I'd like to expound on yesterday's blog a little bit. I talked about social intelligence being mostly responsible for success and happiness. Not only did freud make his well-known statement about love and work, but it's very clear (to me) that reproduction is the sole purpose of the human race. Any other considerations (food, shelter, status, money, etc) exist because they facilitate reproduction.
The whole of human culture is a footnote to fucking.
Anyway, I think the lack of social intelligence is precipitated in some (namely, me) by a deep-rooted fear of humans and interacting with them. And, I'm not reluctant to generalize this to other socially-maladapted folks as well. Well, actually, many of these people share an inability to read facial expressions, share humor, etc. Here is a list of subtests of the george washington social intelligence test:
Judgment in Social Situations Memory for Names and Faces Observation of Human Behavior Recognition of the Mental States Behind Words Recognition of Mental States from Facial Expression Social Information Sense of Humor
I find it interesting that nowhere, on the berkeley paper from which I took the above information, is the word 'fear' found. Maybe I'm crazy for suggesting such a massive correlation, but I don't think so. I remain convicted that a lack of social ability often stems from fear of other humans. In many cases. I think. Maybe.
I had to run downstairs and blog about the importance of social intelligence. Namely, the importance of social intelligence to both love and work, unless one is a masturbating drawbridge-operator, or possible a software engineer.
Success in the workplace is overwhelmingly dependent upon the ability to socialize: to ask questions, follow commands (or 'take direction', si tu prefere), not get ruffled when snapped at, read people in order to gauge how to best deal with them, and most importantly to coordinate activities with other members of a group to more efficiently accomplish a task.
Likewise, success in copulation is dependent upon social ability, problems with the mechanical function of the genitals notwithstanding. Sex is the most intimate and most intense form of interaction between human beings -- more so than conversation, cuddling, playing checkers, etc. Those without good capacity to interact in general are going to have a hard time attracting and interfacing with sexual partners.
If you're a geek, you're going to have trouble getting laid and/or working a job that isn't closely engineered to some specific natural ability.
People who find themselves able to have a lot of sex with multiple partners are most often the same people who have a lot of social intelligence and social ability. This is almost truism -- if they are in this position, then they 99% likely got there as a consequence of some kind of social ability.
Likewise, people who have trouble with sex are most often those who have trouble with social functioning and relating to others in general. For instance, the 'geek' stereotype is of someone with low social intelligence and thusly not much potential for sexual interaction.
Of course, there are other factors that determine sexual viability (physical appearance, wealth, status, etc), but social ability is the most important one.
Another caveat for the coitally deprived geek is that if the human with low social intelligence can somehow manage to sniff out another opposing-gender human with low social intelligence, they can perhaps take baby-steps together towards successful interaction and copulation. But, this isn't going to happen very often, for two reasons: 1) how are these people going to meet in the first place? 2) there are a great many more men with debilitatingly low social intelligence than there are women. Someone once described the autistic as the 'extreme male brain.'
Social intelligence tends to be glossed over -- probably because the kind of people who are likely to be sitting at home writing or abstracting about human intelligence and cognitive functioning (such as myself) are unlikely to have much social intelligence themselves. However, I think it's incredibly important; perhaps the most important neurological ability a human can have: the capacity to interact with others, and therefore love and work, the two activities freud said were essential to health and happiness.
I am aware that freud is often scoffed at as a mystic or literary philosopher, but I like his analysis of love and work. I'm sure he meant these to be more broadly definable than 'having sex' and 'working a job', but these are common contemporary applications.
There are some jobs (such as perhaps a drawbridge-operator or software engineer) that might require minimal contact with others. But for the most part, all jobs demand social ability. Success in the workplace is determined by the ability to smoothly interact with others, especially at those higher-level jobs that involve leadership.
Likewise, it's possible to have a sex life without interaction, but it is perhaps less satisfying.
I am reluctant to mention absolutes in the form of human instinct and 'hard-wiring,' but I may have to concede that the need to interact, regardless of ability or intelligence at it, is something that is shared by 100% of humanity, and that it is not dependent on cultural factors. In other words, I'm willing to make the rare statement 'we are hard-wired to be gregarious creatures.'
Note that I sometimes refer to it as 'social ability' and sometimes as 'social intelligence.' the first would imply trainability, while the second would imply innate, unlearnable quantities, like height or eye-color. For the sake of optimism I'll think of it as 'social ability.'
What excited me enough to come bolting down the stairs to write at 2am (besides my screwed-up sleep schedule) was the idea that both love and work might be dependent on some other thing: namely, social ability. I would take social intelligence/ability to be the most important quality a human being can have; one that is essential to its survival.
Whoever said 'geeks shall inherit the earth!' wasn't thinking about the geeks' inability to reproduce or lead. The socially intelligent shall inherit the earth, as they have for thousands of years.
I'm never sure the extent to which my writing is stating the obvious. To sum up: love and work are the most important things, and successful love and work are largely contingent upon social ability.
I realize now that I'm going to have to start using my psychic powers during interaction.
It's all late an' shit. Actually, it's early -- about 6:00am on a Sunday. I've been up all night because I made the mistake of napping in the afternoon from 4pm - 8pm. I did this because I didn't get enough sleep the night before, when I fell asleep at about 3am and woke up at 9am. The reason I went to bed so late was because I was out at A FRIEND'S HOUSE. Those are all the details you get. Not because I'm sensitive to privacy issues, but because other people often are, and don't even want their first name mentioned in a blog. Totally irrational. Truly, privacy is a thing unto itself.
I wanted to say something brief about names and language; nothing profound, or multi-paragraph. While I was writing the last entry that referred to bike parts, I was torn between writing 'the set of gears attached to the center of the rear wheel' or 'freewheel.' sometimes, I described the part in question. Other times, I simply named the part. And still other times I either named the part and put a description in parentheses, or vice versa.
It's interesting how any discipline has a language attached to it, and furthermore how fluency in this language is either a cause of, an effect of, or merely indicative of competence. I still don't have all the bike part and tool names down, and I find myself asking questions about 'that thing that attaches to the thing that's shaped like the thing'. I think actively learning the language can accelerate learning the discipline.
I remember when I first started and was eager to impress I would talk about cone wrenches a lot, because I read that they were tools needed to overhall a hub (another term I learned early). So, for a while I talked about overhalling hubs with cone wrenches, and thusly demonstrated my competence.
Maybe I should start making up names for things, and see what people do: 'that bubble-nut is really stuck on there. Do we have any beefle-lubricant?' I think that maybe people's senses of humor are pretty varied, and that I shouldn't risk sounding 1) insane, or 2) like I'm making fun of them.
Anyway, fuck bicycles. They're boring. I don't want to be one of those people who only talks about their job. Even if pressed, I will feign total ignorance, and say 'i dunno.'
I hate it when every succeeding paragrapher is smaller than the previous.
I have a little a half-hour to blog this morning. I thought I'd blog, appropriately, about something I noticed at the bike shop: namely, that the less expensive bikes that need more care to make them function are given less care than the more expensive bikes that don't need as much, and all kinds of sociopolitical ramifications that I haven't quite worked out yet.
I endeavored to put together a $3,000 road bike yesterday, and before I started, the manager on duty asked me, 'are you sure you're comfortable putting that together?', even though I've been putting together bikes for the past week and a half without incident. I said, 'sure'. Then, while I was doing routine things like taking apart the headstalk, adjusting the brakes, etc, the mechanic on duty hovered over me the entire time, something he didn't do later in the day when I put together several mid-to-low-range mountain bikes.
The components on expensive bikes are what makes the bike expensive -- a bike is, obviously, the sum of its parts: the frame, drive train, brakes and wheels. These individual components are recognizable by seasoned bike-people as being high-end, middle-end, or low-end, based on how expensive the component in question is. They can be really expensive -- one crank (part of the drive train) on display is advertised at something like $250, which is more than I paid for my entire bike (of course, the road bike I put together is about twice as much as I paid for my used chrysler lebaron, RIP). Likewise, there are $200 derailleurs, $100 headstalks, $200 shifters, etc.
Very high-end components like these are each made by manufacturer that build nothing but headstalks (ritchie), nothing but derailleurs (shimano), nothing but wheels (somebody). Well, that's an exaggeration -- ritchie makes 2 or 3 things, shimano makes 2 or 3 things, etc. But practically a whole company's worth of engineering goes into each component on a high-end bike, and because these parts are so precisely machined and function so smoothly, they tend to work together better (to state the obvious). Therefore, they require a lot less fiddling, adjustment and most importantly, care, when bolting them onto a carbon-graphite-titanium-whatever frame that weighs .486 ounces and turning some screws or bolts, or tighenting some cables so they work right.
Contrast this with a child's mountain bike, one with a 14-inch frame and that costs something like $150. The components on this bike are going to be a lot more difficult to adjust so that they are in sync with one another, and function properly, just because the components aren't as good as those on a $1,500 adult's mountain bike. The wheels on the $150 bike are going to be warped, the gears on the back wheel (cassette or freewheel) improperly machined and carelessly spaced, the place where the wheel fits into the frame (the dropout) is going to be badly positioned, etc. Because of all of these minor flaws, adjusting this bike is going to take quite a bit more fiddling, tweaking, and most importantly, care, to get it working right.
However, these $150 bikes are glossed over, because they are less expensive, and because taking the time to make these lousy parts work right isn't worth the shop's time (money). $150 of bike isn't worth 2 hours of shop time to make it work right. Also, I have to admit that these bad parts can only be adjusted so precisely -- there comes a point where one has to give up and resign to the fact that an improperly shifting chain is due to bad manufacturing, and give up on adjustments. But, I think the tendency is to give up too readily. And also, I don't quite understand all the concern and hovering if the bike is $3,000, especially since that actually makes it EASIER to put together. Well, I do -- I just don't approve of the motives for the behavior (money, better customer care going to those who spend a lot, etc).
Partly, more expensive bikes being assembled with greater care even though they require less is attributable to the fact that whoever pays $3,000 for a bicycle is going to be pretty hardcore about his or her hobby, and will be likely to notice small imperfections, and come back, complaining that this $3,000 investment wasn't properly adjusted to begin with. Serious riders are treated more seriously. on the other hand, someone who buys a $150 mountain bike (like myself, for instance) is probably not going to be bothered by little things like the chain skipping gears occasionally or the brakes squeaking. And even if they are, it was only a $150 investment; what do they expect?
This demonstrates not only the workings of capitalism, but something deeper and more metaphysical as well: the tendency of a thing or phenomenon to become more like itself. To keep with this example, a poorly designed derailleur will become even more poorly designed because it isn't given the care it needs to function as well as it can function.
Working in the bike shop, I've also noticed the phenomenon of aesthetics versus practicality, and how capitalism causes aesthetics to dominate.
Any hobby, when specialized and focused on enough, becomes an aesthetic rather than a practical issue. My bike works -- it's not going to fall apart. Whether or not I am faster or slower is going to depend 99% on how skilled, strong and resilient a rider I am, rather than whether my rear derailleur cost me $20 or $200.
I've had my first taste of bicycle aesthetics, and it's a slippery slope from there. My rear wheel's hub was grinding, and couldn't be taken apart because the bolt had frozen beyond the full-body strength of a man to turn it. The consequences of continuing to use this hub (and attached rear wheel) were that it would continue to make a noise, and arguably fall apart sometime far into the future. But, it would warning me before this day came by making an even louder noise. My grinding hub didn't affect the rideability of my bike -- it just made an ugly noise.
A few days ago I bought a $23 new wheel and attached it to my old set of gears.
In fairness, the noisy hub may have affected the rideability of the bike a tiny bit, but I'm not interested in maximizing performance to infinitesimal margins. I don't race bikes. And, the vast, vast majority of people who purchase extremely high-end components don't race bikes either. It is overwhelmingly an aesthetic issue.
This is not to say that I disapprove of aesthetic issues per se -- I have an art background, after all (ha). The sin is in the self-deception: where riders turn aesthetic issues into practical ones, convincing themselves that they need a $3,000 road bike, $200 rear derailleur, or $23 new rear wheel for performance issues. It's fine if one holds no illusions and is purely interested in the high-end components as if they were fine oil paintings, but I am skeptical that a significant percentage of riders think this way. Well, the fact is that they do. But they don't admit to themselves that they do.
It's time to recycle yet another bulletin board post (even though I haven't done this in a while).
You think you can stop me? You cannot stop me.
First, an introduction.
My post is about objectivism, the philosophical system of ayn rand. Basically, objectivism is all about being assured that you're right all the time -- if someone disgrees with objectivism, the objectivist can just say 'you're wrong' and be done with it. Well, that's unfair -- objectivism is really about extrapolating worship of capitalism from outdated metaphysics.
After reading more about randian objectivism in wikipedia and in other people's bulletin board posts, objectivism struck me as being almost perfectly antithetical to postmodernism. This contrast is largely what my very, extremely, dauntingly long post is about.
I also give some reasons for objectivism being so popular within geekdom, although I can only give anecdotal examples of this popularity. Maybe it rings true for some readers, though.
I find objectivism to be sort of fascinating, just because it's the stark antithesis of my world-view, which is steeped in postmodernism, skepticism, nihilism, cynicism, dada and eastern philosophy (such as the philosophy of maine, the pine-tree state). What's doubly interesting about objectivism is that it works, or at least fools the adherent into thinking that it's working. And, if it's not working, then it's because the adherent isn't doing it right.
Rand called it a 'philosophy for living on earth.' objectivism admittedly doesn't concern itself with the environment or animal rights, which might sort of make it less credible as a 'philosophy for living on earth', ie if the earth itself isn't important.
Some of the common criticism of objectivism comes from its inclusion of ethics and politics in its credo -- namely, self-interest and capitalism. Supposedly, these are logically derived from two other tenets that, while I don't happen to agree with them, are a little bit more acceptable as philosophy.
The first two tenets are the metaphysical position that there is an objective reality beyond that which we socially or cognitively create and which is the same for all who perceive it (even einstein, I guess), and the epistemological position that logic and reason are the only way to understand this objective reality. I'm skeptical of both.
I haven't read any of rand's books, but I have trouble seeing how these four points are derived in sequence, especially self-interest and capitalism from objective reality and logic. I take comfort in the fact that lots of other people have trouble seeing this too.
To its credit, there is a nice descent from metaphysics to epistemology to ethics to economics/politics -- the areas of philosophy progress nicely from abstract to concrete and relevant. It is a rather lovely system, actually, and I think therein lies its danger. It's so nice, neat, precise and aesthetic in its simplicity and stark reductionism that it draws in people who would prefer to see the world this way; teenaged geeks, mostly.
Randian objectivism is kind of cute, but it mostly seems like newtonian eye candy and oversimple unilateralism; opposed not only to postmodernism but to contemporary science. Read or skim my post, if you want; it's really long.
One addition: in my post, I complain that presenting the four components as equally important struck me as strange. An objectivist on SDF corrected me, saying that they are not in fact equally fundamental, but are rather derived in sequence (objective reality --> logic --> self-interest --> capitalism).
So, the end result of all of these volumes of thought and derivation is 'capitalism is good.' considering this, certainly I can understand why objectivism isn't taken seriously -- it's a system of philosophy that draws the conclusion that capitalism is the best system from axioms like x=x (I'm serious -- look it up), which rand uses to 'prove' her metaphysics.
That's pretty bizzare; objectivism sounds like something I might come up with if I were stoned, scribbling away at 3am, coming up with an explanation for all that exists. Even if universities weren't full of commies, proping up socioeconomic believes with metaphysics is a little bit far-fetched, and maybe not worth professors' reading time.
The inclusion of self-interest and capitalism regardless, my problems with objectivism stem from the claim that there is an objective reality and that logic is the way to eden. The self-interest and capitalism parts are too ridiculous to criticize; extrapolating socioeconomics from universal laws is anthropocentric, whether or not you're in favor of either capitalism or self-interest.
On to the post:
TACKER: barnacle ()
SUBJECT: .. Ayn rand
DATE: 03-Feb-05 00:45:16
HOST: sverige
WARNING: EXTREMELY LONG POST
cserv: no, thanks...I'm not much into novels, regardless of philosophical
import. I'll stick to wikipedia and piekoff articles. I'd take it, but it's
likely that it'd just sit around, unread. If I change my mind, there's
always the pubic library.
I'm seeing that the ideas of objectivism might be interpreted as being very
important -- even essential.
i won't go so far as to make a dogmatic, meaningless statement like
'objectivism IS a religion,' but it offers many of the same things (hope,
morality, standards, absolutes), and is of particular comfort for those
craving purpose in the face of god's death.
i can also see why it might be so appealing (as it is) to geekier types.
Geekier types tend to be into science and computers -- things that follow
the rules, and that do that same thing every time. A world where there are
objective standards of truth, where one thing can meaningfully be
distinguished from the next thing, and where the behavior of an entity
isn't irrational and chaotic, but rather predictable and deterministic, is
a world-view that is imparted upon the scientist. Or, maybe people who are
predisposed to this vein of thinking gravitate towards the sciences
(including computer science). Chicken or the egg.
at any rate, objectivism seems to clarify and codify what geekier types
have suspected all along: that there IS an objective standard of truth,
that this IS distinguishable from that, and that reality CAN be understood,
predicted, and even controlled. At least this is how I understand it.
in that sense, my earlier comment about objectivism being a sort of
antipostmodernism rings true. Postmodernism, if we ignore its roots in
literary criticism ('all is text'), is more or less epistemological
nihilism: we CAN'T know, predict, control or analyze anything -- it's all
just one substance.
i think objectivism is a world-view that grips some in a real frenzied
excitement, because it lays down in a formal system those same ideas that
have been guiding the thoughts and actions of...well...geeks, since the
dawn of time.
postmodernism vs objectivism is an unfortunate split in world-views that i
don't think has to exist. I'm taking science to be perfectly analogous to
objectivism here, which might not be valid, but I think the resolution is
to be found in that both systems, both world-views, are concerned with
accuracy.
postmodernism does it by rejecting all categorical boundaries and
reducing/expanding the cosmos to one big soupy mass where nothing can be
understood, analyzed, controlled, predicted, or logically dealt with in any
way -- the only hope for knowing 'reality' comes from intuition and/or
spirituality.
science (and objectivism) draws sharp delineations between entities,
chopping up all that is into categories that can then be named, and
relationships between them extrapolated, analyzed, and themselves named.
Science is all about discreet digital analyses of things. And it needs to
be this way, so that experiments can be controlled and predictions made. It
wouldn't be very meaningful if a scientist were to say 'oh...im not sure
where the line between liquid and gas exists, so I'm not going to bother
calling ANYTHING liquid or gas.' it is the business of science to draw
lines between this thing and that thing, thus calling these things into
existence in the first place.
the precision that links postmodernism and objectivism as manifested in
science comes from the fact that neither are willing to produce a statement
like 'it's 10 miles to the shop.' the postmodernist will reject the terms,
figures and boundaries altogether, while the scientist will insist on
looking at them more closely until it becomes 10.23 miles, 10.235 miles,
10.2356 miles, etc. Both systems are concerned with accuracy. Science
expresses this concern by looking more closely at something and then
choosing a fitting stopping point, and postmodernism expresses this concern
by ignoring the system of examination and labeling as inherently flawed,
and by exploring other toolboxes for understanding reality.
so, we have on one side postmodernism and, it turns out, a lot of eastern
philosophy, which shares a lot of ideas these french thinkers had (or
stole), and on the other we have objectivism and the scientific method,
which is going to be a lot more attractive to geekoids. Postmodernism, on
the other hand, is going to attract your more artsy fartsy types, largely
because they can't do math or remember where they put their keys and want
some other way of understanding reality that doesn't deal with the rules
and minutiae they are so bad at.
as I said, it's an unfortunate split that doesn't really have to be there,
but dualism is a deeply culturally ingrained force. Some ideas in contemporary
physics appear to be moving towards a resolution (the classic example:
something being a particle and a wave at the same time -- distinctions
between 'this' and 'that' fall apart), but I don't have the background to
delve too deeply into that.
regardless of whether these two world-views can be resolved, I think
objectivism codifies into philosophy the principles of science, and presents
itself as an antithesis of postmodernism.
i think objectivism is pretty interesting and important, and I'm not sure
why it's so ignored. Possibly because of the whole capitalism thing.
Throwing economics into the objectivist pot almost seems like a political
decision. But, who am I to say?
i know rand said (sorry for mentioning the unmentionable one) that linking
up objective reality, reason, self-interest and capitalism meant a lifetime
of writing and work. Her reasoning behind favoring capitalism was that it's
inherently a freer system than socialism, or a centrally planned economy.
I'm not so sure about this, but I'm open to the possibility. Also, there
are problems with the definition of 'freedom'.
i also think part of the rejection by academia has to do with objectivism
being perceived as oversimple and childish. At least, that's how it might
strike me if I weren't such an open-minded guy ;)
we have these four categories: metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, politics.
And then the truths in these categories: 1) reality is objective (there is
an ultimate standard beyond human thought, existence and perception that
dictates what is real, and what distinguishes this thing from that thing).
2) logic, deduction based on axioms, is the only (best?) way to approach
knowledge and understanding. 3) self-interest (no direction from gods or
systems of thought, like objectivism) can be the only motive for action. 4)
capitalism is the only moral system, because it is the freest.
it's a seductively simple system -- indeed, it is a system, unlike the ideas
put forth by many of the philosophers rand so despised (oops, there I go
again). Follow the rules, and you can't go wrong. A geeky wet dream.
I'm not sure the last two (self-interest and capitalism) belong with the
first two (objective reality and reason). It seems that deriving the last
two from the first two might be possible, with some semantic trickery (one
could surely derive other things as well), but taking all four to be equally
fundamental seems weird to me.
the first two smell like universal laws. The last two smell like sociology
and politics. I guess this is related to 'man being an end unto himself' --
the exploits of man are right up there with the universals. It seems like
objectivism isn't concerned with a universe beyond mankind. But then, it
goes on to state there is an objective reality that exists without
dependence on man.
again, sorry for the length. But maybe some with time to kill will have
enjoyed reading.
SO HERE WE ARE IN February BLAH BLAH BLAH. I discovered that the fungal noodles I experienced a few entries ago were not the fault of rotten leftover cheesy alfredo sauce in my boiling pot, but were rather due to the parmesan-romano cheese I bought to sprinkle liberally over pasta. It just tastes fungal.
It's 8:49am, and I have to leave for work at 9:30am. It's a soft 9:30, rather than a hard 9:30. The hardest 9:30 I can imagine would be making sure one pulled out of one's driveway at precisely 9:30, or even 9:29:55. The softest 9:30 I can imagine would be noticing that the clock read 9:30 and however many seconds, and then getting up, getting a coat, even putting on shoes, and then heading out the door to start the car, de-ice the windows, and drive off.
It's really nice to have a bit of my own time in the mornings. Today, I got up at 8:00am. Well, I woke up first at 7:23. Ordinarily, I'd have trouble falling back asleep and would wander downstairs. But with the knowledge that I MUST get up in a little over half an hour, I found it very easy to cocoon back into my blankets and fall asleep until 7:59 (my internal clock can be really fantastically accurate sometimes). Then, I heard my alarm go off, and muffled it between some blankets (it's a wristwatch alarm). I turned on the light, slowly opened and rubbed my eyes, stretched, got up at 8:11, and did some exercises.
Yes, I've started doing pushups and situps in the morning. I'd be up to 25 situps, except I pulled my lower abdominal muscles the other day. So instead, I did reverse situps -- I lay on my stomach, and arched my back. Good enough. I'm up to 15 pushups. My method is to increase the situps by groups of 5 (which may be been a bit much) and the pushups by one every day. Maybe it's time to start incrementing situps by 1 as well. I started doing pushups at...11, I think. Or possibly 10. At any rate, I've not been doing these exercises for very long. History teaches us that I will at some point stop my routine, but maybe this will be the singular exception. Haha. I just wanted to see if calisthenics would make any significant difference in my appearance. Oh, I took a photo of myself for the SDF user pages (I'm fourth from the left, currently). Here is the photo:
I think the overwhelming impression it gives is 'BIG', rather than 'FAT'. So, that's nice to know.
I have 25 minutes to finish this entry and pack up some pasta along with an orange for lunch. I don't feel pressed for time. It's interesting, though, how I feel more able to write when there's some kind of deadline. I like writing in the mornings before I go to work for this reason.
Today, I'm going to do my first brake-and-gear tune-up. Up until this point, I've just been building bicycles from kits. As soon as it gets warm and people start taking their bikes out of the closet, out of the shed, out of the basement, etc, the bulk of my 'repairs' are going to be innertube-changes and brake/gear adjustments.
I've asked around, and no one can remember a mechanic-in-training who 'just hasn't worked out' -- ie, is unable to grasp the rudiments of screwing various things into place on a bike. So, it seems that anyone is trainable in this, because it is very easy. And yet, people still bring their bikes into the shop for really minor adjustments, tune-ups and check-ups.
I guess it's really not that amazing; I did it. It's just illustrative of the amazing power capitalism has over people. The idea that spending some money can solve any problem, that it's some easy way out of thought processes, is prevalent. A common illustration of this syndrome is the way people will identify a problem in their life, trot to the bookstore, buy a book or three on it, and then let them sit around and add to their collection of shelf-trophies.
I'm not saying that 'i don't understand it', as if I were somehow above all humanity (i am, but not in this particular way). I suppose this is how the economy is supposed to work: you invest your time and energy into one specialized thing, make lots of money at this one thing that you know better than anyone else, and use that money to solve any other problems that come up, including minor brake-and-gear adjustments on your bicycle.
There's nothing wrong with this, except that if everyone is operating that way, one can save a decent amount of money by solving one's own problems. I suppose another problem for many is that they honestly don't know how to solve the problems in this wide range that come up, from a broken toilet to a poison ivy rash to an untuned bike. Learning to solve every single one of these problems would take up an inordinate amount of time, that the person would rather spend doing things they enjoy (reading novels, watching tv, watching movies, going out to eat, etc). So, cumulatively, it makes better psychological sense to solve these little problems with the money one is earning as a marketing rep, receptionist, or bicycle mechanic.
Minor repairs and adjustments in home, automobile, bicycle, guitar or appliance are probably the bulk of these little problems. On one end of the spectrum of 'do it yourself' are people who will remove the transmission from their car and fiddle with it on the workbench in their basement. I entered one such basement, saw an automobile transmission lying there on the workbench, and thought 'this is the manliest household I have ever seen.' on the other end of the spectrum are people that will call a service person to...oh, I don't know...vacuum a rug. I guess that's a good example. Perhaps paying for problem solving is a sign of status and wealth as well, which compounds the issue.
But I think not. In a way, performing things like home improvement projects one's self are signs of status that trump any financial status gained by hiring someone to do it.
At any rate, it's a complicated issue, and I have to re-paragraph, check grammar, word choice and spelling before I leave.
Moo.
I love how there's no way to post comments on this blog. I can feed you any crap I want to, and you can do nothing; you are stuck there, mutely receiving my filthy output. I've noticed that I write differently when I post on a bulletin board -- much more concisely and intensely, usually. This here blog is really just the ranting of one madman. BOOGA BOOGA.
I was going to link to another article and discuss it, but I have to go to work soon. I must start getting ready as soon as I finish my breakfast, which tastes a little funny, probably because I didnt wash out the pot from last night before I boiled more noodles in it. The pot was full of cheesy sauce, and now, this morning's noodles, having been boiled in water clouded with rotten cheese, have a bit of a fungal flavor. I'm pretending they're supposed to be that way.
That's the thing with gross food: you can be almost sure that something like it is considered a delicacy somewhere. Or even if it's not, then you can invent a culture that would consider it a delicacy, and pretend to be experiencing your own imaginary culture.
I often do with with improperly microwaved food, food that has inside it a patchwork of hot and frozen areas. I'll pretend that there are chefs in belgium who are trained for many years and spend hours in the kitchen, delicately and painstakingly creating foods that are both frozen and hot.
This is what I'm doing now with my fungal noodles, some of which I will take to work, where sitting in the car they may become even more fungal. They taste a bit like blue cheese.
The existence of blue cheese, alcoholic beverages and yogurt (all essentially foods that have gone bad) is a testament to the fact that anything, as long as it doesn't threaten your health (like rotten meat, for instance), can be considered good-tasting. Whether or not something tastes good is, just like any so-called aesthetic appreciation, culturally determined.
And, as captain picard says to data on an episode of Star Trek: 'a culture of one is no less valid than a culture of millions.' or something like that; I'm paraphrasing.
I used to play games with my friends where we'd go to a buffet and mix up horrible concoctions consisting of mustard, chocolate milk, pudding, salad dressing, roast beef, pie, etc. We'd stir it all around, giggling on endorphin highs from eating so much, and then dare each other to eat it. Really, it wasn't bad. Salty, sweet and sour are combined all the time, as are meat and dairy products. To be honest, there was nothing better or worse about our concoction than any other casserole-like food. In fact, I feel that the best foods are ones that have a casserole-nature -- a lot of different flavors coming together. This is the essence of cuisine: flavor recombination, and of course experimentation.
If there were some objective standards of 'what tastes good,' I guess they might be related to fresh ingredients. But even this is confounded by blue cheese, wine, yogurt, etc -- foods that rely on contamination by some organism like mold or yeast to make them taste as they are intended. Croutons are deliberately made out of stale bread, and many dishes taste better the longer they sit around. I'm forced to the conclusion that there are no objective standards, beyond an infestation of staphylococci, that make a food palatable or unpalatable.
What you do and do not enjoy eating is as culturally determined as what sort of clothing you find fetching. I think I might feel a little bit sick from these noodles, but of course that's purely psychosomatic.
I really have to go get ready for work now.
I'm going to explore a different, perhaps more standard format today, and discuss this article.
It's about a los angeles man who attempted suicide by parking his SUV in front of an oncoming commuter train. He changed his mind at the last minute and dashed out the door. 10 people on the train were killed as a result of the impact, and about 200 others were injured, many of them critically.
If you live in the usa, it's likely that you've learned of this event already; it's a pretty big news item this morning, because it's guaranteed to generate interest (as it did in me).
The roughly 200 people who die every day in run-of-the-mill traffic accidents (ie, where the traffic isn't parked on the railway) is an often-cited reality check when confronted with sensationalist attention-grabbers like this commuter train-SUV crash or the womb-cutting fetus-nabber. Articles that sell, that make good stories, and that entertain us, wide-eyed, while we pretend in polite company to be horrified, are the ones that get printed.
Incidentally, searching on the phrase 'n people die every day', where n is some number, is an interesting game to play with google. Traffic, cancer, smoking, AIDS, the war in Iraq, medical error, alcohol, and contaminated water in nepal are some of the killers when you get up to the big numbers.
At n=400, deaths are pretty much constrained to AIDS in kenya. For n=600, the roads of china kill about as often as AIDS in kenya does. AIDS in kenya fluctuates, and shows up almost exclusively at n=700. At n=800, things are pretty varied -- I see obesity, AIDS in kenya, hepatitis B in asia, and violent conflict. At n=900, apparently the only killer is violence in southeast asia. At n=1,000 the number of hits explodes (probably because it's a nice, round, impressive number), and we see tuberculosis in india, smoking in the usa (!), and sudden cardiac arrest in the usa.
This game gets a bit dull after a while if it's not accelerated. Let's jump to n=5,000. Here, we see things moving to a solely global scale, with killers like tuberculosis, accidents, and injury and sickness combined.
N=10,000: aids, smoking, TB, sanitation problems, etc.
N=20,000: preventable causes, hunger.
N=40,000: in total, hunger.
N=80,000: in total, hunger.
N=100,000: in total, hunger, poverty.
I could do this all day. Clearly, there's some fudging of the numbers and imprecise statistics, which is pretty typical of the web, and perhaps statistics in general. You should try playing the game yourself -- it's sort of fun.
Incidentally, n=1,000,000 didn't produce any hits. Only about 150,000-250,000 people die every day, it seems.
I think I've made my point that 10 people dying in los angeles isn't really a big deal. I'm not suggesting that relevance of a news story is dependant on how many people died in the reported event, but that apparent relevance tends to be unrelated to consequences or seriousness.
By the way, the headline in the second 'top story' in google news is 'world leaders gather in auschwitz to commemorate death camp'. This is why I prefer to read science.slashdot.org -- at least it doesn't pretend to be 'important' or 'relevant'. It's just a collection of links to articles and discussions that might be of interest to science-oriented people. Slashdot's motto is 'news for nerds -- stuff that matters.' 'news for the cynic -- stuff that's interesting' might be more accurate; when I see articles on google news about george bush's plea for courage on a day of carnage, I often think to myself, 'who gives a shit?'
Ironically, the article on the 'suicide bid' (a nice way to encompass both successful and unsuccessful suicide atempts) was of interest to me, and I read it. However, I hold no convictions that the article was 'news'. I just wanted to read it. Maybe all news is just that: what interests people, regardless of an objective standard of relevance or import.
Believe it or not, my original intent in posting a link to the article: 'DEATH, CARNAGE ON THE RAILWAYS' was not to cynically expound on the ways news is dumb and its relevance manufactured. Then, talking about using the web to explore questionable statistics on how many people die in a day in various ways pretty much eliminated all hope of getting to the point any time soon.
The point was to merely pose the question 'why do people make such ill-conceived suicide attempts?' for instance, swallowing over-the-counter drugs or slashing the wrists. I can see the value of a suicidal gesture (elicit sympathy, initiate a life-change, etc), but there is no reason to park your SUV in front of an oncoming train, unless it is your psychopathic intent to cause damage to people and property other than yourself and your own. I'm not convinced that this was the attemptor's intent -- I believe he simply didn't think about it.
Granted, parking your car in front of an oncoming train would most certainly constitute an effective suicide, if a painful and frightening one. But why your whole car? All this does is decrease certainty, kill people on the train, and fuck up the train. Either the attemptor was very stupid, or wanted to take a lot of collateral with him. I tend to think he was just very stupid, or at least very neglectful of consequences. Lying down on the tracks would be a much surer bid, but would traumatize the operator. If suicide is to be discussed rationally as a legitimate civil right, then attempts where the health of others is uneccessarily put at risk should be eliminated right off from the discussion.