Weekends... and Self Improvement.

Weekends are an interesting construction. Americans feel entitled to them and have likely lived with them long enough to take them for granted. The whole week is given an emotional structure based on what we're supposed to feel on the weekend. But, the weekend is a more recent construction than I had originally thought: with religious origins (of course, for days of worship) but more formally related to worker's unions.

According to Wikipedia (for some light research into the topic), the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America demanded and received a five day work week in 1929. Nationwide, the weekend wasn't fully integrated until 1940. Wikipedia says these claims need citation. According to Weekend America, even the word 'weekend' didn't exist until the 1870s. (Weekend America confirms Wikipedia's assertions) The weekend started at first to give workers time to attend worship services and spend time with their families. Sunday was easy to grant, given the large percentage of Christians; Saturdays were harder, given the lower percentage of Jews. As Weekend America points out, if the Jew's religious observance occurred on Wednesday, we would have had Wednesday off and there would be no two-day weekend.

The weekend was set up as a time for relaxation, to be spent with family and or at worship. With the weekend, we gained an emotional pattern for the whole week to follow: Sunday for rest and worship (Christians), Monday for getting back to the grind, Tuesday a continuation of Monday but without the meetings, Wednesday as "hump" day metaphorically coming over the rise to look downhill toward Thursday which is still part of the work week but with the end in sight, Friday to tie up loose ends at work and feel that sense of accomplishment for a week completed, and Saturday for goofing off. Tensions start low on the weekend, rise over the week, and fall again toward the weekend in a seemingly eternal cycle of ups and downs. I just want to remind folks that this cycle is of our own construction.

There is absolutely no reason to feel entitled to a weekend, or even for that matter to feel obligated to enjoy them. That isn't to say that we shouldn't enjoy our weekends, but we shouldn't enjoy them any more than any other day. Beyond our little social circle of life, the earth turns and shows a particular point to the sun on a fairly regular basis. The sun won't shine any brighter on a weekend than it does during the week. As far as business is concerned, the importance of the weekend is fading as workers begin to leave behind religious traditions of weekly worship. When I was young, even restaurants were closed on Sundays; now it is difficult for waitresses to schedule two days off in a row. Other types of business, with less open to the public front end operations, still close on weekends as long as it is convenient for them to do so. Those workers that make sure to take religious leave on days of worship are gladly supplanted by those who don't. And still the entitlement to a weekend persists.

The feeling of obligation to enjoy a weekend can be taxing in the same way that trying too hard to enjoy a vacation can be. There is potential for anxiety and guilt associated with doing "weekend things". If you don't do those "weekend things" during the weekend, you have to wait until next weekend. You may miss the opportunity to take advantage of nice weather by going outside to enjoy your activity of choice, especially if you planned something like a movie marathon or video game tournament. Your picnic plans may be ruined by bad weather. Any number of unexpected events may upset the plans you had for your special two days.

I personally am an example of what can happen when the sense of entitlement to free time and especially weekends goes too far. I go to school during the day, work hard while I'm there, and resent any intrusions into my freedom after school hours have ended. At work it is easy to work hard but, my chores have been piling up for months now because I feel a need to do things for myself that I am interested in doing. I feel that somehow, writing this blog will be more satisfying than having clean dishes. Reading trumps laundry. Guitar practice beats out dusting. I get by on the bare minimum of chores because I have designated all time outside of work and school as mine. Indeed, I have been encouraged to believe that through subtle and sometimes unsubtle appeals of media, friends, and my own pleasure seeking self. This is an extreme case, surely, but one that inevitably demonstrates that entitlement to free time and relaxation can become a very ugly scene.

There must be a way to escape this. I have to change my thinking about the week and weekends in order to change my feelings and behaviors. I have to remember that all days are no more than the turning of the earth. I have the weekend to use at my discretion because of a tradition started by workers unions little more than one hundred years ago. I have every moment to choose how I use my time, not just on the weekends, but all the time. I can choose to skip class for a bike ride. I can choose to use a cloudy day for chores. I can choose to impose a work schedule on myself that fills the gaps in my obligations to others with obligations to myself. Above all else, I can choose to enjoy my week. The weekend shall nevermore hold sway over me. That up and down cycle can become a passage of pleasant days. I enjoy good work, why not enjoy more of it? I can turn my life into a project, so that every moment I am thinking of how to improve myself and enjoy doing it. I can turn my energy to productive goals, and increase the level of standard upkeep along the way. I must make myself see that it will be a slow process. I have a lot of catching up to do, after all.

I hope that more than myself will be able to see what I am seeing now and hope to continue seeing in the future. Every day is a day to be treasured, to be enjoyed, to be experienced, and to be utilized for the betterment of the self. I had known this before, but thought it to suffice to expand my mind with my free time. That's silly. Time isn't free. It shouldn't matter what day of the week it is, or what we do during that day, as long as it is progressive. Work, play, studies, creative expression, all are experiences that can fill our time. It's time to stop taking our weekends for granted. Simply because traditions says we don't have to go to work, doesn't mean we shouldn't spend the time working.

Such a Sad, Soggy Science

     I'm very disappointed in my chosen field right now. I finally figured out why psychology is not only a soft science but is openly ridiculed by other fields and laymen alike. Some of the wishy-washy approximated studies present their findings as absolute fact... to the point of utter silliness. Psychologists use mathematical terms to describe non-mathematical relationships and then wonder why they get funny looks. The graphs are not graphs. The math is not math. The math that's supposed to describe the graph doesn't. Some of the terminology is mixed up into an approximation of meaning that the other sciences have pinned down -- dare I say it? -- to a science. 

     Up until this point, my profs and so-on have been pretty good at pointing out when a theory or line of research turned out to be utter bullshit. The higher I get in the curriculum, the harder it is to distinguish the diamonds from the rough... and instead of helping us poor students out with it; they just present the whole schmear as easily proven scientific fact. Well, I hate to break it to you high and mighty Nobel Laureate Ph.D.s, that's not how science works. When there's ambiguity, you must state the ambiguity. When there is no set pattern, just a suggestion of a trend, you must state that it requires further research to determine exact relationships... and an admission that those relationships may not be general, but specific to the test group. If I hadn't had any taste of harder science, if I was ignorant of the methods of psychological research, I might be duped into believing things that aren't even self-consistent. 

     For all you folks out there that aren't familiar with the science, I can use Sigmund Freud as a beautiful example of what I'm talking about. I'll state it clearly: Freud’s theories have been proven wrong. They are Incorrect. Outdated. The methods he used to collect data were flawed in very basic ways and his subjects were not normal in any sense of the word. As far as we can tell without better data from the times, his test group was not only far too small to be representative of the population, but restricted to 12 sexually repressed Victorian age nymphomaniacs. That is not to say that his theories were without merit, for some of the general concepts he provided are still very useful in the study of psychology today. It's just that the conclusions he drew from his research were invalid and over-reaching. Yet, despite knowing for I don't know how long that Freud was wrong, psychoanalytics persisted for about 60 years. 

     Research is a powerful force in the world. Without it we would not have any of the technologies leading up to the computers allowing me to post this blog. There is a pretty simple and generally agreed upon method for doing research that shows a causational relationship between two variables. Here's the scientific method if you needed a refresher. I like the little backward loop on that flow chart; it shows a part of research that happens behind the scenes that really makes it all worthwhile. See, people don't like to publish papers about scientists being kinda right and kinda wrong with no clear distinction. So, the way we fix it (and strengthen the scientific merit of the paper), is by looking at what we found in the data, picking out the interesting parts, and repeating the whole experiment just for that part. In that way, we can either thoroughly confirm a new concept, or totally throw it out. In psychology in particular, this is useful because sometimes the statistical analysis of an experiment can show flaws in our method that muddy the results. By repeating the process and elimination the inconsistencies of our method we can get better results. That's not to say that well done research can ever be perfect. We don't have the time or resources to do a complete study that undeniably proves anything, but we can get to a point where we are pretty sure. Of course, we need to state that we are only pretty sure and not completely sure. Often, research will create more questions than it answers. More questions mean job security for dedicated researchers (hint hint). The chart shown above is not the only qualifications for good research, but a part of the multitude of things that drives the research process. The specific experimental parameters are also very important. The project guide link I have is for a school sponsored science fair, but the general concepts are pretty good. Note that I don't say that they are exactly right, just pretty good.

     The saddest thing about all of this is that most of the silly stuff would be very easy to eliminate. All that needs to be done is for anyone teaching psychology to stick to solid research, hedge bets with disclaimers of inaccuracy, and generally stop claiming to know the absolute truth of anything. Oh, and use scientific terminology the same way the other sciences do. Seriously. You may not think it matters much, but if you can sling the lingo so everyone else understands it, you make yourself look smarter, not dumber. Make up your own words if you need to, but for things already decided, don't go fiddling around with it. Easy.

     I admit this is a bit more of a rant than a detailed description of what is wrong, so if you have any questions regarding the details, please post them in the comments below and I will do my best to answer them or at least point you toward some answers.

Big Announcement! Battle is Joined!

A gun fires the signal to start, the contestants are out of the gates in a rush, the crowds roar with excitement... no, this isn't a horse race, it's a blog contest!

Last week my friend Jon was thinking about all the stuff he'd been doing, all the stuff I'm doing and what we could both do better. I think he's been wanting to write for quite some time, but hadn't found a topic to write about or a place to write it. He sent me a message on Skype: "You and I should have a blog off! That might actually modivate both of us to become better bloggers" and so it began.

The rules: After discussing what a fair and reliable metric would be, we decided to use daily views averaged over a week and tallied monthly to measure our progress. If that sounds confusing, don't worry about it, we'll be keeping track ourselves. We've got October to start building a following and we'll be measuring monthly starting November 14th. If either one of us quits writing after a decisive win and loses viewers, the win is forfeited. We'll also be cross linking and coordinating some of our posts to boost our total audience.

How you can help: Just keep reading. Tell your friends, write comments, join in the discussion, send me ideas, ask me to research things and keep coming back. The more you demand of me, the more I will deliver. Share my writing on Facebook, on twitter, on Google +, whatever you use. I have links to help you do that on each of my posts. If some part of my blog isn't working, let me know so I can fix it. I want to win, of course, and the way I'll do that is with you're help.

My first entry: The ideas behind this contest are actually pretty interesting. To fix a motivation in the mind to continue to perform a certain action (blog posting) on a more regular and frequent basis we set up a reward for success, and an accountability program to measure that success. Here, the anticipation of a reward (kudos, bragging rights, more followers, beating Jon at something) will be used as my drive and energy to complete the task set before me and build the habit of writing more regular updates to this currently pitiful blog. The writing will hopefully improve as a result of scrutiny, or at least not backslide. The topics will hopefully be more accessible to a wider audience, though no less biting. During this exercise, which I hope will last years, I will try to exercise increasing amounts of self control to post entries more often and more regularly to please my audience.

For now, the reward is purely anticipatory, though as the contest continues it should become a learned association between writing blogs and winning bragging rights and readers. Having intellectually set the parameters of the contest, both of us participants await the benefits from classically conditioning ourselves to better behaviours. To those of my readers unfamiliar with classical conditioning, it was first formally observed by Ivan Pavlov when he trained his dogs to salivate to the ringing of a bell. I will compare the current design to his: The unconditioned stimulus presented to the dogs was a bit of meat or meat powder. For this contest, the stimulus is recognition. The unconditioned response to the presentation of that meat was salivation. For the contest, the response is pride or happiness. The unconditioned stimulus was then paired with a neutral stimulus, a bell, by presenting them together and observing the response of salivation. Our neutral stimulus is blog posting, which is paired by the artificial recognition in addition to the generated recognition of our audience as it grows. After a while, the bell can produce salivation without the meat. Soon, I hope to enjoy posting regular blogs whether anyone reads them or not.

In addition to the classical conditioning, we'll use a feedback loop to gauge performance. The number of viewers a post receives initially will show how relevant or immediately interesting a topic is. The number of viewers a post continues to get will show how much it resonates with the audience. The month to month analysis of results also serves as a feedback loop because it is on going and allows us to gauge personal performance in comparison to another. Basically, The feedback loop will encourage both Jon and I to alter our blogging tactics to attract more readers.

I can go a bit further along this topic of motivation and needs. I can reference Maslow's Hierarchy and where the blogging fits into it. Maslow's Hierarchy, in short is a list of needs that must be accomplished in order. Once one is fulfilled, a person can move along to the next until a more basic need must be re-fulfilled.

This blog post and contest can work toward all three of the upper tiered needs. It works toward love and belonging by putting ideas out there that friends and family may find interesting in one way or another and thus promote closeness. It builds esteem by soliciting favorable responses from others, whether I know them personally or not. It promotes my self-concept and encourages a growth in respect and other social standing. Trolls, though they will be deleted, may also serve as a measure of success as they mostly target highly public Internet venues. Finally, this blog and contest build my self-actualization in that I am allowed to be creative, be spontaneous, and solve problems. Any other parts of this that people read into it are probably relevant, but I will not claim them specifically here.

Finally: I'll wrap up this post by thanking Jon for the wonderful idea. We were going to share links to each other on this first post but he isn't quite ready and thought to distract me with a puzzle. The jumble of characters below is actually a puzzle that he made. I asked him if it would be appropriate for me to share it with my audience and he told me it would be. Anyone cracking the puzzle may be offered some small prize I haven't decided on yet. Post answers in the comments and expect a later post to announce the first correct solution and an actual link to the competing blog, like I originally planned to include here.

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How can I describe that feeling... the one where I realize I probably know more about the world around me than a significant percentage of the world population?

     I feel morally obligated to tell people that their vision of reality is complete and utter crap... and that mine probably is too.

     I know, you might say, "So what? Different doesn't mean crap, it just means different." Ordinarily, I'd agree to some extent but you'd be missing the point.

     First, I know a lot more physics than the average person. That's about how the world works at a basic level. I know this for two reasons. I read books about it in my spare time. I've also taken a college course. No, that doesn't make me an expert, but it does mean I know better than someone who hasn't done any of those things and it changes the way I see the world around me. I can't seem to find a reliable chart anywhere, but to the best of my memory (please correct me) three full years of college make me more educated than 80% of Americans. That's just college in general, I'm not sure how much bigger the number is when talking about sciences in particular.

     Second, both modern philosophy and modern science tell me that the things we know right now are no better than working approximations of the truth, if truth exists at all. That is to say, the crap isn't bad, it's just not technically correct. Sometimes the uninformed try to convert others to their religion and attack science at the same time by talking about how science is always "changing it's mind", or continually getting things wrong and only replacing the wrong things with things that are shown to be also wrong at a later time. Some people have a problem with all that wishy-washy-ness... I have simply integrated it into my worldview. I don't know anything for sure, but there are plenty of little things I would still bet my life on. Like gravity not vanishing suddenly while I am sleeping. Like the world still being there when I cannot see it. There is absolutely no way to prove that it will be there, but we trust that it will and don't think about it too much because we could really drive ourselves insane trying. (Read Kant and Nietzsche.)

     Ignorance about the world feels a little similar to handing a kid a loaded gun with the safety off and telling him/her to figure it out. The trouble is that we've all got that loaded gun in our hands, and we have no idea what to do with it. Thus when someone tells me something like "Wine has cells" I can't help but feel a little spike of dread inside (while I laugh at the poor sod). Science, to me, is the admirable process of trying to figure out how the gun works without blowing someone's head off in the process.

     You probably know how a gun works and why we usually don't give them to little children without extensive instruction. I feel a little like I'm staring down the barrel of that untrained gun when someone tries to talk me into religion. Yes, science gets people killed, but for the most part they are trying not to. There is a big difference between trying not to and not trying to. Religion says "I have a gun, follow me or you might be down range when it goes off!" That's why it's scary to know things. You might have half an idea how dangerous the gun (reality) is and can't help telling people to stop waving it around like lunatics. It's not just religions that do the waving, it's anybody who knows less than anyone else. To their credit, most religions say a lot about how not to wave the gun. The part that rankles me the most is the hypocrisy of the message itself. There is a lot of "love your neighbor, but only if he worships the same way you do" going on. I get told what not to do plenty often: sometimes I don't listen and things go wrong.

     Sometimes it turns out I had the right idea anyway and they were barking up the wrong tree. That's another reason to be scared. Respectable people in the know don't always know. I heard that some physics team is in the process of proving Stephen Hawking wrong about something for just about the first time in his life. He came up with big bang theory, in case you were wondering. I look out on the world and I am scared by the things other people don't know... scared of how many of them there are... then I look ahead to those who know even more than me and it scares me even more that I may never understand enough. I may get my finger around the trigger of the universe and never know it before I set the whole thing off. I still don't know for sure that there is anything to know in the first place. So, I've now described somewhat the depth of my title statement of self-disclosure. I'll restate: my worldview is crap, but it's better than a lot of other crap and not just because it's mine, but because I know what kind of crap it is. Until I find out what the Truth is, I'm going to keep doing the best I can.

Put it in context, then make your decision.

In what context is your life important?
Is it really important to the universe and everything?
As a person of this world I am most important to those around me:
my friends, my family, my colleagues, and even to all those others whom my works will reach.
But what of the grander scheme of things?
What grander scheme is there than those loved ones?
Would I neglect them in pursuit of some undefinable more?
Every action I take propagates outward to those near me and from them to those near them,
like water ripples outward from the place a fish has jumped.
Is that not enough?
What about the salvation of mankind?
What would I save them from?
I see mankind's duty as living the best way possible, regardless of faith.
I see no reason to feel responsible for the actions of others.

     People constantly play at influencing other people. Anyone telling you that they are not trying to influence your decisions is lying to you. It is my mission, through this blog and everything I do, to try to influence as many people as I can to make the choices I consider right. I may not always be gentle about it.
     Life, for humans, is in part a constant struggle of various people who think they know what's right. They gather followers, they preach at them, and then they lead on into the black abyss of the future, hoping all the while that they are a light and not a trap. Some believe so firmly in their own infallibility that they will lead others directly into traps they can see plainly ahead of them, more afraid of the press behind than the pitfalls ahead. Many politicians fall into this category. Others may struggle almost blindly to find the right path forward, convinced that all others before them have gone the wrong way. Still others have a light of their own with which to see ahead and walk confidently into the dark whether they are followed or not. There are those who follow proven paths and sidestep known pitfalls. Many cannot lead. Many of those do not know how to choose a leader.
     I prefer to lead, but for those that follow, please choose a leader that is not afraid to correct their mistakes. Perhaps my long metaphor is opaque, but do not be obtuse. You have the ability to choose, and the duty to make the best choice you can, whether you are a leader, a follower, a loner, or just hanging out somewhere along the way. Gather information, check your sources, and choose again. Choose again. Choose again. You can make the same choice over and over but know that there is nothing keeping you from choosing differently. Learn from your mistakes, learn from others' mistakes, and don't forget to learn from success as well. I can preach and rant and rave and grovel and lecture and plead with any number of people for any length of time to make a particular choice I feel is the right one, but in the end, it is still YOUR choice.
     I for one, choose to lead in my own way, after gaining what I believe to be the best kind of education and gathering what I think is the best information. I choose to make my own choice. I choose to frown upon those that would take that power away from me. I choose to choose differently from what I am told to choose, and nobody can tell me not to, because it is my choice. Think about it. And have a nice day ;)

--The real world is a harsh place to live and though we may deny it, we live there from the day we are born.--

Down with Fear-Mongering Media!

Perhaps this POV isn't as strange as I once thought:

I think the media machine has gone out of control. What is and isn't considered news anymore is becoming increasingly harmful to the public and it's time to turn things around. News service is meant to keep people informed, not keep them afraid. I can think of two ways to solve this problem.

The first one involves petitioning the networks to follow up on stories that spread fear and untruth. If people in the know start raising the bullshit flag on national television and work hard to destroy the dominance currently held by pundits, the general populace can stop living in fear and start thinking for themselves.

Other than working with the existing networks, well informed persons can join together in starting a new network dedicated to debunking fearmongers. The Mythbusters have a large following and a successful model for doing just that. Truth can be entertaining.

The movement can even take a cue from Fox news because people take pleasure in proving "respected" sources wrong. We have the technology to make this work. All we need now is the people.

This movement needs a name, and it needs a forum. Until something more official pops up, use the comment thread below this blog post to share ideas about how we can stop the oppression and fear that has been running rampant through the media outlets for far too long.

My Late Night Thoughts, Feelings, and Philosophical Musings

I think on the definition of "homo sapiens", or rather, the translation of it "same as me". Funny, isn't it, that we define humans as "same as me"? This means, then, that because I am unique, and nobody can be the same as me, that none of you are human. I am the only human, and no one else can be human because no one is the same as me. But of course, to another point of view, the same is true. If I were someone else, then I would still be the only human, for the same reason. Strange then that you would also be able to say you are the only human because none is the same as you. Too bad the definition is "same as me" because you don't matter. Only me. Thus I study psychology to understand the ways of the people, who are not homo sapiens but simply an entity or group of entities other than me. This does not mean I am psychopathic or anything like that; merely that I have the wisdom to see a flaw in our language that is often overlooked. Strange, this is exactly the sort of flaw that would cause me so much trouble in school. I would follow directions to the letter when I was meant to follow the spirit and to the spirit when meant to follow the letter. It is my basic misunderstanding of intentions that caused me to fail so many assignments. I was not meant to learn how to do something but what to do in order to get it done. I’ll not bother explaining the difference; you'll just have to get it wrong.
It’s funny how humans seem to always search for the one basic thing that explains everything. This I believe to be folly. It’s true that according to Occam’s razor, the simpler explanation must be more true. It’s just that I find the simplest explanation to be admitting the complexity of something. All the theories of psychology address a different aspect of the human experience. Why can't they all be partially right and partially wrong? Why can't we figure out why one part of a theory works while another doesn't? I say throw out the garbage and look at what we know to be true and functional. After that, we can start to sew together the scraps into a quilt of ideas more complete than any of the "all inclusive" theories were to begin with. It’s absolutely amazing what we do know about ourselves if we throw out all the outdated and frankly disproved ideas. It all fits, really. When I take all the things I have learned, all the things I know, and salt away the fat, I am left with an honestly disturbing and yet strangely beautiful idea of the universe. I won't go into it here; it will take an entire book to explain how it all interrelates. Chaos is a beautiful thing.
It's too bad that school is such a mystery to me, or rather, the teaching methods and attitudes of some people, and my difficulties with homework. I have given thought to the matters leading up to these current problems and found that there are a small number of common themes. First among these right now is the idea of backbone. I define this term as the opposite of spinelessness, the willingness, ability and action of standing up for oneself and others in the name of one's own values and beliefs. I also have a strong distrust for authority. On top of all that I love to learn new things but quickly lose interest if it feels forced on me.
In kindergarten I was known as a bulldog to my teacher, because I would not let a subject drop until I had decided it was over. I would fight over things that to my teacher had been concluded and otherwise taken care of. This, of course, seems to have been somewhat of a theme in itself. I did not think much of it at the time, but now I recognize that it seems to mean that I was thinking of things in their entirety, and not just of those important aspects related to the immediate moment.
Later, whenever I would get into an argument with a teacher, there was some injustice or other that would bother me, or some detail in some directions that I disagreed with or whatever, but the end result was always the same. I would be told that I had to listen to the teacher because she was the authority and I had no rights to say anything against her. Every time I would get in trouble at school, I would of course be punished in some way. It’s only natural. There were repercussions at home, in addition to the punishment at school. I was often grounded for things I had done at school, for my exasperated teachers had given my mom the idea that school punishments were not enough and should be paired with punishment at home. It never occurred to my mom that my account of an incident might have some truth to it, because the teacher was the authority figure and always had the last say.
The problem is that I never really understood what it was that I had done wrong. I never once started a fight. I don't think I’ve ever been the first to swing a fist, though I was often the first to connect. My fights never got beyond that first hit. I suppose I was disruptive, but there was ALWAYS, in my memory, some stimulus preceding it. Often there was name calling, or other argument. Usually it was an argument and didn't get past that. I have a loud voice, and I’m not afraid to use it. I was "out of control" in many different meanings of the phrase. I was constantly in trouble at school and had been "legally" labeled a trouble maker. I did not have many friends, it was too much fun to goad me into trouble and I never understood why people would be mean to each other. I know now that if I had responded in kind (with meanness) I would largely have had fewer problems. Instead I was hurt and didn't understand and so was never left alone. I had easily pushable "buttons" that would leave anyone but me safely out of the eyes of the teacher. It took me some eight or ten years, but I learned to defend myself from these sorts of things. This is where I get my idea of backbone, and why I simultaneously despise anyone without it. I could not defend myself, and others would not, so I suffered all the pain that came my way with very little buffer.
Today I am still the same person I was before I learned to defend myself from the world, but now those defenses are sometimes more in my way than they are helpful. I now have a hard time finding my internal motivation, and find myself putting up a heavy resistance to any but the most gentle and subtle external direction. More often I am able to force myself to do things I do not want to do, but usually the motivation comes from within and not from without. Or maybe that's not true and it's the other way around. Really I am confused about why things like dishes and homework require phenomenal effort to begin while tackling a project at work is less about overcoming internal barriers and more about dealing with a real situation. Perhaps it is that I have no or very little pain attached to anything I might do at work while school and chores carry emotional baggage that I cannot seem to be rid of easily. I excel the most at projects of my own choosing, though those are easily tainted by an external source and may lose their appeal after a time.
I am a student that loves to learn but cannot stand to do traditional class work (philosophy classes and other circumstances that require divergent thought are still fun to me, perhaps unaffected because of the nature of grade school subject material). I have always been a fairly active person, internally motivated and fascinated with everything around me. My favorite television shows when I was young were those that explained nature, and otherwise how things worked. I used to think I would be great at helping other people overcome psychological problems (hence the psych major), but I am beginning to think that this isn’t the best choice for me as I gain some personal experience in a classroom setting.
According to the traditional definitions, I would be a bad student as opposed to a good one because I rarely ever do any homework or reading of textbooks and often seem to annoy teachers and professors with my questions. Then again, I am approaching the end of my third year in college, so I must have done something right, even if it was a slight nod to conformity by doing just enough to not fail. I had thought all through school that there was something missing from my studies and I began to discover I wasn’t the only one thinking this way as articles are published in magazines and elsewhere suggesting that the teachers of the country and our education program in general is lacking exactly the types of things I identified on my way through it. My grades are generally bad, but I would be able to support that compared to a typical 4.0 student, I have had the better education.
I do a lot of reading and have read some of the books that some uneducated people would designate as harmful and candidates for banning. I take pride in having indulged in such "explicit" material for it does indeed explicitly outline the dire conditions of ignorance and general stupidity running rampant throughout societies. I believe that because I can see it and recognize that it's there, I can transcend it and drag our society kicking and screaming to new heights where at long last a majority of people will be climbing upward productively instead of stagnating and subjugating the less fortunate for their selfish needs. I suppose this is, part of why I find it so distasteful to be told to think without questioning.
I am a philosopher, in the literal sense: a lover of wisdom, for with wisdom comes the desire for knowledge and knowledge is power, which corrupts. Perhaps I will avoid corruption as I gain my knowledge, but certainly I see exactly what it is about knowledge that corrupts. It’s not just any knowledge that does it, it's the knowledge that so many people don't have the same knowledge, even don't want it. It’s the knowledge that ignorance is not bliss. It’s the knowledge that by keeping other people ignorant, I can tell them to think whatever I want them to think and they will think it without question because of my authority and power as a knowledgeable person. This is the corruption of knowledge: for who in their right mind would deny themselves the release from the everyday drudgery of work (oh foul, four letter word) by subjugating others to do one's will? Who would not take advantage of being free to advance one's own interests to the exclusion of all else, having all else taken care of already? Why can't a person focus solely on the upper levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, having virtually automated the ones below? Who cares that the automatons working for you to do this are also human beings that could enjoy such realized potential? What does it matter? I cease to understand, in my understanding, that it matters at all, or that it ever mattered to begin with. My understanding puts me above those that tried so hard to keep me down, keep me in control. Now, I can look down from my understanding and laugh at them, for they did not only miss the potential I had in me, but they missed the potential they had in themselves, believing or at least seeming to believe that their power was enough for them, that their control and influence over others lives was absolute. They delude themselves into thinking that they can know the effect their influence will have on an individual and that when that individual seems to be uninfluenced or influenced otherwise than they intended, that individual is hopelessly doomed to failure.
I am a musician. This may be the one thing that gets me ahead in my material existence. I love composing and performing music and would be happy to pursue it with abandon to the end of time. It seems to have nearly everything I need all rolled into one or easily available from within. I can philosophize, psychoanalyze, imaginize, and mathemetize all in less than three minutes with one idea. I could affect millions, I could make millions, I could retire early and often to take on projects of no relation. I could set my own hours, choose who I associate with, and randomly vanish from the scene with relative impunity. I could satisfy all of my intellectual and emotional desires simultaneously. I can't possibly get started because I am committed to another path and am otherwise expected to disregard all urges to make music a profession. I could not justify to myself even the costs to others if I were to choose this path without first having some other means to support myself. After all, I have a backbone and feel a need to stand up for myself even to my own detriment... and unfortunately my physical needs come before my creative needs.
I am a psychologist. I wish to understand people as fully as possible for without this understanding, how am I to relate to them? By studying people and how they think, I can better prepare myself for manipulating them to suit my needs. Everybody wants to control everybody else, at least in some way. Why not make sure I can do it better by learning how people think? I want to control people in such a way that causes them to show me some respect, at the very least. I want to be able to interact with them adeptly and without making myself seem a fool unless it would improve the situation. Also, by publishing research, I may be able to influence such things as the education system and how educators are taught. It's one of my ultimate goals to reform the entire education system into something that gets this country back on track to reclaim the position of number one in the world technologically.
I am a writer. As if you could not see that already. I have an urge to write that is nearly as bad as that to make music. Sometimes if I do not indulge myself as I am now it causes problems that I can't seem to overcome until I get it out of the way. That’s how this started. I could not sleep. I took a shower to settle my mind. When I came out, my mind was not settled, so I gave in to my urge and began to write. Now I am still not sleeping but somehow I am beginning to feel better and even rested as I dump the contents of my brain into this file. I expect that in due course I shall actually be able to go to bed, but not before I have finished this little project. I often think of things to write about. Lately it happens most often in a philosophy class when I see an order, or sometimes a disorder in the way things are presented by one famous philosopher or another and I feel a need to close a gap, either in their logic, or else wise in their explanation of something. It also happens in psychology where I get an idea about the elephant the blind men are touching. I begin to see pathways opening up before me that have never been traveled before, unifying ideas that could rewrite textbooks and reshape how we think about thinking and the brain. I can't wait to start writing my philosophical book "On the Nature of God". In it I plan to expose God as an idea belonging to many people and taking as many shapes for no particular reason beyond that we have an urge to be controlled. I also plan to write some science fiction. I've always loved sci-fi and most of my ideas for fiction involve technology higher than our own and the implications it will have in society.
I am a person. Perhaps I wrote this whole thing out to try and define myself. I don't know if I have succeeded. In philosophy class I heard that a person is not made up of beliefs. I never did hear what a person IS. To me, a person is as defined by the self. A logical loop by its very inexpressibility in human language. A person is a product of his or her past, the cumulation of his or her potential. A person is a specific thought pattern, subject to change at any given time by any input. A person is a black box, that may have rules, but the rules change with every new piece of data thrown through it. A person is the behaviors exhibited by the person, the output of the black box with unknown and perhaps unknowable rules. A person is the quantum state of an idea at any one time, being constantly influenced so that none can ever know the velocity and position at the same time. A person is a moving, thinking, progressive and transitive being. I am a person. I have unique thought patterns and unique history. In the potentially infinite universe, there may be an infinite number of iterations of me that are STILL not me because only I am at this one particular place at this one particular time. There can be no other that exists exactly as I do because every aspect of my being is an aspect of my identity and any difference makes a person even who thinks exactly the same thoughts as me and engages in exactly the same actions different from me because we are in some way separate. I am Me. I change, I grow, I learn, I think, I breathe, I am. If you understand me, you don't. If you understand that you can't understand me, and that I can never understand you, then maybe we can come to an understanding. Maybe now I can get some sleep.