Sometimes, I’m really terrible with responding to people. In this blog there have dozens of responses to my posts that I have not responded to at all. I’ve gotten messages too in xanga that I have not really reacted too either. It isn’t that I don’t appreciate or care about these responses nor is it that I don’t have anythng to say. I both want and need to respond. I just don’t do it. I’m not entirely sure why.
Likewise there have been plenty of other people’s blog entries that I have really wanted to respond to, but have not gotten around to it. I don’t even take the time to drop a simple note of support or praise for those whose blogs indicate that they need it. I just don’t do it sometimes, despite the fact that most of the time I want to. It’s terrible. I know.
It isn’t just blogs too. There are lots of emails I’ve gotten where someone goes into a great deal of depth to explain or describe something to me and I am greatly appreciative of the person taking the time to write so much to me and I often feel as if I have a lot that want to say in response. I just don’t. I don’t reply. I tell myself I will. That I am going to interact with the person and write an interesting detailed email, but I just don’t do it.
It gets worse. There have been times when people have called me and I just never called them back. They leave voice messages, sometimes several. I don’t even make the slightest effort to respond. There have been letters too I’ve ignored, and invitations as well. There have also been times when I thought someone was reaching out to ask me for my help and I’ve just totally ignored them, even when they are people I care about.
So if it seems like I’ve ignored you or are ignoring you please don’t take offense. It isn’t you. I’m like this with everyone sometimes. I just don’t respond very well. I don’t interact vey well. I don’t know what to say or how to say it and so I keep putting it off until I can come up with the right words… only they never come. And I hate that feeling of not knowing how best to handle a situation.
Also, far too often when I do respond, I feel quite disgusted with the nature and impact of my response. Far too often I feel as if I am alienating people I don’t want to alienate when I respond. Sometimes I feel like I am burning bridges before they have even been built.
So instead there are times when I just avoid responding altogether. I go silent. I ignore people. It’s a defense mechanism of course to avoid awkwardness and disappointment.
And yet it doesn’t work of course. In the end I end up just feeling guilty about not responding and that makes me afeel all the more awkard and disappointed.
So maybe my new years resolution should be to be more responsive.
What keeps you from walking into the house of a neighbor and stealing
their stuff when they aren’t home? Or even when they are home? You can
use a knife or a gun or just your own physical strength to overpower
them. How come someone isn’t in your house right now doing that to you?
Why doesn’t it happen all the time. We could all be trying to take what
we want from each other without hesitation or remorse. It could happen.
It could be that way tomorrow. Anarchy. Chaos.
But it probably won’t. Why not? Guess what. It isn’t your lock that
keeps people out or your dead bolt or your state of the art alarm
system. That much I’m sure of. Likewise, it isn’t the existence of the police that ensures that we all
stay to ourselves more or less and don’t bother each other and that the
criminals are one the fringe easily identified, more or less, and
easily stopped.
Still, it doesn’t take a super criminal master mind to be able to get
away with a small crime, even something like a burglary. That’s why it
does still happen and there are plenty of unsolved crimes every year.
So why isn’t everybody doing it? The risk of being caught is not that
great. The more people do it the less the risk too. And the
competitive advantage you might get from being able to break the rules
can be enormous. What keeps us all on the right path anyway?
Let’s look at a smaller easier situation.
Why don’t you run red lights?
I don’t mean all the time. Obviously if running a red light could lead
to your death or injury or the death or injury of others you would have
to have a pretty damn good reason to run the red light. Also, if a cop
is sitting right there you have a financial incentive not to run a red
light. You don’t want the ticket. But what about in all those
situations where you knew there were no cops around and you could see
pretty clearly that there was no real risk of getting into an accident.
You could have run that red light and nobody would have given a damn.
And maybe once or twice you *have* done that, but on the vast majority
of times if you are like the vast majority of people, you don’t.
Likewise with not stopping at STOP signs and making illegal turns and
u-turns and even speeding.
Moreover in most places the cost of the ticket for making a minor
traffic violation is not large and not scary and impacts your life very
little. It can be argued quite well I think that it is in your
competitive interests to speed and run red lights and pass stop signs
in every opportunity where it is safe to do so even if the cops might
be around. That is to say, the advantage you would gain in time over
the long haul would more than make up for the costs in tickets. Unless
of course you live in one of the places where they are now massively
increasing the fines for minor traffic violations like, I hear,
Virginia.
Yet interestingly, look at J-walking. In my observation in areas where
there is not a lot of traffic, most people do J-walk. In crowded areas
it’s different. There is too much risk to J-walk. People consider the
cross walks as a service protecting them from errant drivers in those
situations. But in an uncrowded road in the country, who walks to the
corner to cross the street? Why? Actually, even in cities I do see a
lot of people J-walking in those rare
situations where it is safe to do so and much more frequently people
cross when the crosswalk doesn’t say to walk but it is nonetheless safe
enough to cross. What is it about J-walking that makes it so different
from driving?
Let’s look at some more examples.
What about things that aren’t illegal but which we still refrain from doing?
Like for example, why don’t you spy on your family and friends? It’d be
easy, so easy to do so and you could learn a lot from doing it right?
Maybe you can find out what people really think about you. Maybe you
can learn something about someone that helps you relate to them. Maybe
you can find out in advance if people are going to betray your trusts
so you could protect yourself from it. Again, even something so little
as paying too much attention to what someone is saying when they are on
the phone with someone else could give you a kind of competitive
advantage in the social arena of life.
With the internet it opens whole new avenues to spy, and no I’m not
talking about reading someone’s myspace or doing a google search for
someone’s name. Those things have a bad reputation but I hardly think
there is anything morally wrong with it, even if you are obsessive
about it. But other things are more private online but it still
wouldn’t be particularly hard for someone who wanted to to listen in
and figure out more about you by examining your online behavior. Most
people don’t encrypt their emails. Almost nobody encrypts their IMs.
How hard do you work to eliminate your download activity, your browsing
history, your cookies? How many people know how to harden their
computer against intrusion? There’s a lot more to it than downloading
zone alarm, btw. Most people keep their passwords and stuff stored
right on their computer, often in their web browser, for easy access so
that if someone ever got a hold of their computer they’d have access to
them all.
If someone, even a friend really wanted to find out more about what you
did on your computer, unless you are super paranoid, they totally can.
It isn’t even that hard. And the closer you are to that person, both in
terms of how much you know about that person and in terms of how
spatially close you are to that person, the easier it gets. So why
aren’t you doing it? Right now. I’m willing to bet that there’s
somebody out there that you feel it would be of benefit to you to know
more about. And you can probably find that out in such a way that the
person will never find out unless you slip up and say something out of
place that reveals your excessive knowledge.
And yet, very few people do anything like that. People won’t even read
somebody else’s mail when it is accidentally delivered to them and
nobody could possibly know about it. People don’t spy on each other.
They feel it is wrong to do so, even if the knowledge would cause no
harm. The only time they do is when they feel they have to, in those
few situations where desperate need sets in or when they feel it is
their responsibility to do so. Everybody else respects one another’s
privacy for the most part. Why is that?
Similarly, why don’t you lie?
I mean come on, nobody can tell me that they’ve never been in a
situation where they wouldn’t have gained significant advantage from
lying and nobody would have known the difference. Surely there are
hundreds of situations you’ve been in where a little white lie can
smooth over the awkwardness of social interactions. Yet even in those
situations I observe that people will go through great contusions to
avoid outright *lying* to somebody. They’d much rather tell an
unrelated half truth than be deliberately untruthful to someone even if
social awkwardness results. More likely they’ll word their statement in
just such away that it sounds like they are saying something when they
aren’t really saying anything at all or something that is always true.
The “that’s nice” or “that’s interesting” kind of a vacuous comment.
All in the name of avoiding deception. Only in those situations where
people have no choice but to lie or else really have a social dilemma
on their hands do I see people directly lying. Even then only very few
people seem really comfortable about it. Why is that?
And for matters of self betterment, the avoidance of lying from a
strictly rationalist perspective is even more baffling. If someone is
going to cause you financial or physical harm, why would you hesitate
about lying your way out of that situation? Moreover, why don’t you lie
about anything and everything that can give you a financial advantage
in your daily lives and causes no harm? Why don’t you cheat on your
taxes for example? Why don’t you lie when filling out your resume? Why
don’t you lie during your interview? Why don’t you lie on credit card
applications and loan applications? There are a thousand thousand
situations where you could lie and the harm that would be caused should
you get caught would be minimal compared to the advantages you would
obtain from being a perpetual liar. So why isn’t everybody doing this
all the time?
I wish I knew the answers to these questions, but I don’t. I could
rattle off the multitudes of theories about this that have been bandied
about throughout history but what’s the point? Nobody really knows. All
we can do is examine our own choices and try to see why we consider our
personal morality so important to us.
Recently I blogged about a trick involving manipulating CVS coupons to
get goods for free. I did this and yet I felt a little bad about it. I talked to
a bunch of people about it and most people were supportive of the act.
They didn’t see anything wrong with using these coupons. If their
system allows it then so what? No harm is caused, they argued. And you
shouldn’t feel sorry for CVS. They rip off more people every day than
you could ever do. In fact they deserve to lose money. Moreover, they
argued, that I was just really using the coupons that they provided in a
way that they allowed. If they didn’t want you to use the coupons in
that way, they shouldn’t allow it. It’s as easy as that. Not using the
coupons in this way it could be argued actually is worse for CVS
because it keeps the problems that result in these exploitations
existing under the surface, invisible, and not corrected. Somebody will
figure it out and abuse it. It’s better that as many people as possible
do in fact since that will inspire CVS to change.
On the other hand, others gave the opposite perspective. They didn’t
think what I was doing would cause a lot of harm but if enough people
did and it reached critical mass they thought it would. That is to say,
people could lose their jobs or get less money in bonuses as a
consequence of stores under performing. But this argument is fairly
weak and nobody really pursued it that strongly. Most of the people who
were against the trick like this, didn’t have much of an explanation
for their choice not to do it. They just felt that it was wrong to do
so. It didn’t feel right. So they didn’t do it.
Well a majority of people didn’t do it because they are just too lazy.
Or they thought it was more work than the advantage you get out of it.
That is sheerly on practical grounds they refused. Meaning had it been
easier or they got better gear, they would have been all on board.
Strangely I didn’t feel *that* uncomfortable doing this. And I did do
it. And it isn’t the only kind of consumer trick I’ve used to minimize
my spending on goods. And I’d do most of them again too. Most aren’t in
any way morally ambiguous at all too. You are just combining offers and
plans in a way that the people who provided them didn’t think about
when they were putting them out there. It’s all fair game. Some are a
little morally ambiguous though, like when you ignore something that
says “one per customer” on the grounds that you know they’ll never know
you are the same customer when you come back there tomorrow. They
*could* do something to make that impossible, but most likely they
won’t. And knowing this, I take advantage. Is this wrong? In a way I
sort of feel as if it is a competitive game to try and maximize how far
your money can go.
But the question remains, why isn’t everybody doing this? Why doesn’t everybody think the same way?
And yet I reached a level where I couldn’t do something too and I just
felt that sense that it was something that was beyond me. My xbox360
broke and I was pretty pissed off about it. So I called the customer
support and you know I could have lied about when I bought the console,
and they didn’t ask for a receipt or anything, but I didn’t. I told the
truth. In part that was because I thought the console had a 3 year
warranty. I didn’t realize the 3 year warranty only applied to one
specific problem. Had I known that I might have lied and said it was
having that problem. Sadly, I did neither.
And then another opportunity arose to get my money back on my console
in a manner that would, I was assured by many people, only hurt the
company that produces the console. I can’t discuss the details but it’s
pretty obvious when you think about it. And I was mad enough to go out
and even start the process of doing this. I was all ready to do it.
And then I couldn’t do it. Why couldn’t I? It just felt too wrong.
So I just ended up buying a new console. At full retail price. ugh. So
Microsoft makes more money off of me. Their shoddy hardware goes
unpunished because my own ethical bar is too high to stoop low enough
to do them harm. So their next console can be just as buggy if they
want and they can rely on the exact same garbage to ensure their profit
margins.
Obviously this puts me at a considerable competitive disadvantage in
society. There are people out there who wouldn’t have hesitated. Lots
of people. They would have just gotten their money back and said screw
it to anybody it inconveniences. And doesn’t that benefit them more in
the long run? They end up with more money, more comfort. Life is easier
for them.
So why didn’t I do the same thing? Why don’t I cheat Microsoft? Why doesn’t everybody? Every chance they get?
All these examples are really the same. Our morality doesn’t seem to be
bound or even particularly influenced by rational thought about
competition and advantage. Incentive theory doesn’t get us anywhere
when trying to understand our moral and ethical choices. If it did,
we’d be living in an entirely different world. But the world we do live
in, people are constantly holding back, refraining, restraining
themselves. Holding themselves to a higher standard. Trying to be
better people for no apparent visible reason except that they feel they
should.
If the answer must be one or the other, as the question implies then if you neither love success nor fear failure then you have no reason whatsoever to work. Then what?
Lantis showed me this video the other day. How he remembered this clip, I will never know. And that there is someone else out there who liked it enough to post a youtube video including it is something that I find totally remarkable. But then, it’s far from the most obscure thing I’ve seen on youtube.
Ah old cartoons. They really were great. There were all the disney cartoons – rescue rangers, tail spin, darkwing duck, ducktales, etc. Not to mention the extraordinary Gargoyles. And there were so many other classic shows like transformers, he-man, GIJOE, Thundercats, Animaniacs and even the short lived Pirates of Darkwater. And dozens more. No matter how you look at it they just don’t make cartoons like they used to.
Sure there’s Avatar now, but that’s just one cartoon, even if it does trump almost everything I mentioned above. It also lacks that “cartoon” feel to it. It’s more like an anime. It doesn’t try to express any kind of simple morality in a kind of episodic revelation like old cartoons did. Rather it’s more of a serious epic tale, like reading a novel almost. It’s not the same. Where are the high quality mindless fun cartoons? They don’t seem to exist any more.
Anyway, Coo Coo Cola was an interesting episode. Lantis says that you can’t really tell from this clip but the overall episode has a theme about the importance of belonging to a group, of having something to which you belong that’s more than just you by yourself. That’s why we develop connects and become friends with people. In order to belong.
If that’s the case, then Coo Coo Cola is I think even more subtle than my friend suggested. It seems to be showcasing the subtle line that can be drawn between belonging to a group and being indoctrinated into part of a cult. The first is something human beings need in order to feel complete. The second can be corrupting and even dangerous. Cults take “belonging” to the next level, where you act as or in favor of the group independent of your own individual reason. Rather than you contributing your individuality to the betterment of the group, the group suppresses your individuality in order to ensure that you fit into the mold expected of the group.
It can be a subtle line to draw I think. In order to become a part of a group you do have to sacrifice a little bit of yourself . Your own wants and needs have to be partially suppressed in favor of the needs of the group. You can’t always go your own way. You can’t always do exactly what you want most. But it’s easy for the desire and thirst to belong to the group to become so strong that you end up giving up more of yourself than is healthy. Rather than being part of a group you end up being part of a cult.
hmmm… With a message that profound maybe I’m wrong to characterize these old cartoons as “mindless fun”.
Well here’s a clip that I remember that really was mindless.
One thing I’ve always hated is when someone refuses to answer the door when a stranger knocks. And yet lots of people do it. And many will argue that it is even the most rational thing to do. They think that you are crazy if you answer the door for a stranger. The risk is too great.
And yet, I will always answer the door if I am able. I would even leave my door unlocked sometimes or even wide open if the weather is good. It’s neither because I am stupid or fearless. Rather, I simple do not believe in the presumption that my fellow human beings are inherently evil. I don’t think we should be so very afraid of *everyone* that we don’t give people the time of day or treat them with even cordial politeness. I think that when we are afraid like that, we create the very scenario that we are trying to avoid. Criminals thrive in an environment where everyone is afraid of everyone else and keeps to themselves and nobody helps anybody. That’s how they are able to get away with so much.
For example someone knocking on your door might be in trouble and in desperate need of help. Since you don’t answer and ignore them and pretend to not be home, you never find out about their trouble and you can’t really help them. So that person becomes a prime target for those who prey upon the weak and the vulnerable. Because all the Good people are too afraid to help one another, the bad people win. It’s as simple as that.
Ironically the internet is pretty different. If anything it sort of seems to be the opposite. Or at least it used to be. People were obsessively non-careful. I mean revealing all kinds of info about themselves as if nobody online would ever dare hurt them. It was really stupid of course and it’s a good thing its changing. But there are a lot of vestiges of that old openness attitude and its that which makes the internet still attractive to me. People really care about community interaction here in the ether world. And people are willing to give people the benefit of the doubt.
But sometimes the dedication to community goes a little too far, I think. For example, there was a recent discussion on a blog about whether people should use xanga “friend-lock”. This simple privacy mechanism causes no harm and basically just lets someone protect themselves. It’s sort of equivalent to locking your online “door”. But in order to use it, you have to partially opt out of a part of the community interaction. And it’s sort of surprising to me, but people seem to come down pretty strongly against that kind of a thing in the online world. There seems to be a lot of people who demand that people commit as much to the community as they themselves are willing to commit.
Now I do think the online community grows and thrives the more open its members are, and if I had my wish nobody would ever use xanga-lock or friend-lock or protected lists or blocking users at all. But at the same time I can’t imagine ever getting upset at someone for not engaging in the community in the same way that I do. Just like although I would love to keep my doors unlocked at my home, I’d certainly not blame anyone for locking theirs. People absolutely do have a right to protect themselves. And I expect people to make the best decisions that they can in order to do that.
I just personally want to be a person who has the courage to not always take the safest course. I want to choose sometimes not to protect myself. And I hope that enough people will follow suit so that we can all make the world a slightly better place.
Don’t ever swear to yourself that you won’t ever think about something. Even if you think that thinking about something would be a betrayal of trust or dangerous or evil or just plain wrong. Take my advice. Just don’t do it.
The end result of making such oath is that you end up thinking about how much you refuse to think about that thing far more often than you would have thought about it had you never made the oath in the first place. And in a way isn’t that really the very same thing that you were trying to avoid in the first place?
I’d sleep. Really, I very rarely sleep just because I have to. I sleep because I enjoy it. Because it feels good and it gives me peace of mind and because I like to dream and because I enjoy the feeling of having just woken up in the morning.
What would I do with my time if I COULDN’T sleep? That’s a different question. Sadly, depressingly, I think that I’d do nothing different. There’s plenty of free time that I have now that I don’t use to do anything productive. I just stair off into space and think and wonder and dream. Or I play games or chat with people or blog or otherwise waste time. I’d just do more of all that.
And when I think back to the busier times in my life, it’d be no different then. Again I’d just do more of what I was already doing. Even if I was the only one with that advantage in the world and there was no competitive reason for me to work harder, I’d still probably spend much of that extra time working hard on the same stuff I was working hard on during the rest of the day. Once I get into the habit and the mindset of working toward a goal I usually find it difficult to take a break or disconnect from the goal and try to do something else. Nor can I focus my attention part of the time on other goals. I just do what I’m doing. The extra time wouldn’t influence my decisions in the least.
I used to hate the show
Smallville. I mean there were things that I thought were ok about it I
guess or else I would have never watched it at all. You get the
excessive eye candy and fan service, so I guess you could watch it just
for that. In addition the season premier’s and finale’s are decent or
at least a cut above the regular season episodes. If you even have the
slightest passing interest in the mythology of Superman it can be a
little interesting to see how Clark’s story unfolds and how they
manifest his powers using modern day special effects. The season
premiers and finale’s are good for that aspect since you get the cool
powers stuff with a minimal of the soap opera fluff that takes up 99%
of every other episode.
But what I really hated about the show was the very premise
of it. The idea behind Smallville is to make Superman more human and
believable by showing how he grows up and all the hardships and sorrows
he faces. And so throughout the series they play all this sappy music
and over dramatize stuff and try to make you feel so sorry for poor
poor Superman.
And I just can’t get on board with that. I can’t suspend my disbelief.
He’s SUPERMAN for christ sake. What does he have to complain about? I
mean really. What the heck is so bad about his life? Give me even ONE
of his powers and I guarantee you I’d be dancing in the streets I’d be
so happy. Super hearing, Super strength, X-ray Vision, Heat vision,
Cold Breath, Invulnerability, Super Speed, Flight, the ability to heal
by standing outside in the sunlight. Sheesh. What I’ve got to fight
some super villains in exchange for those powers? Big frickin deal.
Sign me up. I’ll take it in a second.
It’s even worse because you the viewer *already* know how the story is
going to unfold. When he’s done dealing with all these silly little
childhood dramas, he’s going to be Superman, loved and revered by all
the worlds people, savior of humanity many times over. He’s going to
fall in love with the woman of his dreams and basically things will
work out between them, more or less. We know this. We also know he’s
going to get to live on a space station and hang out with super heroes
every day. How awesome is that? And he’ll even have a pretty nice day
job as a reporter in the mean time.
So boohoo Clark. Cry me a river. How are we supposed to believe his
life is so tough because he has to deal with green cryptonite and red
cryptonite and phantoms and a friend who betrays him and unrequited
love and lost love and all the other nonsense they try to squeeze into
the story to fill season after season of bullshit.
What’s with this rant? I have a point. I even think it’s a rather
interesting point this time. Bear with me if you dare. I’m getting to
it.
Another show that created similar feelings in me was the show Heroes.
In this show the character Claire is the biggest example. She seems to
whine and whine to me and I just don’t get what she’s so upset about.
Her power is incredibly awesome! She’s like wolverine. Eternal youth,
immortality, and her blood can be used to heal people. And she has an
awesome dad who would do anything for her and on top of all that she
just happens to be incredibly beautiful.
So when she spends half the first season complaining about how terrible
it is to be different, I just rolled my eyes. And when she spent half
the second season complaining about how terrible it is to not be able
to be different I just wanted to gag. Her character is just a big
stupid teenager cliche. It is a manifestation of the stereotype of all
people in a certain age group being all “woe is me” all the time. And I
just call bullshit on that.
There are other annoyingly tragic figures in Heroes too. There’s Niki
and Peter for example. But they at least have more reason to complain.
I mean Peter is worried about a little thing like *exploding* because
he can’t control his powers and Nikki has an evil psychopath living
inside her for a while. Still, I think, even if I were them I’d be a
little more positive about my lot in life. I mean they’ve got to take
the time out every once in a while and look at themselves and think
“Wow. I’m incredibly awesome!” Why don’t they do that? If I had their
powers I sure would.
That’s why I like Hiro in that series. When he discovers his powers he
gets happy. He gets excited. He’s mastered time and space! How awesome
is that? That’s how you’re supposed to feel when you find out you have
a super power. That’s how I’d feel. So what if I have to face super villains? And as for people potentially
experimenting on me… well let them try! I’m the master of time and
space after all! Bring it on!
A friend of mine introduced me to the preaching of Joel Osteen. It
isn’t usually my kind of a thing and neither of us are very religious
but I occasionally find it interesting. He’s a very talented speaker
and much of what he says is quite true. He reminds us of things that
are obvious but that we nevertheless far too frequently forget.
In the last episode of it I saw he was preaching about this topic sort
of. He talked about how negative we are all in this society. And how
important it is for is for us to sometimes take a moment and look back
at ourselves and see the good in us. To stop and say “I did good”
rather than keep saying “this sucks” or “I suck” or “Man I screwed up
so bad”, etc. etc. That’s what I find missing in Smallville and Heroes.
The characters rarely take a moment to pat themselves on the back or to
look at all of the good aspects of their lives. Claire never stops and
says “you know, even though all kinds of screwed up things are
happening in my life, at least I can regenerate and whatever else may be
true, that’s just frickin awesome.”
But I said I used to hate these programs because of these aspects
and that’s true. I don’t feel that way any more, or at least not as
much. Why not? What changed?
Well I thought about this from a
different perspective. Everyone I’ve ever encountered has had hardships
and dark times and moments of sadness and vulnerability. Everyone I
know has sometimes spoken about it or blogged about it or mopped about
thinking about it. Everyone has a tragic aspect. A part of their life
that they look at and wonder “oh why oh why did it turn out this way”
and “if only it could be different”.
But you know for any
given person there’s probably somebody out there who if they were to
hear the story of your tragedy would think about it in much the same
way as I think about Clark and Claire’s stories. “Oh big deal!” they’d
say, and “What the heck do you have to complain about?”
Likewise
there’s probably somebody (and maybe a lot of somebodies) out there who
reads my blogs and thinks “oh what a whiner!” and “geez, if I could
write like him, I wouldn’t be complaining.” And when I describe
experiences and events that happen in my life they think “oh stop
complaining! My life is SO much worse than that!”
Just like I
read many other blogs and think “well damn, I wish I could write half
as well as that!” And I read about the extraordinary experiences others
seem to be having, the incredible lives they seem to be leading even as
they sprout their angst filled description of their hardships and
sorrows and I think sometimes in my heart of hearts, sure I’d take that
life. In a second. It isn’t half so bad as the writers make it out to
be.
Maybe there’s a theoretical worst life in the world that
somebody has that nobody would trade for but for most of us I think we
see our lot in life as bad because it’s the only one we’ve ever had.
It’s our personal tragedy and as much as we lament over it, there’s
somebody out there who would take it in a nano second.
Wouldn’t
it be interesting if we could do a sort of random life exchange. It’d
be an opt in system of course. IF you love your life as it stands you
wouldn’t be forced to change it. But all the rest of us who at some
point or another even if it is only for a single instant feel
overwhelmed by the tragic nature of our experiences could just choose
to be added to the life exchange pool. Then they’d just get a new life
randomly assigned from amongst all the others who’ve opted in the pool.
The interesting thing about such a system is that every
potential life you could get is going to be tragedy in some sense or
another. Somebody thought it was a tragedy and indeed tragic enough
that they felt at some point like giving up and taking a different life.
And
yet… I wonder if it wouldn’t end up with people being generally
happier? Everyone gets a new life and when they look at that new life
they see it much more positively than the original occupant just
because it’s different, just because it’s unique, just becuase it’s NOT
their old life. The one they felt was so intolerable that they had to
run away from it?
Or am I wrong? Would the people who engage in
the exchange suddenly experience through comparison a greater
appreciation for their OLD lives. So much so that they want it back?
They might say “Man I didn’t realize how GOOD I had it before! What the
heck was I thinking going into this life exchange?” So maybe we have
to add in a sort of 30 day life-back guarantee. Your life is reserved
for you for 30 days so you can jump back to it if you want but after
those thirty days are up your life might be given away at random to
another life seeker. So you’d best decide well. Old life or new? Which
do you want? It’s likely to be a tough choice but then again even if
you miss your thirty day window, if your new life gets intolerable you
can always re-enter the roulette and get another random life. Maybe you
even get lucky and get your old life back or something even better.
Anyway
thinking about all of this lead me to start to doubt my earlier disgust
at the depiction of tragic heroes. Maybe it’s ok, I thought, for
Superman to be a tragic figure? And maybe it’s ok too for Nephyo to be
a tragic figure? Sure other people have got it worse, maybe much much
much much worse, but so what? Is it so bad a thing to see and recognize
the tragedy in our lives and to feel bad about it every once in a
while? Maybe that’s just a part of being human too?
I’ll probably never like Smallville.
It’s just too cheesy. And Heroes I only watch for the cool powers since
the plot is never ever going to make a lick of sense. And maybe I’ll
never be the hugest fan of Clark Kent or Claire Bennett, but I don’t
think I’m as likely not to be disgusted by them anymore. They’re over
dramatized, over idealized versions of characters, but even so they’re
just like everybody else. Drama and tragedy. It’s not so bad. Is it?
A
friend of mine once suggested the idea that someone could be attracted
or repulsed by the tragedy in another’s life. That the sorrow and
sadness could appeal to you or it could push you away. And that a more
tragic figure might be more preferable to some than a not tragic
figure. Or a more tragic figure might be impossible for others to deal
with than a less tragic figure. So it’s that idea of preferences I
blogged about before (12/10). I’d never thought before he mentioned
that that tragedy was a feature of people that could attract or repel.
It makes sense though, but I just never thought about it in that way.
And so I thought about this and wondered where do my preferences lie
along the continuum of tragedy? Am I attracted to or repulsed by the
tragic? My prior opinions of Clark and Claire seems to suggest a
repulsion but at the same time many of my other interactions in life
suggest the opposite.
I’m not entirely sure the answer to that question, but I do think that at least understanding
tragedy is really important to me. How the tragic aspects of someone’s
story shapes who they are. How it makes them who they are and what they
are and why they think the way they do and act the way they do. I
really care a great deal about understanding people, especially people
I come to care about. And I think understanding the tragic aspects of
their lives is essential to understanding a person.
More than
that though, I do thing I have a lot of a low level attraction to
tragic figures too. And yet I don’t think that’s weird or bad either.
Think of it this way, would you enjoy a story that had no sadness in
it? Would you care about the characters in a book if they experienced
no sorrow, no angst, no fear, no dread, no uncertainty whatsoever?
Would you keep reading if nothing bad ever happened to anybody and
everything just worked out with a minimal level of effort? I certainly
wouldn’t. I would despise such a story. It would repulse me to no end.
And
it’s like that with people too. If I meet someone who just seems so
dang insufferably happy all the time, it drives me nuts. I want to
strangle them! I just don’t believe it! There’s gotta be something
there that they are hiding I think. Life is never all sunshine and
lolly pops. Everybody’s got a tragic aspect. Everybody’s life has
drama in it. I can’t confirm those statements with 100% accuracy since
I haven’t examined every person’s life, but I believe it whole
heartedly nonetheless.
At the same time, I also think I have a low level repulsion for certain kinds of tragic figures too.
Consider the short story “The Second Kind of Loneliness” (see
yesterday’s post). I’m sure most people end up reading this and end up
thinking about how bad loneliness sucks. They will feel bad for the
main character. Maybe they think that they can relate to his feelings.
But overall they just think at how terrible it is for society to let
someone become that lonely and how important it is for human beings to
interact with people and become a part of groups. That old adage that
human beings cannot survive alone. That’s the line of thought most
people will have. Sure they may be a little disgusted by the choices
the main character makes, but that feeling will be dwarfed in most
people by how sorry they will feel for him. In short they will pity him.
Which is exactly what he would have hated the most.
Me, I too think that I can relate to this character. I think I can
relate a lot more than most people. I felt exactly like he’s felt. I’ve
been alone in the woods starring at the night sky isolated from the
world and feeling that brooding loneliness. And I’ve been at a party or
a gathering shy and unable to relate to anyone feeling that other kind
of loneliness too. I’ve felt it far too frequently. And yet I don’t
feel sorry for the main character in this story. Not at all. I don’t
think what a sad life or how terrible that things turned out that way
for him. Nor do I even particularly feel angry at him or disgusted by
him.
The main character’s problem is, in my opinion, not that he was lonely.
That isn’t it at all. So many people are lonely and lonely in so many
different ways but they deal with it. They live their lives. They find
happiness or at least a level of low level joy to get them by. Somehow
they cope. Why couldn’t this character?
No, his problem is in my opinion that he lets his tragedy, the tragedy
of feeling alone, become his entire life. It became the focus of his
existence. Nothing else mattered to him. He felt no other joys and no
other pleasures and thought of nothing except in relation to how it
related to his tragic loneliness. Every interaction he ever had made
him berate himself for being too lonely, for lacking courage, for being
too self-pitying. Even out in the extraordinary expanse of space alone
amongst the stars he can’t find simple appreciation of the beauty he
sees. Rather the vast emptiness of space is but a metaphor for the
emptiness of his own life. It’s all part of the tragedy. The lonely
soul who is so much more on the inside than anyone knows. As beautiful
as the vastness of space, but just as empty too.
He made another mistake too. When faced with this tragedy and letting
it build up and become more and more a significant part of his life to
the point that he couldn’t stand it anymore, instead of facing it, he
did the worst thing he could possibly have chosen to do.
He ran away.
He thought he was running away from the loneliness. He thought that it
was being around people having to interact with them, being awkward and
shy and afraid were what was making him lonely. He thought he could run
away from interactions and escape that second kind of loneliness. He
thought he could escape his tragedy.
But what he ended up escaping was everything else that was good in his
life. He ran away from Earth and all its joys and pleasures, hardships
and sufferings. He ran away from the chance to grow or change or become
something else. Yeah he escaped those awkward moments when he might say
or do the wrong thing, but at the same time he lost everything else
too. Nobody could hate him or be disgusted by him when he was alone on
that star ring, but nobody could praise him or commiserate with him
either. He abandoned his entire life. The good, the bad, and the ugly.
And all that he was left with, ALL that he had left, was the thing he
couldn’t escape no matter how far he went, no matter how far he ran.
His loneliness. His tragedy. Because in the end when all is said and
done, our tragedies are inside of us. You can’t escape them by running
away. And in the end doing so only makes you feel worse. Much worse.
Reading about this made me feel, not dislike, but a sort of low level
aversion to this character. The opposite of the attraction I feel
toward some aspects of tragic figures. The way in which he coped with
his tragedy disturbed and repulsed me. It just feels so wrong. There’s
so much that is extraordinary in life to take pleasure in and to find
joy in that you don’t need to become so overwhelmed by one aspect of
your existence, even if it is such a big aspect as one’s feelings of
loneliness.
And you know you can do that with any tragedy not just the tragedy of
loneliness. A person can become overwhelmed by a tragedy of loss or a
tragedy of impending disaster or a tragedy of conflict or a tragedy of
exclusion. Everyone has at least a little bit of tragedy in their
lives, in their pasts, and in their imagined future. But not everyone
lets this tragedy become their soul defining characteristic. Not
everyone feels as if those feelings that arise from the tragedy in
their lives are their only feelings or the only feelings that matter to
them. Not everyone makes the mistake of running away from their tragedy
only to find it an ever looming un-escapable presence dwelling in every
tiny corner and recess of their minds.
It’s doing that that creates the problem in a character like the main
character of “The Second Kind of Loneliness”. It’s when you are
consummed by your tragedy that mere sadness and doubt and fear gets
transformed into shame and sorrow and bitter guilt. It’s then that you
might contemplate killing yourself. Or it’s then that you can become as
the main character in this short story did, a monster. But if you let
yourself be the totality of yourself. To see the good and the bad, the
sad and the joyful, then I don’t think a little thing like feeling
lonely or any other tragic character aspect can destroy you. It will
only make you stronger.
On the other hand now that I think about it, if it is a mistake to be
consumed by your tragic aspect, I think it is just as much if not more
of a mistake to overly ignore your tragedy. I don’t have any good short
stories that illustrate that, but I have observed it in the real world.
There are those who don’t want to live as part of a tragedy, don’t want
to think about the bad things that have happened or are happening or
might yet happen to them. They just shut it all out and pretend like
nothing’s wrong. They want a world that is without that sense of
darkness or fear within them. So they pretend it doesn’t exist or that
it didn’t influence them to make them who they are. They want a world
that really is all sunshine and lolly pops and they live a life in
which they strive to bring that about in their daily livings.
And I feel as much an aversion to that attitude as I do for the overly
tragic figure. Because I know it just doesn’t last. Tragedy can’t be
suppressed and repressed and made to just vanish and disappear. They
don’t go away that easily. Instead they build up when ignored behind
the scenes hurting you more and more until one day you won’t be able to
take it anymore. The stress of trying to be something that nobody ever
really is, the sorrow-free existence will drive you insane just like
the excessive obsession with one’s sorrow drove the main character of
“Loneliness” insane.
It’s ok I think to every once in a while stop and say “Man this sucks!”
It’s a good thing I think to every once in a while admit to yourself
that you wish that things could be different and that you hate the way
things turned out. It can be an entirely good thing I think to one day
go off somewhere and scream and scream and scream and shout and rage at
all the things that aren’t the way you want them to be and that didn’t
turn out quite like you wished and dreamed. Or to write long rambling
blogs or journals about it. Or to find someone receptive and rail at
them and tell them all about all the stuff that hurts.
It’s ok to be pissed off about life. It really is. Doing so doesn’t
mean your a bad person or that you are wasting your life. It isn’t
really so bad a thing to pity yourself sometimes either. Doing so
doesn’t mean that you aren’t making the most out of your existence.
Doing so doesn’t always hurt you. Sometimes it helps. It’s a lot better
than shutting it all in and pretending like everything is all always
alright.
I think it’s all just two sides of the same coin. Whether you are
running away from your life in hopes of escaping your tragedy or you
are running away from your tragedy in hopes of escaping your life it
just won’t work. Running doesn’t help. At best it can give you a
temporary reprieve. But at worst it can end up exacerbating the
problems. Since your life won’t disappear and your tragedy won’t go
away not as long as you live and breathe. But the running can make you
feel terrible. I’ve done both of course in my short life time. That’s
probably why I have an aversion to both attitudes. In my experience
running away always feels worse by far than facing the thing from which
I was running.
I don’t know if I really said all the things I meant to say on this
topic but I think I covered the important stuff. So I guess I’ll just
end it right here. I’ll close with an amusing only slightly related
youtube video just because.
