Eccentric Flower:201008/Some Recantation
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Some Recantation
OK, first, since I know that some of you will find this tiresome to read and some won't try, here are the important administrative points - the executive summary, if you will:
1. I'm turning back on comments for certain kinds of entries. "Two Stories" and "Again On Poetry" have had their comment links re-enabled.
(I wanted very badly to write that "reënabled" and one day we should all have the discussion on why America decided ugly hyphens were a better standard than a diaeresis and Robert can make the joke that it's because no one wanted to say the word and I can respond by going off on a tear about how yet they have no trouble with "blog" and we'll all have a good laugh. But that day is not today.)
2. I'm going to attempt, once again, to renew my resolve to keep a split between Columbina Discusses Shiny Objects entries, which are harmless, and Columbina Shows How Ugly His/Her Psyche Is entries, which are dangerous - but as you'll see, the distinction is often very difficult to mke.
3. I have no plans to adjust my psyche to make this distinction any easier to make.
Everything below this line is discussion of the three points I have just given.
Over the past few days, comments I have received both away from this site (IMs elsewhere, emails, etc) and activity on this site (people squeezing in comments in places they didn't belong because they had no other good way of communicating things) have made me aware that turning off all comments here is 1) a bad idea and 2) an overreaction. So I'm turning them back on. For some entries.
The problem is that I really don't think it is fair to you to make you play the game of Wade Through The Swamp of Columbina's Brain. You can't win and you would be right to insist on not playing. And comparatively recent events have reminded me once again of the dangers of this game.
I should be oblique about this, but I also don't think it's fair to leave you mystified, and again, off-site comments have made me aware I'm being mystifying. So, full disclosure. Back in the comments on the "Continuance" item (the item was posted in May, but the comments continued slowly until at least a month or more after that, partly because Andy was out of town for a while in the middle of it), you'll see - should you be brave enough to look - that Andy is no longer reading this journal, and may in fact not be speaking to me, because of the things I said in that entry.
This would be difficult to bear if Andy were a virtual friend, but it's far worse because he's one of the few of you I do see semi-regularly in person, and he has friends who are also my friends, and this rift has put all of that in doubt. Furthermore, I'm in a bind because I don't think Andy will settle for anything less than an utter recantation of some of my positions, and I don't feel that I have anything to recant. I'm not going to go back on my essential suspicion and distrust of lawyers; that would be lying about my basic nature, and to me, that would be even worse - to misrepresent one of my fundamental aspects to a friend of mine. I'd feel dishonest every time I saw him. But writing him off is just as painful.
The ideal, of course, would be to agree to disagree, just as I've asked you all so many times to agree to disagree. But I'm aware that asking for that - and even getting it - can only take us so far.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, but after this time I think I'm done saying it for a while, so I'd like you to all pay attention: If you knew me in person I think you would not find me a generally unpleasant person to be around - at least I hope not. I am cynical but friendly, annoyed but optimistic, and do not (I swear!) travel around with a gray storm cloud over my head at all times. Honest. In general in daily real-world life I am far too busy being distracted by the causes and crises and shiny objects of the moment to brood too much. I save that for sleepless nights and moments of downtime when my brain has nothing better to do than chew on itself.
But - and this is a very important but - underneath my generally more-pleasant-than-shown-in-these-pages demeanor, I have some fundamental principles which I see neither need nor purpose in changing. And those principles are generally negative.
I have stated these principles pretty strongly in "Consider the Lobster," and I don't like to repeat myself, so this time I'll say that they parallel the rough ideas of the laws of thermodynamics:
1. You can't win.
2. You can't break even.
3. You can't get out of the game.
You wouldn't ask someone to recant a belief in the laws of thermodynamics, would you? I sure hope not. Well, that's the way I feel about my core ideas that the world is not improving, and that any small short-term gain in general conditions is not actually a defeat over entropy, but a small bobble in a much longer-term trend. In other words, even if it seems like something is improving, over the millennial scale it is not; short-term gain for long-term penalty.
Some of you feel that maintaining this as my core idea means that I walk around under a dark cloud. It does not.
Some of you feel that maintaining this as my core idea means I could use a spot of psychotherapy for my own benefit. It does not.
In fact - this is what I find hard to convey - because I simply take this as fact, it affects me very little. It's the rules, is all, and since I've established it's the rules and there can be no true long-term improvement, I can work peacefully toward local, meaningless, relatively-short-term improvement with a clear mind. Since we are on a long and irreversible spiral of decline and fall as a species, I need feel no qualm about working solely to improve my lot and to a lesser extent the lot of my friends, even though in the end all our small, pathetic, local destinies won't matter a jot.
It's true this does perhaps lend me a certain fatalism that you may not have yourself. As a child, I did not expect to live to retirement age. (As a child I didn't consider living to retirement age a useful option, since I also expected to be unmarried and alone and friendless, based on my school experiences.) These days I do expect to live until then, but I don't expect my retirement to be very pleasant or very long. Since I resent the doctrine that children support their parents in old age, and since at any rate I don't have any children and no plans to, I expect that my retirement is going to be short and unpleasant and may contain pet food as a dining option.
(Yes, I have investments, a few of which even aren't underwater. And a modest amount of savings. And no debts of any kind save my mortgage. And yet I believe the universe will find a way to bite me on the ass anyway - so much so, in fact, that I dislike talking about those things because I feel that as soon as I mention that I have any money saved, I will come home to find that my house has been destroyed by fire for daring to mention it. Is that fatalism? Perhaps it is, he says with his tongue not entirely out of his cheek.)
My wife does not agree with this point of view. She went to a school where they taught her that the mind can accomplish anything (even to the extent of making Boston traffic magically stop by sheer force of will when you step into the street, which is why you should never take a cue from an MIT student or alum on crossing streets when you're walking with them). Of course I think that my wife was lied to, but I can't deny her viewpoint of essential optimism - she's laughing wryly now as she reads this because it will be the first time that anyone has accused my wife, whose personality is a cross between Daria and Lisa Simpson, of optimism, but it's true; she believes Science Will Improve The World Eventually and The Smart People Will Eventually Triumph, and I believe neither. (Nor, for that matter, do I believe a World Run By Smart People would necessarily be an improvement over the World Run By Idiots we have now.)
But I don't need essential optimism. As a programmer, essential optimism gets in my way. If I brought optimism to my job, I would expect the large codebase that dates before my arrival, and which I have to maintain, to have been well-planned and well-constructed, and that assumption would keep tripping me over and over. But by understanding the rules - that the prior code was not planned in any sense, grew haphazardly, was often poorly written, and in some cases consists of bandages applied over bandages to the extent that the bandages are the only thing keeping the substance together - I can operate efficiently within that framework; I can know that I am just a plumber who mostly only has time to fix the worst leaks, and that if I want to make permanent improvements in anything, I have to sacrifice virtually all my other repair work and firefighting in order to rewrite some piece from scratch. I can live with that. I'd rather have rules I don't much care for than pretend the rules are something different and have this pretense bite me.
The point of all this digressive, omphaloskeptic mess is that I can't recant my positions; I can see nothing to recant. If you tell me the world is not going to hell I do not see this as a matter of me needing to rethink my worldview; I see it as a matter of you needing to rethink yours. My response is, "Well, I think it's sweet that you manage to keep that essential optimism, and I'm sure you sleep better than I do, but you're founded on denial."
The other point of all this digressive, omphaloskeptic mess is that I don't really see that my worldview has to always enter our dealings with one another. Surely we can talk about art or poetry or music or programming or trivia or movies or random numbers without ever bringing in the fact that I think we are all in this handbasket together zooming toward someplace where there will be no air conditioning? Surely it doesn't have to affect the fine quality of our relationship?
Ah, but sometimes it does - and that's when the meltdowns come, like cold winter rain.
The problem is I depend on keeping that wall up because I believe my worldview will lead you to hate me (even if I don't completely understand why) and therefore it is something I should conceal from you, and I often forget to, or am unable to, and then the consequences lead me to tears. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I have few enough friends that it is never a casual thing for me to lose one.
Anyway, I've been made aware that I should not throw the baby out with the bathwater, tempting as it is. So I'm leaving on comments for the harmless entries, the ones with the poems or the stories or the film criticism or the brain dumps on Veracruz folk music. And I'm not allowing comments on the ones where the basic point is how much the world frustrates and disappoints me - like this one. I think this split approach stands the best chance of preserving good will and limiting anger on all sides, including mine. (And if someone does think something unforgivable about me because of something I wrote, then I'll be able to avoid knowing about it.)
There are only two problems with this.
One is that there are some of you who have plenty to say every time I get deeply into the contemplation of my own navel and what's wrong with the world, but have nothing to say to any of my more harmless topics.
Well, frankly, I love you folks in that category dearly and I don't want you to think that I think less of you in general because of it, but that happens to be a specific habit that sort of pisses me off.
The second problem is connected to the first, and it is the one which tripped me up this time. It may trip me again. I'm going to try my best not to let it. That's items and entries which unfortunately fall in an area that is neither definitively safe nor definitively unsafe.
A lot of Economist articles fall here. They make me think about the world, and they generally don't make me think about the world in a good way, because in general I do not think about the world in a good way. My reaction to most world news is along the lines of, "Oh, god, in what way have we fucked it up now?"
I'm happy to read them, because I think it is important to know what's going on in the world even if you don't much like it, but I won't pretend my reactions are positive. Still, when I discuss them, the idea is that you discuss whether you agree or disagree with the article and why, not whether you agree or disagree with my personal worldview. Too often, I have felt, the comments you've made on these could-go-either-way entries have forcefully, maybe even deliberately, gone the wrong way. The thing that gets me the most pissed off is when I sense that someone is more interested in telling me why I'm wrong than discussing the merits of the thing that inspired the entry in the first place.
Or to give the specific example from "Continuance," if I post an item that is about whether it's appropriate and useful to have a center for "cyber law" research and discussion at Harvard, and it becomes a general referendum on my position on lawyers (which is not open to debate), it's only going to end badly for all of us.
Some of you don't believe this is fair, and you know what? I don't either. That's why I took down comments. It's not fair. It's not at all fair to say, "I'm going to present you with this proposition which is heavily informed by my own premises, but I will get upset if you challenge those premises." It's presenting a game where the rules are "Columbine wins." Small wonder it seems like some of you have taken to overreacting in the opposite direction and pointing out every place where Columbine loses at the slightest opportunity.
It's easy for my temporary comments takedown to look like a hysterical overreaction now, when the past two entries have been benign, pleasant, creative - harmless. But the next item coming up is a discussion of some interesting articles from this week's Economist, and along the way we're going to see how hard it is to have that discussion without making it a referendum on my cynicism.
The bottom line of all this is: I do, in fact, believe the world is going to hell, quantitatively and qualitatively. I'm not interested in losing this worldview; I see nothing there to recant. To me it is a fact, like the sky being blue. But I also recognize this may bother you, and I don't want it to bother you. So here's the deal: If that bothers you, then you should restrict yourself to reading only the entries where my worldview doesn't intrude on the topic.
You'll know which ones I think those are, because they'll be the ones that allow comments.
This one is an exception; it ordinarily would very much be the sort of entry where I don't allow comments, but where I will allow you to express your displeasure so I can find out how many more people I have annoyed by making this statement of policy.
(Have I mentioned that I consider all my friendships extremely fragile and easily jeopardized?)
Let's focus on the Continuance comments, because that's where I think the real problem lies, and that that problem is the gap between what you claim to believe about lawyers and their work, and what you actually believe, as expressed to me in person at my dining room table a month or so ago.
There have been exactly two times when I've read things you've written in your journal and thought, "Uh-oh, this will end badly." One was what you posted on 9/11. The other was on Continuance.
As to Andy, you saw, or you should have seen, that he was taking what you wrote as an insult to his father. You needed to address that source of upset. That doesn't involve a recantation. All it involves is this: "I didn't know your father. If you tell me he was an honorable man doing his best, I will believe you. My suspicions and dislikes are for the profession generally, and indeed, there are a number of lawyers whom I count among my friends, whom I like, respect and trust." That's all you needed to do, and unfathomably to me, you didn't.
To take it a step further, though, by your own admissions to me, you don't actually believe the hyperbole you assert. You told me, at least as I understood you, that yes, you do believe that BP should have lawyers dealing with claims to make sure they are fairly presented, and that the claimants' claims are actually legitimate. You agreed, or so I understood, that there needed to be a proceeding with representation before someone/thing was adjudged "evil." Indeed, I gave you an example of a client of mine who, by most people's understanding, breached a contract and then sought to mitigate the consequences of that breach through my efforts. And at the end of my story, in which I was successful at helping the client reach a settlement by which it did not have to pay 100% of what it owed under the contract, you said that, no, this was not an evil exercise on my part.
Now, I don't think you were jollying me on, because a) it's not in your nature to jolly people one, and b) even if it were, you know I'm pretty much the last person with whom you would need to take that approach.
So the issue, as I see it, is not that you need to recant what you said in Continuance, but rather that you need to bring your rhetoric in line with what you actually believe, rather than in line with what feels good to bloviate on. "75% of lawyers are evil," may feel great to write, but you don't really believe it, nor do you really believe that specific people or entities are not entiled to representation, at least until they are proved to be "evil." Where you honestly part company with the mainstream is that you believe in much more extensive -- even complete -- punishment of serious wrongdoers. And if you left it at that, you'd not have lost Andy.
-- 21:40, 3 August 2010 (BST)
The gap exists because here I think here (here meaning this journal) there is very little room to be nuanced, and time has shown me that when I'm nuanced people tend to skip the nuance and act as if I've made broad assertions anyway, so better to just make the broad assertions and (as the saying goes) ask forgiveness than permission. To this end, I cop to overdoing the rhetoric at least 25-50% in this space; at the table, or at the bar, comes the time for nuance and hashing out of fine points. Or, sometimes, in the comments.
My discussion with you was mostly, to me, a matter of you giving examples which I would never have said were unreasonable, here or there. BP should have lawyers to make sure the claims against them are legitimate; but if those same lawyers acted to try to help BP escape legitimate obligations, or pay adequate reparations for those obligations, then they would be doing evil - a point of our table conversation you did not relate.
You also didn't mention that in that breach of contract issue there were, to my mind (and yours), extenuating circumstances in favor of your client and that both you and the client were in good faith.
I'm not jollying you on; you made good points and I agreed with them then and now. And yet I don't feel like any of this changes my basic position on distrust of lawyers, nor on their access to ability to do evil.
As for Andy, I'm not sure you are going to believe this, but I honestly didn't make the leap from "my father was a lawyer" to his thinking I was in any way insulting the memory of his father, probably because it seemed to me inside my head so far from something that could be construed as an insult in any way that the possibility was just unthinkable. I also thought I was replying to his points and not sidestepping them, and so his reaction literally blindsided me.
This connects to Jette's comments about insulting a profession - of course I would never insult someone's profession to their face. The thing is, I don't construe a statement "I don't like your profession" as an insult to your profession, or to you. It just means I don't like it - why should that matter? If I happen to think tech writers are useless (I don't), then that's just me being cranky, right?
I guess the root problem is that I have trouble with the idea that what I think about something is significant to someone else. "How can someone get offended by one of my ideas? Even I don't take myself very seriously, why should they?" I assume it will just be filed as a quirky sidebar and won't leave a scar or a stain.
I think at the bottom of this is my everlasting goal to have a discussion of varying opinions that treats all of those opinions as equally frivolous, eccentric, and ultimately meaningless.
-- 22:16, 3 August 2010 (BST)
Okay, I'm back. Had to go look up a word...
I'm astonished that, at the end of the day, you feel the same way I do about the significance of ideas, yours or mine. I seldom comment because I figure nobody cares what I think about it. And why should they? I'm no expert. But it's the contribution of different points of view that fuels the discussions, and occasionally I have something to add from another viewpoint (yeah, usually conservative, but also from having been a Fed for so long. You tend to see things differently when you've been on the "dark side.")
Anyway, I think we've proven that you can't really escape comments on controversial entries. People just comment off-topic on a different post. We're wily that way. Your point seems to be that you don't wanna hear it if it's going to upset you. Who can blame you? However, we seem to be willing to enter the minefield and try to discuss things in a civilized manner. I don't get the impression that any of us are out to poke you with sticks or otherwise hurt your feelings. Print is subject to misinterpretation, even from those who communicate for a living. If it smarts, you should maybe ask for clarification before you take it as an affront to your principles. It most likely wasn't done deliberately. If you do have so-called friends who would do that, well, I wouldn't want friends like that. Just sayin'.
I'm going to toss this in as an aside, because I've thought about it often. Somewhere in a previous post you mentioned that you never had positive experiences in New York City. I wanted to, and maybe did, I don't recall, ask Robert to kindly show you some good things about the area. But I frankly feel that a person can influence his or her own experiences by the demeanor of approach to the situation. At the time, I perceived you as having a rather large chip on your shoulder, and thought maybe you were making your own crummy experiences. I dealt with John/Jane Q. Public for a whole lot of years, and found it remarkable how much an attitude could influence the outcome of an encounter.
Now I see that you tend to approach situations the same way I do. That is to say, why put yourself into positions where you are vulnerable to hurt, whether physical or psychic? I find I miss a lot that way, but it's safer and way more comfortable in the end. I have to consciously make myself look people in the eye and smile, and hope I won't be rebuffed. Most of the time it works. And I'm always surprised when it does.
-- 23:21, 3 August 2010 (BST)
Recently a friend of mine lost his job. (Oh, that'll jolly you right up!) And he was talking to me about his sweetheart's response, which was essentially to tell him over and over again that it would be all right. This, to him, was stupid and counterproductive, because his sweetheart did not know--had no earthly way of knowing--that it would, in fact, be all right. For plenty of people all over the world and in history, it has not, in fact, been all right. And there was no way of knowing that my friend would not be among them. Did I see how this was not comforting, he asked? To attempt to reassure ahead of the data like that? And if I did see, did I see how he could explain to his sweetheart?
I feel like you are doing the same thing but in reverse. You are anti-reassuring ahead of the data. You are telling him that it will definitely, definitely not be okay. And you don't know that either. And I don't know how that's any more rational than telling him that the sky will be filled with puffy white clouds and chirpy bluebirds.
-- 03:28, 4 August 2010 (BST)
"As a programmer, essential optimism gets in my way."
See, I always thought one of the traits of the best programmers was to be able to hold two ideas in their head at the same time: "This is going to be awesome!" and "This will never work." At least, that's always worked for me, since it both lets me start projects, and be surprised when I successfully finish them.
I also think you're wrong about the world going to hell [0], but I don't really see how that would matter, other than to inform your viewpoint about some things. Perhaps I'm wrong, but as you said, it does let me sleep better at night.
"How can someone get offended by one of my ideas? Even I don't take myself very seriously, why should they?"
I've heard this recently from someone in the Mozilla community whose ideas caused a fair amount of pain and grief, and as a result, I don't think it's a reasonable excuse for (unintentionally) hurtful behaviour anymore, since anyone who communicates on the internet should know that a) text is a really bad way of communicating tone, and b) people are intensely social animals, and pay a lot of attention to the things other people say. If you really don't mean something seriously, the onus is on you to indicate that somehow. Long gone are the days of Modest Proposals, I'm afraid.
And Bunny, I had a positive experience, in New York City, with Columbine. Granted it was a long time ago, but as I remember it, everyone seemed to be having fun. Perhaps I'm just getting senile, though. ;)
[0] Personally, I think we're doing as well as we ever have, and while it looks like a billion terrible things are happening every day, that's largely because that's what gets reported on the news. On the other hand, "Man lives to 80!" never makes the headlines, but would seem completely miraculous in, say, the 1500s. Of course, you're not going to suddenly change your world-view based solely on my assertions, but perhaps you might acknowledge that I _could_ be correct, and _may_ not be in denial. Or maybe not. I promise not to mind either way.
-- 04:35, 4 August 2010 (BST)
So, Mrissa, did it turn out all right?
(I lost my job a year and a half ago. Turned out to be the best thing ever! I got to spend some time with my kids, do some fun consulting work, and eventually got a more interesting, easier on my karma, and higher paying job.)
-- 04:37, 4 August 2010 (BST)
Bwinton, actually one of my favorite tee shirts reads "Better Living Through Denial." Not a thing wrong with it, if it helps me get through my day.
Oh, and I happen to agree that things aren't nearly as dire as they appear in the media. Witness the filled-to-capacity cruise ships leaving Miami and Ft. Lauderdale every week. And the crowds at Disney World and Universal Studios. There's obviously money somewhere. Not everyone is starving, and I don't believe for a minute that the only people going to Disney World are mega-rich. No one wants to hear about those who make ends meet with a little left over for frivolity. They're not newsworthy. Instead, we get fed profound poverty and decadence. I choose to believe it's not really that bad. Little Mary Sunshine, that is I.
-- 04:52, 4 August 2010 (BST)
Mrissa: This is a good point, and it may surprise you to know that I agree with it.
I also agree with Blake et al, to wit: While I feel that my crabby opinions should not, in a perfect world, affect other people in any way, the problem is that recent events have reminded me once again that they do. In general, you'll notice, every time I have the impulse to pull in the welcome mat and lock the door, it's because I have been reminded of this yet again (and that, in turn, is because I forgot yet again - and I keep forgetting, I think, because of part of my brain insisting This Isn't The Way It Should Be).
The question, as ever, is: how do I do the ranting I need to do, in the way I need to do it, without taking the slightest risk that it will affect other people negatively? I'm coming to believe it's not a solvable problem as defined.
Bunny: I'd be interested where you got the statement that I've never had a good experience in NYC. I visit NYC once or twice a year (just came back from a trip there) and usually have a very good time, although I admit the sheer crush of population exhausts me and means I keep the trips short. What I probably actually said - and what is still true - is that I can't understand anyone actually living in NYC or wanting to live there; if I lived there I would go insane.
Incidentally, I'm one of those people who makes ends meet with a little left over for frivolity (knock wood). And I think there are plenty of other happy and/or content stories in the world. But (while I agree with you that there's a sampling problem because good news isn't newsworthy), I don't think that addresses my general thoughts on decline and fall, because those are small localized conditions, whereas I'm talking about the big picture. If we have a bunch of basically happy and contented people on the cruise ship that's travelling express to hell, their happiness does not affect the destination of the cruise ship.
I would give you a list of ten major ways in which I do not trust the world to not implode within the next fifty years, but I don't think that's germane to this particular comment thread.
-- 15:40, 4 August 2010 (BST)
And yet the world hasn't imploded in the previous fifty years, or the fifty years before that… People seem to be almost as good at getting themselves into trouble as they are at getting themselves out of it at the very last second. (Well, this whole Global Warming thing has me a little worried, since I think the last second might be too late, but we're all entitled to our areas of pessimism.)
I think spoiler tags might work to let you rant without annoying your gracious readers, on the other hand, I'm not sure that you know what it is that seems to set people off. In the Continuance entry (at least as I read it) it wasn't your famous negative outlook that was the problem, as much as your exposing (nay, flaunting) of your prejudices, and refusal to examine or change them based on evidence. But, if you want to run articles by me, or maybe someone who's more clued-in than I am, to see what they think are the controversial parts, I would be happy to provide that service.
-- 16:04, 4 August 2010 (BST)
Well. I am generally optimistic, and yet I do agree that the world is going to hell in a handbasket, for various values of "world," "hell," and "handbasket." Just about everyone seems to believe that, in fact, and seem to have done since recorded communication began. We're all just quibbling over which handbasket we're in and which circle of hell we're heading toward. Sometimes we agree on "world" but oftentimes not.
Y'know, I was going to comment on Continuance but really ProfRobert said what I was going to say. So did someone else back then but I can't think whom: You say something incendiary and expand on it at length. Then someone calls you on it, and you cheerfully agree that you are being irrational and emotional, and that it's your inner six-year-old talking. And you accept well-reasoned counterarguments. But you still don't change your initial thesis.
Normal people in real life, they can say, “yeah, rationally I know I’m wrong” and move on even though they’re not happy about changing their mind on the subject. Even you are capable of doing that. It’s part of social discourse. And you know, that's a frustrating aspect of your online persona: Everyone has to admit they're wrong sometimes except the Columbine persona. Or maybe it’s a flaw in your writing: Maybe when you say, “I’m being irrational and emotional but I still think I’m right” you think that you’re backing down. But it doesn’t sound like you’re backing down. In fact sometimes you come right out and say, “I don’t see why I should back down.” In person maybe you would say it with a disarming apologetic smile that showed that you were joking as you conceded the point. But in print—and I say this with love-- you’re being obstinate. Intractable, even. Not a good look, Muriel.
-- 20:21, 4 August 2010 (BST)
I'm sure the general feeling about New York that I picked up was in a Live Journal post, sometime just before you switched to this journal instead. If there were a New York tag or something, perhaps I'd try to find it. It had to do with negative experiences, negative encounters, New Yorkers being cold and uncaring in general, I dunno. That was the impression I took away from the post. You could very well be right, it might have been related to wondering how anyone in his right mind would elect to live there.
"If we have a bunch of basically happy and contented people on the cruise ship that's traveling express to hell, their happiness does not affect the destination of the cruise ship."
Ah, lemmings racing blindly, inexorably to our destruction. Happiness at the expense of the downtrodden? No, I don't think so. At least, not consciously. Sure, taken as a world view, not many folks living in the jungles of Africa or South America can afford to take a cruise. But I choose to believe that we first-worlders evolved from that condition, and achieved whatever we've achieved by hard work, resourcefulness and vision. And it's that vision that will ultimately prevail. *bows and steps gracefully down from soapbox*
-- 22:22, 4 August 2010 (BST)
This reply belongs, for more than one thematic reason, in "Consider the Lobster." But this thread is where the action is! and thus:
There's another author who's earned your public disapproval, though I suspect that his personal outlook on life is probably a lot like your own. In one of his books, a character offers this bit of advice: "live by the [harmless untruths] that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy."
-- 00:43, 5 August 2010 (BST)
"[H]ow do I do the ranting I need to do, in the way I need to do it, without taking the slightest risk that it will affect other people negatively?
Um, I've told you that answer; do I need to say it again?
"I would give you a list of ten major ways in which I do not trust the world to not implode within the next fifty years . . . ."
Agree with Bwinton. I believe the past 50 years contained more threats to existence, whether you mean life on earth or the American way of life, than will the next 50. [I admit, however, that that statement may change once we get to 2013, past the Cuban missle crisis's 50th anniversary.)
"I do agree that the world is going to hell in a handbasket, for various values of 'world,' 'hell,' and 'handbasket.'"
I love you, Rhonda. Not in any weird or inappropriate way. Just love.
-- 00:50, 5 August 2010 (BST)
"live by the [harmless untruths] that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy."
See, I think I've just been insulted in your journal, and I kind of don't mind a bit. I don't consider having my head in the sand a religion, per se, but I pretty much do practice what Bokonon says. Never thought about it that way.
-- 01:59, 5 August 2010 (BST)
I find your collective optimism simultaneously heartening and depressing. I think it's good you're not all falling in my pit, but I still can't help thinking it's also naive that you're not down here with me.
Putting aside the facts - because we've already established that my general pessimism is not strongly fact-based, right? - I think there must be a reason why clinging to a core of pessimism is personally important to me, but I'm not sure what the importance is exactly; I do have a theory though.
[I originally wrote that theory here, but I cut it. It made me laugh, but I suspect you wouldn't have liked it very much.] -- 03:40, 5 August 2010 (BST)
Oh, no fair! You should let us judge. Party pooper!
This isn't the first time I've been called naive for my sunny outlook, but it's what I've got and it seems to work for me. Dwelling on the negative would put me away. As the man said, "Always look on the bright side of life!" Be dum, be dum be dum be dum.
-- 06:51, 5 August 2010 (BST)
Joy:
From Bunny42: "Sure, taken as a world view, not many folks living in the jungles of Africa or South America can afford to take a cruise. But I choose to believe that we first-worlders evolved from that condition, and achieved whatever we've achieved by hard work, resourcefulness and vision."
I just can't let that go. Really? You don't think it had a great deal to do with luck? And being the colonizers instead of the colonized? And all the other ridiculous inequities of time and space and geography and money and race?
Sure, hard work, resourcefulness and vision can get you a long way. But you need to have basic resources available to even apply those things. Not everything in life is up to the individual.
And Col, I just want to say I love you. I similarly think the world is going to collapse at some point in the not too distant future (although I sometimes hope technological and political innovations will alleviate some of the catastrophe, or that we'll figure out a way to go back to more subsistance level living), and I kind of can't believe I had my babies anyway. Call them my most profound moments of optimism (another being my voting Obama instead of Clinton in the primaries).
-- 16:05, 5 August 2010 (BST)
Forgive this temporary lapse into the sticky, but: The fact that so many of my friends, in the face of the storm, have chosen to have such wonderful and intelligent children is the best single source of hope for the future that I ever see in my daily existence.
Ahem. Sorry. We will now resume our regular program of crankiness. (But I do mean the above sincerely.)
-- 16:23, 5 August 2010 (BST)
Joy, I do believe we are very lucky. But, a)we were the colonized, before we used our resourcefulness to forge our own way, and b)we carved our existence as a country out of wilderness. Not jungle, exactly, but just as wild. Given the number of peoples all over the world still living in primitive conditions, I can't believe it's just that they aren't as lucky as we were. They need visionaries, and they simply don't seem to have them. I've never considered this country to be particularly imperialistic, but, there again, I'm the naive optimist. And I don't for a minute believe there are no resources in Africa or Southeast Asia. It's the vision that's missing, not the resources.
Sean and I were discussing Haiti, the other day, because my niece took her vacation time from her job as a paramedic to participate in a rescue mission in Haiti. She reported the deplorable conditions and the abject poverty, existing not just since the quake, but obviously way before. You have to wonder how two countries on the same island could evolve so differently. I'm inclined to believe that there's no one in Haiti with the vision and motivation to lead them out of their condition. Even under someone as heinous as Papa Doc, living conditions were generally better. He was a tyrant and a murderer, but "the trains ran on time..." That Haiti is so profoundly third-world should not reflect negatively upon the success of other countries. We found a way. They have, so far, not. We could colonize Haiti and drag it out of poverty, but that's not what we do. Money flows in from all over the world, but there's no infrastructure there to handle it and distribute it properly. Why? Who there could do it? That's not a question of luck, I don't believe. Oh, well, yeah, it was not very lucky that they had an earthquake, but things were pitiful long before that happened. The Haitians did not know enough not to ravage their countryside of trees. You can physically see the border between Haiti and Dominican Republic by looking at where there are trees. Now they have mudslides, because there are no tree roots to stop them. It's horrendous.
I'm not claiming to have answers, but attributing our success to luck doesn't ring true to me, is all.
-- 18:24, 5 August 2010 (BST)
Joy:
Let's just say that I think you are making what is known as the fundamental attribution error on a large scale, and leave it at that.
-- 19:00, 5 August 2010 (BST)
On Pessimism: Of course you are a pessimist. Pessimists cannot be disappointed. I suspect the Worst Thing In The World for you is to have hopes, and then to have them thwarted. Thus, the safest way to operate is to assume the worst will happen, and then, maybe, at most you will be pleasantly surprised. I understand that completely.
My approach, however, is slightly different: cynical optimism. I expect the worst of people and situations, but I hope for the best.
As for babies, I hate to burst your bubble, but my wife and I were not thinking about 50 years from now -- our kid's life and everyone else's could suck then; but WTF?, we'll be dead in all likelihood -- we had him because we wanted to enjoy him now. Hope that doesn't burst a bubble for you.
-- 23:34, 5 August 2010 (BST)
Joy, I may well be, but I still think I'm right about Haiti. Witness the fact that Wyclef Jean has announced that he'll run for president of Haiti. And the Haitians adore him. It takes someone raised in this country (since he was nine, it seems) to be able to provide guidance to Haiti. His father, or uncle, is the Haitian Ambassador to the U.S. Together, they have waged a concerted effort to provide aid and assistance, especially since the quake. More power to him if he can really help, but my point remains that there doesn't seem to be anyone in Haiti who can drag them out of their pit of poverty and ignorance. How did DR do it? On the same island, for goodness' sake.
Robert, a lot of people think we have a moral obligation to save the world for the sake of our children. I believe in all likelihood our children will save themselves, as long as we allow them the freedom to learn and dream. And, caring for us in our dotage is a crappy reason to have kids, I think. Good thing I happen to feel that way, too, because I don't have any.
-- 23:52, 5 August 2010 (BST)
Robert: No, no, I get that, but I still feel it takes a certain fundamental optimism in the world as it is NOW in order to bring a child into it.
-- 01:16, 6 August 2010 (BST)
@Bunny42: I just re-read the thread and saw that, the order of posts being what it was, you might have interpreted my quote as being directed at your remark immediately above. I didn't notice that, and I meant no insult.
My quote was directed towards Columbine, particularly on the topic of pessimism and the assertion that any element of human nature better than eat-or-be-eaten is rooted in "a despicable lie."
-- 20:53, 6 August 2010 (BST)
Danima, no offense taken. I thought it was kind of cool, actually. I'm off to locate a copy of Cat's Cradle. I'm a little tongue-in-cheek about the "harmless untruths" notion--I'm not conceding that they actually are untrue. I make no apology for being an incurable optimist, however misguided I might be considered.
-- 00:00, 7 August 2010 (BST)
One is that there are some of you who have plenty to say every time I get deeply into the contemplation of my own navel and what's wrong with the world, but have nothing to say to any of my more harmless topics.
Well, frankly, I love you folks in that category dearly and I don't want you to think that I think less of you in general because of it, but that happens to be a specific habit that sort of pisses me off.
Guilty as charged.
Your harmless topics are occasionally interesting to read, but they are, as you say, harmless. Incredibly boring to actually talk about.
Getting to talk about the stuff inside the head of another interesting person? Now that's interesting.
(I haven't read the comments yet, going to go do that now, if I'm being redundant that's why.)
-- 19:10, 26 August 2010 (BST)
Jette:
"As a programmer, essential optimism gets in my way."
As a writer/editor, I believe I have the same problem, and I think this is why my former boss took such a dislike to most of us writers. We are not Pollyannas, we are not going to tell you how marvelous your document is. We will tell you what is wrong with the document in detail, and we will carry that over to telling you what is wrong with the project, the department, and on a bad day, your stupid idea to tear down cubicle walls so we can all be distracted while we're trying to focus on getting the damn documents right. Ahem.
Here's the thing -- if you and I were having lunch together, you would probably not savage my given profession to my face. Okay, you might to ME, but only because you know I wouldn't take it personally. The problem with a small online community like this (and yeah dude, it's a community at this point) is that people are going to take slams on their professions personally even if they're not intended as such. So if you write about how useless technical writers are these days, and how the profession is stuffed full of pessimistic bitter women who aren't ambitious enough to be developers like the menfolk, you're going to piss me off. (Except I would probably just laugh.) Online writing is tricky like that -- are you a columnist throwing out your diatribes to the wide world, a diarist who lets people peek at intimate thoughts you wouldn't otherwise publish, or a host who lets people into your virtual salon, where we should all feel mindful of the feelings of everyone else there? I don't have the answer, but it sounds like your compromise is that the entries with comments are the salon area and the ones without are the more intimate glimpses.
-- 21:25, 3 August 2010 (BST)