http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLlGopyXT_g
This is an amazing video by an amazing man. It says more than I could say with words.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, what is a video?
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
On Democracy
Democracy, it has been said, is the worst form of government except for all the others.
I don't know about the others, but let me tell you. Democracy is really really stupid.
It's a great idea in theory, but so were Socialism, Star Wars (the Strategic Defense Initiative, not the movies, although Episodes 1-3 certainly qualify for this list), and Betamax. Democracy is a great idea in which men and women choose their own destinies, where the laws that affect the populace are chosen by the populace.
The people who decided Democracy was awesome failed to remember that the populace is, by and large, pretty stupid. In Athens, hailed as the first Democracy, only the rich landed men over forty were allowed to vote, experienced politicians and philosophers all. In the United States, a country that prides itself on its democratic fervor, the founding fathers wanted only landed white males to vote. Men they felt were educated, intelligent and more likely to make choices beneficial for all. In fact, soon after the formation of our fair country, several of the founding fathers thought they had been too inclusive with voting rights, that the country would be overwhelmed by the rule of the uneducated masses, that the masses would vote selfishly only for what was best for them and not what was best for all.
And the founding fathers, of course, were unselfish and noble men who never gave a thought to their own personal finances when rebelling against taxes. Who, of course, did not keep their own fortunes in mind when they crafted the country themselves.
Some might say here that the expansion of voting rights nullifies selfishness. When everyone votes, if everyone votes for what is best for them, the will of the majority will be fulfilled.
I'm going to give you a small example here. Not long ago, there was a very controversial ruling in California. Proposition 8.
Before I talk about my example, I should explain a bit about the referendum system in California for those of you who aren't from the US or just can't find yourselves to care about the legal system of our fair state. Most states have their laws made by legislators who are voted into office by the people. In California, a lot of our laws work on the referendum system, where laws are put directly before the people and the people choose what is best for them.
Yeah, it's stupid. You'll see why in a second. Proposition 8 was a hugely controversial topic that was watched from all over the country. Prop 8 was about the outlawing of same-sex marriage in the state and it passed, meaning that gay marriage is outlawed in a state that contains San Francisco (I know, ridiculous right?)
But that's not what I want to talk about today. What I want to talk about today is Prop 2. Prop 2 was on the same ballot, and it was about a matter slightly less dear to our hearts. It was about the legal size of chicken cages.
Here you have everyone in the state voting for the size of chicken cages, in a state with some of the most populated urban areas of the country. What does your average wannabe Hollywood actress know about the size of chicken cages? Your average cubicle worker? Yet you have these people voting on new laws based only on the information they have from commercials for and against Prop 2. How many people can make an informed decision about chicken cages based on biased media? How many people would actually care enough to research about the proper size of chicken cages by themselves?
Rule by the mob is too easily influenced by fear, by propaganda. Democracy simply puts the people with the best advertisements in control. There is too little logic and too much emotion in the masses, too few people who actually make decisions that aren't influenced by personal position or emotional commercials.
Maybe I'm being too harsh on Democracy. I'd like to think so. Especially in America (and I'm not proud of this) voters aren't educated enough about the issues they vote on. We're simply too absorbed with our everyday lives to seriously look at all the issues we vote on. So thus the fault lies with America and not the system.
In America, we are all Kings and Queens. We are all Presidents, all signers of bills and approvers of legislature. Should we be figureheads, mere signers of the pieces of paper politicians put in front of us?
In a Democracy, it is the responsibility of every voter to educate themselves, to know the real impacts of what we vote on, not the slanted views of commercials.
That's why Democracy is such a stupid system. It depends on the minds of every voter to be logical, to be unswayed by selfishness and emotional pleas, or at least the minds of the majority of voters.
And that's just not the way things work. Democracy, like Socialism, is a system based on how the world should be. It just doesn't work.
It's a beautiful idea in theory though.
I don't know about the others, but let me tell you. Democracy is really really stupid.
It's a great idea in theory, but so were Socialism, Star Wars (the Strategic Defense Initiative, not the movies, although Episodes 1-3 certainly qualify for this list), and Betamax. Democracy is a great idea in which men and women choose their own destinies, where the laws that affect the populace are chosen by the populace.
The people who decided Democracy was awesome failed to remember that the populace is, by and large, pretty stupid. In Athens, hailed as the first Democracy, only the rich landed men over forty were allowed to vote, experienced politicians and philosophers all. In the United States, a country that prides itself on its democratic fervor, the founding fathers wanted only landed white males to vote. Men they felt were educated, intelligent and more likely to make choices beneficial for all. In fact, soon after the formation of our fair country, several of the founding fathers thought they had been too inclusive with voting rights, that the country would be overwhelmed by the rule of the uneducated masses, that the masses would vote selfishly only for what was best for them and not what was best for all.
And the founding fathers, of course, were unselfish and noble men who never gave a thought to their own personal finances when rebelling against taxes. Who, of course, did not keep their own fortunes in mind when they crafted the country themselves.
Some might say here that the expansion of voting rights nullifies selfishness. When everyone votes, if everyone votes for what is best for them, the will of the majority will be fulfilled.
I'm going to give you a small example here. Not long ago, there was a very controversial ruling in California. Proposition 8.
Before I talk about my example, I should explain a bit about the referendum system in California for those of you who aren't from the US or just can't find yourselves to care about the legal system of our fair state. Most states have their laws made by legislators who are voted into office by the people. In California, a lot of our laws work on the referendum system, where laws are put directly before the people and the people choose what is best for them.
Yeah, it's stupid. You'll see why in a second. Proposition 8 was a hugely controversial topic that was watched from all over the country. Prop 8 was about the outlawing of same-sex marriage in the state and it passed, meaning that gay marriage is outlawed in a state that contains San Francisco (I know, ridiculous right?)
But that's not what I want to talk about today. What I want to talk about today is Prop 2. Prop 2 was on the same ballot, and it was about a matter slightly less dear to our hearts. It was about the legal size of chicken cages.
Here you have everyone in the state voting for the size of chicken cages, in a state with some of the most populated urban areas of the country. What does your average wannabe Hollywood actress know about the size of chicken cages? Your average cubicle worker? Yet you have these people voting on new laws based only on the information they have from commercials for and against Prop 2. How many people can make an informed decision about chicken cages based on biased media? How many people would actually care enough to research about the proper size of chicken cages by themselves?
Rule by the mob is too easily influenced by fear, by propaganda. Democracy simply puts the people with the best advertisements in control. There is too little logic and too much emotion in the masses, too few people who actually make decisions that aren't influenced by personal position or emotional commercials.
Maybe I'm being too harsh on Democracy. I'd like to think so. Especially in America (and I'm not proud of this) voters aren't educated enough about the issues they vote on. We're simply too absorbed with our everyday lives to seriously look at all the issues we vote on. So thus the fault lies with America and not the system.
In America, we are all Kings and Queens. We are all Presidents, all signers of bills and approvers of legislature. Should we be figureheads, mere signers of the pieces of paper politicians put in front of us?
In a Democracy, it is the responsibility of every voter to educate themselves, to know the real impacts of what we vote on, not the slanted views of commercials.
That's why Democracy is such a stupid system. It depends on the minds of every voter to be logical, to be unswayed by selfishness and emotional pleas, or at least the minds of the majority of voters.
And that's just not the way things work. Democracy, like Socialism, is a system based on how the world should be. It just doesn't work.
It's a beautiful idea in theory though.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
On Government
WARNING: This is not an authoritative thesis. This is just my own musings and almost certainly refutable by any college student actually taking a class on governmental philosophy.
I touched on this topic a bit yesterday, so I'll go a bit more in depth here.
The essence of government is the giving up of individual liberty for safety. By giving up the right to decide everything for ourselves, we also gain the security of knowing that certain things will be provided for us. Things like welfare spring to mind, though there are other examples, such as civil liberties.
The first government, most likely, was some kind of oligarchy. Some leader of a band received the allegiance of his followers in exchange for the increased availability of food. A coordinated, decisive band of hunters were much more likely to bring down prey than a lone tracker.
The need for a leader in this band is not immediately self-evident. If they all know what they're doing, then shouldn't they share the food equally?
That's only until you consider how much man instinctively likes to argue. We love to do it. We are also selfish bastards. Both of those are the driving forces behind why Socialism really doesn't work that well. We like having stuff, especially food. And if we work slightly harder than anyone else, we feel like we should get the lion's share. And if two people feel like that they did more work than the other, fighting ensues and probably ends up with injury for one or the other.
Humanity needs an alpha male, an Ubermensch, someone who can tell everyone else to shut up and eat what's in front of them. We need some one person in charge, at least when we roamed the land in small groups. The autocratic system works pretty well in small groups, with the autocrat always taking the lion's share, but assuring food for all. Even with the death of the roaming lifestyle, autocrats of small towns of farmers works well. The autocrat can spend all his time exclusively working out how to coordinate the town in defense, or simply how to run it daily because he doesn't need to farm food for himself. With more consistent farming practices, as farms became more and more self-sufficient, the need for a coordinator of people fades, and people become largely self-sufficient governmentally as well, though the need for a community persists, in case of hard times. Thus the autocrat is reduced to a nominal position, or removed together as farms depend once in a long while on each others' goodwill.
However, as humanity clumped in bigger and bigger groups, neither simple self-sufficiency nor autocracy would work. Self-sufficiency no longer worked because there were no people who could specialize in making better products than the farms could create themselves. People like cobblers, blacksmiths, specialized trades that required food but did not make it themselves. Farmers needed to trade with the tradesmen, and the tradesmen needed food from farmers. Again, coordination was needed.
However, you couldn't simply have a true autocracy (here, I mean not just a government where only one person has all power, but a government made entirely of one person) with larger amounts of people. True autocracy requires each individual to personally give up some of what they have to the autocrat. However, bigger is merely smaller on a bigger scale. Bigger is different.
Here's an example I've heard. Say you're an actor or an actress and you say to yourself that you will answer every single piece of fan mail you ever receive personally. At first, this isn't too hard. Just an hour a day as the letters trickle in. You get to have personal conversations with your fans. But then you star in a movie and the amount of mail triples. No problem. You just spend three hours a day. That's not too different. Suddenly, your movie becomes a cult classic and you get twelve times the mail. No problem, you'll just spend.... wait. You now receive so much fan mail that it would take thirty six hours a day to reply. Even if you just take the time to write thank you notes, you have to spend twenty hours a day replying, and you still have to do things like sleep and act, so that's out of the question. Even if you have form letters and all you do is sign, it still takes you ten hours. Which is doable, but only barely. And you're not really doing what you promised to do, are you?
The way in which governing becomes different with the first stage of bigger is simple. First of all, you can no longer know approximately what everyone is doing, because there's so many of them. You can't organize people any more. Secondly, there are now a shitload of them and only one of you. How do you enforce your law now? As long as you could physically cow the majority of your tribe or village one on one that was all right. But with enough people unhappy with you, there's nothing you can do.
Thus gives way to the second form of government. "Democracy" (or really, oligarchy.) We see this happening in Ancient Greece, with the rise of Athens. Democracy, the rule of the people, is the most selfish of the governments. Democracy requires every single person to want to participate in the ruling of everything.
And lemme tell you, Democracy is a stupid system.
(More on that topic tomorrow. That is one I know MUCH more about.)
I touched on this topic a bit yesterday, so I'll go a bit more in depth here.
The essence of government is the giving up of individual liberty for safety. By giving up the right to decide everything for ourselves, we also gain the security of knowing that certain things will be provided for us. Things like welfare spring to mind, though there are other examples, such as civil liberties.
The first government, most likely, was some kind of oligarchy. Some leader of a band received the allegiance of his followers in exchange for the increased availability of food. A coordinated, decisive band of hunters were much more likely to bring down prey than a lone tracker.
The need for a leader in this band is not immediately self-evident. If they all know what they're doing, then shouldn't they share the food equally?
That's only until you consider how much man instinctively likes to argue. We love to do it. We are also selfish bastards. Both of those are the driving forces behind why Socialism really doesn't work that well. We like having stuff, especially food. And if we work slightly harder than anyone else, we feel like we should get the lion's share. And if two people feel like that they did more work than the other, fighting ensues and probably ends up with injury for one or the other.
Humanity needs an alpha male, an Ubermensch, someone who can tell everyone else to shut up and eat what's in front of them. We need some one person in charge, at least when we roamed the land in small groups. The autocratic system works pretty well in small groups, with the autocrat always taking the lion's share, but assuring food for all. Even with the death of the roaming lifestyle, autocrats of small towns of farmers works well. The autocrat can spend all his time exclusively working out how to coordinate the town in defense, or simply how to run it daily because he doesn't need to farm food for himself. With more consistent farming practices, as farms became more and more self-sufficient, the need for a coordinator of people fades, and people become largely self-sufficient governmentally as well, though the need for a community persists, in case of hard times. Thus the autocrat is reduced to a nominal position, or removed together as farms depend once in a long while on each others' goodwill.
However, as humanity clumped in bigger and bigger groups, neither simple self-sufficiency nor autocracy would work. Self-sufficiency no longer worked because there were no people who could specialize in making better products than the farms could create themselves. People like cobblers, blacksmiths, specialized trades that required food but did not make it themselves. Farmers needed to trade with the tradesmen, and the tradesmen needed food from farmers. Again, coordination was needed.
However, you couldn't simply have a true autocracy (here, I mean not just a government where only one person has all power, but a government made entirely of one person) with larger amounts of people. True autocracy requires each individual to personally give up some of what they have to the autocrat. However, bigger is merely smaller on a bigger scale. Bigger is different.
Here's an example I've heard. Say you're an actor or an actress and you say to yourself that you will answer every single piece of fan mail you ever receive personally. At first, this isn't too hard. Just an hour a day as the letters trickle in. You get to have personal conversations with your fans. But then you star in a movie and the amount of mail triples. No problem. You just spend three hours a day. That's not too different. Suddenly, your movie becomes a cult classic and you get twelve times the mail. No problem, you'll just spend.... wait. You now receive so much fan mail that it would take thirty six hours a day to reply. Even if you just take the time to write thank you notes, you have to spend twenty hours a day replying, and you still have to do things like sleep and act, so that's out of the question. Even if you have form letters and all you do is sign, it still takes you ten hours. Which is doable, but only barely. And you're not really doing what you promised to do, are you?
The way in which governing becomes different with the first stage of bigger is simple. First of all, you can no longer know approximately what everyone is doing, because there's so many of them. You can't organize people any more. Secondly, there are now a shitload of them and only one of you. How do you enforce your law now? As long as you could physically cow the majority of your tribe or village one on one that was all right. But with enough people unhappy with you, there's nothing you can do.
Thus gives way to the second form of government. "Democracy" (or really, oligarchy.) We see this happening in Ancient Greece, with the rise of Athens. Democracy, the rule of the people, is the most selfish of the governments. Democracy requires every single person to want to participate in the ruling of everything.
And lemme tell you, Democracy is a stupid system.
(More on that topic tomorrow. That is one I know MUCH more about.)
Monday, September 27, 2010
Can't Say Much. Much to Busy Doing SCIENCE!
Never take AP Chem and AP Physics at the same time and then have both a Chem Problem set that the teacher decided to give instead of the test and a list of monthly problems for Chem AND a list of weekly problems for Physics due on the same day. It could seriously impede things like blog posts that you might need to do.
Also, I'm still sick.
And I've found that I still dislike Libertarians. Asking for so much personal freedom while still expecting personal security seems like asking for something for nothing. As Locke said, and as many other people have agreed, the nature of government is the sacrifice of personal freedom for security. That is, I allow the government to keep me from having large bombs under my house as long as it also keeps everyone else from having large bombs under their houses that could conceivably take me up with them.
Also, Blargh Science.
Also, I'm still sick.
And I've found that I still dislike Libertarians. Asking for so much personal freedom while still expecting personal security seems like asking for something for nothing. As Locke said, and as many other people have agreed, the nature of government is the sacrifice of personal freedom for security. That is, I allow the government to keep me from having large bombs under my house as long as it also keeps everyone else from having large bombs under their houses that could conceivably take me up with them.
Also, Blargh Science.
Sunday, September 26, 2010
A Controversial Topic
It's always annoyed me when people automatically equate pro-life with backwards religious fundamentalists. I mean, I hate deep Southians as much as the next liberally-raised Obama-backing teenager, but I still see some merit in the pro-life side of the abortion debate.
(Yes, this is the most controversial topic I've tackled here by far, but I'm going to try and get past that by just plunging straight in and hoping no one notices.
Oh wait.)
Yet when I've tried to explain my views to those pro-choicers who I've talked with, they don't seem to get my views, at least seventy percent, I believe, because they assume it's based on faith.
Well I've recently figured out a way to explain what I think. I have to warn you though, this is a pretty deep hypothetical.
So imagine you time-traveled to March 25, 1908 in Vienna by accident (you were actually trying to get to 2908 so you could read up on the stock market in 2010 and make a shitload of money, but you twisted the dial the wrong way. Silly you.)
While you wait for your handy-dandy time machine to recharge, a painter approaches you with some paintings he wants to sell. You don't have any of this time's money on you (in fact, you can't even remember what it is) so you just end up chatting with the struggling artist. He tells you about how his mother recently died of breast cancer and how he's trying to get into art school. You tell him some stuff you make up on the spot about a father who died in a war. As you talk, a rabbi walks by, and the artist spits at the holy man's feet. Shocked, you launch into an impassioned speech about the equality of man.
Halfway through, you realize that the artist has signed his paintings A. Hitler. You also notice that he has a Hitler mustache. You then realize you are lecturing Hitler on racism.
You also realize that you have a Glock. 45 tucked in the back of your waistband for those pesky space monkeys in the future.
Do you shoot poor sad artist Hitler?
(For the purposes of this exercise, we're going to ignore paradox. Killing Hitler will not cause a cataclysm of events that will cause you not to have a time machine and thus not kill Hitler.)
There are a couple things you need to consider about this situation. We know Hitler caused the deaths of millions and millions of people. If he hadn't lived, it's likely that there are few with the charisma and political savvy to unite the Germans in a nationalistic fervor as he did, although it's possible things would happen anyways. Yet even if killing Hitler makes the Holocaust slightly less likely, killing him seems like a good idea.
Yet there's a good possibility that merely your presence in this time will stop Hitler from the Holocaust. Your lecture had some very good points in it. Maybe Hitler becomes a priest. Maybe he finds a conscience and just expels all Jews from Germany instead of mercilessly slaughtering them as subhuman beings. Maybe as a political leader, he instead makes an appeal to the League of Nations to create worldwide standards of living and causes the League of Nations to actually become a potent force for good in the world. You have no way of knowing.
Yet we know for sure that there is a possibility that Hitler will go and kill all the Jews. This seems the most likely possibility, just from induction. (that is, he did it last time, so he'll probably do it this time.)
Thus, it seems logical that we should kill him. I think most people would agree here (if you don't think killing Hitler before he causes mass genocide, feel free to comment.)
Yet, that seems to demonstrate one lesson: What people can be is a part of what they are now. We think of artist-Hitler as a person who will become Mass-Murderer-Hitler. It's an intrinsic part of who he is, in this case an even bigger part of who he is than what he is now. In this case, who he will be is more important to his identity than who he is now. When we end what he is now, we end what he will be as a part of that.
Can you not use the same logic for abortion? Part of what an embryo or a fetus is currently is what it will be in the future. And, even if life is just a very good chance, as miscarriage is always a possibility, that life that it will have is a part of what it is now. Even if it is not alive yet, it has the potential to be. And by ending the potential life, well, you end a potential life. (Just in case I wasn't clear, Killing Hitler in this case would be an allegory for not having an abortion. Just making sure that was clear.)
It that doesn't make any sense to you, well, it does to me. Now, I should say that I'm not a rabid pro-lifer. I don't believe that abortion should never happen. There are cases where abortion is the best and only choice. Pregnancies from rape, pregnancies that endanger the mother's life or impede her life enough that her quality of life is drastically lowered.
Yet there are other options for other cases. Adoption is a huge one. There are hundreds of people in the world who wants kids and can't have them.
Anyways, I'm not telling you what you should think. That's the realm of holy men and politicians. I'm just trying to explain why I feel the way I feel in a way that makes sense. You can take it or leave it.
(Yes, this is the most controversial topic I've tackled here by far, but I'm going to try and get past that by just plunging straight in and hoping no one notices.
Oh wait.)
Yet when I've tried to explain my views to those pro-choicers who I've talked with, they don't seem to get my views, at least seventy percent, I believe, because they assume it's based on faith.
Well I've recently figured out a way to explain what I think. I have to warn you though, this is a pretty deep hypothetical.
So imagine you time-traveled to March 25, 1908 in Vienna by accident (you were actually trying to get to 2908 so you could read up on the stock market in 2010 and make a shitload of money, but you twisted the dial the wrong way. Silly you.)
While you wait for your handy-dandy time machine to recharge, a painter approaches you with some paintings he wants to sell. You don't have any of this time's money on you (in fact, you can't even remember what it is) so you just end up chatting with the struggling artist. He tells you about how his mother recently died of breast cancer and how he's trying to get into art school. You tell him some stuff you make up on the spot about a father who died in a war. As you talk, a rabbi walks by, and the artist spits at the holy man's feet. Shocked, you launch into an impassioned speech about the equality of man.
Halfway through, you realize that the artist has signed his paintings A. Hitler. You also notice that he has a Hitler mustache. You then realize you are lecturing Hitler on racism.
You also realize that you have a Glock. 45 tucked in the back of your waistband for those pesky space monkeys in the future.
Do you shoot poor sad artist Hitler?
(For the purposes of this exercise, we're going to ignore paradox. Killing Hitler will not cause a cataclysm of events that will cause you not to have a time machine and thus not kill Hitler.)
There are a couple things you need to consider about this situation. We know Hitler caused the deaths of millions and millions of people. If he hadn't lived, it's likely that there are few with the charisma and political savvy to unite the Germans in a nationalistic fervor as he did, although it's possible things would happen anyways. Yet even if killing Hitler makes the Holocaust slightly less likely, killing him seems like a good idea.
Yet there's a good possibility that merely your presence in this time will stop Hitler from the Holocaust. Your lecture had some very good points in it. Maybe Hitler becomes a priest. Maybe he finds a conscience and just expels all Jews from Germany instead of mercilessly slaughtering them as subhuman beings. Maybe as a political leader, he instead makes an appeal to the League of Nations to create worldwide standards of living and causes the League of Nations to actually become a potent force for good in the world. You have no way of knowing.
Yet we know for sure that there is a possibility that Hitler will go and kill all the Jews. This seems the most likely possibility, just from induction. (that is, he did it last time, so he'll probably do it this time.)
Thus, it seems logical that we should kill him. I think most people would agree here (if you don't think killing Hitler before he causes mass genocide, feel free to comment.)
Yet, that seems to demonstrate one lesson: What people can be is a part of what they are now. We think of artist-Hitler as a person who will become Mass-Murderer-Hitler. It's an intrinsic part of who he is, in this case an even bigger part of who he is than what he is now. In this case, who he will be is more important to his identity than who he is now. When we end what he is now, we end what he will be as a part of that.
Can you not use the same logic for abortion? Part of what an embryo or a fetus is currently is what it will be in the future. And, even if life is just a very good chance, as miscarriage is always a possibility, that life that it will have is a part of what it is now. Even if it is not alive yet, it has the potential to be. And by ending the potential life, well, you end a potential life. (Just in case I wasn't clear, Killing Hitler in this case would be an allegory for not having an abortion. Just making sure that was clear.)
It that doesn't make any sense to you, well, it does to me. Now, I should say that I'm not a rabid pro-lifer. I don't believe that abortion should never happen. There are cases where abortion is the best and only choice. Pregnancies from rape, pregnancies that endanger the mother's life or impede her life enough that her quality of life is drastically lowered.
Yet there are other options for other cases. Adoption is a huge one. There are hundreds of people in the world who wants kids and can't have them.
Anyways, I'm not telling you what you should think. That's the realm of holy men and politicians. I'm just trying to explain why I feel the way I feel in a way that makes sense. You can take it or leave it.
Saturday, September 25, 2010
One fish, two fish, Friends help you (ish?)
So today I was dragged to a musical where, of the two main characters, one was condemned by his own family for spreading radical ideas and the other was nearly sentenced before a prejudiced jury of his peers as crazy simply because he believed that some persons who others though of as inferior were just as much people as all the rest.
Can you guess which musical? If you guessed Wicked, you would be wrong. It was actually Seussical the Musical.
But anyways, it got me thinking of the common theme between the two musicals. Both accentuate individuality and how society drags us down. (Although Seussical moderates this very Ayn Randish idea with some implication that there are some people in the universe who will actually help you.)
And then I played a game of Munchkin (for those of you who don't know it, it's a satirical board game revolving around a group of RPG adventurers constantly backstabbing each other so they can get to level 10 before the others) and that seemed to hammer in that other people drag you down.
Isn't that a very contradictory idea to the way human society has developed? We, as humans, have created groups, tribes, based on the ideas of difference and conformity. Even if I may not like it, there is something that connects me with every single God-loving gun-toting gay-hating Texan, just the fact that we are both American. Even if there might be someone much more my temperament living in Egypt, we are still different simply because he's an Egyptian national. Humanity loves groups.
Yet at the same time, in America especially, we constantly hammer in the idea that an individual can do great things. In capitalism, one person with an idea can make millions. The idea of the self-made man, the man who gets no help from any of his friends or his background, is prevalent in our country.
Yet, nothing grows in a vacuum. We are all the product of our friends and our families. They shape us more than we ourselves do, envelop us like a mold around clay. The question seems to be, is the enveloping more of a blanket, keeping us warm in the cold nights, or a straitjacket?
I don't have an answer for that. I think society does weigh us down in some ways. I also know that I love my friends and my family, and, even if I could go farther without them, it's not because they're dragging me down but because I enjoy walking slower if it means I'll be with them longer.
I guess the lesson is, if you have awesome friends, life is much better with them than without. But that's not much of a lesson is it?
Can you guess which musical? If you guessed Wicked, you would be wrong. It was actually Seussical the Musical.
But anyways, it got me thinking of the common theme between the two musicals. Both accentuate individuality and how society drags us down. (Although Seussical moderates this very Ayn Randish idea with some implication that there are some people in the universe who will actually help you.)
And then I played a game of Munchkin (for those of you who don't know it, it's a satirical board game revolving around a group of RPG adventurers constantly backstabbing each other so they can get to level 10 before the others) and that seemed to hammer in that other people drag you down.
Isn't that a very contradictory idea to the way human society has developed? We, as humans, have created groups, tribes, based on the ideas of difference and conformity. Even if I may not like it, there is something that connects me with every single God-loving gun-toting gay-hating Texan, just the fact that we are both American. Even if there might be someone much more my temperament living in Egypt, we are still different simply because he's an Egyptian national. Humanity loves groups.
Yet at the same time, in America especially, we constantly hammer in the idea that an individual can do great things. In capitalism, one person with an idea can make millions. The idea of the self-made man, the man who gets no help from any of his friends or his background, is prevalent in our country.
Yet, nothing grows in a vacuum. We are all the product of our friends and our families. They shape us more than we ourselves do, envelop us like a mold around clay. The question seems to be, is the enveloping more of a blanket, keeping us warm in the cold nights, or a straitjacket?
I don't have an answer for that. I think society does weigh us down in some ways. I also know that I love my friends and my family, and, even if I could go farther without them, it's not because they're dragging me down but because I enjoy walking slower if it means I'll be with them longer.
I guess the lesson is, if you have awesome friends, life is much better with them than without. But that's not much of a lesson is it?
Friday, September 24, 2010
Groggy is a fun word to say.
Seriously, it is. Groggy groggy groggy groggy. Eventually it degenerates into weird animalistic noises, except that no animal ever sounded that stupid. Except for maybe the frog. To any frogs reading this: RIBBIT SOUNDS STUPID. ALSO, YOU SUCK AND TASTE LIKE CHICKEN. EXCEPT A LITTLE MORE RUBBERY. YOU TASTE LIKE WHAT I IMAGINE RUBBER CHICKENS WOULD TASTE LIKE. AND YOU'RE NOT NEARLY AS FUN TO HIT PEOPLE WITH.
I'm a little sick today, which is why this blog post is so early in the day. Nothing major, just sore throat, a headache, and some grogginess.
I have discovered, over the years, that the only part of my writing that improves as grogginess does, is my lyricality, especially when I try poems. So I figure I might as well give it a shot and entertain you all.
This is not in iambic pentameter because iambic pentameter is boring mostly. I don't know exactly what the meter of this actually is, but it's pulsating in time to my headache.
Come to me and bring your spears!
Bring your sons and bring your fears.
We shall ride in fog and night.
We shall ride with fierce delight.
Ride through hill and mount and town
Ride as our fell horns do sound.
Sing of us, if you must sing.
And let the Wild Hunt begin.
I tried to read that all the way through but I started coughing halfway through. It sounded fine in my head though.
I'm not even sure if there's a name for that meter. I want to say something about dactyls.
But yeah. I'm going to go take a nap now.
I'm a little sick today, which is why this blog post is so early in the day. Nothing major, just sore throat, a headache, and some grogginess.
I have discovered, over the years, that the only part of my writing that improves as grogginess does, is my lyricality, especially when I try poems. So I figure I might as well give it a shot and entertain you all.
This is not in iambic pentameter because iambic pentameter is boring mostly. I don't know exactly what the meter of this actually is, but it's pulsating in time to my headache.
Come to me and bring your spears!
Bring your sons and bring your fears.
We shall ride in fog and night.
We shall ride with fierce delight.
Ride through hill and mount and town
Ride as our fell horns do sound.
Sing of us, if you must sing.
And let the Wild Hunt begin.
I tried to read that all the way through but I started coughing halfway through. It sounded fine in my head though.
I'm not even sure if there's a name for that meter. I want to say something about dactyls.
But yeah. I'm going to go take a nap now.
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