April 19, 2008

• Featured Question Ominbus #3

  I was going to wait until I had completed more questions and cleaned it up a bit before posting this. But oh well I’m bored now and I feel like it’s been too long since I posed anything. Here goes.
  
  

  What’s on your wishlist?
  

  I’m
  afraid to write it down on a list. That would sort of make it too
  permanent. And I’d be afraid to look back upon it a few years later and
  have to admit to all the things I wished for that I still hadn’t
  achieved.
  
  I do have broad wishes though.
  Like the wish to develop meaningful friendships, to find some sort of
  career path I’ll enjoy and not be so bored with, the wish to help
  people in need, and the wish to read lots of great books, watch lots of
  great anime and movies, and play lots of extraordinary games. And I
  mustn’t forget the wish to never stop writing no matter what.
  

  
  Do you like or dislike speaking in public?

  Oh
  I absolutely adore speaking in public! The sweaty hands, the cold
  shakes, the tears in my eyes, the feeling like I’m going to puke. I
  find it all absolutely enrapturing. <sarcasm>
  

  
  What do you hope your life to be like at the age of 65?

  That’s
  like the most depressing question ever. My primary hope is that I’ll
  still be alive and functioning but considering my eating habits I find
  that rather unlikely.
  
  Truthfully though I
  just hope that as long as I live my friends remain my friends and my
  family remains my family. Other than that, who cares? I can live in a
  cardboard box on the side of the road or under a rock somewhere for all
  I care.
  

  
  Has our generation become increasingly picky as to who we date or marry?

  Isn’t
  it interesting how this question says “our generation” as if all
  Xangans are part of the same generation?  But Xangans represent a range
  of age going from like 7 to 70 or something like that. It’s true that
  most are in the 20-30 range, but still even that represent a rather
  large difference. Someone who is 20 is likely to think differently than
  someone who is 30.
  
  So I’ll change the
  question to is it the case that as time goes by, each generation is
  becoming increasingly picky as to who we date or marry?  That’s an
  interesting question. I’m not sure that’s true. In the old days,
  marriage wasn’t an individual choice, but more of a family choice
  imposed upon children. But back then people were pretty picky about it
  too. The kids had to be of “good upbringing” whatever that means.
  Actually I know exactly what that means. It means wealthy.
  
  Today,
  it’s different. Money is still a part of the equation but more nebulous
  things seem to have more bearing like “compassion” and “responsibility”
  and some incomprehensible thing called “love”. And it’s not like we
  ignore appearance, or habits, or shared tastes and similar demeanors
  and avoiding disease and not being psychos all that good stuff.
  
  Is
  this picky? Well sort of, but not excessively so. Another way to look
  at it is that since we are living longer, we have more time to make our
  decision and because we are more connected we have a larger pool from
  which to choose from. As a result what we perceive of as being “picky”
  might just be generations becoming increasingly more “rational” about
  this business of choosing a permanent mate.

  
  What are your New Year’s resolutions?

  Although
  to be honest I made it significantly before new years, my primary resolution
  was to open up to more people. To share more of myself. To be more
  truthful. To make more friends. And to be closer to the friends I have.
  That’s a big part of how come I’ve been able to meet and interact with
  so many interesting xangans over the past few months. And it’s a big
  part of why some of my blog entries are sometimes more whiny and
  self-absorbed lately than they usually are.

  But
  still overall I haven’t been doing too great a job of following this
  resolution. Online is good but in the real world I’ve fallen far short
  of my goals. But the year is far from over.
  

  Also, these days I wonder if it isn’t possible to have revealed too much. Some truths may be better kept secret.
  

  
  What is one thing about you that most people probably don’t know?

  Are
  you sure you really want to know? Some things are better off not
  knowing. For if you were to accidentally let such truths slip, there
  could be dire dire consequences.
  
  What you still demand an answer? Very well then. You were warned. Here goes my super secret secret you’ve been waiting for…
  
  I don’t even like featured questions that much…
  
  How do you want to be remembered after you pass away?
  
  I
  said that other question was the most depressing question. I was wrong.
  This one’s worse. Who wants to think about after they are gone? What’s
  the point? We won’t be around to care.
  
  I’m
  not sure I really want to be remembered. I don’t want people to think
  about me and get sad or nostalgic or any of that BS. They should just
  live their lives and be happy as best they can. They shouldn’t spare me
  a second thought.
  

  
  Do you think violent video games are to blame for recent shootings in the US?

  ::ROFL::
  
  Should second chances be given to someone who has broken your trust?

  Absolutely
  anything and everything can be given a second chance. It’s the third
  chance that is the hard question.  For the second chance, it could just
  be a mistake or a misunderstanding. On the second chance someone might
  learn from their previous wrong doing and might be regretful that
  they’ve hurt you.  Second chances are good as they allow people to grow.

  Third
  chances should be given too, but they’re tougher. They can’t be given
  out unconditionally. There has to be consequences to actions. If
  someone betrays your trust not once, but twice, consider then how
  important it is to you that they change and what you can do to make it
  so.
  

  
  Do you feel the mental health system is helping or hurting people today? Do you have an example?

  These
  systems exist for a reason. They are undoubtedly helping people. A lot
  of smart people who care a lot went through a lot of effort to build up
  these systems. They are far from perfect and I’m sure some have been
  hurt by them. So there’s plenty of anecdotal evidence of them causing
  harm. But the same is true of ANY beneficial system from higher
  education to medicine to governments. The question is does the good
  outweigh the bad? I think it does.
  
  No I don’t have any examples. Guess everybody I know is sane, or too crazy to know when they need help.
  

  
  What would you do with your extra time if you did not need to sleep?

  http://weblog.xanga.com/nephyo/632370854/what-would-you-do-with-your-extra-time-if-you-did-not-need-to-sleep.html

  
  Would you raise your child the same way your parents raised you?

  It’d
  be stupid not to learn from their choices. So I have to say no.
  However, I would raise my kids in a manner very similar to the way in
  which I was raised. But I’d make changes where I think could result in
  improving the lot and happiness of my children.
  

  Do you find it comfortable keeping eye contact in conversations?

  Nope. But I suppose it depends a little on how enamored I am with the person’s eyes…
  

  Should people accept it as their duty to take care of their aging parents?

  See
  society sucks. We haven’t thought any of this out very well. We *could*
  develop a system where everyone is taken care of as they get older
  automatically and so children are free to live their own lives. Sounds
  like a great idea huh?
  
  We tried. It was called SS. It doesn’t seem to be doing so well these days.
  
  But
  that was just hap slashed together in an era where people didn’t
  understand economics and demographics half so well as we don’t
  understand them today. Ideally we’d build a system that could be
  increasingly improved with the intent of ensuring that people are taken
  care of to the best of our ability as a society at any given time.
  
  Or
  we could equally just say “screw-em”. And let it be everyone’s sole
  responsibilty to take care of themselves, regardless of circumstances.
  So, if you happen to be sickly and of retirement age during a
  depression, we just say “boo hoo. Too bad for you! Off on the streets
  you go!”
  
  Or we could use a traditions and
  enforce a contract where children must take care of their parents. We
  could do that. Sucks for kids with aging parents. Sucks for kids with
  parents who are assholes too.
  
  Or we could
  have a modified traditions system, where children are default expected
  to take care of their parents but only on the condition that their
  parents treat them well and are good people. If they aren’t then the
  children should be able to “disown” them.
  
  

  Are you sending a care package to the troops this holiday season?

  Huh?
  Was I supposed to have? I didn’t. Nobody told me! geez. I feel left
  out. I think I could have sent them some Naruto Manga. I think that’s
  wholly appropriate. The US is so totally Konoha and Sasuke is Bin
  Laden…

  
  What do you work for: the love of success or the fear of failure?

  http://weblog.xanga.com/nephyo/633112969/what-do-you-work-for-the-love-of-success-or-the-fear-of-failure.html
  
  Who can you count on when you needed advice or help? Why?
  hmm…
  I tend to ask a lot of people for advice… but I often don’t get any
  advice. But maybe it only seems that way because when I do get advice I
  don’t usually take it. In fact if I don’t like the advice, I don’t even
  hear it.
  
  As for help… my friends and family have all helped me an enormous amount. Just not in the areas that I want help in.
  

  How far have you gone/would you go to help a friend in the military?

  Exactly as far and no further than I would go to help any other friend.

  How would you explain racism to someone who was born blind?

  I’m
  sure if you were born blind you’d certainly know well enough the basic
  necessary concepts just from living in a society filled with not blind
  people. Seriously you’d have to be living under a rock to not have at
  least had the concept of colors explained to you like a billion times
  before. So I’d explain racisim to a blind person just like I would
  anyone else. Being blind doesn’t make you somehow incapable of
  understanding something discrimination. Indeed, I should think that
  being blind would make you uniquely qualified to understand irrational
  discrimination since I’m sure the blind have to face it every day.
  

  But
  the spirit of this question is sort of like saying that racism is so
  absurd it really ought to be incomprehensible. I can get behind that
  idea. If some super rational alien species were to come to Earth I do
  believe they would laugh themselves to death when they heard of this
  stupid species’ called humanity’s hang up on something as ridiculous as
  skin tone.

  I wouldn’t try to explain it to them. I’d just laugh along with them.
  

  What would you do if someone broke into your home while you were sleeping?

  Keep sleeping.
  

  Are you an Internet addict?

  No
  of course not! The fact that I break into a cold sweat, start shaking
  uncontrollable, and get migraines when I’ve been away from the internet
  for a few hours is just a coincidence!
  

  If you could be invisible for 1 day, what would you do, where would you go, and why that?

  I’d probably chain myself down and do nothing. Otherwise, I might do something really really bad. Why? Because I could!
  

  Do you have a friend who is serving overseas?

  No.
  

  What does it mean to be “trustworthy”? Do you think you are trustworthy?

  I believe being “trustworthy” requires too things:  
  1. sound judgment
  2. sincerity
  
  What
  I mean by that is fairly simple. Say someone entrusts you with a
  secret. To me being trustworthy does not mean blindly holding on to
  that secret no matter what it is and no matter what the circumstances.
  That’s just being stubborn. Anybody can do that and to be honest
  virtually nobody does.
  
  Rather, a
  “trustworthy” person is sincere in their desire to do what’s best for
  the person who entrusted them with that secret. If that means not ever
  sharing it, then that’s what that person will do. But if that means
  that the person needs to share it with certain people, then that person
  will do their very best to exercise sound judgment in choosing with
  whom and when to share that secret.
  
  In
  short, the “trustworthy” person is the person who holds trusts in turn
  only sharing them with those whom he or she soundly judges to be
  “trustworthy”. The end result is a network of trust where secrets flow
  slowly from trustworthy person to trustworthy of person. That’s the
  best security possible in this world, we can’t hope for any other.
  
  Of
  course, all trust networks eventually fail.  It’s just a matter of time
  really. Just think about it. Nobody can exercise perfectly sound
  judgment all the time. We’ll make mistakes and one day entrust a secret
  with someone we shouldn’t with dire consequences. Furthermore, people
  change. At one point a person may well care greatly for someone and be
  willing to sincerely hold that person’s secrets in their trust. Then a
  week later, they might hate that person’s guts and out of sheer hatred
  or desire for revenge reveal that person’s secrets or the secrets that
  person is holding in trust for someone else deliberately to
  untrustworthy persons.
  
  That’s the sad fate
  of the world. So really if you have a secret and you don’t want anyone
  to know, the only way to make sure of it is to tell no one, not even
  your closest confidant. This is just like computer technology. The only
  real way to keep a computer secure, guaranteed is to disconnect it from
  everything and lock it in fort Knox. That’s about the only possibility.
  
  OK,
  now the second part of the question, am I “trustworthy”?   I think so.
  I have revealed secrets entrusted to me to others, and sometimes I’ve
  felt really guilty about that.  But the only times I’ve ever done that,
  the person I shared it with was someone for whom I had the deepest
  respect or a profound amount of trust or I just felt deep down perhaps
  irrationally that I could trust this person. And there was a reason I
  shared it too. Either because I felt I had to in order to prevent my
  own insanity or because the person with whom I shared it I felt had a
  need to know or because I felt the secret was something that needed to
  be shared for the well being of the secret giver.
  
  But
  I don’t know if I am “trustworthy” really. I certainly have the
  “sincerity” I think, but I’m not sure if my judgment has always been
  sound. Sometimes I think I may have revealed information about myself
  or about others that I really shouldn’t have. I think sometimes I may
  have made things worse by telling the truth or being honest. I don’t
  think it is unreasonable to say that perhaps I may have, in the past,
  broken people’s trust.
  
  But I certainly do try
  to be trustworthy. I’m as trustworthy as I am able to be right now. And
  I just hope as I grow older and wiser, my judgment improves and so I
  grow more and more trustworthy in the process.
  
  And really that’s the best I think any of us can strive for.
  
  How do you support your friends who are in the military?
  I
  don’t have any right now. If I did, I would support them in much the
  way I support everyone else, by telling them what I sincerely believe
  and by trying to listen to them when they have something that they need
  to talk about.
  
  Sharing what I sincerely
  believe though might not be so good for the military personnel. Because
  I would certainly tell them that I think our incursions into Iraq and
  Afghanistan are folly. I would also tell them that our military is way
  too big, too cumbersome, too powerful, and downright dangerous for the
  democracy of our nation.
  
  That’s not to say
  that I would discourage them from being a part of the military. I
  wouldn’t. I would say to them that they should do whatever makes them
  happy and whatever they can do to get the most out of life. For some
  the disciplined life of the military is exactly what they need to
  better themselves. For others, the military provides an unparalleled
  opportunity for economic advancement to elevate them out of dangerously
  un-prosperous situations.
  
  But I would warn
  them too that I really do believe that the military thrives on being
  one of the most powerful propaganda and indoctrination machines on the
  planet. I would tell them to make sure they hold to their own beliefs
  and make their own judgments and be true to themselves because to be
  sure the military will try to convince them to hold to theirs.  This
  isn’t particularly distinctive of the US military (thought the US
  military is particularly good at it), but ALL MILITARIZES.  That’s the
  very *reason* why modern governments are designed to limit the power of
  the military and place it under control of the civilians. It isn’t
  their superior weaponry and better training that makes the military a
  threat to peace and democracy. It’s their cohesiveness. Their
  indoctrination capacity. That is, an evil person could easily use those
  systems to get a large quantity of loyal deadly followers wiling to
  work to obtain goals that lead to that evil person’s own power.
  
  And
  all along the military personnel will keep saying the refrain that they
  were “just following orders”. Don’t become a person like that, that’s
  what I’d tell my friends in the military. Always act in accordance with
  your ideals.
  

  What’s the best solution to boredom?
  

  Anime!!!
  
  I
  think there’s a place you can go to get thrown into a den of ravenous
  lions with meats that they enjoy strapped all over your body and
  several cuts put on you so you are bleeding profusely.  Fighting them
  off might be an alternative way to alleviate your boredom. Or if you prefer, I’m sure there’s a
  pool of sharks that you can likewise be thrown into.
  
  
  In the spirit of the new year, what is one thing that you wish for and why?
  
  Only
  one? I can only say one!?!? That’s sooo hard. I wish for so many
  things. Which should I say? If I say anything it’ll sound like it’s the
  most important thing that I wish for, but that might not necessarily be
  true. There’s all kinds of things I wish for equally. So many. Oh well,
  but I guess I have to answer.
  
  I wish for my friends and family to be happier.
  
  That’s
  sort of really general though. Maybe since this was asked around the
  New Years the intent was to have a wish specifically for the year 2008,
  not a general wish. Hmm..  Still a million wishes there. OK, I guess
  I’ll say something.
  
  I wish that I get a job during the year 2008 that I will not hate. That I will enjoy doing, at least a little.
  
  
  If you had to name the one thing that most frightens you about growing old, what would it be?
  
  What
  I’ve observed far too often is that people as they grow older also tend
  to grow more distant from their friends. They adopt their own lives and
  become en wrapped in them and they forget about one another. They grow
  further and further apart. The old shared interests that brought them
  together are dismissed and abandoned as childish pursuits of days gone
  by. And then as they start to grow particularly old, they become even
  more distant, as if preparing themselves for a time when those people
  they once cared about will be dead and gone so that it won’ hurt as
  much.
  
  This is what frightens me. Even worse
  than the fear of having everyone you’ve ever known die, there’s the
  fear of having them be so distant from you as to be effectively dead
  before their death. That terrifies me. It’d be so sad. It’s already
  happening actually. I’m not even 30 but I already I see as I grow
  older, people grow further and further apart.
  
  But damn I was wrong about those other two questions. THIS is the most depressing question.
  
  But
  take heart! The good news is as you get older you can make more old
  people friends with whom you can commiserate about aches and pains and
  you share no haunting echoes of happier times to depress you. Bust out
  your Bingo boards and have a ball!
  
  
  What do you consider to be your accomplishments this past year?
  
  I quit my job last year. And thank god for that. I didn’t accomplish anything else of note.
  
  
  What do you like the most about yourself?
  
  ::shrugs::
  
  What
  should I like most about myself? Singling one thing out seems unfair to
  all those other things about me that are not chosen.
  
  Really I try not to judge myself in that way. I am who and what I am and that’s all there is to it.
  

  —–

  Geez. At this rate, I’ll never finish all of these!
  
  

  • 1:21 pm
  • 3 Comments