Wicked Fragments

I heard the term "New Impossibilities" somewhere and it kind of struck me...  What an interesting idea.  If there are new impossibilities, wouldn't that imply that there were old ones?

It would seem to me that impossibilities are never new.  They are, in fact, just undiscovered.  After all, impossibilities would have entirely to do with the physical realities of things, particularly if you believe that people and their emotions and whatnot are entirely based in the physical... which, in fact, is exactly what I think.

This is interesting because it is kind of depressing in a way.  There are a whole variety of impossibilities that are like stones in the ice cream.  They are there, there's nothing you can do about them, except to do your best to eat around them, or miss one accidentally and break a tooth.

Yet, if you think of it another way its somewhat reassuring.  In time we will work our way through many, and possibly even all, of these impossibilities.  Perhaps one day we will have them all sorted and mapped out, know exactly what we can and cannot do, and be allowed to live out the rest of our time as humanity somewhat more peacefully knowing that certain things simply aren't possible, and that we should focus our attention somewhere else.

I was thinking about my current work predicament and comparing it to all my other past work experiences, specifically with respect to change... since, after all, change is basically the core of what I do.

Each place has been somewhat unique, so I was thinking I would try to articulate change in terms of certain video game challenge mechanics, since for no other reason that games are also something that I do.

Since I have little else to do right now, since this place is change averse, I figured I would try to write it up in a journal that no one reads, since that is also something I occasionally do.

I have ordered these from most effective long term/least entertaining/most likely to allow you to keep your job, to most effective short term/most entertaining/most likely to get you fired very quickly.  Obviously as a professional I'd have to recommend the first of these, but I have to say I desperately miss my Quake days.

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A buddy and I went out to test out his new (and rapidly growing) gun collection.

I've been something of a closet "gun enthusiast wanna-be" for a while now.  I used to target shoot with a .21 caliber rifle.  (I believe that's how you "say" that... I think the key here is wanna-be)  I was always a very good shot and scored very well in competitions and the like.  I was even asked to join a shooting team once when I picked up a M-1 Garand and started cracking off bullseyes at a rate that suprised my gun-toting host.

Naturally, I figured that someday I would probably wind up getting a gun of my own.  It would be an awful lot of fun to be able to just go down to the range and crack off some rounds and see how well I do.  Perhaps even compete for real.

What's more is I obviously don't have the best impressions of where society is going, and sometimes I think maybe I should have a gun around for protection if things really collapse.  Yeah, I know it seems crazy, but sometimes I wonder...

Now, however, I'm thinking maybe I don't want to "play" with guns so much.

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Those that would know me may say otherwise, or likely at the very least have a different and much harsher angle on this particular item, but I believe my biggest challenge in life is just letting people be stupid.

If you're going to be stupid (which I will broaden a bit to include self-destructive, dangerously naive, or just an outright asshole), I find it nearly impossible to let people do it without comment.

Take, for example, the person I was just speaking with.  They're about to have a baby.  Their relationship with their SO is apparently in the shitter, they live in a horrible place, and are just generally not doing well... but they're excited about the baby... why?  Because the baby is gonna make things great!

This is, of course, patently foolish. 

The smart thing to do?  Walk away, or perhaps nod appreciatively and say "Yeah, that's great!  A bundle of joy!  Will do wonders for everyone!"  That's what people really want to hear.  Lies.

What do I do?  Make suggestions.  BZZT!  Wrong!  Suggest that maybe the person evaluate what in life now is complicated and spend all of your time trying to fix those things because babies make them 10x more complicated.  Suggest that maybe they stop hiding from their problems by playing video games and confront their issues when things are relatively calm.  Etc.

Ohhh no.  We'll have none of that.

Sure, it's none of my damned business, and sure I just told a person who is spiralling into a very bad pit that shit is about to hit the fan, but guess what?  I was telling that person what they needed to hear... certainly not what they wanted to hear, but definitely what they needed to hear.

The problem is that people won't ever listen to you, then they get (understandably) pissed off at you, and you wind up causing all kinds of bad issues in that relationship.  In the end, I need to learn to keep my mouth shut and just sit and watch as people destroy themselves. 

Maybe I should sell tickets to the show... that would at least keep my hands busy.

People who get offended blow my mind.  The whole process of being offended is so severely flawed.  Consider it for a moment.  If you are offended, someone has said or done something that you, personally, find inappropriate.  The offense is only relevant within the context of your own personal feelings and situational circumstances.

For example, someone makes a fat joke.  If you're fat, you might get offended.  If you're not fat, you might find it absolutely hysterical.  If you gain 300lbs later and are then fat, do you suddenly find the joke no longer hysterical?

How does that work, exactly?

I am not someone who is easily offended.  There is very little you can say or do that will trip off my "I'm offended" meter.  I also happen to be someone who would occasionally listen to Howard Stern.  I listened to Howard for years and years, and all the unquestionably obnoxious things he said without being offended, and what's more is I found much of it quite funny.

Then, one day, he said something that hit my personal offense-o-meter.  I was initially quite mad.  I felt he had "crossed the line".  Of course, all the hookers incorrectly answering trivia questions for a chance to felate a thirteen year old retarded kid never bothered me for one moment, but this one thing... yeah... totally over the line.

But wait...

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We're supposed to teach our children that violence doesn't solve anything.  Fight with words instead of with fists.  The pen is mighter than the sword.  God says "Thou shall not kill" and "Do unto others as you would have done unto you."

Then we go off and start a war.  A couple of them, in fact.

Now wait a minute, but wasn't there something about non-violence that we were supposed to be paying attention to?

See, the rub here is that violence in many cases does solve things.  The simple fact is that if a bully continues to harrass you on the school yard and you pop him one in the nose, he'll realize that he probably shouldn't mess with you because you mean business.  Up until that moment, however, you're a nice prime target that won't hit back.

In more traditional wars, violence solves things as well.  The world at large doesn't like what you're doing?  Well, here, have a world war dropped on your doorstep.  We'll bomb the hell out of you for a while until you decide you're going to be a better world citizen, and that will fix things up nicely.  Violently, but nicely.

In non-traditional wars (such as this "war" on terror), violence just begets violence, but that's a topic for another day.

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My wife has commented that my entries are horribly depressing.  Generally, I don't feel this is actually true.  In fact, I think she is just responding in an almost defensive nature to some of the more "cut to the bone" perspectives that I write about.  This one, however, I find to be pretty discouraging.

I have often pondered the reasons behind why we do the things we do.  Human beings, after all, are an incredibly diverse and frequently unpredictable collection of emotions, opinions and actions.  I have spent nearly all my life being absolutely baffled by the actions of a great many people, and yet... sometimes... if you watch carefully, you can almost predict what certain people are going to do under certain sets of circumstances.  Frequently with alarming and uncharacteristic precision.

Why?

Well, cause and effect I suppose, right?  After all, if I punch a big scary looking man in the face, odds are pretty damned good he's going to haul off and punch me back... hard.  Simple enough, I suppose, and in fact I think there is a great deal of merit to cause/effect that goes probably deeper than most people would like to admit.  That is, however, a topic for another day.

So back to why, then.  Why do we do what we do?  Why is it that sometimes it seems logical and sometimes not?  The answer, I believe, is both elegantly simply and ridiculously complex: survival.

That is to say that everything we do... everything we do, is ultimately tied directly back to survival, and more specifically, survival of our genes.  The simple fact is that it is deeply programmed into us to make sure that our genes continue to be spread as far and wide as possible, and while that goes through an awful lot of translation into some guy punching me in the head, it is still the root of all things.

Let's start with a simpler example first, however...

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There really isn’t enough courtesy in the world.

This is probably a pretty hard-to-believe statement coming from “Mr. Negativity”, but part of the reason why I come across as so negative is just that I find people to be astonishingly unkind to each other and their surroundings. In fact, when you boil it all down, people’s poor behaviors really are little more than selfishness. And what is courtesy, but an act of selflessness.

It’s an astonishingly wide-swept problem, and it appears to be getting worse, though I may simply be falling victim to the “as we get older everything looks worse problem”. I tend to doubt it though, as I think a lot of the problem stems from people having less time, and that is a provable fact. People do have less time than they did some-odd years ago. There is much to indicate that this is a direct correlation to money (more money, less time). Since I live in a wealthy nation, this may be why I see it more than, perhaps, some other nations do. (Citation: http://www.utexas.edu/features/2005/time/index.html)

I know everyone’s busy and all that… places to go, meetings to attend, right? The truth of the matter is that courtesy is very anti-Darwin. Being courteous to people means investing energies in things that do not directly affect your personal survival, and in many cases even increase the chances of your (and therefore your genes) not surviving. A simple example might be letting someone else cut in front of you in the chow line, only to find out that the very person you let in got the last spoonfull of gruel.

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You know sometimes I sit and ponder how very "unreal" everyone around me feels.  I mean, I interact with people all day long every single day, but if I don't interact with them, they might as well not even exist.  This isn't a reflection on selfishness so much as the eternal cliche question of "If a tree falls in the woods and no one hears it, does it make a sound?"

The thing is that we all go through our lives each and every day, and there are billions of people who do not know that we even exist, and will never be affected by anything that we do.  By and large, our existence on this earth and our actions and lives goes completely unnoticed, like that stupid tree everyone talks about.

Then I hear my wife's voice on a recorded voicemail that our phone system sent to my computer, and I listen to it over and over again.  There is this person... another entity like myself, presumably real and not some fictitious representation from my imagination, saying something to me.  This person whom I have known for nearly two decades now.  Probably the only person whose voice is more imprinted in my brain than my mother's.

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You know, I've never been a real fan of panic.  When someone comes into my office and says "The servers are all down!  The websites are dead!  No one can get to their files!"  I go, "hoo... that's bad. <chuckle>" and get up and go find someone to deal with it.  Is it urgent?  Certainly.  We need to get right on it, but running around freaking out really doesn't accomplish much more than freaking other people out.

Here's a hint: freaked out people don't work well.  They run around, crashing into walls, causing mayhem.  Hell, usually freaked out people will break far more than they fix.

Here's another hint: it is possible to communicate urgency without causing panic.  It is also possible to act out of a sense or urgency without needing to be paniced.

Unfortunately, however, that's one of those things that fall within my "5th Degree of Complexity" thing... the stuff that's "hard" to do properly, and frankly the stuff that not that many people can handle.  This, however, is an entry for another day... back ot my panic thing.

Let's say you're going to engage in combat.  So consider for a moment which you would rather have:

1. The PANIC guy, who runs around screaming in alarm because bullets and mortars are flying.  He fires off shots randomly, probably manages to take out a couple of the people on your side, and maybe accidentally tosses a grenade into your munitions dump.

or

2. The CALM guy, who patiently lights up his stogey, suits up in body armor, steps calmly and grimly into the battlefield and unloads his chain gun into the enemy with a big grin on his face?

Me, I'd vote for the latter guy.