A Chair That Sits Too Low

When left to my own devices, I think that "odd" is well. Floating, flying as a fluttering feather, but my mind doesn't seem to mind. Inside out and upside down, everything is in it's place, but out of place it seems. Ceiling, then glass, blurred post, cloth barrier that confines me to open spaces. I wait.

I grumble, and pull my eyes as high as they'll go. The machine preempts the man in the blue shirt. "I'm on vacation." Like radio words filtering through, they slide by me like a stream. Distraction. On task, again. Yet, nothing is on task, really. Can it be? I question. Everything at first, but then realize that's absurd. I let go. It feels good, even if it's too soon.


Oh well.

Caribbean Dreams

The ocean blue
It brings me to life
I smile
I dream

The Online Community

Or, why Vengance.net?


Though I am sure the historical tracing of my choice of the online alias “Vengance” would surely captivate and inspire you all, that’s not what I’m talking about today. Today, I am talking about why I ever chose a “nick” in the first place, or the role of online representation in our community, and the “Online Community” that is being formed.

The idea of and participation in the community is essential to all human endeavors. Science, art, and philosophy are not excused from communal participation, as they might believe they are. Every action we take effects our community, and the fact that this should change the way we live our lives (though has yet to do so in the modern world) is an entirely different essay (against modern superstition.) The car we choose to drive, the career we choose to follow, and the person we choose to marry effects much more than just our personal lives. Even the food we choose to eat has communal repercussions. So the question of the day is, how does an online presence effect the community we live in, and is there a separate community that solely exists in the neither worlds of the Internet.

Online interaction within a small community speeds up and, more importantly, broadens the interaction between and within citizens and “governors” (those that establish, dictate, and uphold the rules of the community along with the common voice of the people.) Now people with valid concerns have easy access to information and answers about those concerns, and an easy way (if the city government utilizes the potential of online expression) to voice an opinion or stance. People are becoming better educating in an increasingly large number of fields. The net becomes a true forum, making it easy for all to participate in community decisions.

However, if fully relying on the written word to convey a message, the personality of a problem or discussion is lost, and face-to-face information is never picked up on or seen.

But is the impersonal written word incompetent of stirring the emotions needed to get or keep things moving, or real action being taken? Does an online conversation really have the power to change governing principles, laws, ideas, and procedures?

I think the open source community might quickly jump in and say “yes!” They have created a small democracy of people that have nothing in common, not even locale, other than their dedication to certain principles, which they hold of very high value. The majority of their communication, if not all of it, is online; yet, they are able make decisions about protocol, procedure, distribution and rights, and carry out plans and actions that really make a difference.

It is difficult, if at al possible, to be a member of more than one community. Usually the limitations are created by physical boundaries, but modern communications have removed those boundaries.

The important fact, however, is that while it is easy for the member of a local community to join an online community, it is impossible for that same person to leave behind all local communities and exist only online. He may succeed in not participating actively in the local community, but non-participation breeds ignorance and apathy towards local situations, and thus has a very real effect on the local community.

The questions yet remains, then, wither a person should establish an online identity separate from his real-life identity in order to not lose his connection to the local community, or if the person should represent themselves online as their normal identity only, thus never falling trap to being lost to an alternate identity.

I believe the validity and reality of online communities are unquestionable. What is yet undetermined is the effect they have local communities

Experiential Communication, Hypocritical Rhetoric

There are things that are experienced in life,
And then there are things that can be written.
They are not equivalent, and they cannot be,
For the holistic journey of life cannot be scribed,
In it completeness, as mundane abstract symbols

Which, made to reflect life, can never resonate
As the swirling motions of the senses combined,
Like a syncopated whirlpool of emotion,
Surging and climbing, which embeds the soul
Into an ethereal world of beautiful contradictions
Which speak wonderment to the mind.

That is where ink fails and imagination succeeds
That is the uncaptureable essence of the infinite opportunity
Guiding to the creation of the unknown
Which is beyond transmittance through lingual capacities
And can only be created anew in another
By the sharing and giving of experience
Unto the understanding of truth.

That is the message, which is impossible to describe.

And human inadequacies will always prevail;
Where full, thick life is lived
Only in being can there be understanding
Only in being, and not the written, can there be life

[Inspired by Yoko Kanno - Sora's Folktale, from the Escaflowne Movie]

Life is a Miracle

Current Music: Bush – Mouth (remix)

“What should I do?”

“Shoot for the stars.”

“What if I miss?”

“Just taking the shot makes your extraordinary”

“What if I’d rather be normal?

“Then you’ll never achieve anything.”

“But what does it mean to achieve?”

“It means you do something worthwhile.”

“Is being normal not worthwhile?”


Every day we are in a battle. This battle is between the demands of our time. I have been told that the best thing to do with my life is to be something extraordinary, the best at something, and if I just put my mind it, I will achieve. I have the power.

I think I sincerely believe that, at least I have in the past. I wanted to be revolutionary. I wanted to change the minds of millions. I wanted to create the movement that would storm across the world.

But now I am left to ask, and I cannot help but see it this way, where would my enjoyment be in doing so? Would it be the same as living a sedentary life? Or more to the point “is being normal not worthwhile?”

The farmer has his place. We all know this, but if a bright, young, gifted university student said he wanted to go a farm and life a normal life, what would we say? I argue we, the society, would say “then make sure you are the best darn farmer out there.”

But what if he’d rather just be a normal farmer?

What we have forgotten altogether is that there is life outside of the profession. The more I enter the professional level of my career, the more I realize sometimes I’d rather give up for more time at home, more time with my family, and more time really living life.

What do I mean by living life? I mean experiencing, not droning in the same tasks every day, yet still enjoying the simple, basic, natural things.

Imagine.

A warm tomato plucked from your own garden. Savor it in your mouth.

A cool breeze kicking around leaves, at the mountain’s point, while you watch the sun set. Feel it. Breath it.

Live it.

Why should we live our lives?

Life is a Miracle.

(Or maybe life is just a big inside joke.)

[A big thanks to Brady Wiggins for the inside joke reference, which is, in itself, an inside joke.]

Floating Monks and the French

So today in my Clinical Psychology class, my teacher comes in and we start the discussion right away. He sits up on his table. Throughout the class period he nests himself more and more firmly on top of the table, until he is sitting cross-legged completely on top of the table. I kept seeing him in my mind, floating above the class mates as he spouted off a few fleeting words of wisdom here, and a haiku there. We spent the entire two and half hours talking about Victor Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning." It was quite illuminating.

He tells of his sufferings in the concentration camps, and the sufferings of many others there. The main theme of his book how different people chose to deal with suffering. He says the real measure of a man is how he handles, thinks about, and endures unavoidable suffering.

His handling of freedom and choice is what intrigues me. Many religious mental illness-equals-sin extremists have interpreted him to be saying that if a person lives well, and does what is right, they will be happy. Frankl tells about how he gained meaning and life even in the depths of the horror that is a concentration camp. Read it again folks, he gained meaning, not happiness. Sure he had an optimistic outlook compared to many other prisoners, but when you listen to him tell his story, it’s clear it was misery. He was miserable, everyone was miserable. What was fascinating to him was how simple things like a crumb of bread or tiny bit of help from the typically cruel capos were very impressive, kind, generous, even righteous, when compared to the general attitudes and situations the camp.

He never says you will be happy if you put your values above all else, he says your life will have meaning. Ultimately, that is the most important thing in this life. You can see he is not your typical existentialist, yet his is existential because he believes truth, healing, and understanding come from the living of our lives, not the analyzing of them.

So with a background established about the nature of mental illness (such as depression or addiction) that perhaps there is more to becoming healthy (and being happy) than simply choosing to do so, what does one say to those people who have snide remarks like “Just be happy! You choose your life, just do it!?” I asked the floating monk in my mind (my teacher in real life) just this questions, with some psychological jargon/mumbo-jumbo every few words to make sure no one realized I was actually asking a practical question that had to do with my own life. The answer was something like this.

“Well, why don’t you just choose to be in France right now!? Go ahead.” Someone can’t choose to be in France any more than they can choose to be happy. Does that mean we are all lost and doomed to whatever linear causal-fate chain has brought us to this point? No, we really can change our lives by choosing to do so, but when someone is clinically ill, it’s more like making a voyage to France than just “turning yourself around.” It takes preparation, it takes effort, sometimes money, and more than anything, it takes time.

Now, I don’t want to undermine the power of our will, but we must realize our freedom and agency do not mean we are all-powerful – choice is bound by context. Ever played a tabletop Role Playing Game? Believe it or not, we can learn by a simple example from this pinnacle of geekdom. You have the choice to try anything you want, but once you try to jump off that cliff and fly away, you’ll realize you don’t really have the choice to fly. If you had wings, if you had a flying carpet, if you had a hang-glider, sure, but that’s just what I mean by limited by our context. I can choose to be in France all the time, when I’m in France.

I’m hungry, anyone want to come to McDonald’s and get some Freedom Fries? Or is that out of fashion already?

Societal Molding at its Finest

Hilarious Doctor Yamawaki tells the class that so-and-so postulated that religious of this world are more susceptible to mental illness, and the more devout to their religion they were, the more susceptible they would be. “What do you think about that?” she says in her broken Engrish. Now, before I proceed, I have to point out that virtually the entire class is religious people. What follows is a 20-minute “here’s why” of students giving definitive reasons for the results of his studies. I have to give them credit, they were quite creative at debunking the reasons behind this finding. While the research originally postulated Neurosis as being the cause behind people believing religion, the students said things like “it’s less acceptable for someone in a religious society like ours to be mentally ill or depressed so it is more stressful to them, and the people with even the slightest hint of this seek help” and “When we don’t live according to our standards it’s harder to deal with because of our beliefs, and we find ourselves living higher standards than many of peers, which also makes it more difficult and stressful” and all sorts of other clever answers. Most of them, of course, were right, to a certain extent. The teacher even mentioned how Utah is the most educated state in the nation, so it’s likely that they will turn to psychologists for help rather than booze, like many do.

But after TWENTY MINUTES of explaining that the religiously minded really are more susceptible to mental illness due to cultural factors, the truth came out. This guy’s theory was debunked shortly after it was released, with many more correlative studies showing that the religious really don’t have any more mental illnesses, nor did they show up as more susceptible on any measure taken by religious and non-religious professors alike. The entire class was convinced at the simple one-liner mentioning of study that maybe religious people are crazier than “the rest of us.” Not one of them was willing to say “I don’t think that’s true.” How sad!

Though, even I was duped by this same phenomenon. I was a research subject for extra credit, they had me take a long survey about my thoughts about what was effective to being healthy. Then they weigh me, measure me, and have me read three research articles about what really is effective to lose weight. Afterwards, I take what is basically the exact same survey hidden under the guise of different wording. Little did I know that the research articles were fake, and sure enough, my answers about what keeps someone healthy were different from before and after reading the articles. Were my twenty one years of experience really trumped by a few measly fake articles?

I wish I knew where I was going, but I don’t. The moral of the story is this, I suppose. Don’t believe those online surveys you all love, it might ruin your life. The next time someone quotes a statistic, inform them that you have chosen to not be easily persuaded by such simple methods (stupid Jedi thinks his mind tricks work on me!) Most importantly, however, don’t ever believe anything that has a nicely re-capped moral to the, story ready for you to digest – they are probably trying to trick you into being molded in their own view of what society should be like.