Existentially Bonkers

So I'd like everyone to follow me through an exercise for the day.

Sit back, relax, feel your breath and become aware of each of your senses one by one.

Clear your mind of today's troubles for a few seconds.

And remember:



You exist. Somehow, in all the random chance and in an infinite and uncomprehendably vast universe, through some bizarre scientific magic that we have only just scratched the surface to understand- there is a you. One. There is one you in the world. You control a set of limbs. These are your choices. Your eyes transmit data to your brain.
These experiences you have are your memories, individually tailored to the way that you lived through them. The opinions and position you have are constructed of your experiences and your knowledge of the world. No one else's.

There is a you.

There is a me.

Each human being that you come across in your life has this same sense of me. Each human being has experiences, memories, sensory perceptions, and thoughts, just as complicated and conflicting as yours. Just as complicated as mine.

There are 7 billion yous. There are 7 billion mes.

Just stop. For one minute. And marvel at how your individual consciousness came to be out of pure luck. What's more wild is that the concept of me is completely inexplicable. By what magic was it decided that I would get control over a body and mind?

It is a complete goddamned mystery and no one has come even close to answering it without relying on guesswork and gods.

Do you feel the sense of pure, raw awe reminding yourself that you exist, and that everyone else is their own me as well?
Unfathomable.

Absolutely unfathomable.

Another Week

Sunrise, sunset.

Thoughts for the week:

Holy crap, I'm talking to the University of Washington professor in two hours... It's entirely informal, but I'm still crazy excited/stressed.

Seeing ex for the first time in some moons at Pizza Night, hopefully resolving an anxiety issue I've been having (more on this later).

I've chewed two of my fingers raw. It's become apparent that, with all Buspar did for me that sucked, it was toning down my nervous habits.

I'm ridiculously excited about the weather. Like, I couldn't be a whole lot more enthusiastic about being able to go on a walk and really enjoy it.

My game design has lulled. Largely because I'm at the point I like to call "guessing and checking," wherein I pick arbitrary numbers for pertinent stats in-game, test them out, watch things go horribly wrong, and then fine tune.

I hate fine tuning. I'm all about ideas, concepts, mechanics, and general workings. And I'm detail-oriented enough to catch a number of small things with a quick glance. Anything further than that bores me to tears. Suffice it to say, I'm procrastinating the real work on my games.

I'm currently bothered by how much I'd love to have someone to flirt with right now. I wish my brain would be okay with single life for a while. Not only is it healthy, but it would be practical to stay single for right now, since my foray into graduate school thoughts would almost certainly result in moving across the country (or out of it entirely). To that end, it would be irresponsible to start something right now.


So, on the "more on this later" topic, I've gotten advice from a number of people who are close to me who have recommended that it would be wise to cut my ex out of my life entirely, with the explanation that it's obvious she stresses me out. Which is not untrue. However, I fear that's just a symptom of the larger problem that is my propensity to obsess in general. Moreover, I don't want to be the kind of person who solves a problem by pushing it away and ignoring it. If I'm obsessing and stressed about this person, then there's some unresolved issue or some closure that needs to be addressed. Simply being in the same room might handle the problem or it might make it worse. At the very least, I think it's worth trying, since doing nothing is clearly simply leaving the tensions at a standstill.
Moreover, the overall good that would come of me sweeping the problem under a rug is far less than the overall good that would come of me confronting these anxieties face-to-face. Namely, I'd be giving her back a group of friends that she has otherwise been largely out of touch with.
So, while I do think it would be more healthy for me in the long-run to try to resolve these issues, the idea that it's just about me is a selfish one devoid of compassion and awareness. As such, my decision is to invite her back into my life so that I can hopefully gauge what her presence does to me and what my next step should be in order to overcome the demons I am faced with.

I am... tentatively concerned with my potential reactions to this meeting. I want to continue progressing towards the person that I would like to be. I don't want to get held up on silly or trivial things that my mind convinces me to ruminate on extensively.

Especially when I have real things to obsess over, like graduate school potentials!
Or, apparently, whether or not I smell really terrible and everyone is just too polite to tell me.

Words.
Words and syntax.

-Waddles

An Opponent

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone. Today's post will be romantically leaning, but will be about life in general and some changes I've experienced between my teenage years to my adult years.Yes, another reflection post, I apologize, please stop throwing tomatoes.

This is a sentiment that I'm not sure is translatable to the experiences and thoughts of others, but I'm interested in placing it in the open regardless.

All my life, I've grown up focused on winning. Having two older brothers and living in the house of a sports-minded father, competition was endless. My philosophy had become that all of life is a challenge, and I am to overcome it. To that end, I've strove to place myself into situations where I can prove my "worth" through victories. Two specific types of situations in particular:

Gaming; and
Argumentation

I did not do this because I relish winning insomuch as I wanted desperately to show people that I'm worth respecting because of my skill or my intellect. It was this need for outside affirmation that has given me much of my self-esteem issues over the years.
However, I'm not making this post to be a debbiedowny, as I completely realize that the only affirmation I need is from myself. So long as I respect my abilities and decisions, there is little else needed.

Rather, my aim is to highlight how I've transformed this somewhat consuming desire into something a little more... reasonable. Sometime in the last few years, I started caring a lot less about actually winning games, and I started really enjoying games that proved to be ridiculously difficult. See:
Cave Story
Dark Souls
Binding of Isaac
Risk of Rain
Smash Brothers
etc.

There's a unique sensation that I get from games like this; the adrenaline of everything going wrong at once. I cannot say why I've become so enamored with watching my progress grind to a screeching halt of frustration, but it's immensely rewarding to find something that is difficult without being arbitrarily so. Meaningfully arduous.

With this change game a profound boredom with games that are too easy.

Along this road, I've come to realize that I'm not interested in winning anymore. Winning is simply a potential outcome for the path I want to take for the path's sake.
I want an opponent. I want fiercely to have an opponent that is worth playing against. No matter how good or how bad I am at a game, I want someone who's as good or better than me to play against/with.
Not just in the realm of games, but in all of life. I want someone around me who beats me (not physically, preferably). Someone whose comebacks, insults, and teases lash with deadly wit that I cannot match on most days. Someone who forces me to second guess my thoughts. Someone who, if I'm to compete, forces me to play at the top of my game.

I do not want someone "better" than me per se. Better is not an apt word for it, since we are all better or worse in varying things. I do not want to hold someone back or use anyone else as a crutch. Rather, I want someone I need to keep up with- someone who's worth keeping up with to me. Someone that I can defeat on my best days, but someone against whom losing is simply inspiring.

This is what I want out of life, games, relationships: I want something difficult enough to pique my interest and thrash me, captivating enough to ensnare me, and wise enough to know that when it tries to give me assistance and I refuse, it's not because of anger, resentment, or jealousy- but just because I want to be worth that level of difficulty, whether I win or lose.


If you have someone that you love, sit them down, stop everything else, focus on each other, and tell that person how much they mean to you and why. Make it a memorable expression of your personal emotions and thoughts.

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone.

Relationships

Nice, totally ambiguous title we're working with here.
The reason? Because I have thought this through 0% and I just know that this is the topic on my mind of late.

So, I don't really know what all is going to turn up in this post. Sorta'.... completely winging it.

Noteworthy at this point that I've only been single for some six months or so. As such, anything I say might be colored with the bias of someone who misses couples life.

I had the striking and almost laughably absurd desire that had totally blind-sided me recently- that I'd like to settle down. It's actually really irritating that this has hit me at the time in my life where I'm probably least likely to stop moving around for a while. Moreover, it's unsettling given my prior fears of commitment and the idea of getting "stuck." I attribute this at least in part to the depression being kicked largely to the curb, however, there's still a part of this that doesn't sit quite right.

During this time, I have unintentionally reached out to four people for whom I had (or still have) romantic feelings. Further, I've sat my ass on OK Cupid and tried to spark twenty to thirty conversations. In none of these encounters was my goal actually romantically inclined, however. I've just been seeking connections with people who matter or used to matter in my life. Nostalgia, perhaps? I have also stepped forward to apologize to a former girlfriend for the way I had hurt her without meaning to. In my negligence, selfish thoughts were the only ones I'd given adequate consideration to, and that's been a theme throughout my relationships over the years.

Others are slowly getting married around me, and it's entirely possible my mind is reacting in the same way that it reacted when I wasn't picked for a team in gym class as a child: quiet desperation. This is, of course, one of the absolute worst reasons for trying to maintain actual human connection. To that end, I can only assume that my need to feel wanted is overriding my ethical positions in some regard. This isn't altogether surprising, but it's disheartening to be slave to something so...

Somewhat related, a friend recently expressed frustration over the notion that when a person finds themselves in a relationship, the rest of their social life suddenly gets placed in the backseat- friends to be approached as a backup plan rather than for their own worth. Is that what I'll do when I find a best friend to share my life with? Will everything else become an accent to the striking colors that is our bond (hilarious poetic ideal)?

Am I wrong, too, for being dependent? For objectifying? For subjectifying? Am I wrong for wanting the truth to be so bright that nothing can hide in the shadows in between?
It's all well and good to look at such a sentiment and say "of course honesty is the best- who wouldn't want it?" but what of total honesty? Even of things that are arguably unimportant?
This is a problem on my end; a result of damages to my ability to trust other human beings. I keep them at just enough distance that I don't have to trust them with anything meaningful. Because of this, relationships now seem a daunting endeavor, since I must trust my partner. There is a cognitive dissonance here that is jarring and disappointing.

Relationships are wonderful, complicated, imperfect representations of our connection to another person(people) in a way that makes us feel dizzy, uncomfortable, anxious, warmth, happiness, contentment, and a joyous bridge between fundamentally different, but linked persons. It would be impossible to fully describe the depth of complexity of the emergent dynamic of each individual relationship- each so wholly unique, fascinating, and varying, despite being born of the exact same kinds of connections every time.

I wish I didn't want a connection like that so badly right now.

The Fundamental Attribution Error

So, there was an interesting, albeit biased, discussion on Reddit that took place in the slums of the political forums. To quote a small bit,

One of the things I noticed after working fairly closely with Republicans on Capitol Hill is that many of them earnestly believe every terrible thing they've ever heard about the dark side of politics and seem to derive justification for some of their more despicable actions on account of the fact that they believe Democrats are doing it, too. Turnabout is fair play, right?
To some of these people, the notion of people who enter politics with the aim of establishing good government for the common citizen is nothing more than a fig leaf for the pursuit of liberal power. They honestly seemed to believe, at least the ones I went out drinking with, that there was no one on the Democratic side who sincerely wanted to help poor people, it was all just a big vote-grab through entitlement programs. At best, if there was in fact anyone who was trying to help the poor, they were just seen as unwitting dupes who were nothing more than useful idiots for the shadowy "liberal elite." None of the so-called "bleeding heart" types could possibly have any real power within the Democratic Party.

Now, I'm not so naive as to think there aren't Democrats playing politics for power and wealth. Nor am I so naive to think that there aren't Democrats who genuinely want to help people, but have been seduced by the allure of that same power.
The same holds true with Republicans. There are those who legitimately believe that what they do is justifiable for the greater good of the nation.

But the focus of this post is about the buried assumption that rests inside this thought process; the Fundamental Attribution Error. It's a psychological principle of the West that posits that people have the tendency to assume that others act due to some certain traits that define who they are. Not only that, but the flip side of this coin is that they assume their own actions are purely a result of circumstance. This is the kind of cognitive dissonance that results in people voicing the position that their abortion is acceptable, but the abortions of any others are immoral at their core. It's the belief that absolute evil exists, while simultaneously holding that you yourself are not absolute good or absolute evil. You're willing to define yourself in terms of ethical gray areas, but you are not willing to extend the same favor to those with whom you disagree.

It is acceptable to fight pure evil using somewhat contemptible means. It is not worth arguing with pure evil because they cannot say anything that is right or good. Pure evil is simple; black and white; clear. Pure evil is a foe in every possible universe.

Fundamental Attribution Error is the reason we're able to call other drivers 'assholes' when they make mistakes, while maintaining that when we make the mistake, there's an excuse and a qualifier to go with it.

The cold, hard reality, however, is that very rarely is there ever a driver on the road with a tweedly mustache and monocle cackling madly as he cuts you off. "Yes, this will surely inconvenience that person who has done me no wrong- Bwahahahahahaha!"
Cartoonish supervillainy just doesn't actually exist like that with the tentative exception for people who literally lack the capacity to empathize with others and have developed antisocial tendencies as a result. Barring that, people don't act simply because it causes misfortune unto others. Things aren't nearly that simple. But humans really want them to be.

We're a species that loves to other. We want schema; groups; identifications; barriers; teams. We don't like gray areas. We don't like ambiguity. We don't like uncertainty.
This has been the great philosophical debate between modernism and post-modernism. Objectivism vs. Subjectivism. It's incredibly easy to deal with people when you write off all their behavior as something inherent to who or what they are. You don't need to know anything else about them. If someone cuts you off, they're an asshole. If they're an asshole, logically, they will continue to be an asshole in all they do.
Or so the idea goes. It certainly removes a lot of the troubling complexities out of life.
Unfortunately, with that goes nuance, care, consideration, and empathy.


People are more than their actions; even if their actions say something about them.

Thoughts on "The Debate"

Alright, so we've all been talking about the infamous debate between Ken Ham and Bill Nye on young earth creationism vs. actual science.
I'm not going to hide my bias in this and I will flat-out say that I think Ken ham was entirely full of crap.

With that said, I don't think Bill Nye has sat down and really considered the fundamental differences between evolution and creationism. His debate structure focused on trying to "prove" the validity of science via the methods that scientists value and favor, asking "how else would you explain it?" with relative frequency.

Ham, being a professional smooth talker, has practiced having this argument many times, and he knew what points were easiest to attack and what defenses he could adequately rely on.

Nye struck the heart of the issue a single time that I heard near the end when he declared that science simply had the far more compelling explanation of the two systems. Scientific explanations are more robust, nuanced, and accountable than those of the bible. Unfortunately, he spent little time on this general principle, and instead focused on a number of very specific phenomena that laypersons know little about. Ham had counters to the vast majority of these arguments, and while some of them weren't satisfying intellectually, they were consistent with his set of beliefs.

The structure of the debate and Nye opting to play pretty strictly by the rules kept him from addressing counter-arguments with any specificity, which was the real shame of the debate. Instead, Nye appeared to Scramble over dozens of scattered points that had little to no connection with each other in an attempt to cast a wide net of doubt. Without driving deep towards any of the specific problems that were uncontested, Nye missed a golden opportunity.

Why aren't there kangaroo fossils anywhere except Australia? Surely one of them must have died during the journey from the Middle East to Australia?
What about instances of observable evolution in species with shorter life spans and high birth rates? Insects that have objectively changed to better suit their environment?

Nye never picked an issue to hammer home except the notion of predictions. The problem with that is that Ham did address predictions. It wasn't a satisfying explanation, but he addressed the concern. Nye did not address his counterclaims, leaving the issue feeling as though the two were talking over each others' heads rather than carrying a conversation.

Such is the nature of the entire discussion though, and Nye should have had the foresight to avoid going into it at all.

To switch gears and berate Ham for a minute, there's an argument that I really hate within Creationism; the idea that because humans are here and intelligent, and that the laws of the universe are consistent, it's proof that there's an Authority.

Hold up. There's something you're missing about the very basis of existence; if humans were not intelligent, we wouldn't have the understanding to grasp the issues of creation. Therefore, the conversation wouldn't even exist in the first place. If the the concept of origination can only be understood or discussed by .000000001% of organisms in the universe, then of course the ones who can understand it will discuss it and the ones who can't won't. It's a goddamn tautology.

The laws of the universe are consistent because a universe with inconsistent laws wouldn't function. Humans, by necessity, wouldn't have time to develop because the universe wouldn't be able to keep anything going for any extended period of time, since the rules change. In that event, there wouldn't be humans to discuss whether or not the universe is consistent.

So, the universe has to be consistent if organisms are to survive, which they have.

Humans (or comparable creatures) have to exist. There is not a possible situation where intelligent life forms don't exist but the question of creation and origin is still relevant.
Likewise, the question of creation and origin only exists because there are intelligent life forms to raise it.
Even if the odds of intelligent life existing are .00000000000000000000000000000000000001%, the rest of that 99.99999999999999999999999999999999999999% doesn't have the mental capacity to entertain the thoughts about intelligent life existing. As a result, the only place where this discussion can occur is a place that fits that .00000000000000000000000000000000000001% threshold. (Moreover, blah blah blah, statistical likelihood of anything above 0% has near certainty of occurring if the space in which you're examining is infinite or near infinite)









(I really wish I was intelligent enough to get my thoughts out in a coherent pattern on this issue, but I don't believe that I am, so I hope this explanation suffices)

Also REALLY? Survival of those who survive?! That IS survival of the fittest. Those who survive are, on average, those who are better suited to the environment; those who have better adapted to their surroundings. It's actually a really fantastic tautology, and I have no idea why it's difficult to grasp. The things that survive are the things that are more capable of survival. That is what it means to be more fit in evolutionary biology.

This whole thing went about as well as I expected it would, and it made me exactly as frustrated as I thought it might. The big upset for me was that Nye didn't talk to the audience as though they were students interested in learning (and in fairness, many of them weren't interested). He talked to them like he'd already given up on them. He spoke hopefully only to the people watching online. He spoke as though we all had the same wealth of knowledge that he has at the ready. I'd have loved to have seen him debate as though it had been an episode of his show. The passion was there, but not the confidence that his audience would care.

Blargh. I hate creationism, but I don't think Nye had much of an idea how to debate a creationist before this.

On the Way Down

This is going to be a selfish and whiny blogpost. This is your chance to duck out now, before your eyes are assaulted by emotions and reflections.

Today marks the first day in months wherein the depressive symptoms have resurfaced. Not in full force, mind you, but they're definitely noticeable in that, again, for the first time in months, I kind of just want to crawl into bed and be sad. My heart is beating faster and harder than normal, with some significant discomfort. Feelings of isolation, hopelessness, and all around fatigue have begun their encore presentation. I'm not sure to what I can attribute this unwelcome circumstance, if indeed there's a triggering factor, but it's predominantly an issue of self-worth, as has been the trend for the past years.
I imagine those around me having a total indifference as to whether or not I'm around. Even in the case of those who aren't indifferent, there's some base shame I have for not having someone in my life who's happiest to see me. Because I define my value as a person with how much I impact those around me, not feeling particularly important to anyone (whether true or not) is jabbing my heart in the feels.

I don't know if I need validation or unconditional love, or if there's something else specific. I really want a cat or a dog. Someone who would cuddle with me and legitimately need me around. But I'm not in a place where I can get an animal friend.
I'm not in a place where I love myself enough to be with another person romantically.
And I do not have the confidence or motivation to seek the help of others. Nor am I certain that what I could obtain from friends is something that would solve my current dilemma.

This is all very troublesome since I'm:
1. Hoping to be rid of my depressive symptoms

2. Philosophically opposed to extreme dependency.

Of course, if my last blog post reminded me of anything, it's that my emotions and my philosophies don't always get along. My daemon and I are quite different despite our similarities, so to speak.

It doesn't help that I understand that moping and hiding myself away from others will not help me at all, and it will not solve any of my problems. This understanding does not conquer the rather primal nature of the swamp my mind is temporarily mired in.

I want to defeat this; I do. However, my anti-anxiety medication has thus far not eliminated my obsessiveness. Instead, it has only made me so fatigued that I yawn constantly, and with each one, my body is paralyzed with tremors. I want to defeat this because my goal for 2014 is to let nothing on this earth keep me from having a spectacular year. To that end, I've done a lot of work that I wouldn't have otherwise done. Far more than I had done in any given month of 2013. But, it's not enough, and I find myself tugged back to old thoughts and hold haunts.

I still obsess over the woman I fell for who didn't try.
I still obsess over my ex not being willing to communicate.
I still obsess over people not liking me.
I still obsess over the idea that I'm not interesting.
I still obsess over the first woman I fell in love with.
I still obsess over little things that don't matter; people who don't care enough to respect my thoughts; whether or not the people in my life should respect my thoughts; whether or not my thoughts have any value or merit at all in the first place.
I still obsess over whether or not I'm actually a terrible person or just someone who teases relentlessly, or if there's even a difference.
I still obsess over whether I'm seen as equal or lesser.
I still obsess over whether people are just humoring my notions of philosophy, psychology, balance, and mechanics.
I still obsess over how completely pompous I must present myself to people.
I still obsess over whether or not people I care about are hiding things from me; lying to me; what they really think about me; what kind of mark I'm leaving on them, if one at all.

I obsess over the feelings of guilt for wanting to post a blog post that is purely self-centered and a desperate plea for help, despite the number of friends I have who I could just openly ask for some validation from.

For the first time in months, I just want to stop. I just want everything to stop.

Just... Stop.
Please.