just because I could spend 24/7 in the holodeck and effectively be a part of every tv show and every historical event that ever occured and even visit worlds entirely developed in my own imagination. Plus it’s a near utopia civilization. They’ve elimianted money. Come on. Too bad you have to join the military in order to do anything interesting with your life. But it’d be worth it just fo the holodeck.

I just answered this Featured Question, you can answer it too!

I couldn’t really work this in to the last entry but I thought it was important to say anyway. One thing that drives me crazy, I mean it really makes me want to hurt someone is when people wield the truth like a sword, like a weapon. 

When people seek the truth to use it against people, to hurt people when needed or to prove something to someone or to like win an argument or make somebody else look bad, that just strikes me as needlessly cruel. And yet I see this being done all the time, especially in the business world. Truth isn’t sought in order to gain knowledge and understanding. It’s sought to get a leg up on the competition. It’s nothing but a tool in the information war.

In environments like this, where everyone around me seems to see the truth as a kind of weapon or when stuck in the middle of any form of information war it makes me hesitate to reveal the truth. I get afraid to provide the truth to anyone for fear of arming one side or the other, giving them the tools to win their battle. I hate that feeling as if I have to hide from what I know or suspect to be true in order to not be culpable for the harm that I cause by revealing. I hate that feeling so much.

To be fair, sometimes people seek or utilize the truth as a weapon for entirely altruistic reasons. It’s like, what if you try to find out some truth about someone so you can throw it in their face? Maybe you did that because you don’t like that person and just want to cause them pain. Or maybe you thought that that person needed to face that truth about him or herself. Maybe you thought it was the only way they can grow. You might be wrong. Maybe it was even arrogant for you to think that you knew what was best for the person. But maybe your conscience made it so you couldn’t help but take that risk because you thought it too important to do otherwise.

Even so I don’t like it. I don’t think it counts as real honesty. Again, I guess I think the truth should be sought and revealed for its own sake, not for some ulterior motive.  But maybe I’m just overall being fanciful. Maybe the truth really is only a tool, a utility,  a weapon, or an object and nothing more. I hope not.

How deep does your fealty to the truth run?  How deep should it run?  

By
fealty I mean your inclination to tell the truth, share the truth,
believe in the truth, seek the truth, and demand the truth? In other
words to what extent to do you think that the truth is sort of
independently important, independently invaluable and that nothing not
even the happiness and welfare of yourself or others should stand in
the way of that truth?

Because for all we talk about how
important the truth is, I think a lot of us a lot of the time don’t
think too highly if it. We tend to think of the truth as situational.
Tell the truth when it matters or when it will help. Or we think of the
truth as a kind of tool to be wielded to gain some advantage or achieve
some ends.  Or we think of the truth as a kind of ‘owned’ thing, that
is one truth is your truth and another truth is my truth and nobody
should impinge upon my truth soiling it with their own.  In all cases,
the truth lacks inherent significance. It’s a subjective thing bound to
your will and your reason and can be discarded with a moment’s notice
if needed or never aired at all.

As for me, I used to be
pretty nonchalant about the truth. I never thought of myself as very
subservient to it. I never felt as if it had any great inherent power. 
When I was very young I was a flat out liar.  It’s true. Like I was six
or seven and I would lie through my teeth and the funny thing is, I
don’t think anybody even really realized it. I almost always got away
with it. It’s a little funny today but back then I felt a little bad
about it.  I never enjoyed lying, I just did it anyway.

Some
examples perhaps are in order. When I was in elementary school we would
get these field trip permission slips and they’d give them straight to
the students to take home to their parents to have them signed. Back in
those days the teachers more or less trusted the children to do that. I
think it’s crazy to put that responsibility on the student solely in
retrospect but I guess it was a good way to try to teach kids
responsibility and it more or less worked back in those days.  Now’a'days
I think permission slip lack of return is a big deal and schools come
up with all kinds of involved systems to ensure that the slips get to
the parents and get returned in time.

Well, I was one of the
only students who actually forgot to give my parents my permission
slip. I just literally forgot. I would stuff it in the bottom of my bookbag
and totally forget about and I wouldn’t ever be able to find it again. 
Even if the teacher reminded us every day to give it to our parents I
just would never get around to do it. I don’t know what was so
preoccupying my mind in those days that I couldn’t remember such a
simple thing as to give my parents a slip of paper. It certainly isn’t
like they would have any problem signing it or paying for the trip or
whatever. I just didn’t give them the slip of paper. I was always
somewhat absent minded.

Anyway the last day when the permission
slips were do would come and that morning I’d realize it. “Oh no” I’d
think (back then I didn’t curse). And the first time I think this
happened I think I just admitted it and felt really bad about it being
the only student in class who didn’t have a signed permission slip and
the teacher had to jump through all these hoops calling my parents up
and whatnot in order to get me permission to go. But the next time it
happened. I said no way I’m going through that again.  I reasoned that
my parents would never say *no* to my having permission to go on such a
trip so the whole slip thing was just a waste of everyone’s
time.  Why should I in fact waste my parents time making them sign this
sheet of paper? Why should I waste my teachers time telling them that I
never did make them sign it and now she has to call my parents? This
was just silly to me. 

So I forged my parents signature.  

This
is pretty amazing to me now to think back on it since my handwriting
has and has always sucked. But I found a copy of my parents signature
somewhere and I just very slowly and carefully made a duplicate of
exactly what I saw. 

To my utter shock, it worked! Of course
having done it successfully once I just had to do it again. And again.
I only got caught once. I rushed and the signature I wrote didn’t look
authentic and the teacher called me up and said something all knowingly
as if it was so obvious that I had forged my signature an she was so
smart to have caught it. Lol,
of course I’d already gotten away with at least two forged signatures
with that teacher in the past.  Anyway, I lied my way out of it. I
pretended it was the only time and that I had lost the form and felt
bad about it and I guess I looked all pitiful or something but the
teacher never did tell my parents about it. So to this day, my parents
probably don’t know about my early life of of counterfeiting unless
they are reading this blog right now which is unlikely since I’ve never
told them about it.

Anyway, that was hardly the only example of
my lying exploits. I was really good at getting out of school too. I
could pretend to be sick effectively enough to get out of school.
Actually I got lucky in that I was a person who never felt really bad
when I was sick so a few times early in my life I was sick and went
right on to school without thinking about it and I’d end up getting
sent to the nurse’s office and sent home because I have an insanely
high temperature all the while I protested that I was fine.  Anyway,
this left an impression on people, so they tried to tell me that if I
was ever feeling sick I should say something and not just go on to
school anyway.

Haha,
bingo. That meant that I could just pretend to be sick and everybody
would believe me. Any day I didn’t feel like going to school I’d tell
people I was sick and even though I didn’t particularly look sick
they’d believe me because they’d remember the last time when I didn’t
‘look’ sick. Sometimes I had to do a little trickery if they tried to
take my temperature or something to ensure that it registered high, but
that was easy enough. Then I’d just need to make sure I stayed in bed
all day, preferably for a couple of days. And bam just like that no school for me.

Actually
in retrospect I’m sure some of those times my parents saw through my
deception. I think though that they knew that I was having a hard time
with school with bullies and whatnot or maybe they just suspected that
there was something or other bothering me about my school life so I
think they were ok
with me just taking a day off because I was sick of it.  It isn’t like
they ever imagined I would have a hard time keeping up because of it. I
was way to smart for that and everybody knew it. I probably knew it the
least back then because I didn’t play hooky that much because I was a
little afraid of falling behind.

As I got older though I found
ways to sneak out of school that were a lot more clever and a lot more
deceptive and which my parents never found out about. Sometimes though
I would just get shocked at how easy it was.  Sometimes it was just a
matter of coming up with some sort of believable excuse for the people
at school and I would just say like “go ahead and call my parents” and
usually I wouldn’t even have to say that. I was always the good student
so everybody believed me. Everybody thought I wouldn’t lie. It’s crazy
in retrospect. Why did they think because I was good at math and
writing that I was incapable of lying?  They had some stereotypes that
the students that lie and cut class are the ones who are loud and
obnoxious and get poor grades or have unstable family lives or
something.  They didn’t realize that I was lying and cutting class just
for the shear challenge of it. I thought it was fun. And in contrast I
thought school was mostly a waste of my time. Man I was arrogant.

It’s
not just lying and cutting class too. I was a accomplished liar in all
kinds of things. I lied. I stole. I cheated. Not on tests because I
never had to, and I didn’t think I’d be able to talk myself out of it
if I got caught. Wait, that’s not true. I cheated on one test too. I
used my calculator. But that was just such an obvious cheat I couldn’t
help myself. To this day I believe half the class was probably doing
the same thing. The teacher had to know it too. Why allow us a graphing
calculator when the math doesn’t get beyond basic multiplication?
That’s crazy. I also engaged pretty heavily in the ‘homework’ copying
trade that became a vibrant market in some of my classes. Although I
was more often to be the provider than the user, I used it a few times
myself and whereas others would sometimes get caught for having copied
I always made sufficient changes to make my work look uniquely my own.
Even when I provided my work to others, I always had two copies, one to
turn in and one to let others copy, unless it was a class where I was
sure the teacher wouldn’t bother to check.

Sure, in all of this craziness,
I did get caught sometimes but I was somehow able to shake off blame
and it was weird too because I wouldn’t even be trying. I think I
always expected people to catch me and start yelling at me and punish
me severely just like everybody else gets punished, but it always
seemed like each time I was caught they’d always assume it was my one
and only lapse as if I was just usually a good student but for some
reason or another something terrible was happening in my life and I
felt the need to act out. Some garbage like that must have been what
they were thinking.  There was a much more likely explanation though if
they thought about it though. It’s just that I was bored. 

It’s
funny though that the only times I ever got punished were for things I
didn’t do. Like I’d get detention with a group of students because
‘they’ were talking out in class and I happened to be sitting there
with them. Ridiculous stuff like that. Only like when there was a
substitute teacher would something like that happen though. The real
teachers knew. “Nephyo would never do anything like that.”, “It couldn’t be Nephyo talking out in class like that.”  Haha. It was so funny.

And
the substitute teachers were the best to get one over on too. Whenever
there was a substitute I’d be able to get out of most of my work. Some
of the regular teachers probably saw through me to some extent over
time, at least the ones I liked did. But the substitutes never had a
chance.

Now when there were substitutes there were always
students trying to make their lives a living hell and I hated that. I
wasn’t trying to be disruptive like they were. In fact sometimes I’d
try to do what I could to mitigate their behavior, if they were
students I got along with well enough and not kids I was afraid of or
kids I didn’t care about.  Anyway, I didn’t want to cause any trouble.
I just didn’t want to do any work. So I didn’t.

Here’s one funny
story about that, there was this substitute teacher who passed out this
reading material and we had to read it all and answer some multiple
choice questions on some work sheet that everybody knew he wasn’t going
to grade then we could have time to do what we wanted. The teacher
figured it was so long it would take us all period. Basically this busy
work was just to keep us shutup
and even then I thought it was so stupid it made my head ache. The
stuff we were reading didn’t have anything to do with the rest of the
curriculum in that class. Threefourths of the questions you could
answer without having read a single word of the text.  Anyway, I read
for about ten minutes, maybe less, quickly bubbled in some answers and
then I raised my hand and said that I was done.  The teacher
incredulously said “You can’t possibly be done in such a short time.”
But then the whole class came to my defense. “Yeah, that’s Nephyo.” “He can do it.” “Of course Nephyo
could read it.” I was already known as an avid reader, but no. I don’t
read that fast. The book was too long for anyone not trained in speed
reading to finish in that time frame. Most would not finish in the
entire class. That’s why the worksheet wasn’t even due until the next
day when the regular teacher would be back and would surely just throw
it away if he even bothered to collect it (he didn’t).  But the idea of
me was so great that the entire class wanted to back me up. They wanted
to think of me as the person who can read that book in ten minutes
flat. And really what was the teacher going to say? He was a
substitute. He didn’t know any of us. The funny truth is the teacher
probably hadn’t read it himself so he couldn’t quiz me on it.  Yes, of
course I’d barely read a word of it.  So I did whatever I wanted. Free
period.

That one made me feel bad afterwards though. I felt as
if I had not just lied to the teacher but to the entire class. Worse I
felt I’d used them to gain something for me without giving them
anything in return. To be sure some of the smarter students in the
class knew I was full of shit (maybe everybody did I don’t know). But
it should be no surprise that a number of them also ‘finished’
remarkably quickly. But they were smart enough not to push it nearly as
far as I did. They knew that having two or more speed readers in a
class was remarkably unlikely. Although I remembering wishing them
would and I was imagining coming up with a story to try and defend them
like lying about some sort of speed reading lessons we had after school
or some B.S. like that. He was a substitute. It probably wouldn’t have
flown but I would have given it a shot. Alas, the other students didn’t
think it was worth the risk.

And that’s just it really. Was that
lie somehow inherently bad? Were all those lies back then? Did I hurt
myself by being so deceptive? Did I lose something?

I find that
as I grow older I become much more truthful sometimes to a fault.
Whereas before I would just hold the truth in, fail to say things, or
even substitute a lie for the truth where it was expedient, now I just
tend to blurt out the truth. I tell me people everything I am thinking
all that I believe sometimes much more than they want or need to hear.
And I cause trouble with this. But more and more I do it anyway.

I’m
still not *that* honest, in the grand scheme of things. I’m still a
pretty quiet person unlikely to volunteer anything, but I am changing.
And the reason for that change does not appear to be altruistic.  I
don’t think I’ve become a person who believes in the truth’s inherent
goodness. I don’t think I’ve really developed a sense of fealty to the
truth at all. Rather I think that as I get older the boredom of my
youth has transferred into impatience with the world around me. I tell
the truth now because information seems to transmit too dang slowly
when I observe how people hide and peep around the truth, trying to say
just enough of the truth or to say the truth in just the right way as
to be to their greatest benefit or to prevent hurting someone. I hate
that.  It’s not that I mind trying to keep your words from hurting
people but it’s just so dang slow. Understanding comes so slowly to
people when they play games with the truth. It just seems so much
easier to me to just put everything out there on the table all at once
and then sort everything out. That’s the kind of honesty I’ve developed
now. I’ve changed from my lying days of youth to the guy who gets on everybody’s nerves because he keeps airing everybody’s business.

I’m
not a big fan of this change in myself. I feel truly that if I am to be
an honest person it should be because I really believe in the power and
efficacy of the truth. I should feel that knowing and sharing the truth
is fundamentally good no matter the consequences. I shouldn’t just be
honest because I’m too impatient to deal with lies and half-truths that
become so common in regular discourse.

Actually I suspect though
that I am going to become even more forthright and brutally honest as I
grow older. Why? Genetics. My grandmothers on both sides were renowned
for being the kinds of people who “tell it like it is”. They were
always direct and to the point and didn’t ever seem to ever feel any
kind of reservations about telling the truth to anybody and everybody
who crossed their path.  My Mom also as she grows older seems to become
more and more direct. She’s never been a person who was unwilling to
tell the truth but more and more she volunteers the truth whether asked
or not. And she doesn’t seem inclined to spare anybodies feelings as
much any more. And as for my Dad. I don’t think I’ve ever observed him
in a single dissembling act. Not once have I noticed him lie. He does
hold back a lot more but it’s more because he pauses to find the right
wording for something before telling people what they don’t want to
hear. Not the nicer wording. The truer wording. That’s the way he is.

But
it would be really strange for me to become this way if I don’t
fundamentally believe that the truth is good. I mean if I start to
treat people like that but deep down inside I actually don’t think the
truth matters that much wouldn’t that make me a kind of a hypocrite? It
would mean that I am only trying to further the truth because it is
convenient to me, because it fits with my own aesthetic vision for the
way the world should be or because it makes me happier to know that
others know the truth regardless of whether or to what extent it hurts
them. 

If that’s the way I become then I won’t be a person who
has a sense of fealty to the truth. Rather I’m more like the traitorous
spy within the truth’s organization using its tools for my own gain. So
the question is can I become truly loyal to the truth? To do that I’d
have to believe that the truth is fundamentally good of its own right.
Right now I just believe it and I don’t know if I ever will.

5:55 AM. A strange time.

I awoke this morning with my head tilted at a strange angle, my eyes pointing straight at my alarm clock.

Precisely 5:55. The last of the tri-part times. You’ll never see a 6:66 unless you are on an acid trip. And precisely 5 minutes from the next hour too. An altogether unique time of the day.  That’s when I awoke.

And with the waking came an overwhelming and disturbing feeling. The feeling that I am about to make a terrible terrible mistake.

It threw me. I’ve rarely felt anything remotely resembling such a vivid sense of trepidation and discomfort. I got up paced around for a while trying to shake the feeling but it won’t go away. All day, until now when I can’t help but write about it. Somehow, in some way, I feel as if the something terrible is going to happen in my immediate future and it’s going to be all my fault.

Wait. Stop. Think rationally about this.  It is impossible to know the future. Well, maybe not impossible, but I certainly have never exhibited any signs of clairvoyance or divination. It seems unlikely that I developed any such powers right now.  So if I am feeling fear it must be because of something that will happen that I can rationally or irrationally predict. Some conflict that I either know is going to come to pass on some level or I fear  is going to come to pass and have some convincing reasons for having that fear even if it is irrational.

The most likely explanation then is that I had some sort of a dream and in that dream I imagined the future consequences of decisions I am already in the process of making, decisions that are about to come to fruition and in my dream I imagined that the consequences were terrible enough that they disturbed me. The only problem is, I don’t remember the dream. I don’t know what it is that I am afraid of. I only know that I am afraid.

Or maybe I do know but I am just afraid to really face it. There are a lot of changes happening or about to happen in my life right now. Any of them could be the thing that is likely to lead to the terrible future I dreamed of.

But I don’t want to think about that stuff. I don’t want to imagine that I might lose or harm some part of my life that I don’t want to lose.

I could veer off I suppose. I could decide right now to abandon all of the decisions I was planning on making and reject all the choices I’ve chosen and just try to do something totally different and unpredicted and unpredictable.  I sometimes make random choices to follow my instincts even in cases where others would just follow along.

Who am I kidding? I’ve already decided these things.  I’ve already put the balls in motion and I’ve already made the commitments. I won’t back down now. I can’t. I made these choices because I thought they would help me in some way to learn more about myself, to become more than I am now. Maybe whatever it is that I am fearing is a part of that goal, a necessary step along the way. To give up now before I have even begun would make me feel far worse about myself. Far worse.

So to be true, I was wrong about the feeling that I had after I awoke this morning. It wasn’t a feeling that I am about to make a big mistake, rather it should correctly be described as the feeling that I have *already* made one or more big mistakes and I am about to find out the consequences of those mistakes and I am not going to like them.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the future will all be candycanes and lollypops. Only I hate candycanes and I’m not a big fan of lollypops. So for me it could be things I love: all video games and writing prompts.  Maybe. Maybe.

There’s no point dwelling on it. I guess I just have to wait and see what the future holds. I’ll do the best that I can to move myself forward as quickly and carefully as possible so I can get past whatever discomfort the future might hold and become that future me I’ve always wanted to be.

I finally got a chance to watch his speech in its entirety so now I feel as if I have enough information to really answer this question.  There’s a lot to say about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s visit in general and even more that can be said about the content of his speech but if I were to talk about it all I’d be writing all night and all day tomorrow. It’s late though, and I’m a little tired so I’ll try to touch only only what I think is the most important and the most controversial.

But first something that I don’t think is very important at all, the statement by the Columbia Dean that the university would even invite Hitler. This is just a sort of silly provacative thing to say that doesn’t mean very much but the philosopher in me finds it an interesting topic to examine.

I think a huge distinction would need to be made between inviting Hitler as a world leader before you are aware of the monstrous atrocities he’s committed or before he started on his massive genocidal campaign and afterwards. 

If you only suspect that he might be a monster or might yet become a monster then I think it’s probably a good idea to allow him to speak. It isn’t even any special feature of universities to me that justifies this invitation. I would be just as fine with allowing him to speak before Congress or speak at the World Trade Center memorial or speak whereever he is willing to speak nd the people are willing to have him.  And that’s for one very simple reason. The more you talk to him, the more you hear from him the more information you will have. Even knowing his lies is better than not knowing anything about him, for having him be a faceless entity in a far away land. That knowledge will help you to combat him should he end up confirming your suspicions.  In any case it isn’t even any of our business as outside obsevers whether Hitler is allowed to speak in each of these venues. Rather it’s up to the communities involved to choose who they want to speak. If the majority of the Columbia University faculty, staff, and student body rejects Hitler’s presence than he should be rejected.  I think it would be a good idea to let him speak anywhere and everywhere, and our government should try to encourage it, but nobody would say that we should force him to be allowed to speak in any praticular place.

On the other hand if he’s really Hitler and I mean by that that he’s a person who in the process of implementing policies to exterminate hundreds of thousands of innocent people and you know this without a shadow of a doubt.Well then I think your behavior toward him should be different. You still invite him into your country and to your school but you do so hoping he will be stupid enough to accept the invitation. And then when he does, well you arrest him. You make him face international justice. You can let him speak too, if you want. Maybe we’d learn something about the madness within the human mind. But regardless you have a moral obligation to stop this person at all costs. International agreements guaranteeing his safety would not be enough to protect him in my mind, nor would the desire for the free and open exchange of information. If the fate of so many thousands of people hang in the balance, you do what is necessary. The only possible reason I could see for letting Hitler go would be if you thought that for some reason by doing so you could set up his regime and make it more vulnerable and so save more lives. Even that would be a hard choice and you’d better be damned sure about it.

Do not get the wrong idea by me saying this. I do not in any way believe that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is comparable to Hitler. In fact it disturbs me greatly when people use this comparison. I think it is being used as a kind of political maneuver to try and create public fear and loathing toward Iran. As some have put it, with Saddam gone, the US needs another boogey man to inspire fear and so galvanize the public will in support of our continued global empire. 

But I did bring up the Hitler case because I want to say that I understand why people are so upset by his presence. I understand why people hate it so and reject this idea of allowing him to speak. If you’ve bought into this idea that Ahmadinejad is or will soon be this generation’s Hitler, than of course you’re going to want him not to come. You’re going to think that if he comes and we don’t stop him, then we will be responsible for the future atrocities he continues to cause. We will be to blame. We had the power to stop him and out of some naive devotion to pretty little concepts of fairness and the pursuit of knowledge we let him go so he could monsrously slaughter and make miserable millions of people around the world.

Now there’s lots and lots of reasons why the Ahmadinejad/Hitler analogy just doesn’t make any sense. The biggest and most obvious being that he simply lacks the power in Iran that Hitler had in Germany. He doesn’t even control Iran’s military nor has he done anything to suggest that he intends to cease control of it any time soon. And he’s been in power for quite some time now. If we are looking for genocidal madman tendencies, why haven’t we really seen them yet? I’d even entertain the notion that maybe deep down in his heart he has a Hitler-like personality and Hitler-like aspirations, but if that’s the case then it is clear that the circumstnaces he is in completely neuter his ability to act upon those impulses. He wouldn’t be the first world leader who if given a chance would become a monstrous slaughterer of innocents but simply cannot because he lacks that level of power and control. This is a good thing.  It means things are working. More or less.  (Actually the only place a real Hitler could arise would be a nation of comparable power and influence as the United States. That’s the only analogous situation to the one Germany those days)

I really don’t believe Ahmadinejad’s Hitler-like at all though. I’m sure I could be mistaken, but from hearing his speech I did not get that impression. He seemed a well reasoned and mostly rational speaker. He clearly had some preconceived notions that were influencing his opinions that I believe are just not true nd his cultural heritage certainly influences his way of thinking, but all of that is to be expected. He carried himself so well during this speech giving event that I cant help but suspect that if he had gotten his wish to debate George W. Bush he’d probably wipe the floor with our President.  But I don’t think saying that’s so much praise for the Iranian President as an indictment on the debating skills of our current President. The only thing that might hurt Ahmadinejad is his long and convoluted religious analogies that make little sense. Maybe those go over better in Iran but I don’t think American audiences would get very impressed by them in a debate setting.

But I didn’t want to talk about Mahmoud’s speaking skills. Rather the subject matter that interests me most about his visit is the most disappointing media coverage of it that we got. 

At least we did get all of it televised on some stations and I think that’s great, but mostly we got summary stories of the event and what was said and those stories as they almost always are, were severely lacking.

First there was the coverage of the lead up to the event. This was very rabbel rousing coverage. The newscasters seemed to take great joy in airing every possible critique of Iran or its President and showcase dozens of people upset or annoyed at his impending presence. Almost nobody bothered to put anyone up in front of a camera who was willing to give even a lukewarm defense of anything at all having to do with Iran. Nobody said a word that might even cast into doubt any of the accepted truths about Iran.  Rather we just heard again and again thos same old lines he wants “Israel wiped off the face of the map”  and is  “developing nuclear weapons” and is “a holocaust denier”, and of course how Iran is a “supporter of terrorist groups.”  

There are reasons to dispute all of these claims as Ahmadinejad proved during his speech but not alterior perspective was aired on any news program I heard.  Even more disturbing was the utter lack of anything resembling an attempt to give Americans a historical perspective on the regime of Iran. We heard nothing about how the current regime of Iran came into power, or about the previous brutal regime in place in part because of US intervention. We heard nothing about the wars between Iraq and Iran and how we, the US supplied Iraq in that conflict. We heard nothing even about how Ahmadinejad came to power and very little about any of the things Ahmadinejad did since coming to power. Instead all we hear about mostly are the things he’s *said*. It’s as if we care more about words than facts and deeds.

This kind of tunnel vision showed up in the presentation too. The best part of the entire event was the very very beginning of the Columbia University President’s speech where he airs specific complaints about specific human rights violations happening in Iran.  He talks about scholars inprisoned and people killed by the Iranian regime and reports from Amnesty international. Unfortunately the President didn’t end his remarks there and gracefully ask his guest to respond. Instead he went off into crazy land trying to preach to his students and convince them to feel the same level of unthinking disgust and hatred toward their speaker as he no doubt feels. Maybe this is the way they treat all speakers at Columbia University. If so then so be it. That’s just one school I never want to attend. But if it isn’t, and I can’t imagine that it really is, that speech became increasing incredibly rude as it went along to the point that I could not help but feel embarrassd listening to it.

The media coverage of this introductory speech was really bad too. They kept repeating just a few of the President’s most biting words like “a petty and cruel dictator”.  But none of the rest of the content of the University PResident’s speech was ever aired or discussed. Most importantly nobody seemed to want to talk about the beginning part which was actually quite good and true and reasonable. Talk about scholars inprisoned and detained I guess just isn’t as exciting as the stoy of “University President bashed Iranian President.”  So all we get are the bashes.

The tunnell vision comes in when we look to the questions that are asked of the Iranian president. To no surprise it is almost an exact replica of the common media points, the only points being made in the news about Iran. In other words the questions are about: 1. nuclear weapons program.  2. destruction of Israel statements  3. holocaust denial statements, and 4. support for terrorist groups.  These are the ‘hot’ topics I guess. The questions everyone wants the answer to. The topics sensationalized by the media. It really is no surprise that the Columbia university students happened to bring up those tired old points.

What would have been far more interesting and more effective is if they talked more about human rights, more about the reports of scholars being jailed and mistreated, the protests being shutdown, the treatment of opposition parties, and the reports by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.  These are the questions about Iran that really matter. These are the things we should be trying to change about Iran, in my opinion. They are actually in the grand scheme of things far more important than the question of whether Iran’s nuclear program will continue or whether Akmadinejad really himself denied the holocaust or just complained about holocaust deniers being jailed.  Seriously, who cares about that?

There was one question about human rights and it ironically was the very question that got the most news coverage, albeit biased and disturbing coverage. The question was about women’s rights and the treatment of homosexuals. This is a serious topic and one that I think should have been treated with the greatest deal of respect. But it became the joke of the day. The news coverage abandoned the question of how women and homosexuals are actually treated in Iran instead to focus on Ahmadinejad’s absurd statement that “we don’t have homsexuals in Iran”.  Why? Because it illicits a laugh.  It’s unclear to me whether this was quite calculated on Ahmadinejad’s part or just a part of his own natural biased and unusual religion influenced view of the world. But I suspect it was calculated. It seemed so effective at distracting people from the actual content of his response and keep people from focusing at the problem at hand.

Two other aspects of the news coverage bothered me.  One was the description of Ahmadinejad as being “belligerent” and “combative” in many of the news reports.  I watched it and I just didn’t see the combativeness in him. He seemed rather completely calm and in control. Too calm and in control. He deviated from his planned speech to chide his introducer for not treating him with due respect but he didn’t do it with any vehemance. There was nothing in his manner that seemed to suggest that he was angry or annoyed or even disturbed by these events. Indeed I would not be surprised if he was ecstatic. His anti-American support at home will undoubtedly climb when they see the rude introduction their president received at the hands of American intellectuals. In a sense ithat was a gift to Ahmadinejad.  Anyway, the language in the coverage suggesting that Mahmoud was somehow combative or argumentative almost sounded like it was coverage written for the event before it even occurred as if it was reflecting what the Journalists expected to see rather than what was actually there.

The last was the lack of factual verification in the news coverage. There were some provocative claims made by both the Columbia University President and the Iranian President but there was noting in the news that talked about whether or to what extent these statements are true. Even something so simple and easy to clarify as the “wiped of the map” statement was completely unvetted in the media. It was taken to be true  and exact even though a cursory search through the web puts it into doubt. When you take the entire statement in context it doesn’t mean quite the same thing and it doesn’t make anywhere near as good a sound bite. So they ignore it and let viewers just take the speakers words as they stand and it sucks. The Iranian president made accusations of the US supporting terrorist groups targetting Iran. That isn’t a subject important enough for someone to bother to try and look up the veracity of? That’s just ridiculous. And what about the numbers and documented cases of human rights abuse that the Columbian President aluded to? Not to mention the question of whether Iran is really funding terrorists. Surely these are things that we the viewers would want clarification on. Well if you are going to get it you better fire up your wikipedia because the main stream media apparently isn’t even going to bother to spend five minutes to enlighten you.

Anyway, overall the entire event was rather disappointing. While it was definitely interesting to hear the Iranian President speak, I can’t help but feel that very little was accomplished by it all. For an event meant to foister learning and understanding across cultures, I doubt that very many people gained in any amount of learning and understanding. People pretty much probably kept their own pre-existing beliefs about Iran and if anything the only benefit this event had was to help re-enforce in both countries the hatred of each other felt by the extemist elements in each. Iranians who hate the US will be able to point to this and say “look how intolerant those Americans are” and of course Americans  get to hear  all this unchallenged criticism of  Iranian policy and get their rage and ferver built up. The belief that “Iran is evil” and “Iran is our enemy” solidifies in people’s mind however absurd those propositions really are.

Oh and on an aside I just don’t get the desire not to let Ahmadinejad visit Ground Zero. He was not behind 9/11. He wasn’t even in power and there’s no evidence he supports or did support those terrorist groups that were behind.  Hamas and Hezbollah are very different from Al Qaeda. Why can’t we acknowledge the difference?

On the other hand I’ve got no problem at all with the protesters out in the streets protesting his presence. That’s just a part of a functioning democracy and it’s exactly the way it should be.

I just answered this Featured Question, you can answer it too!

Bennet: “Ok everybody. It’s come to my attention that Peter Petrelli
is going to go nuclear and blow up half of New York. But I think that
given all our resources we can come come up with a game plan to limit
the likelihood of such an outcome. That’s why I’ve brought you all
together.”

Niki: “Wait a minute how do we know he’s going to blow up?”

Hiro: “I can travel through time and I found about this by visiting the
future. Also a future version of me came back and told us. By the way,
check out my kick ass sword.”

Ando: “Yes yes we’ve all seen your little sword.”

Hiro: “Isn’t it awesome. I’m going to stab Sylar with it. Yes, I’m that much of a badass.”

Parkman: “Yeah right. Do you even know how to use that thing?”

Hiro: “No. But I’m sure my father will be able to teach me how to be an expert swordsman in a single day.”

Parkman: “I think you better let me handle Sylar.”

Niki: “Oh right and I’m sure your gun will be soo much more effective against his super powers.”

Bennet: “ENOUGH!”

Micah: <whispers> “I think your sword looks cool.”

Bennet: “Anyway, as I was saying. Since we have intimate knowledge of
the future thanks to Hiro’s and Peter’s powers that should give us a
leg up against Sylar. So the only real problem is Peter’s impending
explosion.”

D.L.: “What does he mean Peter’s powers?”

Ando: “There was this guy who could paint the future. He got all
depressed after he shot his girlfriend and so he let Sylar cut his head
open. Peter absorbed his powers.”

D.L.: “Bad way to go.”

Ando: “I can think of worse. Like maybe having a fist materialized in the middle of your head.”

Niki: “That’s disgusting.”

D.L.: “hmmmmm”

Parkman: “Woah. I’m reading Peter’s and Hiro’s minds right now and the future is pretty f-ed up.”

Peter: “Yeah isn’t it? I get a scar. I can regenerate and for some reason in the future I have a scar right on face. wtf.”

Parkman: “Forget about that. I turn like totally evil.”

Hiro: “The future’s not so bad to me. I end up a total badass swordsman.”

Ando: “It’s true. Future Hiro’s pretty badass.”

Peter: “Yeah. He definitely is. But I’m pretty badass myself in the future.”

Mohinder: “Unfortunately, that is the very source of our problem.”

Nathan: “What about me do I end up evil?”

Parkman: “Nah. Sylar just steals your job.”

Nathan: “Crap.”

Bennet: “Don’t worry. We’re going to stop all that from happening all we need to do is—”

Parkman: “Holy Christ I kill you!”

Bennet: “WHAT!”

Claire: “There’s no way I’m letting you kill my dad!”

Peter: “Sorry, but uh, Sylar kills you.”

Claire: “Oh Shit.”

Bennet: “Ok. Ok. Everybody calm down. I told you this future isn’t
going to happen. All we have to do is stop Peter from exploding. Now
let’s start brain storming here. We’ve  got a lot of tools at our
disposal let’s just come up with a few plans and be ready to implement
them.”

Molly: “I know I’m just a little kid and all and I just got introduced to the show but can I say something.”

Bennet: “Of course. We’re all working together here.”

Molly: “Well I was just thinking that since we already said that Hiro
could travel through time and teleport, isn’t the solution to the whole
Peter problem pretty clear?”

Bennet: “You’re right. Of course.  It’s so obvious what we have to do. Claire. You shoot him in the head.”

Claire: “Excuse me?”

Peter: “Actually, that’s exactly what I was thinking. It’s the perfect plan.”

Mohinder: “It sounds like a most excellent suggestion to me.”

Claire: “Wait a minute? Why me? Why not Parkman or Hiro or you dad?”

Bennet: “Sweety of course I’d do it, but your father is going to be
busy helping Parkman and Hiro fight Sylar. You know these two aren’t
nearly bright enough to be able to do it on their own.”

Claire: “Well that’s true.”

Hiro and Parkman: “Hey!”

Peter: “And besides, if I get too radioactive you’re the only one who could get close enough to me.”

Claire: “Hello? Last time I checked guns were a long range weapon.”

Bennet: “You’re the only one who can do this. You have to hit him in
that exact spot in the back of his head where you temporarily die if
something is lodged in there.”

Molly: <under her breath> “Lodged? Would the bullet lodge?”

Claire: “But… But… I just can’t do it!”

Niki: “How about you Nathan? Why don’t you shoot your brother?”

Nathan: “I… I just can’t do it!”

Niki: “Oh please you were willing to let your brother explode, but you can’t shoot him in the back of the head?”

Nathan: “That’s different. He’ll probably just regenerate if he explodes.”

Molly to Micah: “Is there something I’m not understanding here? He
regenerates if he *explodes* but not if he gets shot in the back of the
head?”

Micah to Molly: “I’ve learned to not ask questions. “

Molly to Micah: “But I mean wouldn’t that part of his brain that stops
regeneration when damaged be blown into itsy bitsy pieces or
disintegrated or something. We are talking about a *nuclear* explosion
here aren’t we?”

Micah to Molly: “Trust me. Just drop it ok.”

Bennet: “Right then. I think we’re making progress now. Plan A. Either
Claire, Nathan, or I if I can get a free moment will shoot Peter in the
back of the head.”

Nathan: “Couldn’t we just stab him back there? We know that if we stab
him all we have to do is take out whatever we stab him with and he’ll
regenerate right? I’m pretty sure I pulled that piece a glass out and
he regenerated just fine.”

Bennet: “Listen. Whose making the rules around here? Just shut up and listen.”

Nathan: “Right. Sorry.”

Bennet: “As I was saying we need a few back up plans in case that one doesn’t work out too well. Suggestions?”

Niki: “I know! Why don’t I just knock him out with my super strength?”

Bennet: “Now you’re talking. That’s a good backup. There’s a chance he
might explode anyway so I’d rather leave that one as a last resort. But
good thinking.”

Parkman: “If you’re super strong why don’t you take him and throw him way far away so he can’t hurt anyone.”

Niki: “That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard.”

Micah: “No it’s not Mom. The Hulk could do it. So could superman.”

Niki: “Sorry honey, your mother’s just not that super strong. Instead
of real super strength I get to talk to my dead sister in the mirror.”

Parkman: <sarcastically> “Good deal.”

Niki: “Shut up Parkman. It’s not like your mind reading is all that great either.”

Nathan: “Hey at least neither of you get lame ass flight as your power.”

Micah: “What are you talking about flight totally kicks ass as a power.”

Niki: “Micah! Watch your language!”

Micah: “Well it does.”

Molly: “I don’t think it’s all that great. Arc Angel was kind of lame.”

Micah: “That’s true. But it depends on the kind of flight. If it’s
superman flight, mixed with super speed it’s incredibly awesome.”

Hiro: “I saw flying man fly. He flies super fast just like super man. Sugoi!”

Molly: “But superman has invulnerability with his flight. That’s what
makes it so good. He can fly through space and land easily. Without the
invulnerability you’re just likely to get yourself killed.”

Hiro: “Flying man burned his feet when he landed.”

Molly: “See, he’s not invulnerable. So he’s right. His power sucks.”

Nathan: “Gee thanks.”

Micah: “It’s not that bad. He could at least fly Peter far away somewhere so he doesn’t blow up the city.”

Bennet: “You are one bright little boy! That’s exactly the kind of
contingency plan I was looking for. Nathan if for some reason you can’t
shoot him fly him far away so he can’t blow up the city.”

Nathan: “Wait a minute. Won’t I get blown up too if I do that?”

Bennet: “Well yeah probably.”

Molly: “You wouldn’t if you were invulnerable.”

Micah: <glares at Molly> “Don’t worry if you’re super fast like
superman, you can just fly far enough away and then drop him somewhere
and fly far away. Then you can live out the rest of your life as a
drunken bum regretting your past actions.”

Nathan: “Sweat.”

Bennet: “Great. Now we’re making real progress. We’ve got the shoot
Peter plan, the stab Peter plan, the knock out Peter plan, the pick up
and throw Peter plan, and the fly to enormously high heights and drop
Peter plan. Do you think we need a few more contingencies.”

Peter: “These plans are making me a little uncomfortable. They all seem to involve my bodily injury.”

Bennet: “Hey do you want to save the world or not?”

Peter: “Yeah yeah I guess. That’s the point of my whole character.”

Bennet: “Good then. Just be happy you met my daughter when you did and absorbed her power or else you’d be really screwed.”

Claude: “You know if you’d just listened to my lessons and learned to control your powers you wouldn’t be in this mess.”

Parkman: “Hey, where the hell did you come from?”

Claude: “Quite the telepath you are, aren’t you? Can’t even tell how
many people are present. I’ve been here the whole time of course.”

Bennet: “Don’t mind him, he’s always been kind of a jerk. He was invisible.”

Claude: “Actually in listening to your little get together I noticed
one members talents you haven’t yet tried to employ to stop the ticking
Peter time bomb.”

Bennet: “Oh yeah and who might that be.”

Claude: “My phasing black friend over there, who if I understand it
will have the honor of killing the rich white guy later on in the
season.”

D.L.: “Are you talking about me? What could I do?”

Bennet: “Of course! Why didn’t I think of that. He can grab Peter and
phase the two of them out just before he explodes then the explosion
will occur out of phase harming no one! It’s brilliant.”

Claude: “Of course it is.”

Niki: “Wait a minute what will happen to D.L.?”

Bennet: “Oh he’ll be out of phase too so he’ll die of course. Still I think we can all see it’s worth it.”

Claude: “Yes. Yes. Aceptable losses and all that.”

D.L.: “Like hell I’m doing that.”

Niki: “Yeah, like hell he’s doing that.”

D.L.: “Instead I’ll just take Niki and Micah and phase us out until the explosion ends and we all live.”

Claude: “Brilliant. And you’ll phase in just in time to die from radioactive poisoning…”

Hiro: “Mr. D.L. Listen to me. We were given these powers for a reason.
We must become heroes! The fate of the world depends upon us!”

Micah: “Yeah Dad, be a hero!”

D.L.: “This isn’t one of your comic books son.”

Micah: “Come on Dad. Pleeeeaaassse.”

D.L.: “Ok. Ok. I’ll do it, but only if all the other plans fail.”

Micah: “You’re the best dad.”

Bennet: “Ok, now let’s talk about contingencies in case the city can’t
be saved or we screw up.  Micah I’d like you to use your technology
interfacing ability to put out evacuation orders on all the major
television and radio stations.”

Micah: “Piece a cake.”

Bennet: “And Nathan, you can use your political clout to go on
television and help convince people of their need to get out of town.”

Nathan: “If the bomb doesn’t go off, this will kill my political career but sure I’ll do it.

Bennet: “And Molly if you can help us locate other people with powers
whose help we might be able to recruit in evacuating the city, stopping
Sylar, or containing Peter, that’d be great.  If you could find the
Haitian that’d be great. He’d solve all our problems instantly.”

Molly: “I’ll do my best.”

Bennet:  “And Parkman…”

Parkman: “Yes sir. Right here sir. Ready to serve.”

Bennet: “Just try to stay out of the way ok. Otherwise you’re liable to
get shot 4 times in the chest. Your power really is pretty useless in
situations like this.”

Parkman: “Oh. Ok.”

Bennet: “Great! Now I think we’ve covered everything. Is there anything
else? Anything at all? Any other possible way to stop the city of New
York from getting blown up or to save lives in the event of a
catastrophe that anybody can think of? Anybody with energy
manipulation, weather control, super speed, power containment, freezing
ability anything like that that might help?”

Molly: “ummm….”

Bennet: “Yes, what is it Molly?”

Molly: “Well, what I was getting at before was, well, I mean couldn’t
Hiro just teleport Peter somewhere and teleport right back?”

<stunned silence>

Mohinder: “Molly you are brilliant.”

Molly: “I know.”

Hiro: “But I have to stab Sylar.”

Bennet: “No it’s perfect. Right after you stab Sylar you teleport Peter away. It should only take you less than a second.”

Hiro: “But, But, what if Sylar blasts me back into a building with his
last once of strength and I am forced to teleport back to 17th century
Japan in order to survive.”

Ando: “Hiro….  Is there something you’re not telling us?”

Hiro: “No. Nothing. I’m just hypothesizing.” <under his breathe> “Although I really would love to meet my hero Kensei”

Bennet: “I’ll tell you what. If that happens, don’t worry about it.
We’ve got enough other contingency plans that we should be able to work
something out.”

Hiro: “Yatta!”

Ando <under his breathe> “Even if that happened, couldn’t he just teleport right back?”

Bennet: “Ok, then if there’s nothing else–”

Mohinder: “One moment if you don’t mind.  Might I interject something. Hiro how exactly does your powers work?”

Hiro: “Well I can manipulate time and space. I can travel to any time period at will and do pretty much whatever I feel like.”

Mohinder: “Then, if that’s the case,  Couldn’t you in fact, even if we
fail to stop the bomb, teleport back in time to before the bomb went
off and fix any problems that prevented us from stopping Peter from
exploding? Couldn’t you even teleport to the time just before Peter
meets Ted and prevent them from ever meeting? Isn’t it even possible
that you just travel back to before Sylar had any powers and kill him
them? Couldn’t you even travel to the far future and bring back a cure
to the mutant plague and take it way back to my childhood and save my
sister from it? You could conceivably even travel to the future and
grab a future Peter Petrelli who knows how to control his powers and
bring him back to teach this Peter Petrelli how to deal with nuclear
powers. The possibilities are endless!”

Bennet: “That’s why you’re the resident genius! This is great! We
hardly have to do anything. Hiro can take down the company, stop
Linderman, defeat Sylar, stop the plague all through using his time
shifting ability. It’s brilliant!”

Molly to Micah: “I was really kinda thinking this the whole time…”

Micah to Molly: “It really is kind of obvious isn’t it?”

Claude: “Sounds like a nice setup to me.”

Parkman: “It’s great. Incredible that you were able to come up with it. Good job Mohinder.”

Nathan: “You are the man. Anything that gets me out of having to fly sounds like a good plan to me.”

D.L.: “And I’m happy I don’t have to get blown up.”

Ando: “Yes! I won’t have to die!”

Niki: “And Micah, D.L., and I can finally live together in peace.”

Claire: “Alright let’s do this!”

Hiro: “NOOO!!!!!”

Bennet: “What is it? What’s the problem.”

Hiro: “I cannot do what you are asking of me. It would disrupt the
space time continuum, destabilize history. Who knows what the
consequences will be if I were to do such thing. They could be
horrendous. “

Parkman: “Oh, come on how bad could it be?”

Ando: “And if anything goes wrong you can surely just travel back and fix it again. Right?”

Mohinder: “Think of all the people you could save. My father. My sister. Your waitress girlfriend. Simone. Isaac. Ted. The list goes on and on…”
 
Hiro: “What you are asking for is dishonorable. It is not what a hero would choose. I refuse.”

Claude: <laughing hysterically>  “This is quite the misfit group
you’ve gathererd here Bennet. I think this is the first time I’ve
encountered someone unwilling to use his powers because they make him
too powerful. What a joke. Honestly, I think I’m just going to skip
town right now. Better than relying on you guys to save the day.”

Bennet: “Shut up Claude. And go away. “

Claude: “Gladly.” <disappears>

Bennet: “It’s ok everybody. Remember we didn’t come all the way out
here and plan all this out for nothing. Hiro. I don’t suppose there’s
anything we can do to change your mind?”

Hiro: “You cannot.”

Bennet: “Not even a shiny new sword?”

Hiro: “soooo… tempting….  No. I cannot. I must be a true hero otherwise I don’t deserve to be in this show.”

Bennet: “Alright. Fine. We still have all of our other plans and
contingencies. But just remember, Hiro if this doesn’t work. If somehow
despite it all we still fail. You, Hiro, will be the only one with the
power to go back and undo it. You will be our only hope. That is a
great responsibility that only you will bear.”

Peter: “Actually…. I can kinda do it too.”

Bennet: “Shut up Peter.”

Hiro: “I understand.”

Bennet: “Ok now everybody knows what they’ve got to do. Let’s get
cracking people. It’s time we proved that we have what it takes to be
heroes!”

The End.

Authors note:  I saw the Heroes season 2 premiere the other day and that brought up memories of how silly so many aspects of this show really were especially at the end of season 1. I like the show a lot but so much of it makes so little sense. It’s just really cheesy at times. Anyway, I thought up this little parody. I hope it amused any other heroes fans out there who feel similarly to the way that I do.

Four times over the last two months or so I have had the following experience:

I am walking through some store going about my daily business and someone comes up to me and says “excuse me, do you work here?” or something along those lines.  Of course I answer no, and that’s the end of that encounter.

Here’s the thing. Each time I would look around note the people who do work there and compare them to myself. Often they have pretty clear uniforms or are wearing shirts of the same color and style. Always they have some sort of clearly identifiable name tag which at anyone can see indicates their employee status. They are usually located in places or are engaged in activities that would be cleary indicative of their employee status. ie they are behind the customer service counter, at the cash register, stocking shelves, or engaged in helping another customer.

None of these were the case with me. I wasn’t even in any of the situations wearing the same color clothing as the employees. In fact I can perceive of no obvious visually identifiable characteristic in myself that would lead them to make such a misapprehension and a great many observations that should have lead them to instantly conclude otherwise if they had been paying a teensy bit of attention.

If it had happened only once I wouldn’t have noticed or cared. But four times? The last time being just yesterday? It’s surreal. Do I radiate some sort of helpful presence or persona? Do I look like someone who is dying to offer assistance to random strangers in locating store goods? Do I seem like I am naturally inclined to take a subservient position to others? Or is it that I am just easy for people to talk to? Ironic that would be since I am not at all at ease at talking with anyone. Or perhaps I’m just naturally a very visible person such that I just end up being the first person that people see and take note of  so I’m the first person they ask? Maybe it’s something in the way I walk, so rarely do I go to a store casually just to browse that I often end up walking directly to my goal with steadfast purpose.  I really don’t know. But it seems too unlikely to be a coincidence.

Anyway, it’s starting to tick me off a bit. If it happens a few more times I might start to get angry and I don’t want that. So please, everyone, please, if you are going to ask for assistance in a store setting take a moment to see if the person you are asking actually looks like they might work at the store. Really that’s just the polite thing to do.

I don’t usually give a whole lot of thought to racism. You know, it all seems rather obvious most of the time. There’s a continuum of course from bias to prejudice to discrimination to racism and where to draw the lines on that continuum can be tough but also not that important. You can never eliminate bias altogether, but you can always try to push people further away from racism and more toward consideration of their fellow human beings. As long as we promote general virtues in everyone and encourage interaction between peoples of different races, racism will naturally decline.

Still, some times the discussion of racism can’t really be avoided, nor should it be. We certainly can by understanding our internal biases and each others progress further toward universal tolerance. The only way to do that is through discussion, and yes sometimes those discussions can get pretty heated and sometimes make us all very uncomfortable.

But what bothers me about the discussions we have is that there is a lot of purposeful historical blindness about it, at least in the U.S. And that drives me crazy. Any discussion that starts with us all presuming that we are all already so much above racism and prejudice that it isn’t even a real issue for us is bound to be a vacuous one. They tend to devolve into discussions about those ‘other’ people, either inherently evil people, or people who somehow missed the boat and  are not as enlightened as most of us are on matters of race and equity. And usually the ‘others’ tend to be very visible public figures who by virtue of their publicity become easy targets. You even start to get that “If Only” mentality. If only we could get rid of the Don Imuses and Al Sharptons in the world and cleanup towns like Jena, well then of course racism will vanish in a puff of smoke and we’ll all live happily ever after.

So people on their Xangas in response to the Jena 6 questions would often say things like “I can’t believe it’s the year 2007 and we still have people acting like this”.  And you know that struck me as a kind of crazy thing to say. You can’t believe its 2007 and racism is still as bad as it is? Really? I can’t believe it’s the year 2007 and we’ve gotten as far as we have. Really I am floored every time I think about it. On the issues of race and women’s rights the world is amazingly progressive. Astoundingly. I only wish we could do as much with issues of War, the environment, and equality based on sexual orientation.

Remember the US civil rights movement sort of had its climax in 1968. That’s when the second Civil Rights Act was passed. That’s when MLK was assassinated. The race riots were windling away by 1970 and even the Black Power Movement had mostly collapsed by 1975. There was still a lot of progress made toward equity racial and otherwise in the late seventies and early eighties but for the most part 1968 was the beginning of the end of it.

You know what? 1968. Not that long ago. 39 years. An eternity perhaps for a 15 year old today, but absolutely nothing for the grand scheme of the world.   That means many many of the people you meet still today were alive when discrimination was rampant. Most of the people in my age group 25-30 have parents who were in their prime during the era of the Civil Rights Movement, and grandparents who lived during a time when racism was as common and unquestioned as breathing.

So it really should be no surprise at all that the average adult today has parents who were probably considerably more racist one way or another than they are. Parents who were involved in what must have seemed like a life and death struggle for their very way of life. Where do people imagine that racism went? Do you think those parents just suddenly woke up one morning and decided that they would no longer care about race and that they would teach their children to live the same?   No of course not.  The trend changed and the tide turned and it became less acceptable to be outwardly critical of race but the racisms didn’t go away. That generation didn’t disappear either. They just learned to try very hard to act better and for the most part they did try to teach their children to act better and be more considerate than they themselves were when they were young. That’s why we’ve made so much progress. That’s what is astounding about the world.

You see it didn’t have to be that way. White families could have nurtured hatred and intolerance in their children hoping that the next generation would find a way to restore the social status quo and put blacks in their place. They could have indoctrinated their children into secret organization devoted to white supremacy under the surface while outwardly pretending to be considerate and fair and just.  Does that sound crazy? Well it shouldn’t. Because it happened. The KKK was a very real phenomenon. In the 1920′s in comprised 15% of the entire population. It very much contributed to the enormously large gap in time between the end of slavery and the establishment of equality under the law on the basis of race and color.  But thankfully, it didn’t happen after the Civil Rights Movement, at least not that much.

And it could have been similar for black families. As it stands you probably wont meet a black person who hasn’t grown up hearing tales of injustice and intolerance from their parents and grandparents. They could hardly avoid it without being wholly silent about their history. Yes that influences them. Yes that contributes a great deal to the cultural divide in America today, as much as lingering racist sentiments amongst white people.

But what is surprising, really surprising, is that the stories are not told with malice nor is there in the way most black youths have been raised a sense of  the need to fight back against the ‘evil’ of white society.  In fact the baby boomer generation despite being massively active in fighting for equal rights in their day was probably least inclined to try and pass on that struggle to future generations. They saw themselves as building a world where their children wouldn’t have to live with the racism and intolerance that they did.

At the same time though there was a lot of tension amongst black parents in the question of what and how much to tell their children. They didn’t desire to influence their children or to train them in the ways of intolerance, but many were still and are still very suspicious of members of other races because of their own personal experiences and they felt a need to instill in their children a sense of caution too. They want to protect their children like all parents do. So they wanted their children to be open to a discrimination free lifestyle and yet not to trust anyone. They were very aware of the inequities of education and influence that still existed, the many dreams of the civil rights movement that were never really achieved. They hoped that the equality that Martin Luther King envisioned would come about over time, but yeah they were pretty skeptical and their children could hardly be expected to be so blind as to not see that skepticism in their parents and to not have some of it rub off on them. But their parents tried hard. They were silent about their misgivings for the most part and suppressed whatever prejudices within them as much as they could. So did their white parent counterparts when dealing with their children. Everyone was sort of holding their breathe hoping that their children would grow up without their own faults within them.

I think though admirable, this was a mistake. Parents and grandparents, black and white, should have been more open talking with their children about how they felt and who they were. They should have acknowledged their racism rather than pretending that it had all gone away. I think our generation would have understood better than they thought and grown up stronger and wiser for it.

The mixed messages and repression of truth had a profound impact on the next generation. A lot of it was good because overtly racism started to seem like ‘a thing of the past’ and that’s why now you read on Xangas stuff like “I can’t believe that racism still exists in the year 2007″.  It’s naive, but its sort of awesome that we can afford to be that naive. It’s cool that we don’t think in those terms any more. It’s cool that we look at people and we don’t assume, by and large, that that person we are talking to secretly hates us because of the color of our skin.

But there have been negative impacts too. For one, when black youths experience overt prejudice the disillusionment factor is very strong. They heard the stories for all that their parents tried to hide them and they read the history in school and then when they experience it first hand, yeah they start to think that maybe their parents were lying to them, and maybe the world hasn’t gotten any better at all and so maybe it’s a good idea to strike back in some way. When you add to that the nostalgia factor from tales of heroism and glory during the days of the civil rights movement and the fact that the children of those heroes will want to be a part of their own heroic tales of the fight for justice, you wouldn’t be surprised to see a lot of young black people joining more belligerent movements fighting for equity or just fighting against the structures of power.

And there’s been some push toward that but surprisingly little that is visible and it has been declining over the years. The reason is, there just isn’t that much to fight about. Yeah everyone’s still got prejudices and  biases that are pretty strong and there are plenty of racists out there, but people are keeping it all inside. People really are trying to be good for all that they screw up so very very frequently. And when people are doing their best to do right by you, however poor a job they might be doing, it’s a little hard to take the moral high ground and its very hard to get aggressive with them over it even if you believe deep down that they are just pretending and don’t even realize it.

So what we’ve seen instead I don’t think anyone could have predicted and that is this cultural bifurcation. A whole plethora of new traditions, new language, new social standards that evolved primarily amongst black society. And it happened strangely all across the country almost all at once, which is amazing. The seeds of this existed before, when black culture had to be underground because it just wasn’t tolerated in mainstream America. That’s why music is a big big part of this movement. The close knit communities within inner city lifestyle where many blacks lived also ended up contributing to it, as did the cultures that evolved in prison settings after drug traffic it the cities an the resulting crackdown put so very many black youths in prison. But it has spread and evolved over time and through the media to the point where ‘Black America’ almost seems like an entirely different world within the confines of the country than the rest of America. The children of the activist generation embraced all aspects of their heritage that was inherently different from what was the norm in the rest of the society. And they clung to it. Why? The psychology is complex, but my suspicion is that it has a lot to do with this dual message we were given growing up. The whole don’t be like us, but at the same time don’t trust *them* either.  (I should note that this is note *entirely* an unpredictable phenomenon. If you look at large immigrant groups historically, Italians, Hispanics, some of them have strongly split with the mainstream American society for lengthy periods of time before integrating. Although blacks didn’t just immigrate the phenomenon is remarkably similar.)

The evolution of white culture is similarly impacted both by the emergence of this separate black society and the ways in which the next generation of white children were raised post-civil rights movement. I could say more about that if I was more familiar with it, but to be sure a lot of the roots of many of the social positions of modern conservatism are in the way this generation grew up too. The counter-culture to the emergence of the split black culture and the newfound commonality of the claim of ‘reverse racism’, the intolerance toward drug traffic and crime which certainly wasn’t at all present in the 60′s and 70′s. To understand the psychology of these changes, look to the past and remember that the racist days really weren’t all that long ago.

The other day I was walking through the park and I saw spray painted on the pavement “White Power” with a nazi swastika. I knew this was a new occurrence because I’d been there before and it wasn’t there. This was right near a university campus with a diverse populace where you’d think such attitudes would not be prevalent. But you can see that the ebb and flow of time in this. Counter culture countering counter culture and back and forth the repression of racisms followed by its re-emergence.

Still. I’m not worried. Nooses hanging in trees and all I am not at all worried. It has only been 40 years here in the U.S. Things are getting better and they will get better. We should really be celebrating how much we’ve achieved not bemoaning our pitiful modern state. In most countries in the world “hate crimes” on the basis of race, gender, or religion are seen and often codified into their laws as the crimes against humanity that they are. Practice lags behind of course, but that’s extraordinary progress. Sure we’ve got a long long way to go, and we can’t get complacent, but let’s take a moment every once in a while and be thankful that we’ve gotten this far.