Friday April 7th 2006

I have not posted anything in a very long time, and I don't have the time to explore anything in depth now either (damn generals!). I wanted to post the following one-liners, however, in the hope that they would inspire me to elaborate on them at a later date. Without further ado:

• Other people can make you happier than anything else, but only if you want to be happy. No one can make you more miserable than yourself, and there is very little others can do to counter that. (That is, others are essential to your happiness, but everything begins and ends with you.)
• Personal growth depends on the ability to admit your flaws. Unfortunately this honesty will sometimes lead to people respecting you less than if you bludgeoned them to death with your otherwise superiority. (Whether true or not.)
• Experience is the knowledge that you will never learn from your mistakes, you only become better at rationalizing them. (Or, perhaps a less cynical version: I do learn from the past, I just choose to ignore it.)
• If you find yourself looking for someone to blame, then you probably need not look much further than the nearest mirror.
• If, in an emotional intense situation, you can recognize a slippery slope yet believe you can maneuver it, then you can rest assured that you're probably already sliding.

Tuesday January 3rd 2006

I have always prided myself upon my ability to improve. There are certainly aspects to my personality that others consider flaws that I do not agree with, but I think I am good at working at myself once I believe I have a flaw. Yet certain habits - or perhaps personality traits - die harder than one might initially suspect, e.g. personified by that tired cliché "the more things change, the more they stay the same." One pertinent question is therefore, if certain instincts are so deeply engrained in my person that they will always lie underneath it all, am I doing myself a favor by adding more fluff on top of it to hide the rough edges? As an example, I am sure it is no surprise to others that I can be both intense and demanding. I usually think I am "fair" in that I primarily ask of others only what I am willing to offer myself, but there is a problem with this line of reasoning because "equal isn't always fair." While I do not want to lose my edge, I have concluded that being a little less overbearing (particularly in relationships) would be a good thing. The problem, of course, is that however sincere that desire to improve is, my intensity is a longstanding and fairly central part of the rest of my personality. Can one pull out pieces of such an essential thread without unraveling the tapestry of one's personality? While I think the answer to this question is a cautious "yes", I have found this processes of improving increasingly difficult.

As a follow-up to my previous post, let me add that while I generally strive to do the right thing, I sometimes feel as if my understanding of it has become more malleable over time. I could say that it is related to the 11/18 Bertrand Russell's quote, but that would be only partially true and would be giving myself too much credit. It is true that as I grow more mature, many of my views have become increasingly tempered - I can see objections and exceptions to most lines of reasoning - and in the degenerate case this can be paralyzing. Yet this does not fully explain why my perception of right and wrong has become more muddled over time. I have certainly done things that I flat-out think are morally wrong, but that is not interesting to me here; I am referring rather to an increased willingness to compromise one set of moral beliefs because I think the action can produce a greater good. That is, an increased comfort in justifying normally immoral actions by the possibility of gains elsewhere. I do not think I am alone in this progression as there are tons of examples: spending less time with (or even completely blowing off) friends to spend time with a significant other, being involved or flirting with more people than you think you ought to, humiliating yourself for money, etc. For my own part, the majority of the compromises that I recognize as I am doing them relate to always keeping in mind which goals are most important and being willing to compromise on the rest. While I think part of the aforementioned progression is inevitable, it is obviously an incredibly slippery slope. I do not yet know where it is taking me, as I still feel myself slipping on occasion.

Quote of the Day: "The honor is to serve." Worf

Thursday December 22nd 2005

Doing the right thing is hard. The right thing rarely pays dividends immediately (or, potentially, ever), nor do you necessarily get credit for doing it. At first glance one may wonder whether doing the right thing gets us where we want to go any more assuredly or quickly. Upon closer inspection it becomes clear that the situation is more dire: even if there is a "right thing", the concept does not appear designed to accomplish the above, so how could it help? It thus appears fair to question whether it is worth it to bother with this mystical "right thing". Perhaps it would be better to do exclusively what's in our own best interests? Or perhaps we are already ultimately selfish and this "right thing" (ethics, etiquette, etc) is merely a concept we've conjured up to feel better about ourselves while also trying to keep others in line with our interests.
While I cannot provide good philosophical reasoning to support this yet, I've always preferred the intuition that there is something to ethics - although perhaps only as a socially beneficial construct. But how does it serve us - it is presumably good for something? Perhaps to guide our actions and compromises through difficult waters. But one could argue that the instant we compromise on our morals, we are damaged. It is an absolutist attitude but it has appeal for its simplicity, conviction, and ease of guidance. In my more radical youth I held a belief not too different from this, but over time I have come to believe (perhaps through convenience) that it is a largely useless theory. It is useless because we are not clearly not born in this absolutist mold ("we are born sinners"). Furthermore, subscribing to a theory that proclaims the vast majority of mankind to be immoral is not appealing.
Where does this leave me? One of my favorite quotes on this topic is from Joseph Butler who was a philosopher and bishop who argued essentially that "doing the right thing" and "serving oneself" are substantially more linked than one might suspect. The nature of this link is obviously unknown, but the hypothesis would not be diminished even if we came to conclude that the origin of the link is largely social. [This robustness is due to the essential intertwinement between our biological and social aspects, discussed earlier (11/05).] As I cannot phrase it better than Butler himself, I am including his quote below (N.B. 'self-love' refers to serving one's own interests).

One key to negotiations is making each side equally unsatisfied with the final compromise. [I think it would be more productive to make each side believe that the other parties are less satisfied, but that makes for a less pleasing analogy.] In much the same fashion, I believe that the most successful relationships are the ones where each party believes that it is truly fortunate to be with the other. I oppose tit for tat relationship models, and I have a distaste for arguments favoring "relationships of equals" because I believe 'equal' is a very difficult and absolute term. From a philosophical perspective, even if we could quantify "equality" among humans (over every possible trait), I suspect it would be difficult to find to equal persons. Yet even if we sidestep this issue (and assume some crude equality), I think it would be a futile and silly pursuit for me to seek a girl who is equally intelligent, equally athletic, and equally difficult (anal?) - that sounds like an all-round terrible idea! Clearly it should be possible - and perhaps desirable - to make up deficiencies in one department with strengths in another. Ideally the weaknesses of one partner may be hid by the corresponding strengths of the other.
The above paragraph should be self-evident, but it does not diminish the message of my first sentence. That is, entering into a relationship where you do not feel appreciated by your partner from the get-go (or vice versa, if you do not fully respect your partner) is a very bad idea.

Quote of the day: "I must however remind you that though benevolence and self-love are different, though the former tends most directly to public good, and the latter to private, yet they are so perfectly coincident that the greatest satisfactions to ourselves depend upon our having benevolence in a due degree, and that self-love is one chief security of our right behavior toward society. It may be added that their mutual coinciding, so that we can scarce promote one without the other, is equally a proof that we were made for both." Joseph Butler

Wednesday November 23rd 2005

Enjoying life is important. A logical person should recognize that this is a truism, so why is it so easy to forget sometimes? I certainly recognize that one must sometimes sacrifice temporary exaltations for future gain, but is it not important to enjoy the journey also? It has been my experience that neglecting this truism is more prevalent among engineers, as they have a tendency to bunker down and relentlessly fight through any challenge without putting much thought to its ultimate utility. I am not so different here in that I share the engineering guilt when I feel I have not been adequately productive, but I also make a deliberate effort to nurture other aspects of life. It seems clear that we are only granted a temporally finite existence, and the people who would do almost anything to make you happy are scarce, which means that we ourselves periodically have to make sure that we are happy. It can be as simple as setting aside me-time for Star Trek, philosophizing or playing a round of spades; compromising on our most grandiose professional goals; or on rare occasions perhaps even breaking our own rules for this greater good. I know I have done all of the above.
The preceding paragraph is then my response to the 11/18 post. That is, my logical side cannot escape the conclusion that I am more productive when I am on edge to some extent, and I absolutely have more time to use as I wish when I am not committed to a relationship. Nor is it improbable that this could lead to greater professional success. It is indubitable, however, that I would enjoy whatever success this culminated in much less. I think one can be happy (for some definition of 'happy') through many pursuits, but the added enjoyment of sharing your life with someone you love is difficult to estimate. I am far from a genius, yet I am spoiled in that I think there are few quantifiable problems that I could not attack. I have, on the other hand, fully given up trying to figure out "love" - you cannot understand it anymore than you can buy it - but, in response to the 11/18 post, I suspect it is worth some sacrifices. I will leave it for another time to discuss how rare it is and whether, given some knowledge about its probability, one might be better of pursuing professional success in the mean time. :-)

I am accustomed to getting my way. After having discussed this with some old friends, it appears that this has been abundantly clear to them for a long time. It is interesting in and of itself that hearing my friends' response was so surprising to me. Beyond mere offhand remarks insinuating the above, this became clear to me earlier this semester when the office of the Dean of the Graduate School [initially] rejected my application to get out of their mandatory meal plan. It was almost unfathomable to me - not to mention gravely unjust - how my application could be rejected. Yet even in the midst of this frustration, I was taken aback by the fierceness of my own surprise. I don't have much to say other than "yes, I suppose it's true."

Dedication of the day: "Have a wonderful Thanksgiving - I hope you are able to spend it with those you love."

Friday November 18th 2005

In certain ways I am more interesting and productive when I am not perfectly happy or at ease. I am clearly more productive and introspective philosophically in this case. It is unclear, however, whether this a generalizable truth or merely an artifact of my thinking (i.e. bias therein). That is, there seems to be a notably higher probability that I recognize negative or melancholy thoughts (poems, lyrics, etc - e.g. Chopin) as engaging/intriguing than happy-go-lucky ones. It is therefore possible that there is a bias in me towards the tension and conflict inherent in the former.
In my specific case, the second key adjective I used in the introductory sentence has added importance. That is, as noted, I think that I produce more philosophically interesting thoughts when I am facing some conflict, but that may be due to the simple fact that I am more productive in general when I am not perfectly at ease. While I am greatly simplifying the issue, the fact that a content person is less driven [than someone who is not so] seems to follow straightforwardly in the general case.
I would like to pose two questions based on the above discussion. First, could I deliberately seek the aforementioned conflict in the name of increased productivity? Second, it seems clear that relationships (and children, to an even greater extent) require tremendous sacrifices - certainly in time. Therefore, if I cared first and foremost about professional success (which I assume is closely related to critical thinking and productivity), could the previous two statements imply that I should shun emotional commitment and deal with girls only to the extent that it meets my most basic needs? While I do not presently have a direct refutation of the assumptions/conclusions I draw above, I will post my own response to it next week.

I am huge on talking. This is true in general (yes, I am sure it comes as a shock that I love to hear the sound of my own voice), but relationships in particular. I prefer to belabor something until it is reasonably resolved - I strongly dislike it when one merely "walks away" from a situation. I instinctively take quietness or lack of effort in fixing an issue as indifference. I think it is partly a reflection of my own personality and partly a reflection of the women I have known. It reflections my personality trivially because, again, I prescribe to this belief and engage in communication whenever and wherever. [A former girlfriend of mine said to me recently that whenever I see something that I would like to improve (in others, the relationship, myself, etc), I am ready to discuss it and deal with it immediately. One could argue about whether this is a good thing, but it undoubtedly takes a while to get used to.] It is also a reflection of the women I have known because I have a deeply engrained belief that girls express emotion when they care about something. It is so deep that I feel "belief" does not adequately describe the state; it is essentially instinctive. I have sometimes wondered whether this instinct leads me toward inherently "less stable" girls and/or whether it means I am more attracted to needy/clingy girls. Ultimately I believe the answers to the previous questions are "no," but the fact remains that I have an instinctive (and perhaps archaic?) view of the connection between a girl's passion (about something, e.g. a relationship) and the expression of emotion. I think there are interesting biological and sociological (e.g. Freudian) questions that could be asked as a result of this.

Quote of the day: "The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent full of doubt." Bertrand Russell

Saturday November 5th 2005

A female friend of mine told me recently that she is increasingly convinced that humans are not meant for monogamy, but that society that makes polygamy untenable. Social taboos like this are perfect for me to address in this forum, and (shockingly) I find this topic particularly fascinating - though difficult to reason about. It is a difficult topic to reason about because I have a hard time separating between social and biological root causes for theories I may consider. That is, even if I came to believe "gee, that sounds appealing!", am I motivated by social benefits or exclusively from sexual preference? Or, even if I could resolve this quandary and (through some amazing piece of deduction) came to conclude that it could work for me, how does this generalize to society as a whole? It is, furthermore, reasonable to assume that my investigation is hobbled from the start by contemporary social and moral stigma. Clearly none of the above challenges or qualifications prevents me from discussing the matter.

Isn't it interesting that many of us instinctively think that our upbringing is superior to others'? Even when faced with this observation sometime last semester, my initial response was something similar to "true, but unlike everyone else, I am right!" One's first hypothesis might be that this is merely another thing that conceited people like myself engage in. "I turned out amazing so therefore my parents' decisions must have been optimal." One can refute this theory by observing that one can arrive at an equally optimal result through different means; and few of us think our parents are perfect (i.e. we can point to specific things - even if mostly minor - that we did not agree with).
I am interested in this partly because I had some debates this summer that ended up hurting a good friend. It led me not only to question why I have this aforementioned instinct, but why I appear to be bad at recognizing the values in different approaches to child rearing. In the interest of (more) disclosure, I should say that my parents are rather liberal. A more "conservative" upbringing would here imply that the parents take a more active role in managing the children's lives beyond a certain age. It is not that I am more liberal than my parents, but I value the free will of children much more than I fear individual mistakes. Even if I recognize certain possible benefits to the more conservative approach, I unfortunately find that I have a general distaste for it. My current firm opinion is disappointing as I profess to be someone who advocates open-mindedness and discussion on any topic.

Quote of the day: "Parents are not interested in justice, they just want quiet." Bill Cosby

Tuesday November 1st 2005

Despite what "society" must be telling girls about most men, I often lose interest in girls who play games. I then do not feel that she takes me seriously, which in turn makes me take her less seriously. At the same time, I have to admit there are shades of grey here. When I say "games" I mean that she deliberately paces her responses, alludes questions or overtures, and generally acts "hot-and-cold". [NB: there are certainly guys who do these same things, but my experience in pursuing them is too limited to draw general conclusions.] I know that there are shades of grey partly because the opposite extreme is oftentimes a turn-off also. It is certainly attractive to know that a girl is interested in you, but a girl who actively pursues you can be frightening sometimes. Perhaps I should start reading the manuals that describe how to strike the perfect balance here..

Two clichés that ring true far too often:

1. You don't realize what you have until you've lost it
2. You don't realize how incompatible you were with an ex until you try again

So why are we so bad at assessing our compatibility with some person using a priori reasoning? When we are with someone we can be so blinded by emotion that we are unable to make a dispassionate appraisal of the other person, but when we are apart we are exceedingly starry-eyed and remember only the positive aspects. We seem largely unable to let the advice of others (or even ourselves sometimes) truly sink in, or even engage in coherent reasoning regarding many aspects of relationships. We are instead destined to make (and remake) mistakes, and that this is the only way - if any - that we learn. What is it about emotions that prohibit rational thought?

Quote of the day: "There was a window of opportunity for a while, but I just sort of walked passed it and waved." Jeffrey Vaughan

Saturday October 15th 2005

I find the force with which my protective/caretaker instinct kicks in interesting. It can occur with girls I have or have had a romantic interest in, and also with family members. Sometimes it manifests itself as detailed premonitions/visions (i.e. worrying) about the person in question. They are also frequently of a very predictable sort: girls being taken advantage of and murder (or break-in) for family. As I (the dreamer) get more agitated with the progression, I show up in the dreams to bash some poor guy's skull in. I have often wondered whether such dreams are primarily self-indulgent, in the sense that I fear that things will be taken from me. It is likely that the subconscious purpose of these dreams is also partly to nurture the protective instinct; i.e. to put it crudely, friends and family are "sacrificed" so that I can practice saving them.

I sometimes enjoy being a cliché of myself and/or others' perception of me. Like most people, there are some reoccurring stereotypes that are not perfectly accurate (some are false, some are true, and some used to be true). One always runs the risk of enforcing others' misconception when toying with them, and it is even more likely that very few understand/appreciate your humor. To others you might appear merely to be acting "within character." But I have already failed miserably if others' amusement was my primary purpose for being put on this earth. [NB: I feel it necessary to remind the reader that I am not at all implying that I do not have this same human flaw.]

Quote of the day: "I find your lack of faith disturbing." Darth Vader (slightly better than "Nooooo!")

Saturday October 8th 2005

We neglect details too frequently, in all aspects of life. These details add up, and nagging details can often be more important than certain large issues because the details are given so little attention. I'll share an example where the importance of certain details in inter-personal relations was underscored. The example is from my one year of Norwegian high school (Kongsbakken). I was walking around the halls with a girl - call her X - in my arm. While I liked the girl, we were also good friends and the act itself was mostly innocent. The walking is not relevant now, only the destination, which in this case was the classroom of our "sister class."
In this other classroom there was another girl (Y), who X and I began talking to. At some point during the conversation I was about to say something to Y, but X discretely pinched me in the back before I had finished. An important background fact about me for this story is that I can sometimes be overbearing, brash and insensitive - I think  I am good at walking the line in general, but I am sometimes admittedly oblivious. And while I do not remember exactly what I was about to say (I only remember that it was directed towards Y), I do remember that it was probably of this questionable nature.
In essence, the pinch was a semi-subtle red flag raised by someone who realized what I was about to say, and realized what affect it would have on Y better than I did. This is obviously only one of many examples of situations where both male and female friends (& girlfriends) save me from myself, but I think the example also underscores the larger argument of how small points of personal compatibility (or incompatibility) are often underestimated. Perhaps it is inevitable that these subtle aspects of the chemistry between two people are overlooked, but I find them worthy of bringing up sometimes.

Walking the line between confidence and conceit can be hazardous. I have emphasized many times how I hate appearing conceited, but at the same time I am proud of certain things, and obviously the latter has made me run afoul of the former. How do you say that you believe you are better at something than someone else without appearing conceited. Or is it better merely to be silent? [I hope not, because I am not good at being silent.] I used to be an ardent idealist and think that it is always better to "tell the truth" and express your beliefs than to participate in social politics and maneuvering; but, to my surprise, it turns out that not only can excessive honesty be disastrous but it can also lead to an (excessively?) overbearing personality. I cannot claim to have fully exorcised this latter personal trait, nor that I want to, because I know that I need others to be open about their opinions to grow myself. That is, I do not have enough faith in my own ability to recognize flaws in myself to think that I do not require the assistance of friends (this itself would be arrogant). Given this, I would be derelict as a friend if I did not return the favor. In an ideal world we would all be able to take criticisms at face value (i.e. without drama or blows to our confidence) and likewise with others' self-complements, but none of us are truly able to do this. And so - for better or worse - I find myself increasingly erring on the side of caution here. It is clearly not the ideal conclusion.

Quote of the day: "Excessive honesty can be disastrous... particularly in a commander." Jean-Luc Picard

Saturday October 1st 2005

Anticipation is such a wonderful thing. It makes us experience even bad things as being good. I could say this is why I took a four month hiatus (i.e. all good things come to those who wait), but the truth is that it's more of a "Dave Chapelle"-type stunt. I actually never stopped writing - this is written in early June - but for some unknown reason I was starting to feel "responsibility" to have regular output, which is both distracting and foolish of course. As noted, I enjoy dissecting my own thoughts and I find that verbalizing them is often the best way for me to understand them. It is obviously an added bonus if others get some satisfaction out of this also, but I felt I had strayed too far from my original purpose when I was putting more emphasis on the latter. So until I have exhausted my reserves, you will have to be content with reading months-old thoughts.

I don't think that we perceive time as a omnipresent and continuous dimension, but rather as a relationship between a sequence of events. I realize this is the millionth post I make on our perception of time - and I am certainly not the first to propose this - but it sunk in recently how accurately the stated theory captures some of the contradictions I have been struggling with. After having been on the west coast for one week I had the common sensation of how time had passed very quickly, but at the same time it felt like ages since I arrived. This dichotomy can be explained by the following crude assumptions:

1. Our perception of the speed of time passing during some time interval is somehow proportional to the frequency of events during the interval
2. Our perception of the length of some time interval is inversely related to the number of events during the interval

Unfortunately I know much too little about our physiology (and time, for that matter) to reason intelligently here, which leaves me only with the trusted Socratic method. It hasn't failed philosophy yet!

Quote of the day: "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and it may be necessary from time to time to give a stupid or misinformed beholder a black eye." Miss Piggy [thanks Ann]

SP05 thoughts