I read the following on a Facebook update a few days ago: “Often I feel like I'm living thus: I can't wait until ______ happens/is over because then I can be happy. It's like I'm wishing my life away. Anyone else ever experience this? I'm guessing that contentment is lacking. Or, more pointedly, a life lived to love God and others versus a life lived for my personal fulfillment. Thoughts?”
I don’t relate to this experience, as the sentiment is grossly illogical, but this is not the first time this Facebook friend has posted something I found flaw in, as is evidenced by the fact that I am now barred from commenting on his posts.
There is not much chance of finding happiness when focusing on what you don’t have or don’t want to have. Many seem obsessed with preconceived notions about the way life should unfold or with creating false dependencies ("I can't live without..."), and unless those assumptions are fulfilled they refuse to be happy. To me, these are an almost surefire way to set yourself up for displeasure. Some expect, or rather demand, everything to be perfect all the time. These spoiled brats will never be satisfied. Being able to un-ironically smile through unexpected and unplanned circumstances requires flexibility.
One of my favorite documentaries is Hands on a Hard Body (1997), about a competition in Texas between contestants vying to see who can keep one hand on a truck while standing for the longest. It contains an interesting perspective and a few insights on life, perhaps the best being, “I figured it would eventually get to a point to where everything would quit getting worse and just stay bad, you know, but it just keeps on going downhill.” I love this idea that sometimes, like a baseball team on a down year, just staying bad is the best thing we can hope for.
It seems many expect that at some point the stars will align and happiness will suddenly appear to them like the culmination of some sort of successful spell. If happiness were to materialize, what form would it take? The answer, of course, is to be found at the Lagavulin Scotch whisky distillery on the isle of Islay in Scotland. But would a lifetime supply of 16 Year Lagavulin really bring happiness? I don’t know, but if someone is willing to fund such an experiment, I am willing to give it a try.
I don’t trust anyone who pretends to be happy all the time. These people are inevitably afraid of facing deep meanings or realities, preferring an existence of superficial fantasy. I currently live in a place that, aside from great disc golf courses, one good Thai restaurant, my brother, my girlfriend and nearby friends, is pretty much awful. However, when I complain about Iowa, the knee-jerk response from some is, "If you don't like it, move!" Really? I mean, it does have great disc golf courses, one good Thai restaurant, my brother, my girlfriend and nearby friends after all. Honestly, I can't think of a place that has more than that to offer. Pointing out flaws in a thing does not automatically make one sad and depressed. Recognizing ways in which things can improve is a much different perspective than wallowing in how bad things are. No matter what Disney wants us to believe, we don’t have total control over our own destiny. Sometimes you have to, as my mom would say, “be happy with what you have.”
I don’t quite understand the difference between happiness and contentment, other than the degree of giddiness involved. I think it’s obvious that laughter, being a sort of temporary onset of delirium, does not equate to happiness. Some situations avail no solution other than laughter. It is unwise to take some things too seriously. I often find myself requiring a conscious decision to not be irritated by things that aren’t at all important. (It is frankly ridiculous how easily I am irritated, and usually try, with questionable success, to keep that quelled, reminding myself that it is the height of immaturity for anyone to make another suffer because of trite, irrational intolerances.) Any degree of satisfaction is temporal, and therefore less valuable than the likes of empathy and integrity.
I have lived with those who suffer from depression, and that seems like a bitch of a disease. My degree is in psychology, and diagnosed depression is something psychologists have gladly turned over to psychiatrists. Do some drugs.
There are a few people who deserve to be miserable. I would love to pen a work entitled Andrew’s Inferno. In my book, there is nobody worse than an exploitive person. This selfish and self-absorbed type is either heartless or tends to assume others have magical abilities to endure hardships more than they can. They are recognizable by phrases such as, "You have to ____ because I'm too ____," often followed by, “Can’t you do anything right?”
The happiest times in my life have come not by intention, but rather have been an unexpected result of simply removing myself from unhappy situations. Feelings of futility, helplessness and contempt all breed unhappiness. In my experience, happiness is equal parts confidence and luck. Anyone who doesn’t believe in providence isn’t paying attention. For example, I've had the great fortune of possessing mental and physical health, a loving and supportive family and growing up in a country where white males have more opportunities and advantages than everyone else- things I really had no say in or control over.
Happiness has its risks. Those we love most have the greatest power of causing us pain. Refusing to endure unhappiness requires more faith and courage than most people have. Hence the Thoreau line, “The vast majority of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” Some will never be happy simply because they're too scared to try.
The impetus for this post implies two things that stand in opposition to his happiness: God and others. He would likely object to this assertion, and I admit I didn’t see it upon my first reading, thinking instead he had randomly added some obligatory religious nonsense. But the dichotomy he creates in stating, “a life lived to love God and others versus a life lived for my personal fulfillment,” is glaring, because from my point of view, personal fulfillment comes in part as a result of living for others and my (lack of) belief in (any) god. I don’t have to make a choice; it is all part of the same thing.
I’ve been told by straight-faced Christians that it is impossible for non-Christians to experience happiness. When pressed with evidence to the contrary, they will eventually declare that happiness on earth does not exist for anyone. They preach that a life of suffering will be rewarded after death, while giving no evidence to support that claim. Jesus himself is portrayed as an utterly dreary bore who got people excited by telling them they could quit their jobs. For the most part, Christians are made to feel guilty for having fun. As life has so much wonderment and joy to offer, I feel this is truly a disservice.
Religion tends to prey on the less fortunate, and offers a community where one can agree to shed their individuality, and all associated freedoms and responsibilities, in trade for a sense of belonging and purpose. Religion appeals to those who dislike ambiguity or distrust their own decision-making skills. In a monotheism that thinks everyone should think and feel the exact same way, it is expected that they would egocentrically believe all others inhabit these traits. But then, they’ve probably never tried Lagavulin Scotch.
Humans are undeniably social beings, and our well-being is almost always connected to the success we are having interacting with others, or another. We are therefore compelled to surround ourselves with like-minded people. After all, misery loves company. It is utterly pathetic, however, to insist upon surrounding yourself with others willing to constantly whisper sweet nothings in your ear. I mean, Alex Rodriquez needs to call Pete Rose to remind him how awesome he is? What a loser. Even worse would be an omnipotent being creating creatures in hopes that they would worship and obey him.
I reject on principle the saying, “Ignorance is bliss.” Besides being a phrase that tends to be used by people talking about somebody else, my own dumb decisions is precisely what has usually led to times of despair. The most accurate summary of the original Facebook update seems to be: I’m miserable, but that must be what God wants, because he’s surrounded me with miserable circumstances and people, although I don’t understand why. My money is on him never being happy, in part because he is too stubborn to ever admit a mistake, but I sincerely hope otherwise.
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Saturday, May 19, 2012
Appreciating Sports
As soccer is easily the most intense and exciting sport I have ever watched, it dumfounds me that most Americans think it’s boring. Further, they prefer a sport in which a bunch of guys in body armor spend more time utilizing time-outs, period breaks, clock stoppages, unlimited substitutions, huddles and replays then actually doing anything. But as much as I’d like to write an essay on why Association Football is better than American Football, the more interesting issue for me is why such preferences exist.
The main reason why people don’t like sports in general is because they themselves lack athleticism. However, since watching sports doesn’t require any athletic ability whatsoever, this reasoning is absurd. Sports contain among the most concrete examples of human achievements. Architects, painters and chefs can all demonstrate undeniably exceptional ability, but none of these directly pit man against man in the same time and place with established rules to decisively declare who is better. Sports can confirm or deflate with equal unpredictability. Even when the results are contentious, there is a winner and a loser. Comparatively, prose is complete bullshit.
Watching a sport without knowing the rules is akin to reading a book in a language you don’t understand- there’s no way of discerning what is going on. Even a seemingly simple thing like how and when the game ends might be complicated for the uninitiated, but is all-important in grasping what’s occurring. An in-depth knowledge of the rules will allow a more full comprehension of the game’s intricacies, and yield greater appreciation. I think most learn rules by watching a sport with someone who can explain it to you, which is a style of learning many adults are reluctant to engage in. Based on the coaches I had growing up, I wouldn’t assume having played a sport means you know the rules. They mostly spout jargon and expect you to know what they’re talking about. (I still vividly remember a rare occasion of getting on base in fourth grade Little League and shortly thereafter hearing the coach yelling, “Tag up! Tag up!” from the dugout with absolutely no idea what he was wanting me to do.)
All sports use a fair amount of jargon, which makes any game mysterious to one not indoctrinated. Jargon often doesn’t translate between sports, which causes frustrating confusions. When an American Football fan hears a soccer fan declare, “Nice tackle!” he thinks, no it wasn’t! and when he discovers a tackle in soccer isn’t what he thinks it is (it’s an enforceable technique for kicking the ball), his knee-jerk reaction is to think, that’s stupid.
I am predilected to prefer sports with efficiently eludicated rules. (Although I don’t follow NASCAR, I appreciate the simplicity of its premise.) There is something beautiful in being able to pull off one specifically difficult task and also in performing various juxtaposed activities. Sport rules typically figure out ways of exploiting human limitations, such as kicking while running or only punching above the belt. As a viewer, this requires an appreciation for the degree of challenge involved in successfully accomplishing an athletic feat. Most who would look upon even the more simple of actions required in sport and declare, “I could do that!” have never tried.
Obviously, the actual skills required differ from sport to sport. Usually there is some kind of built-in mechanism which tests to the max things such as speed, endurance, agility, strength, focus, instinct and coordination. The skill and determination trained athletes possess are an awe-inspiring thing that one can’t fully appreciate without having seen them perform live (and I’m not referring to showing up on cheap drink night, chatting with your friends and getting wasted). It is frighteningly easy to forget that athletes are still human. I can only imagine what it must be like to have 10,000+ people screaming at you to catch a ball or whatever, when that is obviously what you’re trying your best to do. Athletes are not created from a mold. Each player has unique abilities, weaknesses, ideas and fears that influence his game. Anyone who has dedicated the time to get to know a player, watching him mature and/or deteriorate, has probably seen humanity at its best and worse.
Given human limits on physical prowess, strategy employment becomes the overriding factor between winning and losing. Understanding strategy demands a more sophisticated knowledge of the subtleties within the structure of a sport. A player must study his opponent, find his weakness and determine how to exploit them before going about accomplishing that task. In defense, the opponent strives to discern how he is being exploited and strives the close the holes. It is hard to contextualize the outcome of a game without watching it as it unfolds.
In any competition, the outcome is only important to anyone who cares who wins. Being a neutral spectator is nothing like being a fanatic. Even events of a sport one enjoys become dull if you aren’t cheering for a winner. Team loyalty can span generations, uniting or dividing families. In some countries, sports clubs can have political ties. You can’t really take anything a sports fan says seriously, because their opinion is absolutely biased. While having a bias is best avoided in judicial matters, there is no substitute for wanting and hoping for your team to win. Fans are undoubtedly the most obnoxious thing about sports, but there is a part of human nature that compels us to take sides and unite behind a common goal which sports allow us to indulge. The thing that saves us from sports fanatics is that sporting events take place within a clearly defined arena. No sport can function without an out-of-bounds. The brilliance of sports is no matter how seriously it’s taken, in the end it’s “just a game,” and when the game is over, everybody goes home, hopefully looking forward to the rematch.
One could argue that sports are the greatest way there is of settling a dispute. This reads as ostentatious, but certainly sport is preferable to war. For example, the Biblical Elisha conceived a simple way of turning religion into a sport. I propose that the world’s religious leaders get together once each year at rotating sacred sites throughout the world and build bonfires. Then their respective religious fanatics can congregate and cheer, jeer, pray or whatever, and the first religion to get their god to light their bonfire, say before sunset, wins. The winner can get- and then smash- a golden calf or something. Throughout the year, local churches, synagogues, mosques, etc. can hold little competitions on town squares. Atheist referees can prevent attempts of cheating. Agnostics can root for whoever seems to be in the lead. What objection could any religious zealot have against this opportunity to demonstrate their god’s power?
The main reason why people don’t like sports in general is because they themselves lack athleticism. However, since watching sports doesn’t require any athletic ability whatsoever, this reasoning is absurd. Sports contain among the most concrete examples of human achievements. Architects, painters and chefs can all demonstrate undeniably exceptional ability, but none of these directly pit man against man in the same time and place with established rules to decisively declare who is better. Sports can confirm or deflate with equal unpredictability. Even when the results are contentious, there is a winner and a loser. Comparatively, prose is complete bullshit.
Watching a sport without knowing the rules is akin to reading a book in a language you don’t understand- there’s no way of discerning what is going on. Even a seemingly simple thing like how and when the game ends might be complicated for the uninitiated, but is all-important in grasping what’s occurring. An in-depth knowledge of the rules will allow a more full comprehension of the game’s intricacies, and yield greater appreciation. I think most learn rules by watching a sport with someone who can explain it to you, which is a style of learning many adults are reluctant to engage in. Based on the coaches I had growing up, I wouldn’t assume having played a sport means you know the rules. They mostly spout jargon and expect you to know what they’re talking about. (I still vividly remember a rare occasion of getting on base in fourth grade Little League and shortly thereafter hearing the coach yelling, “Tag up! Tag up!” from the dugout with absolutely no idea what he was wanting me to do.)
All sports use a fair amount of jargon, which makes any game mysterious to one not indoctrinated. Jargon often doesn’t translate between sports, which causes frustrating confusions. When an American Football fan hears a soccer fan declare, “Nice tackle!” he thinks, no it wasn’t! and when he discovers a tackle in soccer isn’t what he thinks it is (it’s an enforceable technique for kicking the ball), his knee-jerk reaction is to think, that’s stupid.
I am predilected to prefer sports with efficiently eludicated rules. (Although I don’t follow NASCAR, I appreciate the simplicity of its premise.) There is something beautiful in being able to pull off one specifically difficult task and also in performing various juxtaposed activities. Sport rules typically figure out ways of exploiting human limitations, such as kicking while running or only punching above the belt. As a viewer, this requires an appreciation for the degree of challenge involved in successfully accomplishing an athletic feat. Most who would look upon even the more simple of actions required in sport and declare, “I could do that!” have never tried.
Obviously, the actual skills required differ from sport to sport. Usually there is some kind of built-in mechanism which tests to the max things such as speed, endurance, agility, strength, focus, instinct and coordination. The skill and determination trained athletes possess are an awe-inspiring thing that one can’t fully appreciate without having seen them perform live (and I’m not referring to showing up on cheap drink night, chatting with your friends and getting wasted). It is frighteningly easy to forget that athletes are still human. I can only imagine what it must be like to have 10,000+ people screaming at you to catch a ball or whatever, when that is obviously what you’re trying your best to do. Athletes are not created from a mold. Each player has unique abilities, weaknesses, ideas and fears that influence his game. Anyone who has dedicated the time to get to know a player, watching him mature and/or deteriorate, has probably seen humanity at its best and worse.
Given human limits on physical prowess, strategy employment becomes the overriding factor between winning and losing. Understanding strategy demands a more sophisticated knowledge of the subtleties within the structure of a sport. A player must study his opponent, find his weakness and determine how to exploit them before going about accomplishing that task. In defense, the opponent strives to discern how he is being exploited and strives the close the holes. It is hard to contextualize the outcome of a game without watching it as it unfolds.
In any competition, the outcome is only important to anyone who cares who wins. Being a neutral spectator is nothing like being a fanatic. Even events of a sport one enjoys become dull if you aren’t cheering for a winner. Team loyalty can span generations, uniting or dividing families. In some countries, sports clubs can have political ties. You can’t really take anything a sports fan says seriously, because their opinion is absolutely biased. While having a bias is best avoided in judicial matters, there is no substitute for wanting and hoping for your team to win. Fans are undoubtedly the most obnoxious thing about sports, but there is a part of human nature that compels us to take sides and unite behind a common goal which sports allow us to indulge. The thing that saves us from sports fanatics is that sporting events take place within a clearly defined arena. No sport can function without an out-of-bounds. The brilliance of sports is no matter how seriously it’s taken, in the end it’s “just a game,” and when the game is over, everybody goes home, hopefully looking forward to the rematch.
One could argue that sports are the greatest way there is of settling a dispute. This reads as ostentatious, but certainly sport is preferable to war. For example, the Biblical Elisha conceived a simple way of turning religion into a sport. I propose that the world’s religious leaders get together once each year at rotating sacred sites throughout the world and build bonfires. Then their respective religious fanatics can congregate and cheer, jeer, pray or whatever, and the first religion to get their god to light their bonfire, say before sunset, wins. The winner can get- and then smash- a golden calf or something. Throughout the year, local churches, synagogues, mosques, etc. can hold little competitions on town squares. Atheist referees can prevent attempts of cheating. Agnostics can root for whoever seems to be in the lead. What objection could any religious zealot have against this opportunity to demonstrate their god’s power?
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
Human Week
Monday, May 14, 2012
Bricks
My first real exposure to writing came in sixth grade. Sure, I’d learned to draw letters, spell words and construct sentences long before, but it wasn’t until a group of us started a student newsletter that I realized the potential of writing to inform and entertain strangers.
Our elementary school divided classes into reading groups according to different levels of competency. There were eighteen kids in my class and three reading groups. I was in the advanced group, and by the end of fifth grade we had already completed the entire curriculum. To give us something to do, our sixth grade teacher, Mrs. Bleam, assigned our group to compose our own newsletter.
I wasn’t the smartest kid in my class- Jim Condon was. And he wanted to be a journalist when he grew up. I had no idea what a journalist was but figured it must be something important. He was named the editor of our newsletter, which I also assumed must be something important.
We were allowed to construct our newsletter in an empty office area that had belonged to the creepy elementary school principal until his position was dissolved, apparently because he did nothing except extol Dr. J and distribute jelly beans, calling them “happy pills.”
I volunteered to do the movie review and comic sections of the newsletter- in other words, the best parts. I cleverly titled the movie review section “Fiskell & Sezbert” and gave my opinions about the informational films we watched in class. (In those days, we got to watch actual films projected onto a screen that pulled down over the chalkboard. Jim ran the film projector.)
Jim reviewed our work before press-time. For the first issue, I had drawn a cartoon, but it was suggested that it wasn’t very good. At that time, I was obsessed with Marvel comics, and they inspired me to want to be able to draw. Our art teacher felt that it was more important for me to understand that I had no artistic ability whatsoever. Both Jim and JJ could draw, and every once in awhile JJ would give me a drawing of a Marvel hero, which I jealously cherished at the time and still own to this day. I nagged JJ for help with my cartoon, and he explained to me some basic principles of perspective. I wondered where he had acquired this information. I dropped the cartoon and instead contributed zingy one-liners cribbed from a joke book.
Much to my confusion, it was not the jokes others found funny but my movie reviews. In explanation, I learned of the word “candid” with an attempt to contextualize by using the television show Candid Camera, which I had never seen. Apparently, if you simply express your observations without being self-conscious, others will perceive that as humorous.
We printed and proudly distributed two or three issues of our newsletter before the other teachers complained that our entire class should be involved, but it seemed implicitly obvious there was no way to coordinate the logistics of doing so. We soon realized their objection was that we were working on it unsupervised, which was precisely the best part about it. I had relished the ability to explore and experiment with this project, rather than the usual regurgitation of information, which I found tedious. Why ask us for the answers when they already had a book containing all of them? I didn’t understand why we needed to be constantly lorded over, and suspected the sole function of adults was to prevent us from discovering anything they didn’t already know.
The newsletter was scrapped. I don’t remember what our reading group did instead. I spent the school days surreptitiously reading Marvel comics hidden under my desk and the evenings reading an entire compilation containing every Sherlock Holmes mystery except (I would discover years later) those containing references to cocaine. Later that year, I won an Easter art contest by drawing a rabbit with a red cape flying across the sky with bipedal rabbits below looking up, pointing and saying, “It’s a bird!” and, “It’s a plane!” On the far right, a little bunny trailing his mother while holding her hand said, “Look mom, it’s Superbunny!” Looking instead at the edge of the paper, the mother drolly replied, “Yes dear, hop along now.” The art teacher, who had not been a judge, made sure to remark that my picture had obviously won more for the humor than the artwork.
I have never won another contest of any sort in my life. I wouldn’t learn a useful thing from a teacher until college.
Our elementary school divided classes into reading groups according to different levels of competency. There were eighteen kids in my class and three reading groups. I was in the advanced group, and by the end of fifth grade we had already completed the entire curriculum. To give us something to do, our sixth grade teacher, Mrs. Bleam, assigned our group to compose our own newsletter.
I wasn’t the smartest kid in my class- Jim Condon was. And he wanted to be a journalist when he grew up. I had no idea what a journalist was but figured it must be something important. He was named the editor of our newsletter, which I also assumed must be something important.
We were allowed to construct our newsletter in an empty office area that had belonged to the creepy elementary school principal until his position was dissolved, apparently because he did nothing except extol Dr. J and distribute jelly beans, calling them “happy pills.”
I volunteered to do the movie review and comic sections of the newsletter- in other words, the best parts. I cleverly titled the movie review section “Fiskell & Sezbert” and gave my opinions about the informational films we watched in class. (In those days, we got to watch actual films projected onto a screen that pulled down over the chalkboard. Jim ran the film projector.)
Jim reviewed our work before press-time. For the first issue, I had drawn a cartoon, but it was suggested that it wasn’t very good. At that time, I was obsessed with Marvel comics, and they inspired me to want to be able to draw. Our art teacher felt that it was more important for me to understand that I had no artistic ability whatsoever. Both Jim and JJ could draw, and every once in awhile JJ would give me a drawing of a Marvel hero, which I jealously cherished at the time and still own to this day. I nagged JJ for help with my cartoon, and he explained to me some basic principles of perspective. I wondered where he had acquired this information. I dropped the cartoon and instead contributed zingy one-liners cribbed from a joke book.
Much to my confusion, it was not the jokes others found funny but my movie reviews. In explanation, I learned of the word “candid” with an attempt to contextualize by using the television show Candid Camera, which I had never seen. Apparently, if you simply express your observations without being self-conscious, others will perceive that as humorous.
We printed and proudly distributed two or three issues of our newsletter before the other teachers complained that our entire class should be involved, but it seemed implicitly obvious there was no way to coordinate the logistics of doing so. We soon realized their objection was that we were working on it unsupervised, which was precisely the best part about it. I had relished the ability to explore and experiment with this project, rather than the usual regurgitation of information, which I found tedious. Why ask us for the answers when they already had a book containing all of them? I didn’t understand why we needed to be constantly lorded over, and suspected the sole function of adults was to prevent us from discovering anything they didn’t already know.
The newsletter was scrapped. I don’t remember what our reading group did instead. I spent the school days surreptitiously reading Marvel comics hidden under my desk and the evenings reading an entire compilation containing every Sherlock Holmes mystery except (I would discover years later) those containing references to cocaine. Later that year, I won an Easter art contest by drawing a rabbit with a red cape flying across the sky with bipedal rabbits below looking up, pointing and saying, “It’s a bird!” and, “It’s a plane!” On the far right, a little bunny trailing his mother while holding her hand said, “Look mom, it’s Superbunny!” Looking instead at the edge of the paper, the mother drolly replied, “Yes dear, hop along now.” The art teacher, who had not been a judge, made sure to remark that my picture had obviously won more for the humor than the artwork.
I have never won another contest of any sort in my life. I wouldn’t learn a useful thing from a teacher until college.
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
Mr. Fjelly-belly
During our last week of high school, the principal gathered a group of seniors together for a meeting. We scrunched around a table in Burdett Christiansen’s classroom. (As there were three teachers with that same last name at our school, we informally called this one Burdett.) The principal, who we all called Mr. Fjelly-belly behind his back, stated that the purpose for this meeting was to get feedback from us as to how we thought our scholastic experience might be better improved. Having for the most part deplored the experience, I had a few ideas. Probably because we were in his room, I started out by suggesting, “Two of our required courses and one popular elective are all taught by Burdett Christiansen, and all he does in all three is repeat the exact same anecdotes.”
Perturbed, Mr. Fjelly-belly responded, “Okay, let’s just stop right there. Mentioning specific teacher’s names puts me in an awkward position. Let’s try to limit this to things that can be done in general.” I thought I had done something wrong, and felt both guilty and stupid. I remained silent for the remainder of the discussion, even while he explained the decision to build a second gymnasium instead of an auditorium.
In the ensuing years, I have often been puzzled by strong reactions to elicited answers. My stance is, don’t ask the question if you don’t want the answer. My working hypothesis for an explanation is that what people are doing in these situations is seeking agreement, validation and praise. I don’t really see the use of such things; they don’t provide means to improve and you can’t eat them. I rarely trust anything positive anyone has to say about anything. Frankly, compliments piss me off, because they imply the deliverer assumes I need one.
People are obsessed with affirmation. Most can’t make two consecutive statements that go unacknowledged, even when no response is necessary, without worrying whether they are being ignored. We can be saying the most trivial remark known to man and still become disoriented without an “amen.” Odds are high that anything you have to say isn’t worth the effort, but kudos to you for making the attempt. (Does that make you feel better, you fucking pansy?)
Humans are wired with an innate fear of inferiority. This is what compels us to improve. I see no reason to hide from it behind a veil of unwarranted applause. As there is no difference between the two, even warranted praise is meaningless. It is up to each to decide for himself whether he tried his best, because in the end that’s the best we can do. I guess that’s the point I’m trying to make- in the end we must judge our actions for ourselves, without forgetting that we exist in a world with others.
Probably praise-seekers realize their incompetence to a degree, and are testing to determine whether others have picked up on it. Who cares? Unless we’re talking quantum mechanics, existence does not depend upon perception.
I honestly prefer criticism. Little is more useful than discovering and accepting ways to progress. While most will gladly be complimentary but dishonest, only manipulative egoists or twisted humorists will be deceitfully critical. These former assholes are best avoided, although even their insults can contain an element of truth.
Realizing something I can improve on is a good thing- I enjoy working at perfecting a task. In fact, that is what I most like to do for fun. I don’t like making mistakes, but I don’t mind apologizing when I do. I don’t understand the resistance to do so many seem to have, as if admitting mistakes is some kind of weakness. I also don’t care about being perfect; I don’t know what that term means anyway.
Perturbed, Mr. Fjelly-belly responded, “Okay, let’s just stop right there. Mentioning specific teacher’s names puts me in an awkward position. Let’s try to limit this to things that can be done in general.” I thought I had done something wrong, and felt both guilty and stupid. I remained silent for the remainder of the discussion, even while he explained the decision to build a second gymnasium instead of an auditorium.
In the ensuing years, I have often been puzzled by strong reactions to elicited answers. My stance is, don’t ask the question if you don’t want the answer. My working hypothesis for an explanation is that what people are doing in these situations is seeking agreement, validation and praise. I don’t really see the use of such things; they don’t provide means to improve and you can’t eat them. I rarely trust anything positive anyone has to say about anything. Frankly, compliments piss me off, because they imply the deliverer assumes I need one.
People are obsessed with affirmation. Most can’t make two consecutive statements that go unacknowledged, even when no response is necessary, without worrying whether they are being ignored. We can be saying the most trivial remark known to man and still become disoriented without an “amen.” Odds are high that anything you have to say isn’t worth the effort, but kudos to you for making the attempt. (Does that make you feel better, you fucking pansy?)
Humans are wired with an innate fear of inferiority. This is what compels us to improve. I see no reason to hide from it behind a veil of unwarranted applause. As there is no difference between the two, even warranted praise is meaningless. It is up to each to decide for himself whether he tried his best, because in the end that’s the best we can do. I guess that’s the point I’m trying to make- in the end we must judge our actions for ourselves, without forgetting that we exist in a world with others.
Probably praise-seekers realize their incompetence to a degree, and are testing to determine whether others have picked up on it. Who cares? Unless we’re talking quantum mechanics, existence does not depend upon perception.
I honestly prefer criticism. Little is more useful than discovering and accepting ways to progress. While most will gladly be complimentary but dishonest, only manipulative egoists or twisted humorists will be deceitfully critical. These former assholes are best avoided, although even their insults can contain an element of truth.
Realizing something I can improve on is a good thing- I enjoy working at perfecting a task. In fact, that is what I most like to do for fun. I don’t like making mistakes, but I don’t mind apologizing when I do. I don’t understand the resistance to do so many seem to have, as if admitting mistakes is some kind of weakness. I also don’t care about being perfect; I don’t know what that term means anyway.
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