Happy(?) New Year

Well, it hasn’t been a great year.  There have been a few bright spots of course: my Smaller Animal has continued to recover excellently from his surgery, and we had a fantastic National Heroscape Day this year, and my work changed its name and we got lots of cool new swag out of the rebranding.  But there have been shootings and fires, and lots of sickness, plus the foot disaster, and Pathfinder 2nd edition wasn’t as exciting as I’d hoped it’d be, and I had to buy a new laptop 3 months ago and I’ve been configuring it ever since, and my accountant/financial advisor is quitting the game (partially due to the aforementioned fires) and I have to find someone new after it took me like 2 years to find her, and John Perry Barlow died and William Goldman died and Stephen Hawking died and Penny Marshall died and Harlan Ellison died and Ursula K. Le Guin died and Aretha Franklin died and Dolores O’Riordan died and even the immortal Stan Lee died, and I’m pretty sure that’s not even supposed to be possible.  And don’t even get me started on our rapidly deteriorating political situation.  So I’m not thrilled with you, 2018.  You could have done me better.

But I did remark on the occasion of Thanksgiving this year that life was still good, and I suppose that, like the inimitable Joe Walsh (who, somewhat amazingly, has not died) that I can’t complain, but sometimes I still do.  As a subscriber to the philosophies of Cynical Romanticism and balance and paradox, I continue to remain hopeful in the face of being shat upon, and I will continue to grumble in the face of unbelievable karmic blessings.  It’s who I am, and what I do.

For you, dear reader, I wish nothing but the most glorious and joyous experience of a 2019.  If your 2018 was horrible, this one will be better, I’m sure of it.  And, if your 2018 was pretty damned good despite all the contrary evidence, then I have no doubt that you will continue to make hay while the sun shines, and make lemonade from the inevitable rain of sour yellow citrus.  2019 will be an interesting year: it may be filled with political turmoil, and no doubt a bunch more of our role models will die, and I’m sure there will be adversity to test us.  But it will not be boring.

Cheers.

Gaming the Grey

A recent article on EN World got me pondering the contrast of black-and-white vs gray in modern fantasy.  Because the author (Lew Pulsipher) seems to me to be spot on in many ways ... but also slightly off in some ways.

Now, obviously my position is going to be highly influenced by my philosophy of balance and paradox: surely here is a custom-tailored debate for my outlook.  Obviously I must be on the side of gray, right?

But not so fast.  Recall what I said quite early in my inaugural Baladocian post:

But what I mean when I speak about “the Baladox” is that I believe in balance and paradox.  Not just that I believe that they exist, but that I believe everything in life is ruled by those two principles.  That the world is not black and white, but that sometimes it is gray, and sometimes it is both black and white and the same time.  And, recursively, sometimes it’s sort of halfway between gray and both black and white at the same time, and then sometimes it’s black and white and gray, all at once.

Now, that may sound sort of hand-wave-y, but it actually applies quite nicely in this situation.  What the author (and nearly all the commenters, for that matter) are trying to do is divide the world of fantasy (and/or fantasy roleplaying) up into either black-and-white—where the bad guys are inarguably evil and the good guys are purely good—or gray—where everyone is a little bit good and a little bit evil, and the “bad” guys are just those who lean more to one side than the other, or perhaps it’s even up for debate whether anyone is a bad guy at all.  But the problem with this is that entire argument is a stark dichotomy which doesn’t track with the actual reality.  Look at the simple examples that everyone there is using: the Lord of the Rings vs Game of Thrones.  Lord of the Rings is obviously black-and-white, with Sauron representing ultimate evil and the only good orc being a dead orc.  Whereas Game of Thrones is obviously gray, with the Kingslayer being both a oathbreaker and murderer, and also the savior of an entire city, and where it’s easy to root for “bad” people like Tyrion or the Hound, and far more difficult to get behind “good” people like Stannis or Robert Baratheon.  Except that there’s a big problem with this analysis: it completely ignores the Night King, who is no less purely evil than Sauron, and the political situations of Gondor (including the madness of Denethor) and Rohan (with the machinations of Wormtongue).  Hell, even Saruman, who does some pretty awful things in the Lord of the Rings, is not completely evil.  There is plenty of gray in the Lord of the Rings, and plenty of black-and-white in Game of Thrones.

Which is not to say that these two examples don’t lean pretty hard toward one extreme or the other.  There’s no denying that the the gray is pretty much background material in the Lord of the Rings, and the black-and-white is just there to shake up the gray and keep it interesting in Game of Thrones.  So on the one hand you could claim that I’m merely quibbling over matters of degree.  But I think it goes deeper than that.  I think that humans, with their inherent need to simplify things, wish that they were faced with a stark, either/or choice in this area.  But the fact is, we’re not.  Like everything else in life, the choice between black-and-white or gray is not between two poles, but rather a spectrum.  You can hew close to one end or the other, or you can stick closer to the middle.  It’s entirely up to you.

But I think this debate is oversimplified in another dimension.  Because we’re very specifically talking about fantasy here.  There are other types of literature out there, and we needn’t make the same choice for every genre.  Sometime I feel like people want fantasy (including some offshoots, such as horror or superhero stories) to conform to the level of gray shading that we’re seeing in modern dramas such as House of Cards or Breaking Bad or Sons of Anarchy.  There’s been a tendency in this area to take antiheroes to new heights.  And, personally, I like it—I’ve enjoyed all three of the examples I just gave.  But a drama set in modern times is very different from a fantasy.  For me, there’s nothing wrong with choosing shades of gray for one genre, but preferring a bit more black-and-white for others.

And fantasy (in addition to horror and superhero literature) is one area where there’s a distinct advantage to black-and-white.  A story in which good and evil are clearly delineated leaves no ambiguity about who to root for, and no question about whether the protagonists have “won” at the end.  If the evil was defeated, that’s a victory.  If not, then hopefully there’s a sequel in the works, because otherwise it’s a bit of a bummer.  And, again, there’s nothing wrong with a good tragedy, especially in a modern setting.  I shan’t give any direct spoilers for Breaking Bad, but let’s just say that the conclusion of that story was positively Shakespearean.  And I loved it.  But that’s just not what I want out of fantasy.  I want the good guys to win in the end: I’m willing to wait a while for that to happen—three movies or so is about right, but I’ll settle in for the long haul of seven books, if the story’s compelling enough—but, in the end, dammit, the good guys need to win.  Is that realistic?  No, of course it isn’t.  It’s FANTASY.  It’s not supposed to be realistic.  When I want realism, I’ll watch something realistic.  Or science fiction, perhaps: I’m way more tolerant for shades of gray and tragedic outcomes in sci-fi.  But fantasy needs to feed my need for a world where the bad guys are easy to identify and the good guys are destined to win.  Otherwise I could just stay in the real world.

Which is not to say that I don’t enjoy Game of Thrones, because I do.  I like the show more than the books (blasphemy, I know), because the books are even more tediously, drearily gray, but even the show can get on my nerves sometimes.  “Stop freaking fighting each other, you idiots,” I will often say to the screen.  “Listen to Jon Snow.  He’s the only one with any brains.  White walkers are coming to munch on your brains.  Morons.” I have a similar love/hate relationship with The Magicians (I’ve watched the first two seasons of the show, and am about three-quarters of the way through the first book).  It’s obvious that somebody read Harry Potter and said, man, these kids have way too little sex to be teenagers, and then promptly went off to write their own version.  And I’m not saying that’s a bad thing at all: by being a direct contrast to Rowling, Grossman not only provides a completely different take on the vagaries of a magical eduction, but is able to pose many really interesting and profound questions.  For instance, in the book especially (and to a lesser extent in the series), the characters wrestle quite often with boredom: if you can provide all your basic needs with the flick of a wand, then what do you actually do all day?  It is, in many ways, a meditation on the contrast between those who have to work hard just to feed themselves and those who are wealthy enough to afford leisure time, and then what happens if you have nothing but leisure time.  So there are definitely intriguing aspects.  But sometimes I find my mind wandering, or I simply throw up my hands, because there’s never any clear concept of who the real enemy is (or, rather, it’s more that, whenever you think you know who the enemy is, you later find out you were wrong ... mostly).  To me, this stumbling around, never able to figure out exactly who the bad guys are, is just not that entertaining in a fantasy setting.  In other settings, okay.  But, to me, fantasy is different.

So, whether we’re talking about books, or movies and television, or roleplaying games, I think the question of black-and-white vs gray is a false choice.  In reality, you will end up with both; it’s just a question of which one you will choose to emphasize more than the others.  Now, in a roleplaying context, I’ve already done an entire post on choosing a playstyle and, not surprisingly, two of the options were Lord-of-the-Rings-style and Game-of-Thrones-style.  (The third choice was Conan-style, which is sort of a variation on black-and-white, where the “good guys” are defined as “you,” and the “bad guys” are defined as “anyone who gets in your way.”)  As a GM, I pointed out that it’s important to get your players on the same page; personally, I prefer to let everyone vote on what style they prefer, preferably with lots of discussion.  But, as a player, I’m always going to vote for Lord-of-the-Rings-style.  I love the epic quest, with clear goals and crystal clarity on who the ultimate bad guys are.  A little bit of murkiness on the lower-level baddies can be fun—I love a chance to figure out how to turn the #2 “bad” guy and make them a good guy double-agent—but up at the top, I want Sauron, I want Voldemort, I want the White Witch, I want the Dark One, I want the Night King, I want Lord Foul, I want the Wicked Witch of the West and the Red Queen and Captain Hook.  You can tell me about the tortured childhoods of these fiends all you want, but I will only be listening with half an ear.  These are the Big Bads, the faces of ultimate evil, the pullers of strings and wielders of dark energies.  These are the people whose defeat is worthy of an epic quest, and that’s what I’m in it for.

So, whether as participant (as in fantasy roleplaying) or merely audience (as in fantasy literature or cinema), I like to see my good and evil clearly accentuated in a fantasy context.  Throw me a little gray here and there, but mostly black-and-white.  Fantasy is one of the few genres that can support that sort of dichotomy, divorced as it is from what we see in the real world, so I say: take advantage of that.  Keep the heroes valiant and the villains despicable and we’ll all get along just fine.

Adventures in Spirituality, Part I: The Nature of Agnosticism

[This is the first post in a long series.  Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguous—that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week.  Just that I will eventually finish it, someday.  Unless I get hit by a bus.]


The other day I was pondering what it means to be agnostic.  I often think of myself as having that outlook, although of course it’s a slippery word that means different things to different people.  Dictionary.com says:¹

a person who holds that the existence of the ultimate cause, as God, and the essential nature of things are unknown and unknowable, or that human knowledge is limited to experience.

And that’s sort of what I mean when I use the term, but not exactly.  I absolutely feel that there’s an aspect of “unknowable” to the universe.  As evolutionary biologist J. B. S. Haldane once said:²

I have no doubt that in reality the future will be vastly more surprising than anything I can imagine.  Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.

and I certainly agree with that sentiment.  The certainty of religion has always struck me as being a bit naive; to trot out a few more quotes:

One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.  — Bertrand Russell

The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.  — William Shakespeare

Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.  — Confucius

To imagine that we fully grasp the nature of the universe because we’ve read a book or two that some other (equally fallible) human has designated as “holy” strikes me as the very height of human hubris.  Surely the universe really is stranger than we can imagine.

On the other hand, “agnostic” is often taken to mean “indecisive.”  That, rather than choosing religion or atheism, I just can’t make up my mind and am constantly dithering between the two.  Interestingly enough, in my experience it is only those truly dedicated to one side or the other that seem to hold this opinion.³  Well, speaking as a confirmed agnostic, I can assure you that I’m not having any trouble making up my mind.  It’s already made up: I believe there is some sort of force running the universe, but I don’t know what it is, and I probably never will.  And I’m okay with that.

That’s what “agnostic” means to me: that, while the concept that we can understand everything there is to understand about whatever Higher Power runs the universe, and can influence Its decisions by means of arcane chants and rituals, is certainly absurd, the concept that there is no Higher Power at all and everything just happens by sheer chance is equally absurd.  My experience of the world has taught me that neither of those concepts meshes with reality particularly well.  So I prefer to live in the middle.

The amusing thing about being an agnostic is that you get to see both sides in an unflattering light.  The devoutly religious are often dismissed by atheists as believers in fairy tales, which honestly has a grain of truth to it, but is far too haughty.  Contrariwise, the entrenched atheist may be disdained by religious types as being amoral: obviously, without a Higher Power telling them right from wrong, they would have no moral compass whatsoever.  And, while there may be a tiny bit of truth lurking there too, it’s an almost perversely obtuse attitude to take.  What both sides seem to want to conveniently ignore is that the other side has millions (if not billions) of devotees, many of which are remarkably intelligent and learned individuals.  So any explanation that involves the other side being “not too bright” or “not too principled” is severely lacking.

I admire people of faith, and I also admire atheists with strong science-based convictions.  But they can go to extremes, and then it’s not as much fun being in the middle.  When it’s more like being a spectator at a tennis match, watching the logical arguments fly back and forth, one can afford a wry amusement.  When it’s more like cowering behind a rock while the bullets are flying, then it starts to be a bit scary.  My pet name for Christian extremists is “CCFs,” which stands for “crazy Christian fucks.”  This might make it sound like I have something against Christians, but nothing could be further from the truth.  The majority of them are wonderful people—just as are the majority of Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, and so forth.  But there will always be bad apples.  Did you know that Genghis Khan was a Buddhist?⁴  When I first learned that, it kind of broke my brain.  On the one hand you have a religion which holds all life as sacred—a religion in which some monks will not even kill an insect.  And, on the other, you have a conqueror who started out by killing his own half-brother and ended by killing (by some estimates) 1.2 million people in a single massacre, after he had already won the battle.  He was known to build pyramids of human heads as a symbol of a victory.  Also, he was a practicing Buddhist.  Now, of course, any Buddhist will no doubt point out that he wasn’t a “real” Buddhist, that he wasn’t actually practicing the “true” tenets of Buddhism.  Which is exactly what the average Muslim would say about a suicide bomber, or what the average Christian would say about people who bomb abortion clinics.

So it can get tricky.  When I see someone on television holding up signs saying that gay people are going to go to Hell, I can’t help but feel like that’s explicitly contrary to the message that Jesus was trying to get across when he said things like “love your enemy.”  Even worse, it really undermines the whole argument that religion provides a moral code to live by and atheists are therefore amoral.  If my choice is hang out with a bunch of people who have to hate entire swaths of the population because “God told them so,” suddenly the atheists are not looking so bad.

But of course the atheists have their extremists too.  In 2010 the government of France outlawed burqas (among other things); this was on top of the 2004 law banning religious symbols in schools.  Measures like this seem (to me) to stem from a misguided attempt to stem overt religion, on the grounds that religion breeds intolerance.  Which is of course true: historically Christians in particular have been remarkably efficient in exterminating people whose religion they disagreed with, even other Christians (see e.g. the Anabaptists).  If I may offer up one more quote:

To know a person’s religion we need not listen to his profession of faith but must find his brand of intolerance.  — Eric Hoffer

And yet, is forbidding Christian children from wearing crosses in school the way to solve that problem?  This now undermines the other side: the atheists are supposed to be the calm ones, the logical ones, the rational ones, but this starts to smack of hysteria ... and on top of everything else, it’s pointless and ineffective, as history should have taught us by now.  The Romans forbade the Christians from displaying their symbols and meeting in their churches, but it doesn’t seem to have done much to stem the tide of Christianity.  And then the Christians took over and tried to forbid—or, even worse: co-opt—the symbols of Druidism and paganism, and yet we still have Wiccans and many other flavors of neopaganism.  It just plain doesn’t work, so why are we still trying to do it?

So my position as a self-confessed agnostic often puts me firmly in the middle, or perhaps in a sort of no-man’s land, not really able to identify with either side.  I’m often put in the position of sending out emails (or blog posts) that try to straddle this line; for instance, when writing about my son’s heart surgery, I included this line:

For those of you who know us personally—and/or who just feel so inclined—we will gratefully accept your positive energies, be they in the form of prayers, rituals, spells, or just good vibes, should any of those be a thing you believe in.

This was a very carefully crafted sentence, one that I put a lot of thought into as regards how to best appeal to those of my friends who might be so inclined to want to pray for us—and I will gladly take all the prayers you care to give, regardless of whether I subscribe to your brand of “God” or not—as well as to those of my friends who might be inclined to roll their eyes at the concept of begging an invisible man in the sky for favors.  But, you know, there is now ample scientific evidence to support the idea that positive thinking can impact your health.  Oh, sure: they call it “dispositional optimism,” because that sounds fancier and more science-y, but it all comes down to the same thing.  So I’m happy to receive positive energy from any and all who are willing to send it my way.  And, if you don’t believe in that sort of crap no matter what the scientific studies say (or you’d just like to point out that extrapolating the power of positive energy from studies on one being optimistic for oneself to beneficial outcomes for being positive on behal of others is not really supported by the extant evidence), that’s fine too.  I’m okay either way.

You may recall ever so long ago that I said that I believe most fervently in balance and paradox.  And that’s no less true of my approach towards spirituality than anything else ... in fact, it’s probably more true.  After all, I sometimes (somewhat flippantly, granted) claim that “baladocianism” is my religion.  So, as a baladocian, I certainly believe that the truth lies somewhere in between religion and atheism ... and also that they’re both true.  My approach to spirituality is somewhat complex, and it’s been shaped by my experience (naturally), and, as I pondered what it meant to be agnostic, I also thought about what brought me here, and I thought that maybe it might be interesting to share that journey with you.


Next time, I explore the flavor(s) of Christianity I inherited from my parents, and where I left them along the way.

__________

1 Dictionary.com, if you’ve ever wondered, is based primarily on the Random House Unabridged, although it includes content from other sources as well.

2 In 1927, in Possible Worlds and Other Papers.  Thank you Wikiquote.

3 Just as, in my experience, only the most staunchly heterosexual or homosexual adherents will condemn bisexuals as fence-sitters.  But I suppose that’s a sentiment belonging to a very different blog post.

4 This is a mild exaggeration—he was raised a tengrist, which is a form of animism.  But he often practiced Buddhism, and consulted Buddhist monks, and so forth.

There's a Kind of Hush

This year my annual holiday-themed post is reaching you right on Christmas Eve.  And, when I say “holiday-themed,” I do actually mean that.  I’ve ranged the gamut from extensively quoting Jesus to exploring pagan Yule traditions, and I’ve at least touched on Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and Pancha Ganapati, among others.  Plus I’ve given you not just one, but two mixes of alternative Christmas music.  (If you want to read all my past holiday posts, you can get the list in my series listing post on the informals.)

Typically I use this post to talk about why you should value your family, or feel goodwill towards the general populace, or that sort of thing.  And that’s an excellent message for Christmas Day, and also for Kwanzaa, and even Yule.  But Christmas Eve is, to me, more about anticipation.  It’s the sense of waiting, the calm before the storm of wrapping paper and videogames and Christmas cookies and telephone calls to absent family members.  This is mostly a good waiting, even though the kids can get frustrated sometimes that Christmas isn’t coming along fast enough for their tastes.  But that’s why we have separate traditions for Christmas Eve than for Christmas: it’s lots of stuff to get the little ones’ minds off the fact that they can’t bear to wait one more night.  Many people do their big Christmas meal on Christmas Eve, and some folks also open a single gift the night before, to help ease that crushing anticipation.  There are other traditions too, like the putting out of the Christmas cookies and milk (or eggnog, or beer, or whatever you think Santa will like best).  Or the hanging of the stockings, or the addition of one final Christmas ornament—in my parents’ house, for many years that was the placement of a holiday verison of the starship Enterprise on the mantel; when you pushed the button underneath, Spock flipped open his communicator and wished all of Starfleet a very merry Christmas.  These are all just distractions for the younger family members of course—with maybe just a touch of hopefully wearing them out so they’ll fall asleep quickly and Santa can come at last.

When I was a kid, Christmas Eve was for going over to my grandmother’s house, where we had the standard holiday mega-feast,¹ followed by exchanging gifts with my grandparents, aunt and uncle, and my two cousins.  These gifts were often less serious, since the extended family were the people you had the least idea about what to buy.  So often you’d just give up trying to find something they actually wanted and just go straight for something that would make them laugh.  There was a long period of time when either me or my brother just counted down the moments till we could open our cheap cologne and proudly proclaim (in unison) in our best Eddie Murphy: “Brut! by Faberge.”  And everyone would giggle, though undoubtedly at least some of them had no clue what we were talking about.

So that’s what Christmas Eve means to me.  It’s a little bit of delicious anticipation, and a small measure of practice run for the serious gift unwrapping and eating to come, and a time to just take a breath ... sometimes, the last truly relaxing time of the year.  Tomorrow there will be schedules to keep and visits to make and instructions to read and phone calls to field.  But today ... today is just chill, and bask in the glory of family.

We have a lot to be thankful for this year, of course.  Our middle human child survived a fairly scary heart surgery with surprisingly little fallout, and I continue to have a great job where they put up with my eccentricities and pay me a comfortable wage to do so.  And we continue to live in a beautiful house, in beautiful sunny southern California, with lots of room for us to avoid each other when that’s necessary and to come together again when we need to, and a pool with a spa out back where the humans will spend nearly every afternoon in the summertime.  We’ve suffered losses, true: for several years now I’ve told you that our family consisted of 5 humans, 2 dogs, 3 cats, 1 guinea pig, and assorted fish and shrimp and snails, and last year we even added a bearded dragon.  This year we are but 5 humans, 2 dogs, 2 cats, and a fishtank ... a runaway and two funerals² have shrunk the family size this year.³  But we all still feel very privileged to have each other, and to be lucky enough to expect a decent-sized bounty from the Big Man tomorrow.  So, today, we wait ...

Anticipation is a funny thing, if you think about it.  It’s torturous, especially when you’re smaller.  But it’s also exquisite—it’s a sensation to be savored, building to an inevitable climax of some almost unilaterally positive emotion: joy, or pleasure, or relief, or (in the case of Christmas) satisfaction, with a touch of decadence.  And, in just one more week, we’ll have New Year’s Eve, with even more anticipation, culminating in the release of a new year, a fresh start, the chance to put all the bad parts of the old year behind us,⁴ and embrace a new, as-yet-unsullied future.  Anticipation is nice, is what I’m saying; no matter how much you want it to be over, you can’t help reveling in it just a little.  Because it’s a sign that good things can still happen, are still happening.  It’s a sign of hope, and a sign of life.  And life goes on.

So that’s what Christmas Eve means to me.  From all of us here, to all of you out there, we hope your anticipation is just as savory as is ours.  And we hope that your Christmas (if you celebrate it) and your New Year’s (if you celebrate it) is glorious and wonderful and all that you hoped it would be.  And, even if you celebrate something else entirely, or perhaps your particular celebration has already been put to bed, we still wish you hope, and peace, and happiness.  Because you deserve it.

We all do.

__________

1 “Holiday feast” in this case means it was basically the same meal for Christmas Eve, Thanksgiving, and Easter.

2 Honestly, one loss is so recent that there is one funeral yet to be conducted.

3 And, if you’re one of those people who think the animals don’t “count,” I’ll refer you to one of my earliest blogs to educate you that “pets” are people too, for the long version.  For the short version: I don’t judge your family; don’t judge mine.

4 And, let’s face it: if you happen to live in the United States, the old year has been overflowing with bad parts.

Counting down

Well, we’re winding down the long, stressful march towards the Smaller Animal’s surgery.  Next week is our final trip to Disneyland on this year’s season passes.  This past week I gave a talk at LA Perl Mongers (a.k.a. LA.pm), despite coming off the tail of a 24-hour bug that kept me home from work that day.  Hopefully I didn’t get any of the fellow Mongers sick.

The Smaller Animal and I are trying to work through the new Defenders series before the surgery, and the whole family is rewatching Stranger Things in preparation for season 2.  And of course The Mother and I will be glued to the tube tonight for the Walking Dead season premiere tonight.

And that’s pretty much it.  Working on a few financial things this weekend to get that stuff out of the way, and happy that there’s not something big going on.  Next weekend we’ll get my birthday celebration out of the way a bit early, and the weekend after that, it’s surgery showtime.

Watched Patton Oswalt’s latest Netflix special last night.  He says his late wife hated when people said “everything happens for a reason.”  There’s no reasons (she would say), there’s no order; we just have to be as good to each other as we can every day because you never know what’s going to happen tomorrow.  Or, as Patton put it:

Everything is chaos; be kind.

I kinda like that.

If I Were Talking with Chris Hardwick

I used to hate “talk shows” when I was younger.  I still do hate most of them.  But more and more I find that I enjoy watching certain people ask questions of people that I know the work of (be that musical, cinematic, or what-have-you).  I have some vague thoughts on why that is, which will perhaps become its own blog post one day.  Today, though, I wanted to chat briefly about one such certain person, mainly to use that as a springboard for a whole ’nother topic.

This certain person is Chris Hardwick.  So far I’ve watched every episode of his new show, titled simply Talking with Chris Hardwick.  I didn’t actually expect to enjoy it, but I figured, I loved @midnight, and I enjoyed Talking Dead (and the far more occasional Talking Preacher), so why not give it a try?  And I’ve actually liked it quite a lot.

This has a huge amount to do with the fact that it’s Chris Hardwick asking questions.  I enjoyed Jon Stewart interviewing people, and I continue to enjoy Stephen Colbert doing the same.  Once upon a time I was really into Inside the Actor’s Studio with James Lipton, and I’ve even listened to quite a few episodes of Fresh Air with Terry Gross.  What all these people have in common is the ability to ask interesting questions, the sort of questions that you wish you’d asked.  Often the sort of questions that you didn’t even know you wanted to know the answer to before it was spoken aloud, but now that it has been you’re really desperate to hear the response.  And they’re all interesting people themselves, people who can interject their own stories without taking over the conversation, which is a tricky thing to manage.  An interviewer who talks about themself too much instead of letting the guest talk is annoying, but an interviewer who just asks question after question without throwing in their own 2¢ every now and again is boring.  It’s a delicate balance, and these are the folks who get it right, at least for me.

One thing that Hardwick does that reminds me (fondly) of Lipton is that he ends each interview with the same format.  In Lipton’s case, it was the long-form Proust Questionnaire.  Hardwick takes a simpler approach, and just asks a single question: what’s one piece of advice that has always inspired or helped you, that you might want to pass on to other people?  He rearranges the wording every show, but that’s the gist of the question, and I think it’s a good one.  His guests have had some interesting answers.

And, to once again quote Bill Cosby,¹ I told you that story so I could tell you this one.

Sometimes when I watch or listen to one of these shows, I imagine how I might answer the interviewer’s questions.  I’ve come up with answers to Lipton’s whole list, at various times.²  So, the other day, after watching eleven episodes of Talking, I started to wonder what my answer to this question would be.

Of course, I couldn’t have a simple one-line answer.  Like everything I write, or say, or think, the full answer is more complex.  But, if I had to boil it down to a one-liner, it would be this:

Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.

Now, this is generally attributed to Confucius, but that’s mainly because all quotes in the history of man were either spoken by Confucius, Voltaire, or Mark Twain, and which one your quote was spoken by only depends on how old you’d like to pretend it is.³  But it doesn’t really matter who said it; it’s a pretty little nugget of wisdom regardless.

It reminds me of something I read on Bruce Campbell’s website.  Now, if you visit his site today,⁴ it’s all slick and commercial and bleaugh.  But once upon a time it was all dorky and stripped down and black and white and blue, mostly consisting of big walls of text and looking like he slapped it together himself.  (Which I suspect he did.  For the record, Mr. Campbell, I liked it better before.)  But it had some cool shit on it.  Like this quote, which I immediately stole for my quote file:

I just love acting.  I can never understand why more people don’t make their hobby into a career.  Sure, it’s unpredictable, but no job is 100% secure these days anyway.

— Bruce Campbell

Ain’t that the truth.  And it perfecty dovetails with my personal experience: I ran my own company for years, and it was not always fun, and it was never easy, but I loved it.  I loved what I did, and I loved all the people I did it with,⁵ and I loved being able to set my own schedule, and I loved being able to say “no” to work if it offended my sensibilities, or if the customer skeeved me out, or whatever.  I loved being the conduit for other people coming to work every day and loving it.  I loved being in charge when I wanted to be and making other people be in charge when I didn’t.  And, even after I stopped running my own company and went to work for someone else, I still loved it.  I’ve had pretty decent luck picking great companies who respected me and trusted me and gave me freedom,⁶ and I tell computers what to do for a living, which I find to be creative and satisfying.  I love my job, and I think I’ve had success and happiness because of it.

But it also occurred to me to contrast the Bruce Campbell quote with another quote from another screen star—in this case, Mike Rowe, famously of Dirty Jobs.  And here’s what he had to say on this topic:

The idea that there’s a perfect job is really comforting ... but dangerous, in the same way that there’s a perfect soulmate. The guys I met on Dirty Jobs, and the women, by and large, were living proof that the first thing to do is to look around and see where everybody else is headed, and then go in the other direction. The second thing to do is embrace the thing that scares you, frightens you, or otherwise makes you blanch. The third thing to do is to become really really good at that thing. And then the final thing, the thing that makes really happy people happy, is to figure out a way to love it.

— Mike Rowe, Ask Me Another, 5/20/2016

Now, I have to tell you that, at first, I hated this quote.  It seems to be saying the exact opposite of what the Bruce Campbell quote was saying.  Instead of “follow your passion and turn that into your career,” it says “find a career that nobody else wants and then learn to love it.” That didn’t feel right to me ... at first.  But then I realized: it really is the same thing.  Either way you get there, you arrive at loving what you do.  In the end, does it really matter which route you took?

So I think this is the heart of the advice: love what you do.  Whether that means to take what you love and do it for a living, or whether it means to throw yourself into what you do so hard and so thoroughly that you come to love it, the point is that, when you love going to work every day, you’re a happier person.  When you dread it, it’s hard to be happy with everything else you have in life.  If your work makes you miserable, you’re going to be miserable, and also you’re going to make everyone around you miserable.  That’s no way to live.

But when you love what you do, every day is like a gift.  Oh, sure: you don’t always love every day—you don’t always love every gift you get either.  There will be bad days among the good, sure.  Days when you come home and you’re just tired, and you don’t want to think about anything.  But those are the exceptions.  Most days, you get to work and you see a bunch of people that you like (or at least ones that you don’t mind tolerating for the bulk of your day), and you sit down at your desk (or whatever workstation your job demands), and you do something fun.  And even when it’s frustrating, or it pisses you off, or it makes your brain hurt, it’s still fun anyway.  And one day you wake up and realize it’s been years, and that you’re still happy, and then you think about what it might have been like if you’d just done a job all those years for nothing but a paycheck, and you’re glad you didn’t have to find that out.

So, Chris Hardwick: that’s my piece of advice, the thing that inspires me, that I think would be useful for other people.  Love what you do.  It’s always worked for me.

Next in the series, I’ll essay Mayim Bialik’s “Rapid Fire.”

__________

1 Who has become a much more controversial figure since the last time I used this quote.  To the point where some may say I should not continue to use it.  Obviously I’ve decided to do so anyway.  Not because I’m a Cosby apologist—on the contrary, I’m quite disgusted by the whole situation—but rather because I don’t believe that the bad that people do erases the good.

2 For the record: I’ve decided my favorite curse word is “fucksticks.” But it’s a tough choice.

3 For an excellent breakdown of the possible origin and certain popularization of this quote, the excellent site Quote Investigator will hook you right up.

4 No, I won’t link you to it, as I didn’t the last time I mentioned his website in a footnote: see my open letter to Wil Wheaton.

5 I mean, of course I did: I hired ’em all.

6 Which you may recall is, according to me, the 3 things that employees want.

Blessed Be

Some two thousand and two squared squared years ago today, a bloke was born a bit outside of Jersalem who would go on to say some quite interesting and powerful things.  The general gist of his instruction had to do with peace and love and favoring kindness over power, which was quite radical at the time ... and, in many ways, is no less so now.  Today is, traditionally, the day that we are supposed to celebrate his life, and his death, and what it meant and continues to mean to quite a large portion of the world’s populace.

And, sure, maybe it wasn’t exactly today, and maybe it wasn’t exactly 2,016 years ago, and maybe he didn’t say exactly the words we have written down in our holy books, and maybe he really was a divine figure or maybe he was just a guy, and, hell: maybe he never lived at all and the whole thing is entirely made up—I certainly don’t fully subscribe to the religion carried forth in his name—but the weird thing is, whether you believe that everything in the Bible is exactly verbatim true or whether you believe that it’s all crap that feeds the zeal of religious nutjobs or whether you hold one of the many positions somewhere in between those two extremes, the one thing you can’t really ignore is the message.  Here are a few of the things that this fellow supposedly uttered:

Whoever wants to be first must be slave of all.

For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.

What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?

Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Give to everyone who begs from you; and of him who takes away your goods do not ask them again.

If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.

Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to cast a stone.

Judge not, that ye be not judged.

You have heard that it was said, “Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.”  But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.

So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.

Even if all this is completely fabricated and there never was a Jesus at all—even if the whole thing is 100% fiction—those are some poweful words right there.  Read through those things again, and really think about them.  Does this sound like the typical philosophy of the times round about two millenia ago? or does it sound revolutionary—practically subversive?  The entire story of Jesus is about a person who threatens those in power by teaching people that riches and authority are meaningless and the only way to get ahead in life is to be nice to each other.  No wonder they nailed him to a piece of wood.  Even today, people who preach messages like that are treated similarly: if they can’t be marginalized or demonized, they can always be persecuted and jailed.  We don’t literally crucify anyone any more, but we have our ways.

So this is still a resounding, powerful message, regardless of its source.  It sort of makes me feel like Jewish detective William Kinderman in William Peter Blatty’s Legion, who addresses a crucifix in a Catholic church thusly:

Who are you? God’s son?  No, you know I don’t believe that. ... I don’t know who you are, but you are Someone. ...  Do you know how I know? From what you said.  When I read, “Love your enemy,” I tingle ...  No one from the earth could ever say what you said.  No one could even make it up.  Who could imagine it?  The words knock you down.

I think we forget just how unlikely those words are.  Perhaps they’ve become dulled through repetition.  But they really are quite remarkable.  This is the main reason I love Legion so much: Kinderman—unassuming, Columbo-like, stereotypically Jewish—is the perfect character to remind us that, no, those words are not ordinary just because you’ve heard them a million times.  Love your enemy?  Think of the over two billion Christians in the world: how many can you name who are practicing that philosophy?  Personally, I got to Mother Teresa and Pope Francis and then I ran out.  (And, honestly, I’m not 100% sure about the latter.)  So, yeah: pretty heady stuff there.

So even if you don’t quite subscribe to all—or any—of the bells and whistles of Christianity, it’s worth taking a few moments today to ponder the words that underlie it all.  It’s worth thinking about the fact that, if you’re supposed to be loving your freaking enemies, you can damn well take some time to love your family, and your friends, and your coworkers, and just random people you see on the street.  Take some time to appreciate what you’ve got, and I’m betting that if you’re reading this blog you’ve got a lot.  Give some thanks for it.  You don’t have to direct those thanks to a divine being if that’s not your thing.  Just direct it to someone in your house, or send it out to the universe at large.  Can’t hurt.

From all of us here that make up this fractured, flawed, fantastic, fortunate family—all five humans, two dogs, three cats, one guinea pig, one bearded dragon, multiple fish, snails, shrimp, and an African dwarf frog named Jeff-O—we wish that everyone reading these words is as blessed as we seem to be, even when we can’t remember that we are.  Even if today is not your flavor of end-of-year celebration, we hope that you’re having (or have had, or will have had) a celebration of some kind, and that it was joyous, and loving, and that it lasted exactly as long as you needed it to.  And that it continues to warm you well into the future.

Ruminations of the Season

As we slip into the holiday season, it’s time to reflect on the year past, and look forward to the year approaching.  I could do that.  But my vision doesn’t quite extend that far, I’m afraid ... I’m looking forward to surviving the holidays, and that’s plenty forward enough, thank you very much.  Here’s some of the things (both good and bad) that I can look forward to as the holiday season begins to swallow us whole:

Multiplication of cardboard.  I love to recycle—really I do.  But recycling cardboard boxes is my least favorite part.  Because you have to break them down.  I mean, you don’t have to, in order to recycle them, but you have to, because otherwise they’ll never fit in the recycle bin.  And nobody in my house, other than me, breaks down the cardboard boxes.¹  Also, we do all of our Christmas shopping at Amazon.  So this time of year there are a lot of cardboard boxes.  In particular, I can count on a solid hour or two of nothing but breaking down cardboard boxes on Christmas day, or maybe the day after, if I’m lucky.  The kids get to come rushing into the room and tear everything apart and fling around the bits all willy-nilly, but who do you think has to clean that up?  Well, The Mother will do a lot of it, really.  But all the cardboard is headed my way.  Bah.  Humbug.

Tiresome repitition of the “war on Christmas” meme.  The holiday season is sure to bring out the crazy in the CCFs.²  In fact, it has already—one thing you can count on is that, if the Christmas season starts earlier and earlier every year, then so must the mythical “war.”  I refuse to link you to the idiot whining about the fact that Starbucks cups are red and green (’cause apparently that’s not “Christmasy” enough for this douchebag), but I’m sure you’ve seen it already.  I really can’t improve on my 2011 holiday rant, so just go read that.  Plus it contains my excellent Christmas music mix, Yuletidal Pools.  Bonus.

The cruelty of the advent calendar.  To a kid, an advent calendar is an excrutiatingly slow countdown to the most exciting day of the year.  Since I now have three such smaller humans—well, really two, because my eldest is now taller than I am—I’m currently being treated on a regular basis to pronouncements such as “There’s no way I can possibly wait another NINE WHOLE DAYS for Christmas!”  Yeah, well: welcome to reality.  Suck it up kid.

Eggnog.  There’s lots of things you can pretty much only buy at Christmas, but the only one I really love is eggnog.  I suppose I could make it myself, but there are some perfectly good ‘nogs out there—almost certainly better than I could ever produce—and it’s nice to be able to just bring it home and pour it in a glass and kick back and relax.  Eggnog is somehow keyed to the spirit of the season for me.  The smell alone is enough to put me in a Christmas mood.  (Also, if you’re putting out milk and cookies for Santa, you’re gipping the fat man.  Eggnog and cookies is the classy way to go.)

The inescapable madding crowds.  Even though we make every endeavor not to do any actual Christmas shopping at physical locations, you can’t really get out of all shopping.  There’s grocery shopping, for instance.  And even though you may just be there for ordinary weekly supplies, try telling that to the rest of the crazed holiday crowd.  No point in bothering, really.  It’s a bit like being at the amusement park: you square your shoulders, tuck your head down, and push on through.

Watching my diet go down the toilet.  As you may recall from my Saladosity series (specifically in part 3, my take on Whole30), I am not “on a diet”; rather, I’ve changed my diet.  As a general rule, I do pretty well at avoiding added sugars of all stripes, grains, and legumes, plus miscellaenous other bits and bobs (like fries and chips).  But the one-two punch of Thanksgiving followed by Christmas is pretty much guaranteed to crush my newly improved eating habits all to hell and back.³  Partially that’s because of seasonally available food like candy cane faux oreo’s and chocolate oranges; partially it’s because of family recipes that come sneaking out of the woodwork, like my grandmother’s pound cake, or her ginger snaps; partially it’s because Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve dinners are, by tradition, celebrations of abundance.  But the exact reason isn’t important.  The point is, there’s a few extra pounds coming my way.

Quiet family moments.  One of the advantages of moving nearly three thousand miles away from one’s parents is that you get to have quiet little holiday gatherings with just the immediate family: The Mother, myself, and the children: 3 humans, 2 dogs, 3 cats, 1 guinea pig, and various assorted fish, shrimp, and snails.  Intimate family meals, lazing around on the couch watching movies (or watching the kids play video games), sharing the excitement of gift discovery, snuggling with a child (human or feline), enjoying the warmth and glow.

Inevitable holiday sicknesses.  I think this must be the 4th or 5th year in a row that some or most of us have been sick for the holidays.  Perhaps it’s the change in the weather, which comes fairly late in the year to southern California.  Perhaps the universe just hates us.  But, whatever it is, some of us will be sniffling, and/or hacking, and/or barfing, this entire coming week.  We’ve already started, actually.

Lack of sleep.  It’s tough to get enough sleep any time, but this time of the year complicates matters even further.  There’s so much stuff to do, and Christmas Eve is full of preparation—try to get the kids to bed, frenzied preparation for Santa, requisite picture-taking, plus it seems like there’s always at least one massive thing to assemble—and Christmas Day has a tendency to start very early, typically with small children jumping on your head.  Is it any wonder that parents tend to drift off on the sofa in the middle of the afternoon for the next few days?⁴

Flashes of simple joy.  Kids love Christmas, no doubt.  But parents love it just as much, if they’re honest.  Because Christmas is one of those times when you get to see straight into your kids’ hearts, via their smiles and looks of wonder.  Every person has a face they wear—even young ones.  Kids are just not as likely to be so adamant about it ... they let their masks slip quite often, at first, and only learn to be more cautious as life throws more and more crap at them.  And of course, a lot of times even when the façade cracks, you don’t happen to be around.  But there are certain times when you can count on your children’s social camouflage to drop away and allow you see straight into their sense of awe at the world around them.  We have a tendency to call this “child-like,” as if it’s only something fit for children, something that you leave behind you when you become an adult.  Bullshit.  You lose it.  You have it stripped away from you, because life sucks, and it’s hard to be a grown-up, and having people depend on you and having to pay your rent and keep food in your belly and having to show up for work every day is arduous and exhausting and we just don’t have the time or the energy to be child-like any more.  But you always want to go back there.  You always want to—no, need to—be reminded of that time when you could delight in simple things, when your standards for being amazed were delightfully low, and you could be happy for hours or even days just because you got a lick from your puppy, or a hug from someone who loved you ... or the perfect gift on Christmas.  That’s why parents give their kids way too much crap on Christmas (or whatever holiday is appropriate for their culture): because you’re hoping against hope that one of those silly pieces of plastic and yarn and circuit boards and wood and metal and wires—just one!—will trigger that ephemeral reaction that transports you back to your own childhood and reminds you that life doesn’t have to be complicated.  It’s quite simple, really.  There’s family and play and being with the people you love, and then there’s the other shit.  And all that other shit doesn’t really matter, no matter how much it seems like it does.  It’s just a distraction from what’s actually important in life.  Christmas is particularly good at reminding us of that.  And that’s why we need it.

And, you know what?  If one of my kids ends up throwing out the toy and just spending all day playing with the box, I’ll take that.  As long as they’re happy.

__________

1 Well, usually.  To be fair, The Mother just broke down a few this weekend.  Which was much appreciated, to be sure.

2 “CCFs” means “crazy Christian fucks.”  These are the tiny minority that give the rest of the Christians a bad name by putting extremely tortured interpretations on Jesus’s message of peace and love.  (Personally, I blame Paul.  Honestly, he’s a bit of a prick.)

3 Helen Back ... heheh.  My surname is Mucus.

4 In retrospect, the lack of sleep probably has a lot to do with the inevitable holiday sicknesses ...

Obstreperousness as a Virtue

I am sometimes a giant pain in the ass at work.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not always a giant pain in the ass.  Often I’m quite pleasant.  Sometimes I’m even agreeable.  But occasionally I lock into stubborn mode and I won’t let go of a point of view, even when I’m hopelessly outnumbered.  When one is younger, one can look upon one’s obstinacy as persistence, can see refusal to compromise as being a bastion of integrity.  Of course, as one gets older, one realizes that they’re really both the same thing.  And, once you realize that every good quality you have is also a bad quality, sticking to them no matter what because they’re “the right thing to do” doesn’t fly any more.  You need better justifications than that.

Thus I keep examining my own motives in an attempt to figure what makes me tick, even though I know that’s doomed to failure.  In fact, on this very topic I’ve already waxed authorial not just once, but twice.  I’m not saying either of those posts are wrong now ... just that I continue to look for something more, even more to help explain my behavior.

The first time I concluded that I hate seeing people make what I think is a mistake, and that’s a part of it.  Maybe a smaller part than that post made it out to be, but it wasn’t a completely useless observation.

The second time I talked about my number one source of frustration in the corporate world.  That’s still relevant too; in fact, at work this week I trotted out that very same story to tell my coworkers.^*  But I still think there’s more to be teased out here.

After quite a bit of reflection, I’ve come up with this:  I figure if you’re going to hire someone like me—by which I mean someone with this much gray in their beard who is this much of a pain in the ass—then you do it for two reasons: you want my experience, and you want me to be vocal about it.  If you didn’t want my experience, you could hire someone younger.  And if you didn’t want me to be vocal about it, you could definitely hire someone who was a lot easier to put up with.

Hiring someone for their experience means hiring them for their mistakes.  As a popular quote tells us:

Learn from the mistakes of others.  You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself.^**

So, if you’ve hired me, and you’ve kept me around for a while, and you genuinely seem to value me, then I assume that you want the benefits of my mistakes, and you want me to let you know in no uncertain terms when you’re about to repeat one of them.  And to keep on letting you know if you continue to keep on trying to make that mistake.

Now, don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying you always have to agree with me.  In fact, I think it’d be pretty disastrous if everyone always agreed with me, or always agreed with anyone.  Difference of opinion, as I am fond of saying, is what makes the world go ‘round.  Which is to say, the world would be a pretty boring place if we all agreed on everything.  And how would we ever learn anything without other people challenging our assumptions?  No, if I’m saying that me disagreeing with you is a good thing (which is what I seem to be saying, if I’m saying that my pointing out that a plan of yours may be a mistake is valuable), then I have to accept that you disagreeing with me must be an equally good thing.  In the big picture, I mean.  On any given point, I’d really prefer you stop disagreeing with me and just do as I advise.  But, overall, I can accept that, some percentage of the time, you’re going to disagree with me, and, some percentage of the time, I’m going to lose that fight, and, overall, that’s good.  But I think there are different ways to disagree.

For instance, if I say “if you do this, things could go wrong” and you (“you” in this scenario are my boss, remember) say “yeah, they could, but the rewards outweigh the risks” ... well, that’s a tough argument to beat.  Maybe we can debate the value of the rewards a bit, or the seriousness of the risks, but in general if you know the dangers and you’re willing to risk them for whatever the upsides are, I can’t argue with that.  Business requires risk.  Opportunities have costs, and sometimes you just have to pay them.  You roll the dice, pray the worst never comes, but, if it does, you just deal with it.  Because it was worth it.  If you don’t take risks in business, you get left behind.  Rapidly.

On the other hand, if I say “if you do this, things could go wrong” and you say “nah, I don’t think they could,” or perhaps “well, they could—after all, anything could happen—but the chances are so low it’s not worth worrying about” ... if you say that, then I may just have to dig in.  Because what I’m telling you is, here’s a mistake I’ve already made.  I’m not talking about some theoretical consequence here: I know it can happen because it already happened to me.  I’ve lived through this, at least once (and, the older I get, the more likely it was more than once), and the resulting unpleasantness is burned into my memory, and I’d really prefer not to suffer through it again, thankyouverymuch.  This is why I also tend not to accept an answer of “yes, that could happen, but that’s okay; we’ll just deal with it.”^***  ‘Cause, trust me: if it was no big deal to “just deal with it,” I would not be doing my giant-pain-in-the-ass impression.

Now, let me stress that I’m not unhappy with the way the these sorts of debates are unfolding at my current job.  In fact, curiously, the fact that the discussions have been so reasonable has been the impetus for my meditation on why I get so stubborn.  In past jobs, the pain of beating my head against a brick wall has somewhat dulled my capacity for self-reflection.  In this job, I have some confidence that the folks who hired me can and will take my obstreperousness in the spirit in which it is intended.  Still, I think it’s worth exploring why I feel so passionate about some of these positions, and examining which circumstances trigger my response and why.  Even it’s only for myself.  Because I think that understanding ourselves is one of the hardest things to get right, but one of the most worthwhile endeavors we can undertake.

__________

* If they would just have the good grace to read this blog I keep telling people not to read, I wouldn’t have had to retell the story.  But one can’t have it all, I suppose.

** Like many quotes floating about the Internet, this is attributed to a bewildering multitude of people, including Martin Vanbee, Sam Levenson, Hyman Rickover, John Luther, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Groucho Marx.  Most of whom I have no idea who they are.

*** This was the favorite tactic of my previous boss.

Between the Lightning Bug and the Lightning

There is a German word that I’m quite fond of: Weltanschauung.  It means, roughly, “worldview,” although it’s both a little more specific and a little more general than that.  More specific in that, technically speaking, it is a term used in German philosophy with a very particular meaning.  But also more general in that we’ve somehow watered down the meaning of the word in English.  That is, “worldview” is a calque of Weltanschauung, so it really ought to mean the same thing.  But, after we borrowed the phrase, we started interpreting it literally (in English, that is), so that nowadays “worldview” often means (or is taken to mean) the way a person views the world.  But that’s actually too specific for what Weltanschauung means (or can mean, when used outside of its technical philosophical sense).  Weltanschauung, according to Wikipedia, “refers to the framework of ideas and beliefs forming a global description through which an individual, group or culture watches and interprets the world and interacts with it.”  That is, not just how you (one person) views the world (the physical planet you live on).  But how any person, or even an organization, or a nation, sees and interprets not only their physical surroundings, but also the social and emotional context in which they are living.

This is related to what I learned of as “the fishbowl effect.”  Nowadays, Google will tell you that the fishbowl effect is a feeling of constant scrutiny, experienced mainly by astronauts and reality TV stars.  Which does make a certain amount of sense, particularly if all you know about keeping tropical fish is those little bowls with goldfish in them that you win at the county fair.¹  Slightly less sense if you understand that keeping fish in a small enclosed area with no cover terrifies them so badly that it cuts their life expectancy by an order of magnitude.  But, anyway, my point is this: when I learned about “the fishbowl effect,” it meant something else entirely.  It was the idea that the fish in the fishbowl has no concept of what a “fishbowl” is.  To him, it’s just the world.  You need to be outside the fishbowl in order to comprehend that it is a bowl at all.  For me, “Weltanschauung” encompasses all the connotations of that: that your worldview not only frames your entire outlook, but also limits it in certain ways.

Similar to how it’s difficult for people to understand a concept that their native tongue lacks a word for.  Like how English doesn’t really have a word for “Weltanschauung.”

German has a few words that we don’t have in English, so we just stole them.  “Weltanschauung” is my favorite, but ”Zeitgeist” is also good, as is ”Schadenfreude.”²  These are great words, and remarkably useful.

The other day I came across an online article outlining ten more German words that there really ought to be English equivalents for.  Sort of like the German version of sniglets.  I find very many sniglets to be remarkably useful: I have a friend who’s afflicted with bovilexia, and how can you tell the story of the guy who invented bumperglints getting 10¢ for each one and therefore becoming a millionaire without the word “bumperglint”?³  And the number of times I’ve committed the act of carperpetuation at this point in my life is pretty ridiculous.  So I’m perfectly fine with coming up with new words to paper over cracks in our vocabulary.⁴  So much the better if they happen to already be real words, just in a different language ... right?

So this list of ten German words was pretty entertaining, in my view at least.  None of the ten are are as great as the big three I mentioned up at the top of this post, of course, but there were some keepers there: who hasn’t wanted a word to express the excess weight you’ve put on from emotional overeating (“Kummerspeck”), or, possibly even more useful, a word to describe the feeling of depression you get when you contemplate the world as it is compared to the world as it might be (“Weltschmerz”)?  Two of the words in particular stand out as pretty damned useful.

The first is “Fremdschämen,” which is defined herein as “the almost-horror you feel when you notice that somebody is oblivious to how embarrassing they truly are.”  This words rings a rather large bell with me.  For years now I’ve been experiencing this exact feeling without knowing what to call it.  Because of Fremdschämen, I can’t watch reality TV, or shows like Springer.  And there are entire avenues of comedy that are closed off to me: I can’t listen to the Jerky Boys or their ilk, I didn’t make it through even a single episode of The Office, I regularly have to fast-forward through Stephen Colbert’s “Better Know a District” series ... hell, I couldn’t even properly enjoy a recent rewatching of Fawlty Towers on Netflix because of constantly feeling embarrassed for Basil.  Also, fully half the comic ouevre of Ben Stiller.  Have you ever noticed that Ben Stiller comedies fall into two groups?  On the one hand, he does some great movies where he plays a wacky character, like Zoolander, or Tropic Thunder, or Mystery Men.  Then there’s the other half of his movies—such as There’s Something about Mary, Meet the Parents, and Along Came Polly—where the entire movie is about him doing stupid, embarrassing things, and we’re supposed to laugh at his misfortune.  I’m sorry, but I just can’t find amusement in the pain of others.⁵  So sue me.

The other great word here is “Torschlusspanik,” which the article defines as “the fear, usually as one gets older, that time is running out and important opportunities are slipping away.”  I live in an almost-constant state of Torschlusspanik.  There are many reasons for this.  Probably the biggest one is something I’ve alluded to before: as you get older, your ability to judge the passage time slows down, resulting in time appearing to go faster.⁶  And I’m pretty much right at that point in life where most men my age have already snapped and gone out and bought a motorcycle or a Porsche, or quit their job to pursue their lifelong dream of being a rock-n-roll drummer or performance artist.

But there are other reasons as well.  I’ve never been a very organized person.  My mother’s side of the family is populated with people who overplan everything, and I find it annoying.  Going on vacation with my grandparents on that side of the family was a nightmare of schedules, itineraries, and lists.  Aren’t vacations supposed to be relaxing?  How are you supposed to relax with all that rushing around trying to make your schedule?  So I never subscribed to all that organizational crap.  Which wasn’t a huge burden when I was younger, although I find that the older I get the more I regret never having put much stock in it.  I’ve tried various techniques for keeping track of my todo list(s), but so far I’m pretty terrible at it.  Which only exacerbates my feelings of Torschlusspanik.

There are lots of things I want to do.  Of course I have a family, including 3 lovely children, and I want to spend time with them.  I want to do my writing: not only my ongoing novel, but this blog of course, and my Other Blog.  I have a few CPAN modules that I’m responsible for, and other programming projects that I want to work on.  Then there’s my hobby, and my other hobby.  And my job takes up some time, which of course I don’t mind at all because I love my job, and there are holidays and birthdays and things to do around the house or things to fix on the car and all the ordinary little things we have to do just to keep on functioning in life.  So sometimes I feel like I’m being pulled in many different directions, all of them desireable, surely, but one still can’t do everything at once.  Sometimes I sit down at night, knowing I probably ought to be working on something, but unable to properly fixate on which something I ought to do first.

So I do my best to spread out my activities.  Being someone who puts so much faith in balance and paradox, I believe one should try to do as many different things as possible, and also sieze any opportunity to do several things at once (like playing Heroscape with my kids, or working on one of my CPAN modules for work).  And I try to fight through my feelings of Torschlusspanik so that I can still enjoy things like finding German words for concepts we don’t have in English.  Or deep philosophical ponderings.  Like wondering if euneeblics are really just trying to overcome their Weltschmerz.

1 Although, technically, goldfish aren’t tropical fish.  Probably you don’t care about that distinction.  But I mention it so that I can prove I know the difference in case I’m verbally attacked by aquarium nerds.

2 German nouns are always capitalized, in German.  There is some debate as to whether German loanwords should be capitalized in English.  You can see which side of the debate I come down on.

3 Fair warning: I’m pretty sure that story is an urban legend.  But still a good story.

4 Remember: “sniglet” itself is defined as “any word that doesn’t appear in the dictionary, but should.”

5 Hey, look: Schadenfreude!

6 I really ought to write a whole blog post on this.  I keep referring to it, but a longer exploration of this interesting scientific theory is probably in order.

A Reflection on Self-Contradiction

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. [Emerson]

No doubt you’ve heard this quote before, although some people seem to miss the “foolish” part.  Emerson isn’t bagging on consistency here.  What he’s talking about is dogma: getting stuck on an idea and refusing to let go, even in the face of contradictory evidence.  Perhaps it would help to look at the context of the quote:

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.  With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.  He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall.  Speak what you think today in hard words, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today.

‘Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.’ — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood?  Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh.  To be great is to be misunderstood.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson, from Self-Reliance (1841)

What Emerson is advising is to admit when you’re wrong.  To embrace change, even in your own mind, and to refuse to look back and second-guess yourself.  To be completely comfortable with contradicting yourself.

I especially love how he says that a foolish consistency is “adored by little statesmen.”  If you follow politics even casually (which is about all I can stand to follow it, myself), you know that if a politician today dares to change their mind, their opponents will leap on them instantaneously.  “Flip-flopper!” is the typical epithet.  Refusal to compromise one’s principles has become a virtue, although refusal to compromise should probably not be a virtue in politics no matter what exactly one is refusing to compromise.  But, if we look back to Emerson, we see that those who do not “flip-flop” are employing a foolish consistency, which then speaks volumes about the volume of their brainpower.

Of course, the smart guys aren’t typically the ones we elect.  Adlai Stevenson is a great example.  He’s famous for two things: being intelligent, articulate and erudite, and failing to get elected to the presidency despite trying 3 times in a row.  Stevenson once said to reporters:

Isn’t it conceivable to you that an intelligent person could harbor two opposing ideas in his mind?

Stevenson here goes a bit beyond Emerson, who talked about believing something today that was the opposite of what you believed yesterday.  Stevenson takes the next step and is perfectly willing to believe two opposite things at the same time.  For a Baladocian such as myself, this is an attractive proposition.

Of course, we needn’t limit ourselves to politicians—poets have weighed in as well.

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

— Walt Whitman, from Leaves of Grass, “Song of Myself” (51)

In just a few words, Whitman takes aim at why we contradict ourselves, and why it’s perfectly acceptable to do so.  The landscape of the human mind is vast, Whitman says.  Just as one vista may contain both mountains and canyons, both ocean and desert, so too does a person contain many ideas which are antithetical to each other.  This often leads us to feel conflicted.  We should not.  We should embrace the paradoxes in our nature.  Stephen Fry (who is neither a politician nor a poet, but easily as eloquent as either) puts it thus:

So we have first and foremost to grow up and recognise that to be human and to be adult means constantly to be in the grip of opposing emotions, to have daily to reconcile apparently conflicting tensions.  I want this, but need that.  I cherish this, but I adore its opposite too.  I’m maddened by this institution yet I prize it above all others.

— Stephen Fry, BAFTA speech, 2010

Oscar Wilde (once portrayed by Stephen Fry, perhaps not coincidentally) was, as usual, more succinct:

The well bred contradict other people.  The wise contradict themselves.

And now we’ve progressed from self-contradiction being acceptable, through it being something to embrace, and ended up with it being a sign of wisdom.  Sort of makes you want to start contradicting yourself right away.

Or maybe not.

At the bottom, I think all of these great speakers were saying something about the human condition.  Which is perhaps all that any writer—whether of essays, plays, poems, speeches, or merely witticisms—wants to do.  You can write things that sound pretty, but unless there is some Truth in it, it won’t have much lasting impact.  We all search for insight, both internally and externally, and the thing we most wish to be revealed is ourselves.  It’s difficult to understand ourselves from within ourselves, just as the classic fishbowl analogy teaches us.  Those folks outside the fishbowl have a much different perspective than those of us for whom 115.5 cubic inches of water are our entire world.  So we want those people who have the ability to express themselves with some flair to express something about ourselves that we can’t see from inside.

Of course, we also hate to be criticized, for other people to point out our flaws.  Yet I think we crave it at the same time.  Just another example of our inherent tendency toward self-contradiction.

I know personally that I hate to be wrong.  Sometimes I’m accused of hating to admit that I’m wrong.  But that’s not the same thing at all, and I don’t believe I have the latter problem.  To work hard not to be wrong—to attempt to forge the future in such a way as to be as good and right as you can manage—is admirable.  To refuse to admit you’re wrong—to deny the immutable past in which everyone already recognizes your folly—is just self-delusional.  So is it self-contradictory to work overtime to prevent the future mistake, while simultaneously being completely comfortable with those in the past?  Perhaps.  If so, I don’t particularly care.  I’ve been wrong many times in the past, and I know I’ll be wrong many more times in the future.  That doesn’t mean I have to accept it meekly.

Willingness to accept your mistakes is also part of being human.  To consult one last great orator:

I am human, and I make mistakes.  Therefore my commitment must be to truth and not to consistency.

— Gandhi

Mohandas K.Gandhi often changed his mind publicly.  An aide once asked him how he could so freely contradict this week what he had said just last week.  The great man replied that it was because this week he knew better.

— a Detroit News editorial

Indeed.  This week, I’m ever so much smarter than I was last week.  Last week I was a moron.  By next week, I shall be a genius.  I’ll be different, but I’ll still be me.  Misunderstood, multitudinous, opposing, conflicted, occasionally wise, always human.