Meet the World

One night I had a conversation with myself. I was lying there in the dark in my room, thinking about the future (as I usually am), and I thought, "I think I'm afraid of the world."

So I asked myself, "What are you going to do about it?"

I am going out to meet the world head on. No more flinching or hesitating or avoiding. I am going to (as Nike says) just do it. I am going to be unflinchingly honest and stop caring what people/colleges/employers think of me as a person. If they don't like my views, too bad for them.

I think perfectionism (and procrastination as well) is a shield. You go around pretending that you're not getting anything done because "it isn't ready yet" or "it's not perfect yet". I say, no cigar. Sugar. Bueno. Whatever. No whatever.

There's no right way to get through life, so does it really matter which way you go about it?  So what if you fail? You have to fail a lot before you ever succeed, and since you learn from failures, the more you fail, the smarter you get.

This all sounds great, but the truth is it's hard to remember when I'm actually out there.

Crazy Things

My, my. The things I write at 2:30 in the morning. I churned out this after reading the first few chapters of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance saturday night.

"So. Say I'm crazy. Say we're all difference kinds of crazy, and "normal" is merely the reigning madness. What does that mean for us?
"What kind of person am I? What's my crazy?
"I'm always going to be questioning, looking at the world through an unusual ontological lens. I will always be searching for myself, and my curse is that I will never find myself. And in the spirit of searching, I will always be challenging other people, poking holes in the way they see things, in who they are.
"How do other people see their own existences? Do you think they recognize the crazy, or do they catalogue everything into a mental system to keep themselves comfortable? They've got so much one-size-fits-all slang so they don't have to look too closely at anything; they can just slap a label on it and laugh. And they blink, like Nietzsche's last men. They have no focus.
"What is meaning to them? What is life or identity, or even intelligence? They think with cheap copies of ideas, mistaking them for reality. Nobody questions.
"What place does "crazy" have in this madness?"

Cornerstones of Confidence

Realize that you are different. You come from a different place. I've never realized this before, but a lot of insecurities happen when you don't match up to others. For example, when someone is talking to you about a band that you've never heard of, and they assume you know what they're talking about and you're afraid to say you don't understand so you just sort of go along with it. Part of the social conformity theory is that people want to believe they're all from the same culture, even though they aren't. People feel cooler when they can talk about how they watched the same shows growing up. I need to know that I am from a different culture - call it a subsubsubculture. There are as many cultures as there are people, so when I don't know something, I shouldn't be ashamed to say it. There are things that are a part of my world that other people haven't even heard about before, even though to me it's very natural to know them and what they're all about. I just need to keep patience with myself and everyone else.

Blogs/Forums > Facebook

On Sunday or Monday last week - I believe it was Monday - I deactivated my facebook account. I think facebook is a regressive way to network.

When I joined facebook (probably about a year ago), I had the same good intentions all facebook addicts start out with. I was going to keep in touch with all my old friends who were moving away. I was going to keep all my distant relatives up-to-date on what was going on in my life. I was going to coordinate with other students on school work. None of this stuff happened.

Have you ever looked at facebook? It's like a window revealing the same sheep-like idiot to you a thousand times over. It's horrifying. Monstrous. The decay of society in action.

Facebook is built around status updates, which allow for users to let the world know when they are visiting their nieces and nephews, doing their homework, getting their teeth pulled, or going to the bathroom. The updates are meant to be short and simple; they allow no room for thought development (probably because most facebook users don't have any thoughts - no offense to you if you use facebook, I'm sure you're different.) If someone wanted to post something thoughtful and intelligent, say, on the meaning of life, their message would be cut off after three or so lines.

But! If you need space for thought development, you can write a note and post that. Of course, your note is also cut off after a few lines, so people can't read it unless they care enough to follow the link. A few people actually do care enough. However, there's no room for them to respond - they can leave a comment, but it has to be short. Again, no room for thought development.

In truth, though, if you really want to talk about intellectual things on facebook, the formatting won't stop you. There's not an actual word limit on the length of your status updates or comments (although it will be abbreviated by the "read more" button). The real problem is the other people on facebook. Generally, facebook users are not people who think deep thoughts; they are people who would rather feed their virtual pet sea turtle than have a discussion on physics.

This is why I prefer the world of blogs and forums. Blogs are made for thought development; forums are made for discussions. I find that the people in these places (at least the ones that I know) are the types of people I like: independent thinkers with original opinions. They're people who know how to write correctly. They know how to convey an important idea.

So far, I haven't missed facebook a bit.