virtualroot.com Ramblings of a mad scientist

Personal GrowthPosted by simon on July 31st, 2008

Those of you who read my blog probably understand that I enjoy learning about myself and the friends I have. I like hearing about their experiences as well as sharing my own. I find that the times I feel I grow the most is when I meet someone new who has differing perspectives from my own as well as the ability to communicate those perspectives adequately. I’m sure this sounds similar to my post on Relationships and it is because we really only get to see ourselves when we are viewed through someone else’s eyes.

I find thats why I am so selective with the people I spend my time with. Few will give a valuable glimpse of me. I hate to say it but many people don’t have the communication or analytical skills I value. It may sound selfish that I pick the people I spend my time with based on what they see in me, but what the hell else should I base these things on? No one wants to wander around with a bunch of chickenheads who have nothing to say and are only interested in their next drink or score. Sure they may make you feel like some kind of god among men and allow you to do whatever you want to their bodies…. wait a minute….. That does sound like an awful good time, but still not my cup o’ tea.

Anyway, No one wants a broken mirror, some people want the funny mirrors that make them look taller or shorter but I want to believe most people want the truth. Day in day out we get fed lies and bullshit and when you meet someone who is just going to tell you the brass tax of the situation odds are you will either freak out or enjoy a wonderful breath of fresh air.

With that I’ll say thanks to my friends who do give me the brass tax and who do share themselves with me. I’m quite sure life would be rather boring without all you kids and your crazy stories.

Wholesome LivingPosted by simon on July 29th, 2008

It has occurred to me after speaking with my cohort Kirsten that there is an underlying theme that I had been hitting on during my last post. I’d like to call the idea “Wholesome Living”. The idea that our life is not so much a bunch of separate pieces but a bunch of connected aspects. Then the idea that our society is not a conglomerate of a bunch of separate lives but a finely interwoven mesh that binds everyone to one another. One could then go and say that the mesh of our society is then bound to nature and all the decisions we make as a society effect the world we live in. You see where this is going. The idea of the separation from our decisions and our world beings to slip away and become one in the same at some point.

The thing that is hard about this concept is we obviously can’t see all the consequences of every one of our decisions. Some consequences build so slowly and over such a long period of time we won’t even notice until it is too late. Look at smoking, in the 1940’s and 50’s it was healthy to smoke. Looking at the results gathered years later we see it’s really not the greatest idea ever. But the consequences didn’t seem so bad at the time.

This just goes back to my point of being aware of your current situation and the decisions you make in it. Consider their immediate and possible long term consequences and accept them as your consequences. If you are ok with the trade off of drinking every night to help you relax then that’s fine, but don’t be surprised if your get liver cancer. Think of the people who will be effected by your decisions. Then consider, am I being fair to those who love me by doing this? Is my personal situation that much more important then the effects I will have on others situations? If it is a yes and you are willing to accept the consequences for your actions then, go for it.

I’m not asking for the world to change I’m asking for people to think about what they are doing and try to make intelligent decisions. I know I may as well be asking for aliens to come from outer space and make all the people who shouldn’t be allowed to breed sterile but… A guy has to hope.

Society’s Mental IllnessPosted by simon on July 28th, 2008

The society we take part in is one based on so many variables that is becoming nearly impossible to nail down a reason for how some people in our society act. Yesterday Tara and I visited the Phoenix Art Museum, and it was wonderful. For ten bucks each, we walked around for 3+ hours and got to see all kinds of good stuff. One of the “good stuffs” was an exhibit where on two opposite walls you had the trials of Joan of Arc (a silent film, narrated by chalk board) and on the other you had various interviews with women who were suffering from a variety of mental illnesses. The interviews provided an odd audio for the Trials of Joan of Arc.

It was a very interesting take on how society defines “Mental Illness” and how these people cope with trying to fit into society. Many of the interviewees would stick out like a sore thumb if you were to see them out in the wild. If they were in front of you at the supermarket odds are you would consider changing lines just because you aren’t quite sure what they are going to do next. Not that they would do anything that would cause you harm or something but still you would get a feeling that all the rules don’t apply to this person.

When I am greeted with these situations it is hard not to ask “What’s wrong with this person?” and “How did this person get like this?”. I feel I should really begin to consider “Why does this person’s behavior disturb me?” I’ve gotten to a point in life where I feel that at some point I will be considered “Mentally Disturbed”. If it’s not because I think the government can see me through my monitor then it will be because I’ve gotten so eccentric or old I’ll just be labeled “weird”. Then the following question will be “How will society handle me?” More then anything, that is what the presentation at the Art Museum drove home for me. Society’s way of dealing with those who don’t fit into society’s mold of a “Normal” person.

Read the rest of this entry »

My cubePosted by simon on July 22nd, 2008

Testing out this new wordpress app for the iPhone. So I figured I’d try to grab a pic of my cube and put it on the blog.

FreedomPosted by simon on July 22nd, 2008

So I’ve picked up another book on Buddhist Philosophy. I know I’m a sucker for the stuff like soccer moms are for tabloids. Oh and I did just finish the Omnivores Dilemma which is awesome but I’m not going to talk about how awesome right now. This book is called The Backdoor to Enlightenment. No, it’s not about how to get your girlfriend to try anal sex. It is however about how too look at your life in various view points and try to improve your understanding of yourself and those around you. Not only that, but it was written by the Tibetan Monk, Za Rinpoche, I periodically attend guided meditations with.

Needless to say the guy already had my respect which is something I don’t hand out to any religious yahoo. So, this book talks about all kinds of stuff I’m sure I’ll be writing about all over the place. The concept that I was enjoying today was….

I’m free to think and feel whatever I like.

I read this and was just like, why yes I am and how the hell did I ever begin to feel like I couldn’t? Then of course it goes on to explain how you begin to think you can’t. We have opinions, religions, teachers, bosses, parents, friends, family all inundating us with their thoughts and opinions. Sometimes this makes it hard to remember that…. I’m free to think and feel whatever I like.

To some of you, I’m sure it sounds dumb that I even have to be reminded of this, but I feel it just goes back to my blog about how we are so inundated with all these things we are told to do and think. We just simply, lose ourselves. That line between my ideas and my parent’s philosophy is so interwoven that I couldn’t honestly tell you where it exists.

So what do you do about it. We all obviously have all things steadfast steady pieces of ourselves that we believe makeup our steady conscious selves. We will happily take bad ideas and make them our core belief system. Just look at people who sign up for cults, or become any kind of fanatic. Society looks at them like they are nuts. But they are free to think what they like right? Where is that line where people are thinking for themselves and where they are being told what to think?

All I know is the more hard and steadfast things that I say I won’t EVER EVER in a million brazillion years do, I begin limiting how much I can freely think and that is an interesting concept. We begin to weight ourselves down with all of these ideas and philosophies and concepts that may offer us some more stability in our life, they also limit our ability to react to things. How do we balance these things? You got me, but becoming more aware is always the first step.

Hot Spot of ThoughtPosted by simon on July 22nd, 2008

As funny as it is I’ve found blogging to become my way of not only organizing my thoughts but solidifying them into something tangible. I’ve always been a bit of a writer and a philosopher. This blog has just turned into my playground to put both to work. It also allows me to look at many of the conversations I have from more then one perspective. I have the perspective at the instance of the conversation and again later when I review my day in detail and go over all the “lessons learned”. Obviously my perspective will be a bit different in review then it will be at the time of the occurrence because my context of the conversation has changed as I know have all the information readily available… Well at least what I remember.

So why talk about this? Because more and more I find myself pulling back during a conversation and drawing on what I’ll call “Hot Spots of Thought”. This “Spot” is where I could easily take the concept that has been mentioned in conversation and write about it. This of course then makes me take a few other steps back and look at the whole context of the conversation and see all these other “Hot Spots”. I find it happening more and more when people talk about personal experiences where they relate massive amounts of information in just a few sentences. For Example: If someone is talking about their feelings or relating one experience they had in which I have had a whole series of common experiences or feelings Or I have read about someone else’s experiences with these things.

More often then not I get to pick whatever common experience I deem is most appropriate for the conversation and move on. Though, the “Hot Spot” will burn in my mind until I analyze it enough to satiate my curiosity. Sometimes you have to ignore these points in a conversation as you don’t want to disrupt the flow. If someone’s working towards a massive point in a discussion or putting together an epic personal tale, it’s best to just let it slide and hope you can recall the points you would like to discuss at a later date.

I find this happens most when I am relating to new people and trying to understand their context and apply it to my own. I find it quite rewarding because these points in a conversation are often where new data can be provided to change someone’s point of view of an occurrence and maybe learn something new from something old. This is why I find the Art of Conversing as a very important skill/trait/characteristic. Especially if you can learn from whatever someone else has to say about an old experience. The whole reason we developed communication was so we could spread idea’s and learn from each other right? Don’t you find it odd when you meet a person who just talks at you and doesn’t communicate with you? When a conversation begins to go one sided where either I’m all of a sudden giving a lecture or someone else has hijacked the conversation to inform us all about how totally awesome they are, I have to take a step back and look at everyone’s body language to see if this should continue or there is about to be a lynching.

Body Language is also one of those important tell tale signs of how a conversation is going. Most people don’t pay attention to it. I know at work people will begin talking to me about some idea that I find almost Disgusting (Yah, it has become an evolutionary trait when I hear something so utterly stupid I find it Disgusting) I will unconsciously begin shaking my head and break eye contact. If some asshole did that to mean I would stop mid-sentence and ask if I caused a stroke. But these people will continue right on happy to talk until I interrupt them or they finish with their brain dump.

After reading all of this I’m sure you just want to punch me in the face and say… Hot Spot of Thought it’s just an “Idea, Opinion, Concept, Philosophy”. Yep, it’s all of those but it’s my damned blog and I wanted to write about a Hot Spot of Thought. And look at that, you actually read it and hopefully you are now the better for it. =)

ExpectationPosted by simon on July 20th, 2008

As you can tell I’ve spent the last 18 hours wrapped up in a long train of tedious thought. With that I began analyzing why I have a feeling of Longing. It appears to me that I have developed an Expectation that I shouldn’t be alone right now. It is only in this moment of “Right Now” that one is capable of experiencing any form of Expectation. If I were to have an Expectation that I should be rich beyond my wildest dreams “Right Now” of course I will not be happy. I’ll be so focused on the difference between my “Right Now” state and my Expectation state that I’m going to have a hard time being happy no matter what.

So how should people deal with this Expectations that don’t seem all that unreasonable, yet they are totally unattainable “Right Now”? I’ve come to this many times in my train of thought and it’s only through managing your Expectations that we will be able to keep the “Right Now” centered. If we let our Expectations run wild we are bound to meet unhappiness.

The difficulty in all this is being able to take a step back from our thoughts and feelings that are controlling our “Right Now” experiences and realize what it is we are doing to ourselves. Perfecting this ability to step back at any and every moment is something I would like to be able to achieve. Imagine being able to step back from every moment where Disappointment, Anger, Frustration, Sadness, Longing and every other emotion we suffer from. If everyone could do this and rebalanced their “Right Now”, there would be a whole lot of psychologists out of work and a whole lot of drug companies working on something other then the next Anti-Depressant.

On a side note:
Happy Birthday Mom.

LongingPosted by simon on July 19th, 2008

As many of my friends know, I’ve been on a long cycle of Solitude. Solitude is a state of isolation from people. My solitude has been a chosen isolation from intimate relationships. At some point during college around, 20, I decided that intimate relationships require a whole lot of energy I don’t have to spare. Now, mind you, I would feel prangs of Longing during these time periods and I may even step out of my Solitude for brief instances to check to see if I wanted to commit myself to an intimate relationship. Over the last 6 years I’ve only encountered a handful of females I would have an interest in. And more often then not I never left my state of solitude. I did however experiment with my thoughts and feelings to see how they reflected. It was like a progress check on my development. I ended up developing wonderfully professionally and spiritually but it seems I may have missed something.

During this time period I realized that the advice my mother gave me during college is quite valuable. She told me that “When you are dating someone it is important to make sure their timing in life lines up with yours”. In essence they are looking for they same things in life you are, meaning you share a common developmental thread and are working towards similar goals. More often than not when I sample these waters I am trying to ascertain this other person’s goals and verify that their time in life is similar to mine.

My findings have not been positive. For a very long time I found that most females seldom considered the same things I did in life. Now as I am a ripe old 26 I find more females maturing to the point where they are actually thinking instead of running around with a pack of other seemingly hormone driven half-wits. Now I’m sure it is just a maturity thing. I was once told by a co-worker that I was 20 going on 55. I should have read that as more of a warning then I did at the time, I took it as a complement and continued working.

So what is a guy to do? Lower standers to the point where I deal with someone I can only talk to about things I find interesting in that social experiment kind of way, just so I can have someone to hold now and again? I mean more often then not I find myself sitting down to watch TV (which I do maybe once a week…) and having an intense desire to just have someone to hold. I’ve never had emotions like this before in my life and I find them very confusing and almost annoying. I feel rather helpless to them and rather then just put myself into some form of an emotional coma I just cope.

Is this why people get into relationships just so they don’t have to deal with these kind of crazy emotions? Instead they get to deal with a whole other plethora of issues they never resolved on their own? I can’t imagine how females deal with this stuff as they have more hormonal changes in a month then I have in the last 6 years.

It kind of feels like some hard exterior is being dissolved from the inside out and I don’t think I appreciate it. I kind of feel like I skipped some step as I was growing up and now I am being painfully taught a lesson.

The thought that keeps going through my mind is one of Buddah’s teachings. As a matter of purity he tells his monks to avoid women as “There is no stronger bonding for men than women”. To get through my schooling and focus on work I seemed to avoid this bonding as often as I could by investing as much energy as I possibly could into work and school. More and more as I am finding free to climb, read and write I am finding it all too obvious that I feel I am missing something.

I suppose all I can do is wait and see what the universe has in store for me. Apparently I may not have been as receptive to it’s invitations for me as it may have liked?

Feelings as Evolutionary TraitsPosted by simon on July 19th, 2008

As I’ve been reading the Omnivores Dilemma by Michael Pollen A very significant point was brought up in the book and it got me thinking. The point was that the feeling of “Disgust” was an evolutionary trait designed to prevent us from eating toxic and ill fated remains.
A quote from Steven Pinker

Disgust is intuitive Microbiology

This reminded me that everything we are composed of was based on an evolutionary necessity at some point in our biological history. I find myself forgetting these facts all too often in my day to day life and it is seldom brought to the forefront of my thought. Why else would a species feel Lonesome? Could you imagine how our species would have ended up without the feeling of Lonesomeness? It will either drive a person mad, force them to be social or turn them into a pariah.

The funny thing is when marketing/government/religion gets a hold of these feelings and plays against them. Jealousy, Desire, Loneliness, Beauty, Happiness, Fear all heavily effect our daily lives. Imagine if for one day you weren’t inundated with countless advertisements, warnings, images of societies vision of the “perfect you”? How would your subconscious change? Would we actually be able to see beyond the world that TV, News Agencies, Marketing Firms and the Government saturate our minds with?

I kind of feel like I can understand many peoples’ neuroses now. They must just be sensitive to all the crap that surrounds them. Try to imagine yourself living as a Native American in 1300 AD. I don’t think I can, the peacefulness, beauty and reaffirmation of the self would be too much for me. To be concerned with only survival, sex and possibly some form of communal social standing. It seems like an image from a dream.

I think I’m beginning to understand more and more why it is I want to just run from society and retire to a mountain where none of these things are here to influence me. We have been raised in a society where it is almost impossible to tell where our feelings for certain things originate from. People’s feelings of “Disgust” have changed from “intuitive Microbiology” to a fashion sense…. How does that make any sense? Has our world gone completely mad?

Whatever happened to the feelings of the next evolutionary step for humankind being the purification of Virtues? When did it become an evolutionary trait to be able to navigate a mall and find the best deal, or dress in the latest fashions? Has Man’s “proper function” fallen so far from the Greek ideals?

I think that is what scares me the most about the development of man in today’s day and age, it seems to me that five Greek Virtues (Wisdom, Moderation/Temperance, Bravery, Justice, Piety) seem to be lacking so much. It is no wonder Rome was able to have 100 years of peaceful glory underneath their Five Good Emperors. It saddens me to see how often our political leaders and company leaders don’t exemplify these men. We as a society often chalk up any imperfections to “Being Human” and have become almost immune to the most immoral acts. There was a time and place in our history where we rose up against a monarchy because we being taxed without representation (amongst various other reasons no doubt). Yet now we don’t so much as flinch when our government declares war on a whole nation based on falsified information and irate Fear?

Some day’s it makes me sad to be part of the human race. Especially when I read things like Walden and really want to just say, “peace out if you need me I’ll be in the mountains”. But then how good of a person would I be if I were to just run away from all of these things. Who am I to hold some form of moral compass up to others and expect them to listen to my words. I’m not doing anything to change the society I live in so who am I to bitch about the direction of our race. If I’m not going to change myself what right do I have to complain……

So maybe it’s time for some change. Maybe I’ll go nuts and buy only clothing made from cotton grown in Arizona and assembled here. Maybe I’ll only shop at farmers markets where all the food is naturally grown here as well. Maybe I’ll begin watching my words even more and never say a negative thing about another person as long as I life. Maybe I’ll bike to work everyday and sell my car and save on the insurance.

The only reason we don’t live like the Native Americans did is because we have become accustomed to convenience. We love all of our gadgets and technology because it gives us so much extra free time. They allow us to communicate with each other round the clock saying whatever things we want to whomever we want. Go back 200 years and tell me how easy it was to let people know you were being married or had your first child or were deathly sick and would love to see them before you die. What have the costs to society been to afford these luxuries?

Negative Feedback LoopPosted by simon on July 16th, 2008

It has taken me awhile to figure this concept out but it is one I find self explanatory after I realized what was going on. I’m sure that your mother always told you “If you don’t have something nice to say, then say nothing at all”. Well it is good advice, because all the negative comments we make about others reflects rather poorly on us.

Say you have a friend who tries out a sushi joint and tells you it is horrible and the help was wretched and the food was just no good. So this taints your opinion and you spread it to others because you trust your friend and you want to make sure your friends don’t have a bad dining experience. It makes sense. Well what your friend didn’t tell you is that he was drunk and he couldn’t tell good sushi from bad sushi if is life depended on it, so you should probably take his advice with a grain of salt.

This principle applies to people as well. Say you and a friend have a common acquaintance. Maybe your friend spends a great deal of time with this acquaintance and decides that they are not a great person and shouldn’t be bothered with on any level. What do you do? Do you take your friends advice or do you find out for yourself?

Is it possible that some people have very rigid expectations that are not going to match up with yours? Should we always second guess everything that we hear? Maybe our perspectives are askew or our emotions are influencing our judgment?

The next time you are going to say something negative, ponder this, “Will whoever hears this understand the context I am being negative in? Will everyone see this as a negative?” Maybe you are better off just letting things slide along, that way the next time someone has something negative to say about you, maybe they will just let it slide along.

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.
Plato (427 BC – 347 BC)