I guess I should answer my own question right?  

Yes. I get writer’s block all the time. There’s almost always a million things I want to write but I can’t figure out how to write them. The words just don’t come and I find myself listing about unfomfortably looking for inspiration.

Usually what I do when I feel like this is that I write anyway. The results are almost always pretty bad. Really bad, sometimes. But I get that need to be writing out of my system even if the resulting product is somewhat incoherent. 

For inspiration when I need to write like this I use things like writing prompts. This is why I love xanga as a blogging community. There are just so many areas where you can look for random questions and prompts to give me something to think about and ultimately write about. Featured Questions is one particular mechanism that I really love to use to get me started on writing. But there are lots of other similar sources that predated featured questions too. And sometimes just reading and commenting on other people’s blogs helps a lot too.

Outside of Xanga, I look to the news and various radio programs, books and games and movies and other forms f popular entertainment that I am enamored with. And I sometimes just force myself to write about them. Even when I don’t have anything in particular to say. I just start writing and hopefully the end result will be somewhat coherent to somebody. Usually it isn’t. So I don’t subject blog readers to these random rants about whatever thing happens to cross my eye at the moment. I save those for emails to annoy my siblings and friends.

Other times, when the block gets really bad, not even forcing myself to write helps at all. Sometimes the thoughts are just so jumbled up in my head that I can’t form coherent sentences no matter how hard I try. In these cases all I can do is go for a walk. And so I walk around, sometimes to the point of exhaustion just looking around me and seeing what there is to see and trying to distract myself from whatever is bothering me. This usually works for all of about ten seconds, but in the end it makes me feel calmer and it becomes a little easier to organize my mind. And then I can write again.

And sometimes even walking doesn’t work and I just can’t get inspired at all. But the itch, the need to write is still there growing stronger and stronger. And I feel like crying out for help. That’s why I look forwrd to reading all of these responses to see if anybody else’s strategy might well work for me in these my darkest hours.

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Is there a pure perfect form of yourself waiting for you far off in the distance?

Look down that long corridor of life. Stare down that winding road of
experience. Do you see him? There. Toward the back. There he is. Right
there. Waiting for you.  Perfect you.

What does he look like? This you of the future? He is still you. Has
your same traits, your same strengths and weaknesses. He has your same
beliefs for the most part save where experience lead him to different
conclusions. He thinks like you think now. He dreams like you dream
now. He cares like you care now.  He wants like you want now. Only,
this you… has it all. All the things that he wants. All the things
you ever wanted.

Wondrous You. Glorious You.

Perhaps he has a job, a career I should say, so incredible that he
can’t wait to wake up in the morning to go do it. He spends his time
all the time doing only the things he loves and wants most to do and
never once does he find himself assigned a task that does not suit him.
Everything he does feels important to him. Essential. His work is
changing the world for the better, fixing the problems that always most
deeply concerned him. His coworkers are all close friends whom he loves
and cherishes and who all have an enormous amount of respect and
appreciation for him only surpassed by the extraordinary amount of
respect that he has for all of them. The work life he leads is one of
purpose mixed with pleasure.

And through his work, this perfect you achieves a modicum of fame and
respect amongst the circles of people who do these things. This you is
seen a significant force, a person to be respected. A creative mind. A
genius. A person whose opinions matter and are not to be taken lightly.
He has influence. He has money. He has power. Not too much to be
stifling or to corrupt, but enough so that he never feels the least bit
insignificant.


Max level You. Fully equipped You.

Maybe his work life is only surpassed by his life outside of work. He
has money enough to be secure. He travels the world seeing things he
always wanted to see. He has time to play and do all of the fun things
he most loves to do and to try new things he always wanted to try.

He looks about the world as if it were built just for him. He sees
everything about him and sees how it fits right into his own life
making it all the more perfect. This you never looks back and wonders
and wishes about things left
undone, experiences he never had and might wish to one day do.  This
you, just lives, every moment of every day as a joyous adventure and
loves every minute of it.

You 2.0. You The Next Generation.

Perhaps he looks around himself and sees only love. Family. Friends. A
huge and incredible support network that is always there for him and
for whom he is always there for. He never lets them down. Never
disappoints. He is close to them and they to him and they all share
hundreds of meaningful experiences, thousands of memories that each
illuminate the present in a comforting pleasant light.

Perhaps this perfect you has to his shock and awe somehow found a
significant other who is in his eyes in every way far more perfect than
he is. And he has children that are even more perfect still. He
cherishes every moment with them more than life itself. And he lives
and strives for their sake even more than he lives for himself.


Fearless You. Unstoppable You.

Maybe this you has reached a point where he feels no pain. No sorrow. No fear. No anger. No doubt.

No shame.

Not anymore.

He’s gotten beyond feelings of inadequacy and shyness. He’s fully cast
aside any sense of uncertainty and has resolved and come to terms with
all of his past regrets and made amends for all of his past mistakes.
His life is his own now. He knows it inside and out and loves it with
ever ounce of his being.

When problems arise this you handles them with confidence and pride. He
helps people. He helps himself. He turns aside the criticism of others
and finds a way to make them relate to him, to understand him, and to
believe in him. He deals with people, enemies and allies alike as if
they were important and worthy of his regard and garners in even the
most despicable of villains a certain degree of grudging respect and
admiration.

All this he does with an elegant ease and simplicity of focus that it
seems like the most natural thing in the world. He never panics. He
never stresses. To him it all just works. It all makes sense. It is
right. All just right. The way the world should be.


Super You. You the Hero.

Where are you with respect to this perfect you? Is he just a couple of
steps away? Just a few more small hurdles to pass, a few hangups to get
over before you are living the perfect life?

And maybe you think, well that’s ok. This is close enough. That I’ve
done this much is enough.  If I can move a little closer than all the
better, but even if I make it no further. It’s enough. I’m satisfied.

Or perhaps instead those last few steps truly haunt you. Those are the
things you need the most. Do you hate yourself for having obtained so
much but you can’t seem to pass those last few all so important hurdles
between yourself as you are and as you wish to be?

Or is the perfect you instead so far away that you can’t even see him,
some insubstantial blurry lines at the end of the corridor that you
can’t even imagine is real or could ever really be. Do you strive to
get there? Are you running with all your might and all your strength
but he never comes into focus? You can never see him, and you just
can’t tell if you are even running in the right direction.

Or do you turn your back on him. Does perfect you hold no allure for
you? Do you embrace the sorrow and sadness and hardships of life for
its own sake?  Do you want to hurt and live to suffer? Do you relish
what you can learn from the heart of darkness? Do you seek it with
reckless abandon? Do you feel his eyes staring at the back of your head
with sadness and pity as you walk determinedly away from him ready to
embrace a life that with bring you only pain and sadness and endless
regrets.

Or perhaps you are like me. You see him. He’s right there, reaching out to me.

Hurry.

I hear him.  His eyes are filled with such sadness but also
understanding. He knows my doubts and my fears because they were his
doubts. They were his fears once upon a time and he understands them.
All too well. He knows just how hard it is to move forward and yet
still he beckons me urgently. Urgently.

Hurry. Hurry.

I can’t though. I don’t move forward. I can’t find the will or the
motivation to do so. I think, what is the value of perfection? Is that
all there is to it? I wonder if this future vision is but an illusion,
a fanciful dream of a mind that cannot accept reality as it is. Can
there really be a point where you get all the things that you ever
dreamed? And if you ever reached it, somehow, magically, would it even
be Good. Would it even be fair? What about all of those other people
who couldn’t, who you couldn’t help and who still suffer and hurt and
want for more.

I say these things to perfect me but he doesn’t seem to hear me. He just keeps calling me.

Hurry. Hurry up and become me.

But what if I get there and I find… that it isn’t enough. That all my
dreams being fulfilled still leads me feeling empty, still wondering
about the purpose of this life. Why do I exist? Why do I matter? What
if in the end, having done everything and achieved everything, still I
find that most important thing of all missing from my life… happiness.

He’s still there calling out for me.

Don’t be afraid.

You can do it.

It’ll be ok.

Hurry.

Become me… Become me… Become me…

But my footsteps slow and his voice fades from my ears. Perfect me
just seems like an empty shell now. No. More like a suit of clothing I
can adorn at some point in the future if I so choose but which is in
itself not really a part of me. It isn’t enough to simply obtain it.
Not for me. I don’t walk toward that any more. I stop. I think. And I
try ever more to understand this me. Here and now. Flawed. Imperfect.
Filled with wants and needs. That’s the me I care about. That’s the me
that matters to me.

Because in the end, what is the point of trying to obtain this perfect
form of you, unless you can find a way to first at least accept a you
that is far from perfect?

As others have stated, the answer to that question is clearly yes. They do right now. However, I think there are other questions that you might have asked that get a better idea of the heart of the issue of the conflict between science and religion that we can expore in turn:

1. Can both religious principles and scientific principles both be true at the same time?

2. Is it possible to be a rational believer in the truth of science and still be religious?

3. Does science and religion always have to be in tension?

Well I’d answer the first “Well, sort of.” And I’d answer the second with “No, not really.” And I’d answer the third: “I don’t see why not.”  Let’s take them one at a time.

The first question is the difficult one. It really depends upon what you mean by religion and science. In one sense, science is just the way in which we understand the truth of *everything*. If you mean that as science then of course scientific principles can be true even if it happens ot be that every single religious principle of some religion or another turns out to be true. All that would just provide additional material for the scientist to study, explore, and understand. It doesn’t really matter to the scientist whether there is a God or there isn’t a God, in either case the sceintist just studies the phenomenon and figures out what conclusions can logically be drawn as a consequence of that phenomenon.  True a science that exists in a universe where religious are not only true but accessible to be studied and understood by human kind through scientific means is one we could hardly imagine right now and the science that would emerge would look nothing like science today, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t possible.

Similarly, if you mean by religion just something very abstract like the existence of some sort of super powerful force that is forever beyond the comprehension of human kind that created everything. Well then, yeah, that can exist and still have science be ‘true’. It’s jsut that ‘true’ in this scenario means precisely that which is understandable by man in a universe created by that Creator and bound by whatever rule He created.
 
On the other hand if you mean by science, just the specific incarnation of science that exist today and you mean by religion the specific principles and propositions layed out in most organized religions that exist today, well then no they can’t both be true. It’s just impossible. The Earth is very very old. On the order of 4.5 billion years old iirc. This is an irrefutable uncontroversial multiply verified truth determined by scientific methods. Many many organized religions say otherwise. Q.E.D.  We can go through all the contradictions between religious and scientific facts that you want to, but I’d be willing to bet that in nearly if not all cases of all organized religions in the world you will find statements that are just in no possible way shape or form compatible with truths discovered by science. If some religious somehow luckily managed to avoid any such contradiction, I’d imagine that it must be religious rather extremely devoid of actual statements of fact or its just a matter of time before science probably discovers something that stands in contradiction to it.

Now the second question is a tough one.. Is it possible to be a rational believer in the truth of science and still be religious?  I don’t really believe you can. If you believe in the scientific method and you believe that truth must be understood rationally through logic and reasoning, you can’t really be religious. You can perform religious rituals and live a religious lifestyle and you can even suspect or imagine that there might be a God or an afterlife or whatever. But you can’t *believe* that stuff to be the truth. Not until you have some verifiable, repeatable evidence to support it. That’s what it means to believe in science. One or the other has to give. Faith is inherently belief without resort to reason or fact. You believe it anyway. Science is inherently belief through nothing *but* reason. The two just dont mix. That’s all there is to it. 

That’s not to say that there aren’t plenty of scientists who are religious. I know people will hate me for saying it, but they are just not being fully true to one or the other parts of their belief systems. Of course it is entirely possible to have two contradicting belief systems. People do it all the time. But if we look at it objectively and distantly we can’t help but conclude that the two are in contradiction and hence if we want to be kind of a dick about it, we can call them on it and say that these people are being irrational.  And it’s the truth. In a way,  but who really cares though? Let people have their contradictions if it makes them feel better and be happier. Nobody lives a fully rational life, anyway. It just doesn’t happen.

As for the third question it sort of speaks to the idea of whether there must eventually be a sort of showdown. Will religion and science always be in such contradiction that one day one or the other will have to ‘win’ and be known as the truth. Will humanity have to pick a side. The way of reason or the way of faith. Once chosen, all the world will fall in line.

To that I say, give me a break. Don’t you think if these two were so beyond our ability to accept their coexistence that one or the other would have won by now? It seems to me that the two are getting along just as well and as poorly as they always have. It isn’t the case that one needs to die in order for the other to live. It isn’t the case that we have to choose. We can have both. We do have both. And I don’t see why we won’t continue to have both. The simple fact that science will continue to contradict many of the principles of religion mean virtually nothing since as far as we can tell right here and right now the most important components of religion, the ones that make it so appealing to people, are just so far beyond the ken of science that religion has a virutal monopoly on them. I don’t see any reason to believe that will ever change.

People want to believe in *purpose*. People want to believe in *afterlife*. We just really can’t help it. To think that the people we cared about will simply disappear as if they never were is too hard a possibility for many of us to face. And the thought that all our every day lives are pointless drivel is just as bad.  Religion gives us an outlet through which we can understand these intransient things and we can talk about them and we can commiserate with each other through them. In this sense religion serves a very important social role. And science can’t really touch that. Science doesn’t really want to touch that either. Science doesn’t give a crap about *purpose*, and unless there is some measurable verifiable evidence of the existence of the *afterlife*, science doesn’t give a damn about that either. Science just concerns itself with the facts. Just the facts.

So yeah, they’ll continue to co-exist for the foreseeable future. And as long as we just stop trumping this idea that there’s oh such a big stupid conflict that needs to be resolved between the two we’ll do just fine with both of them. They don’t even need to be in tension. Scientists will do their thing and religions will do theirs and that’s all there is to it.

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Something I read last week got me to wanting to write something about the nature of motives. But to be honest I couldn’t really think of anything much interesting to say. However, there’s just two common mistakes people make about motives though that I think are worth talking a little about. 

One is to not take someone’s stated motives seriously enough. That is to say that you make the mistake of thinking that each person always has some deep seated ulterior motives that are more important and of deeper significance than the ones that they themselves state and care about. 

The other mistake that is often made is to not look for alternative reasons for our actions. That is to say, that once you hit upon something as the reason why a person is doing X, you assume that there really isn’t anything else to it. It is to ignore other factors and extraneous details that may have influences someone’s decision. Most commonly this mistake is made when evaluating our own decisions. We never like to think of ourselves as having anything behind our choices that might be perceived as ulterior motives.

The problem with both mistakes is the presumption that choices are such simple matters that your exploration of them is just a struggle to find the one “real” reason behind the action. The one that matters.  But choices aren’t that way at all. There is a great gigantic web of experiences and events that lead up to any particular choice of the moment. Often we *can’t* fully understand why we are making  any particular choice right here and right now and we may well never fully be able to. But we are each individually aware of some of our reasons and some of our explanations and life is a constant struggle to try and understand more of them. You see, the process of understanding why you made a particular choice is really a process of understanding exactly who you were at the exact moment in which you made that choice. An impossible proposition to be sure, but we can and should always try to approach it as best we can.

Usually though as we examine our reasons for our decisions we do come up with something of what can really be called our “motive” for the choice that we will give in our defense when asked why we did that particular thing. No, this is virtually never the *only* factor that went into our making our choice, but it does hold a very special significance for us that it would be foolhardy for others to ignore.  This motive is often the primary thing that was going through our mind as we made the choice, and it is often the thing that matters to us the most when we discuss the choice. It is the thing that we want others to remember about us when they think about how and why we made this choice. It is the thing that we really do feel right now is the most important reason we made our choice, the thing that is both necessary and sufficient to explain our action.  And perhaps even more importantly, this is the explanation for our choice that we feel best defines how we want to think about ourselves; who we want to see ourselves as. This is the nature of our stated motives.

Of course our opinion could change over time. At some point we might look back at all our actions and see only cynicism in our decisions. We might start to doubt ourselves and think that we weren’t really doing things for the good of ourselves or the good of others but for more sinister seeming reasons, like to be loved or to be respected or whatever. That happens sometimes. Similarly, our perspective can change the other way. We may have always thought that we were doing something primarily for ourselves only later to find that there was more altruism in our choice than we were willing to admit. We could have been acting for the sake of others all along, we just didn’t realize how important they were to our decision making process.

Anyway, so basically these two mistakes are problematic because they aren’t realistic attitudes about choices. If you don’t treat someone’s stated motives as having special significance, you are basically not trusting or respecting that person’s judgments about the kind of person they are.  And if you don’t look for additional explanations for any choice, you  are basically limiting your perspective to a clouded vision of half truths and  false realities. Usually, in that case you are ignoring the reality as it is in favor of only believing in the reality as you want it to be.

I think that by understanding these mistakes we can all learn to make better choices with regards to understanding the motives behind each others choices.

Never. There are no exceptions.

It is important to distinguish between ‘freedom of speech’ as a generic philosophical concept and as a mechanism of the law.  Under the law, speech is only protected from government persecution, oppression, and censorship. And how powerful that protection is depends entirely on the government. In the U.S. it has been historically pretty absolute thanks to the first ammendment and a number of court rulings that have come down strongly in favor of freedom of speech.

However, this legally protected speech is not true absolute ‘freedom of speech’ because it does not prevent your speech from being restricted or restrained by some other poweful force that is not the government. The most common example would be when you work for a company they may require you to restrict your speech about the company. They don’t have the power to incarcerate you or execute you legally if you fail to abide by these rules, but they can fire you and they can possibly sue you which together can in many ways be just as bad. Similarly freedom of speech doesn’t make it illegal for me to say to you something like “if you say one more word, I’ll beat the crap out of you.”  In fact, legal freedom of speech protects my right to make such threats, or at least the govenrment can’t punish me for saying it. But of course if I were to ever actually beat the crap out of you then I would be liable for charges of assault.  My words would have nothing to do with it. Similarly if you were to beat the crap out of me pre-emptively in order to prevent me from making such a threat.

I would say that there should be no limits to even this broader concept of freedom of speech at least as far as a moral principle goes. That is to say when I threaten you with beating the crap out of you in order to shut you up and I mean it, I’ve done something that should not ‘morally’ be allowed to do.  Obviously nothing is stopping me. I have free will of course. But society should frown heavily upon that kind of a thing. We should support and encourage absolute freedom to say whatever we want provided we aren’t stepping on the toes of someone else’s ability to say whatever they want.

Likewise we should not be so forgiving of comapanies making employees sign vastly complicated nondisclosure agreements that constraing all of their actions and interactions even outside of their job. Such contracts don’t violate legal freedom of speech but they certainly violate the principle of freedom of speech that underlies the legal framework. The idea is that we should be free choosing agents and we should be able to say and do whatever we please. Why should it be that for the mere sake of survival we must compromise our principles and restrict our behaviors to be in line with what is in the best interests of the company we happen to work for. If we want to go home and bad mouth our employer, we should not feel as if we are risking our very lifestyles by doing it. Obviously going home and badmouthing your employer might not be the most polite or moral thing to do but that isn’t the point. The point is, *restricting* someone’s capacity to badmouth his or her employer by threat or force is just plain wrong under any circumstnaces. That is what I believe when I say that “freedom of speech” should have no limits.

Ok, so that leaves two special cases that often come up in freedom of speech discussions that tend to trip people up.  The first is the idea of ‘secrets’.  People think that having secrets somehow manifests a restriction to ‘freedom of speech’ that is valid and acceptable.  This is an easy one though. It’s just a misunderstanding of the concept of a secret. 

Secrets are mutally agreeds upon voluntary restrictions of speech.  It is effectively the same as me choosing not to say something and telling my secret keeper that I am not going to say anything.  If that person who I tell were to threaten me with death or dismemberment or the loss of my soul or whatever then that would be a case of him censoring me and would be violating my freedom of speech but if all he is doing is being grateful that I am choosing to keep his secret for him then nobody has violated anyone’s freedom of speech. As long as it is all non-coerced, unrestricted choice then there’s no problem.  But as in the case of talking bad about your company, if your company, rather than simply asking you to keep their secrets when you become an employee, threatens to force you to hold thier secrets then it is a behavior that your company is engaging in that I believe should be deemed socially unacceptable.

The last case that provides difficult for people like me who want to say that there should ‘never’ be limits to “freedom of speech” is the case of hate speech.  Most of us are absolutely appalled by the idea of someone giving out hateful speech that might well incite someone into behaviors that are immoral. This is particularly disgusting to us because it represents a kind of cowardly manipulation. You get other impressionable people to do your dirty work for you while hiding behind the barriers erected to protect free speech that were meant to be used to protect the good and virtuous amongst us. It’s no wonder that we want to condemn the maker of hate speech. We want to make it so that the government can punish people who speak out hateful messages in order to create a powerful disincentive not to make such hateful speech.

And that makes perfect sense of course, I just think it is wrong.  Let’s say somebody gives a speech where he says “let’s all go out there a kill a <n-word>”. That seems like a pretty f-ed up speech rigth?  But what about context? What if the person is actually making a kind of satirical expression but posing as being in the realistic. Ala, what if he is doing a kind of a Borat thing. Or maybe even simpler, what if he is just a comedian in a comedy club telling a joke.

Now usually in these cases we aren’t worried because nobody listening is going to go out and kill anybody. But what if one person does? What if that person just doesn’t get the joke whereas everybody else did? Should the speaker be held responsible for the stupidity of the audience? 

If you say no, then what about the case of the real deliberate hate speaker that incites a mob to go out killing people.  Should that person be punished for the actions of the mob? Maybe you say that case is obviously a ‘yes’ but the question then becomes where along the continuum of these two extremes should you draw the line?

Actually, it doesn’t really matter for the purposes of this discussion. Since the ambiguity exists about under what context given speech is purposefully intended to incite violence and hate crimes, we should of course I believe pretty much just allow it all. True we won’t be able to create that super powerful disincentive to say hateful things, but I think this can be a good thing since people also won’t have to live in fear of any stray joke they make being taken awry and considered a hate crime. On the other hand we should absolutely punish hate speakers when their speech causes real measurable harm and we can find sufficient evidence that that was the intent of the speaker. But it’s important to note that we are punishing them for the consequences of their action of speaking, we are not punishing them for speaking at all. The speech itself should be legally and morally accepted. It’s just that the act of inspiring morally unjustifiable acts within others should hold some equivalent condemnation to the inspirationalist as to the tool who did what he was convinced to do.

And that’s just the general gist of how freedom of speech should work. Your ability to fearlessly say anything you want should have no limitations whatsoever. It’s jus that when your words cause harm that you could have predicted you have to take responsibility, not for the words themselves but for that harmed caused by them.

All of this applies equally to freedom of expression.

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“The moment I set foot in Kousaka-kun’s room I realized that… ‘What I lack is the courage to accept myself for who I am.’”

Isn’t that an interesting idea? Accepting oneself. It seems so simple and yet it’s clearly pretty difficult for people to manage. And you know what? I think it is equally difficult and requires just as much courage to be willing and able to accept others for who they truly are. Both sides of the coin are necessary for peaceful and meaningful interaction and both are extremely difficult for we mere mortals to manage.

The quote comes from an odd manga series called Genshiken that I just started reading. I’m only a little past the first volume but this one scene really stood out to me.

The story is about the Otaku culture in Japan. That is to say it is about college school students who are obsessed with anime, video games, and manga. In particular, they are attracted to the more taboo aspects of those genres. Even the line “What I lack is the courage to accept myself for who I am” is a case of the character Sasahara thinking in terms of a quote from some anime series.

Sasahara is referring to the fact that as he enters Kousaka’s room he noticed that it is unapologetically cluttered with all kinds of anime paraphernalia and video games. In fact, the room is filled with a great many pornographic games and comics, which he feels no sense of uncertainty or shame about displaying and letting people see. This is despite the fact that outwardly Kousaka seems like what the rest of the world would call a ‘normal’ looking person in every way. This seeming contradiction seems like it will form much of the plot of the manga.

Here is a picture:

The irony of course is that Kousaka who everyone considers normal does not in any way try to hide his obsessions whereas others like Sasahara try very hard to appear normal but end up being seen as somewhat unusual. At least that’s the kind of message I think the writer is trying to get across. A big theme of the series seems to be learning to live with yourself even if your likes and desires do not mesh with main stream society’s expectations.

It should be no big surprise that a big part of that subject is the nature of our sexual inclinations. Society has long held as taboo a great many aspects of our natural desires with that regard and hence forced many people to feel ashamed of themselves and feel the need to conform to the expectations of others at the risk of their own mental stability.

Of course it is entirely obvious to anyone who has really thought about it that it doesn’t really matter where you stand on the great multi-dimensional scale of gynephilia, androphilia, ephebophilia, androphilia, gerontophilia, pedophilia, and asexuality. Not to mention the depths of one’s inclinations toward sadism and masochism and all forms of fetishes. One day we’ll get to the point where we stop judging people on the basis of where they fit into these categorical frameworks. Instead we’ll concern ourselves with what is important, that is ensuring that people act upon their nature, whatever it happens to be, in a manner that does not cause physical or emotional harm to others or to society.

But it will probably be three hundred years before we get there. Ten thousand studies and a hundred thousand papers later and we’ll realize what people have been saying all along: that they can’t help being the way that they are. So who are we to condemn them for it? It’s exactly like skin color, hair color, race, height, intellect, weight, gender, etc. Characteristics that describe who you are right now which you should not be condemned or treated in any way less solely on the basis of having those characteristics. Actions can form the basis of legitimate social critique, not characteristics.

It will take a while. Right now we’re still having an insane amount of difficulty removing the social stigma surrounding gynephilic women and androphilic men. But it’s clearly happening however slowly.

The problem is when society condemns ‘being’ in a state rather than condemning actions made while in that state it creates a scenario where people feel both ashamed of who they are and angry at the society for judging them and terrified that people might find out about their nature. They then struggle to change themselves or at least to appear different than what they truly are under situations of enormous pressure and stress.

Is it any wonder that people under these situations often turn to the underside of society? If someone can offer them a release for their desires without condemnation and without stigma and all they have to do is reject in turn the society that rejects them, (and shell out some cash of course) who wouldn’t jump upon the opportunity?  The problem is of course that these black markets are not regulated by the society, meaning they can do things that are truly evil in the interest of earning wealth leaving the rest of the society to deal with the consequences.   Even when under society does not develop, there is still a strong likelihood that a person who has desires upon which society places a strong stigma will seek to fulfill their desires secretly in any way they can. Often that may well mean some act that is illegal and sometimes very wrong.

It is very reminiscent with the brain dead way in which we deal with controlled substance abuse. Sure, we can do a lot to prevent people from ever getting addicted and I think thats entirely a good thing. The problem is when someone is addicted, we basic label them a criminal and a lowlife and we often lock them up for the mere ‘possession’ of the  substance to which they are addicted. That’s just crazy. The natural consequent is that these people who can’t deal with their addiction will engage in increasingly dangerous and destructive activities in order to fulfill their needs. They, very literally, can’t help their desire for the substance once addicted. To stop could often lead to withdrawal symptoms significant enough to cause death. And yet we condemn them all the same and demand that they don’t use drugs at all. Why? Wouldn’t be so much easier to deal with a legitimate drug trade and institute programs designed to help people to deal with their addictions in addition to those programs that discourage addiction in the first place. Never mind how making something taboo can make it particularly appealing to the youth in your society who are looking for a way to distinguish themselves. Just condemning and abandoning adults already addicted to me already seems unconscionably evil for our society.

Well we aren’t going to reach a utopic state where we all come to accept all of each other’s nature any time soon. In fact I’m not sure that’s even a good thing to hope for. Social condemnation is obviously bad, but there’s nothing particularly wrong with not liking some aspect of a person and wanting people to change. Not really. That too in a way is a way in which people are that is difficult to change.  We are ingrained over time with all kinds of expectations about how society should be and how people ought to behave and we naturally feel a discordance when people act out of sync with those behaviors. Sometimes its trivial things like the extent to which it might bother you that someone bites their nails. Other times its more substantive things where we actually feel that certain behavioral trends are actually strictly better or more moral than others, such as our inclination to be polite to others or to live neat and organized lives.

It certainly isn’t wrong to wish or want or expect people to be different than what they are. It’s just that the real challenge is being able to accept people when they, inevitably, don’t or can’t or won’t meet those expectations. To be able to put aside your own feelings on the matter and try to understand why it is that the ones you wish would be different can’t change, or can’t change right away, is a lot harder than simply condemning them for it. It takes a lot of courage to be willing to say that the problem is not just in the other but in part within you.

So that’s why I think this little message in this random manga that I read is so important. We need to understand how we lack the courage to accept ourselves and others so that we can start to try and develop that courage. We need to learn to live true to ourselves. If we can do that then there isn’t anything else in the world that we can’t accomplish.

Abarai Renji. 

In the anime called Bleach there is a point where the character named Renji who is a shinigami warrior of some renown comes to stay in the human world to help defend it from the evil ‘Hollows’. Apparently the shinigami are too cheap to provide lodgings for their agents in the human world so Renji has to find a place to stay. After a while he ends up staying at Urameshi’s shop.

While there he is teased mercilessly for his status as a “freeloader”. The characters don’t call him by his name. Instead they address him as Freeloader-san. 

So for example there is this exchange:

The characters who live in Urahara’s shop are all gathered to eat and Renji who has a huge appetite is gobbeling down food as a fast rate. Here is the exchange just as he finishes one bowl of food:

Tessai: “Do you want seconds? Just because you are a freeloader doesn’t mean you should hold back. Now, now. How about another bowl, Freeloader-dono?”

Renji: “Ah, in that case…”

Ururu: “Seconds are best. Please don’t hold back. Have some seconds,  Freeloader-san.”

Tessai: “What’s wrong?”

Renji: “Ah, then…”  He holds his hand out with the bowl.

Jinta: “Well, even freeloaders deserve seconds. Eat. eat.”

Urahara: “There’s no need to say that the freeloader is free loading. Isn’t it hard for him to ask for seconds? Right, Freeloader-san?”

Renji freezes and we hear his inner voice say: “I can’t ask for seconds.”

Jinta: “Please take care of cleaning up the front of the store tomorrow morning.”

Renji: “What!?”

Jinta: “It’s natural for a freeloader to do at least that much.You’re having seconds, aren’t you?”

Tessai: “Now, how about those seconds, Freeloader-dono?”

Ururu: “Go ahead.”

Everyone is silent and stares at Renji.  Poor Renji mortified and trembling says:  “Thank you for the meal.”  stands and then leaves, presumably to clean up the front of the store. After he walks out everybody starts laughing at him. Poor poor Freeloader-san.

There are a lot of similar situations in the series and as I was watching them I thought they were extremely funny. At the same time though I felt a little bad for Renji. I mean to have to struggle so hard and so earnestly to try and make up for his presence must be a pain. It’s particularly hard for him since he has no particular skills upon which to call upon. Like most shonnen anime characters his only skill seems to be the ability to fight. You’d think that’d be pretty good in a world where hollows attack randomly trying to steal people’s souls. You’d think he could leverage that ability to help defend Urahara’s shop and thus earn his keep.

However, in this case it is rather a useless skill to have. Jinta, Tessai, and Ururu can all fight already and Urahara is waaaay more powerful than him. Heck, even the family cat is waaay more powerful than him.  Thus his fighting abiliy is largely irrelevant to the defense of the store. So what can he do? Just run around trying to do chores to make himself feel better about imposing upon their hospitality and trying to minimize his impact on their daily living by doing things like not asking for seconds.

I can relate to Renji. How does one figure out how to earn one’s keep? What is appropriate and what isn’t? How can one minimize their impact while at the same time contributing significantly to the daily efficient running of their place of residence?

I’m not just talking about where you live too. We are all part of a society, several communities, a state and/or a nation, and even a planet. Many of us are a part of a family and a business and one or more social groups as well.  How do we earn our keep with respect to each of these? What do we do to justify our presence? All of these groups are good to us. All of them support us. And yet how often do we ask ourselves what are we doing to make ourselves valuable to them?

Take being a member of the planet for example. We are all such wasteful creatures. We pollute. We waste resources. We destroy the environment and contribute to global warming.  And yet the Earth just keeps supporting us, helping us out, no questions asked, no qualms about it.  What can we do to make the Earth’s life easier rather than destroying its ability to support life with our every waking moment and every single act of consumption? That’s the challenge.

That’s the heart of it, nobody likes to be the cause of harm to any system. The thought that one’s presence or actions might cause harm being it emotional harm, physical harm, temporal harm, or organizational harm is a miserable feeling. We all, like Renji would be willing to go out of our way to try and prevent or make up for or undo any harm we may fear we might have caused, be causing, or may yet cause in the future. But often we don’t know what to do or how to go about it .And we often feel we don’t have any skills or abilities to leverage in order to contribute or how to go about applying those few skills we have. We often feel lost and ineffectual as a result.

And we’re left being a drain on each of the systems that we are apart of  feeling bad about it and engaging in pointless gestures that mean nothing to try and make up for it. We strive not to be freeloaders, but we know that nobody would be making a mistake if they were to start to call us Freeloader-san.

Related to my last post about the Save Me Plz  story broadcast on escapepod, I was just wondering what would you do if you had an infinite number of wands of reification? What should you do with such power?

If you haven’t heard the story, I suggest you go listen to it right now, but here’s what you need to know to answer my query. Basically what these wands allow you to do is twist reality however you please. They are sort of like wands of wishes. That is they enable you to bring whatever your wishes are into being. But they only have three charges so normally you can’t do a lot and you have to save them for special circumstances.

However, one the main characters in the story finds a loophole that he can use to get an unbounded number of those wands. And what does he do with this astounding extraordinary power?

He turns the real world into the equivalent of World of Warcraft. In other words he just turns reality into a big video game that he can play.

How incredibly stupid is that?  That was my first thought when I heard this story. Not just that it was totally evil which of course it is. But also so very very stupid. Why would anyone come up with such a cheesy way to use that ultimate power?  There have got to be a billion better and more interesting uses and a great many of them would also be a lot easier to justify morally.

So what would you do if you had that power? You can rework the world into whatever you want it to be slowly over the span of a some years. Can you come up with a more moral use? How about just a more interesting use?

Me? I’m not entirely sure. I have a million ideas. But I know one of the first things I would do is bring back lots and lots of the most famous and interesting thinkers trhoughout history from the dead so that they can help me to make better decisions. I’d have Einstein and Newton and Darwin and King and Ghandi and Plato and Kant and Hume and Socrates and Frued and Jefferson and Lincoln and Franklin and Proust and Marx and Vonnegut and Descartes and Shakespeare and Russell and Niestche and Aristotle and Homer and Adam Smith and John Locke etc etc. I’d haeve all of them to consult with when making decisions, them and many many of the smartest people ever to do anything of significance in their lives throughout history. I’d recruit them to help me to figure out how to use my godlike power for the best of everyone. I’d even consider bringing back Jesus himself, though I might be a little afraid his own godlike powers might get in the way of mine. Anyway that’d be step one I think. I’m not sure what else I would do.

What would you do?

Go here and listen to the story Save Me Plz on episode 124 by David Barr Kirtley. It is brilliant.  One of the few stories I’ve heard lately that surprised me and made me think about things in a different light.

I think a lot of people seem to see this story as a story about mmorpg obsession and hence about obsession altogether. That is that it is a kind of warning against becoming too intensely interested in something and how it can twist you are a result into evil behaviors even in the name of good.  

Yeah, I guess it’s a little about that, but it seems to be much more about Meg’s decisions and choices than it is Devon’s. Meg’s continual repeated choices to try and save Devon and then to trust in Devon’s ability to change the world for the better.

The first decisions is totally understandable, to go on a quest to save someone you once cared about is entirely natural for anyone.  The second decision is passing strange.  Meg chooses to help Devon become a virtual god of the entire world? Why?

Isn’t it interesting that when we hear Meg’s thought processes two things convince her to agree to Devon’s proposal on top of her feelings for him.  One is her own vanity. She sees her old self and the thought of being less attractive repulses her. The second is a strange kind of reasoning where she fears to doubt her previous selves. She thinks that if all those other hers had decided that this was best and that it was good then who was she to doubt them?

Both of these reasoning processes require her to think about previous incarnations of herself after she’s already gone through the loop at least once and after she has been changed through the want at least a little. So in a way the sad thing is we don’t really see what made her choose to repeat the quest the first time. Why would she? Did Devon immediately use the very first want to change Meg’s appearance for the better? If so then Devon proves himself to be even more of a disturbingly manipulative character than I thought.

Devon is basically just a kind of an asshole of a character throughout the story really. This is understandable because the story wouldn’t really work otherwise. Still, I think it is meant to be a little ambiguous. That is, he isn’t acting out of evil, just utter selfishness. He wants to create a world that is exactly like the one he would most enjoy, regardless of anyone else’s opinion, and he is willing to use someone repeatedly to achieve this ends. I find nothing admirable or even understandable about this character. He’s just a jerk to me, but a fascinating jerk to read about.

Meg in contrast is easy to identify with. She’s meant to seem normal. So why did she choose to continuously let herself become closer and closer to being Lena the elf queen? Why?  Was her vanity that strong? Or maybe this is a story of obsession after all but not obsession over mmorpgs, but Meg’s obsession with Devon that leads her to be willing to give up her very self identity for him.  That to me is what makes the  story so sad and disturbing.

It’s all emptiness now. Everything is removed. I lie there on the floor
and all around me there is so much nothingness it is stifling. And I am
tired, so tired. I stare at the ceiling willing my mind to stop
functions and my eyes to close at least for a moment before they kick
me out of this place. Just a moment longer.

But my mind won’t stop just yet, I just keep staring at the ceiling,
the end, the limit. It’s strange that it seems so much farther away
from this perspective for all that I am only a couple of feet lower
than I would ordinarily be when lying in’ bed. And yet for some reason
it’s like I can see more of it. I notice more of the bumps and crevices
on that ceiling, it isn’t the smooth landscape I’d always thought it
was. Or is it all my imagination?

Sleep doesn’t come to me. It will, I know, as soon as the caffeine high
sparked my three red bulls starts to fade.  So I just contemplate the
task I’ve just accomplished during this time period. How I packed up
and compressed a years worth of life, (or is it more of a lifetime?)
into a small little box of a room in the side of a building where it
will sit for who knows how long until the day I choose to reclaim it.
Its strange that my life should be so small and stranger still that it
is so easy for me to cast it all aside as if it meant nothing.

A few hours ago I  hated all that junk. It was a waste of time owning
it, a waste of time collecting it, and worst of all an endless waste of
energy moving it about.  I wished there was an easy way to get rid of
it, to rid myself of it without feeling guilty about having ever spent
cold hard cash upon it in the first place. But there isn’t. There
options are trash or save. Isn’t that the way with all things in life?

Now I don’t hate it though. Now I’m not sure what I feel about it. It’s
just funny to think that this is everything I have, the building blocks
through which someone could if they wished reconstruct my nature
through deduction. Magic cards, video games, books, dvd movies and so many
even more mundane things, what clues would they hold for a detective
seeking to try and deduce the essence of this human’s nature?

Now though I think it all just feels so limiting. It’s a ceiling, a
wall blocking me, constraining me. Too much connection to material
things is a limit to my growth. I need to do more than compress and
store this ball and chain of objective desires, I need to be rid of it,
cast it into the sea preferably with my leg not still attached.

My eyes are starting to get heavy now, and one of the last things I
notice though is that I was wrong. This expansive emptiness I had
engineered as not quite as complete as I thought it was. I was so sure
I’d gotten everything. Everything.  But I cast my eyes about and they
lazily fall upon the far way away from me where sticking out as if to
mock me are pinned two small screws. 

Ah yes, I remember now. Upon those screws had hung a white board and
upon that whiteboard I had drawn my beautiful diagram. So simple and
elegant I’d felt as I drew it that it held some fundamental truth about
how the world really works. Later I came to have serious doubts but at
the time I knew that what I had drawn was important and so I drew it
all the same.    This was many many months ago.
 
I’d told myself that I didn’t erase that diagram because I might need a
reminder of it or because it was a useful thing to think about every
once in a while .But I doubt that’s the truth. Rather I probably kept
it just because it was a clever idea I had and not just any kind of
clever idea but one simple and elegant and concise enough that anyone
could probably understand it at a glimpse. Just two parabolas, one
describing the economics state of the world as it is and the other as
maybe it ought to be. So simple. Those kinds of ideas are so few and
far between
for me that I want to keep them forever in order to remind myself the
possibility of unlikely things.

I told myself I would leave the diagram up until something more clever
strikes my mind. Only nothing ever did during all the months I kept
that white board. But now the white board has been long ago given away.
Actually not that long ago. In fact, maybe it was yesterday, ah it just
feels like an eternity ago when my mind is drawn sluggish through
caffeine withdrawal and lack of sleep.

But the screws remain. How could I forget to remove the screws? There
they sit a blemish upon the otherwise perfectly smooth and clean
surface in an apartment truth told was in many ways cleaner than the
day I had moved in. Clean and utterly empty save for the crazy person
sleeping on the floor and two screws sticking out of the wall. I wonder
if that is a metaphor for something. 

Oh well, screw the screws, I think. And in my sleep deprived state I
find this bad pun of a thought immensely funny, hilarious even. I am
laughing all the way to a deep and thoughtless sleep.

And then they come. They walk in on me, exclaim in surprise. There is
annoyance bordering on anger written on their faces as they glare at my
sleepily rising form. Maintenance. They’ve got a job to do and I’m in
the way. I’m a roadblock keeping them from their Just endeavors. I
guess they better just eliminate it, put this poor fool out of his
misery. Wait a minute! Why are they pulling out nine millimeters. Bang!
Bang! Bang! They are shooting me. Again and again. They aren’t
stopping. Just shooting and shooting and shooting.

Hah I truly am remarkable! I feel no pain at all from the bullet!. I
must be Superman or Wolverine or maybe better than both put together.
With a little bit of Xavier and Storm and Hiro and Raven mixed in. Yep
I kickass. Why do these fools think they can stop me? Or maybe, my
stupidly logical brain points out, just maybe I’m only dreaming. Shut
up brain. Leave me to my fantasies. Damn it!

My brain is insistent though and I awake only to find that the banging
was quite real. The maintenance people are outside banging on something
or another. I force myself awake, force the grogginess out of my system
and walk to the front door to see what’s going on.

There they are. Right outside my door. Banging. I can’t parse what they are doing but it is making quite a racket.

“Oh we didn’t realize you were still here.”  One says.

I mutter something about just finishing up a few last things.  The other says “Ok, just let us know when you are done ok.”

Sure. Sure.  I close the door and contemplate my fate. The banging
continues for only a few minutes more. I check the time and see that I
have only been asleep for a little over an hour. In about another hour
the storage facility will be open again and I can finish my tasks and
go about my life.

What until then? Sleep? Makes sense since I had not intended to sleep
for only an hour.  But although I’m still tired, I’m no where near as
sleepy as I was when I lay down an hour ago. Now I find that trying to
lie down again I find that hard floor nowhere near as inviting and
comfortable as I did but a moment ago. Sleep eludes me this time though
I struggle with it for about forty minutes trying to find a way to get
comfortable.  The screws are no help whatsoever.

Finally I get my vehicle drive around aimlessly for a while. I stop at
some 24 hour convenience store and buy some more caffeinated bevereges
because why not, it will only kill me in the long run right? I  decline
food because I am afraid eating will make me tired again.

Eventually I get back to work and the hours of the day pass by with me
trying to decide definitively what the heck to keep, to throw out, to
take with me, or to leave on the side of the road hoping some happy
person will find and take for their own use. So much junk.

Why would anyone own a set of 40 glasses? Will ever 40 people need to
drink liquid in my presence at once? Why own 6 mixing bowels when I
don’t even bake? What’s the point of that juicer that I only used once?
That jar opener’s a pretty cool device but in the grand scheme of
things its only purpose in existing was to replace a single unopenable
jar that had been sitting around for months untouched with a jar opener
that gets to sit around for months untouched.

Do I really need to keep those msdn magazines I’ve never read or even
cracked open and which I have on DVD anyway? How many books do I have
that I say to myself “one day I’ll read it” only to never crack it open
ever again? What about all those books I’ve read and have no reason to
ever read again? Why keep them? And the notebooks, so many notebooks
each with just a little bit written in them but little of any merit. As
if to be their companion there’s also a big container filled with ink
pens and pencils. Many may still work but surely many more are long
dead. Why on Earth did I keep it all?

A small grill. I’ve never cooked out. A baseball bat. I’ve never
played. A staple remover. A power drill. A programmable thermostat.
Weather stripping. So many pointless bottles of various cleaning
products. Why do I have three bottles of electronic dust removal spray?
I think this pair of shoes I’ve havent worn in 4 years and are so worn
I wouldn’t wear in a hundred even if you put a gun to my head. What
the? A Halloween themed table cloth? How the? Three old broken travel
clocks? Where the? A scanner that looks like it must be from the
eighties? And no I don’t know why I have that mysterious block of wood.

It goes on like that for a while until finally I reach a state of
organization I can accept. I am taking more with me than I’d originally
planned but at least I don’t have to rent a bigger storage unit. And I
got rid of more junk overall. That always makes me happy.

Maybe owning objects doesn’t mark a ceiling capping off my nature after
all. They constrain but not all constraints bind. Sometimes barriers
just guide your path like the walls in a maze. Objects invoke memories,
reminding me of choices good and bad, right and wrong. They make me
feel solid. The world feels more real because them. Whereas to cast
them all aside would leave me untethered, floating free, even more
unsure of myself than I am now.

At this point in the day I know that there’s no rush to get where I’m
going. I won’t be able to get in until late unless I dare get myself
lost seeking a new place which is not the kind of thing I want to try
to do when having slept only an hour in two and a half days.  So now
what?   I’m starting to feel sleepy again so that old apartment floor
is looking inviting again.  I drive back to my abode.

Alas it is not to be. The door now has a sign on it that says
‘maintenance within’. I guess they saw me gone and took it as a golden
opportunity to begin doing whatever it is that they do.  What happened
to waiting for me to ‘let them know?’  Oh well.

With lack of anything better to do I drive around the small little
neighborhood slowly with my laptop out looking for wireless signals
strong enough to power my internet habit. It isn’t long before I find
one that is unencrypted and entirely usable. This is one thing I love
about wireless networks. How they can all sort of re-enforce one
another giving people multiple backups increasing reliability for
everyone. Of course you’re technically not supposed to use other
people’s connections like that, nor are people supposed to leave their
connections open for you to do so. But people do and people do. I don’t
know if it is just laziness or lack of knowledge about the security
risks inherent in having an unencrypted wireless connection or if the
people are leaving their network open on the principled position that
networks should be free and sharing your connection is an inherently
good and nice thing to do.  For those of you out there who have
unencrypted wireless networks for the latter reason. You are my heroes.
And you’re far braver than I.

Well connection established I am able to kill some more time browsing
my usual haunts before my laptop battery runs out.  I even start to
write this, though ultimately it turns out I won’t finish it until
tomorrow. And all the while I dream and wonder about the nature of
ceilings, the power of limitations for good or ill.

I could write more I guess but the story gets less interesting from
here, if that is at all possible. I sleep in my vehicle some. I eat.
Eventually I drive to my destination again fortified with more caffeine
and loud music which I sing along to to keep me awake. I also bought
some spicy food snacks. That works remarkably well at helping to keep
my mind sharp.  So luck of lucks I only almost get into an accident
twice and I think both times it is not my fault. Eventually I arrive
and an uneventful evening ensues.

But I can’t keep thinking about limitations. Barriers. Ends. I keep
seeing that ceiling so far above my head and yet so ever present. And
you know try as I might to see the good in them for some reason or
another I just can’t bring myself to believe in ceilings. I don’t
believe there are heights to which we can’t reach, walls that we can’t
cross. I don’t think there are battles that can’t be won. It just isn’t
in my nature. If we were to meet someone who claimed to be God and had
every possible power you could imagine to prove the truth of his might.
I would not be particularly awed. I’d just presume that each and every
one of his powers had an explicable explanation and that anyone could
one day learn and master them. The idea that he was somehow above and
beyond us, at a level which we could never obtain or approach. That
would be unbelievable to me. Impossible for me to accept. Impossible.

Sometimes though I think accepting and believing in limitations and
ends makes life easier for people. For example, if you believe that you
just aren’t capable of all that much, that you are entirely average and
normal in every way then what big deal is it if you don’t accomplish
something, if you don’t achieve something you set out to do? But what
if you believe that there are no limits on what human beings are
capable of? Then if you think you are average you’d still know that you
could still accomplish virtually anything if you put your mind to. So
each and every one of your failures would be oh so much more of a
bitter pill to swallow. And worse, since let’s face it nobody really
thinks they are entirely average, you’d always be thinking about all
the ways in which you are better than average but always be left
wondering what fundamental flaws in your nature keep you from achieving
any of the things that you want.  IF you don’t believe that reality has
limitations, then you’d have to conclude that the limitations must be
within you. How sad.

But there’s a positive side to not believing in ceilings too. Hope. 
When something seems unlikely or impossible you can still hope.
Irrational, mindless, crazy hope can still well up within you. You can
feel hopeful even against all odds, even when everyone else thinks your
crazy to have hope. The word impossible just doesn’t mean anything to
you. It’s all choices and decisions. We can and will achieve whatever
it is that we want. The only issue then is deciding what it is that we
want. That’s the philosophy of the person who see’s no ceilings above
him, only clear blue endless skies. That’s the philosophy of the kind
of person I strive to be with all the good and the bad that comes with
it.