For most of my life, when I was presented with anything fearful or unpleasant, I would usually just stare it down. Things only really were hurtful or negative on the first pass, but not so much on the second thought, the third remembrance... and after a while, it would be nothing at all. I hadn't read Dune at that point, but I recognized one of the mantras in it later in life when I did read it. “I will let the fear path through me, and in the end only I will remain...” Yes. All fears were worth facing then, and I felt confident in taking them down.
At some point in my adult life this strategy began to fail me. About a year ago, I found fears that could not be faced down. I found problems that upon analysis, bore no resolution.... philosophically, emotionally... I was changing. I always considered myself, and have been considered strong to fault. I became weak in a lot of ways upon finding these limits. I became restless... distractable, emotional... at odds in general. For the first time in my life, which from what I understand should have been very stressful up until that point, I set up a door in my mind to bar me from thinking about things I found too painful to remember. It wasn't one of the things that were supposed to break me... those things I overcame. It was something far more simple... And it was something that by coming to Ithaca, I thought I could finally overcome.
Sorry for the generality... but anyone could really read this.
It's amazing how adrenaline works. I've been told that if people are primed to experience general arousal in one way or another, they can interpret their emotions in vastly different ways. The urge to fight and flight are often intertwined and shifting, especially if you add any further shades of love, betrayal... whatever nuances we might give names too. They are all similar: just excitement which we interpret from the context. Something between never wanting to look away and never wanting to look back. I've always cherished that feeling, especially when it is nuanced and intricate. I suppose we all do. Good stories are filled with ups and down... conflict and pent up desires. We get very bored when we know how to feel... when everything clicks together and what is right is also what we want. That's when stories end, when we paste on “The End” and have no desire to continue thinking about what happens next or living in such a post-script. To continue a thought, to continue feeling content in a new chapter of life, we need a new conflict, and new intricacies... otherwise we just can't live with ourselves.
Jesse, I assume you know what I mean when I tell you you are right.
My friend Doug advised me to face my fears... and never let anything to do with fear be a factor in any of my decisions. If it wasn't for the fact that Ithaca remained so alluringly dark and challenging to me, it would be an easy, logical choice for me to go to grad school here. The advisor is perfect, the program is a challenging, but good fit for me... and if wasn't for a little bit of drama I can't get out of my head, I'd probably be much more up to the task.
So I tried to face my fears. I faced them with strength, with... love even. They didn't budge, but I found myself giving way. I found myself wearing down little by little. At some point in the not so distant past, I surrendered. I retreated. I did all I could. I fought it. I changed strategies and faced off again. I fought passively and defensively... and in the end, when nothing else would work, I threw in the last ditch efforts, and turned to run away. There's less confusion now between fight and flight... I did my best, and flight won over fight. So now what?
The sad thing is, I have no where to go... it's hard to satisfy the physiological need for retreat when I have such little power to change anything. I can change myself, and I do... but that does not solve these particular issues no matter how I rearrange my mind. It's my surroundings, the things outside of me, connected to me... that needs to change. If I could pack up and change my physical location, the need would be met. I suppose I could do that, but I don't want to sacrifice my career... at least it's not to the stage yet. I know I'm in the right place, and I'm waiting for something... just waiting for something to change. In reality, I can really do is run around in circles inside my head wishing for things to be different. It just leads to emo bullshit really. I really don't have time to be moody or stagnant, and I hate finding myself that way.
For a moment last week, walking down the gorge trail with a friend, I found a moment of aesthetic rapture. It was a rare moment for me these days, because I used to live between many such moments. I find a lot of pretty little sights down the gorge on walks to and from school quite frequently, but this was one pointed out to me, and because it had been passed over once, it was all the more beautiful. That's just how passed-over things work.
“Stand right here”
And so I did. And everything about that moment was truly beautiful. The water, the setting sun. The wind... and the person downstream. I wanted to hold onto it all forever, to stop in that moment, never reaching the bottom of that trail... But if I slowed, if I stopped... the reality I envisioned could not be thus manipulated. All I could do was keep walking, and hope that such moments of inspiration would come again. Serenity can never be captured...
A documentary on the Dalai Lama I just watched recently talked against this feeling I just described. Nothing is immortal. No desire should be immortal. All beautiful things are on loan to us, and by seeking to capture them we only cause ourselves pain. The Tibetan monks work for weeks on beautiful sand mandalas, and upon completion, release the colored sand into the rivers. I would make a horrible monk. Aside from the boobs even... There is much in my life that is constantly shifting, but other things which of whisper eternal and real desire. Thus far these things have only met up with the likes of all that is temporary. It's kinda lonely like that. I feel very out of place among my own kind when I think of these things... like a different sub-species, or a teenager.
I walk home a lot telling myself my time would be spent logically and diligently, and faced down the clusterfuck in my head. Generally speaking, the clusterfuck usually wins. I find myself without inspiration, and I tell myself I will wake up and feel different. I don't, so I tell myself I will get to my office and feel different... When I find myself wasting time staring at papers rearranging themselves into more emotionally salient topics, I tell myself I just need to walk home to feel different... I never am... I'm trapped, and I'm just running with no where to go.
Saturday, November 24, 2007
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Walking Away From Olemas
There's a story by Ursula Leguin called "The Ones who walk away from Olemas":
http://www.miafarrow.org/omelas.html
The story outlines her thoughts based on this study by William James:
Or if the hypothesis were offered us of a world in which Messer's. Fourier's and Bellamy's and Morris's utopias should all be outdone, and millions kept permanently happy on the one simple condition that a certain lost soul on the far‑off edge of things should lead a life of lonely torture, what except a specifical and independent sort of emotion can it be which would make us immediately feel, even though an impulse arose within us to clutch at the happiness so offered, how hideous a thing would be its enjoyment when deliberately accepted as the fruit of such a bargain?
I've reread this story a couple of times lately. I read it first in high school.... and it really hit home with me. It described a Utopian society that somehow maintains it's perfection through the suffering of a neglected and abused child, who suffers on everyone's behalf. People are raised knowing about the child, and at some point they see the child, get moody for a couple days and get over this, finding the suffering worth the price of the their society. And a few walk away from Olemas knowing nothing about the world outside of it, but knowing exactly where they are going. The story could be interpreted on a dig on Christianity, or other sacrifice-based ideologies.
In light of my values when I first read the story, I wanted to rewrite the story so the child is engaged in this willingly, that she/he would be sort of a Dalai Lama of volutary suffering: chosen in some ritual in which this kid was isolated as a god, not just a kid. The super-human aspects of the child would somehow make this society ok, as the child-god would know what he/she was doing in agreeing to this arrangement. I worked on a story based on one of the people walking away from Olemas. (Which is crazy since the Olemas writing is already based on someone else's writing). The main character would be mentored by the mother of the child who's given up caring on the whole deal and thought about walking away herself. The main chatacter walks away from the society before learning about the truth of the child, and both the child and the girl leave the society in the end.
I don't think like something like that now, I was just trying to justify the moral implications of the story and essentially Christianize it. I like the ideas of voluntary simplicity and personal sacrifice, but the idea of one's torture or death leading to heavenly bliss does not seem like a fair deal... i don't find it very beautiful. Jesus may well have been deified by the later generations of his followers in much the same way that I wanted to write that story: to justify an inhumane trade at the heart of his teachings. Whether Jesus was God or just a special man was the heart of the major disagreement that brought the first religious leaders together to agree on a canon of religious texts. They voted, and majority won.
I miss the passion of having some kind of a faith, the certainty and the coincidences and the signs that don't seem to happen anymore. But there is no spiritual system that seems to fully embrace the ethics I've collected, and I'm not about to make one up or adopt one. I embraced one in the past because it introduced itself to me directly, but nowadays I'm not as sure how to interpret that introduction.
So here's what I do believe in:
Simplicity - walking gently and humbly regardless of how smart or badass one actually is (or not smart and not badass). Not being a huge comsumer of the world around me, demanding simple things out of life, and negatively affecting life around me as little as possible (that's part of the reason I don't eat meat anymore).
Service - Seeing people as people, nothing better or worse. Doing good and being genuinely (not superficially) nice to "enemies", and strangers as well as friends, and trying not to be a burden to other people.
Anonomous good deeds - good deeds are best unplanned and unadvertised. When people have nice things happen to them that has no name or strings attached, they are more apt to enjoy it without wondering if they owe anything in return, and are more likely to pay it forward since they can't pay it back. I also think that people should always do good for good's sake and have that be the motivating factor. Doing good works for credit, whether a belief that God rewards them or society will reward them... is not the right motivations.
Evolutionary, but not selfish thinking - The story of evolution has become more artistically and philosophically fulfilling to me than religious explanations, even apart from the whole truth aspects for it. There are parts where I think the stories are pretty much the same, and I like those parallels. I think society can benefit from an evolutionary mindset by allowing us to see ourselves as both one of many species, as a unique species with special obligations to not fuck up the world. Science can slowly shed light on what makes us human, but it never tells us what to do with itI don't like it when evolution is used as a justification to care about one's own reproductive fitness or personal life at the expense of other human needs or suffering.
Humanism - I think people are "improving" as a species in their own way, and I like thinking about that goal.
Pastafarianism - I have been touched by his noodly appendage.
What I don't believe in:
1. God as an Asshole - The God of most kinds of Christianity is a petty dick most of the time. If you read the old or even the new testament for what it is, even adjusting for the intended historical audience and modern interpretations... he just was. A lot of people bypass this by ignoring a lot of it, and believing in a good God anyways... but most of the time these people still believe God tortures people for eternity for becoming what the world made them or not saying the magical religious words or doing the right religious rituals. If there is a God, and I can only guess there is and never test... he's not an asshole.
2. Objective reality - I hate the "well its true for you" line, or mixing up the concepts of perception and reality. What I believe is not instantly true, and my perceptions influence how I live my life, but the world is a lot bigger than things which directly influence me. I find these statements selfish and ignorant at best, and dangerous at worst.
3. Rituals and Rules - just never got most of that stuff. I don't follow any rule unless the rule has logical, or deeply personal underpinnings.
4. Blind leaps of Faith - Nah. I'm ok with uncertainty and running theories as to the nature of the world around me. I won't make an absolute sweeping statement about their being one God with all these attributes any more than I would assume that there is nothing bigger than humanity. I don't know how conscious the universe is of itself or whether God is apart of that, but I don't like the thought of human needs and values topping out the moral and mental universal charts. We are just too damn retarded.
http://www.miafarrow.org/omelas.html
The story outlines her thoughts based on this study by William James:
Or if the hypothesis were offered us of a world in which Messer's. Fourier's and Bellamy's and Morris's utopias should all be outdone, and millions kept permanently happy on the one simple condition that a certain lost soul on the far‑off edge of things should lead a life of lonely torture, what except a specifical and independent sort of emotion can it be which would make us immediately feel, even though an impulse arose within us to clutch at the happiness so offered, how hideous a thing would be its enjoyment when deliberately accepted as the fruit of such a bargain?
I've reread this story a couple of times lately. I read it first in high school.... and it really hit home with me. It described a Utopian society that somehow maintains it's perfection through the suffering of a neglected and abused child, who suffers on everyone's behalf. People are raised knowing about the child, and at some point they see the child, get moody for a couple days and get over this, finding the suffering worth the price of the their society. And a few walk away from Olemas knowing nothing about the world outside of it, but knowing exactly where they are going. The story could be interpreted on a dig on Christianity, or other sacrifice-based ideologies.
In light of my values when I first read the story, I wanted to rewrite the story so the child is engaged in this willingly, that she/he would be sort of a Dalai Lama of volutary suffering: chosen in some ritual in which this kid was isolated as a god, not just a kid. The super-human aspects of the child would somehow make this society ok, as the child-god would know what he/she was doing in agreeing to this arrangement. I worked on a story based on one of the people walking away from Olemas. (Which is crazy since the Olemas writing is already based on someone else's writing). The main character would be mentored by the mother of the child who's given up caring on the whole deal and thought about walking away herself. The main chatacter walks away from the society before learning about the truth of the child, and both the child and the girl leave the society in the end.
I don't think like something like that now, I was just trying to justify the moral implications of the story and essentially Christianize it. I like the ideas of voluntary simplicity and personal sacrifice, but the idea of one's torture or death leading to heavenly bliss does not seem like a fair deal... i don't find it very beautiful. Jesus may well have been deified by the later generations of his followers in much the same way that I wanted to write that story: to justify an inhumane trade at the heart of his teachings. Whether Jesus was God or just a special man was the heart of the major disagreement that brought the first religious leaders together to agree on a canon of religious texts. They voted, and majority won.
I miss the passion of having some kind of a faith, the certainty and the coincidences and the signs that don't seem to happen anymore. But there is no spiritual system that seems to fully embrace the ethics I've collected, and I'm not about to make one up or adopt one. I embraced one in the past because it introduced itself to me directly, but nowadays I'm not as sure how to interpret that introduction.
So here's what I do believe in:
Simplicity - walking gently and humbly regardless of how smart or badass one actually is (or not smart and not badass). Not being a huge comsumer of the world around me, demanding simple things out of life, and negatively affecting life around me as little as possible (that's part of the reason I don't eat meat anymore).
Service - Seeing people as people, nothing better or worse. Doing good and being genuinely (not superficially) nice to "enemies", and strangers as well as friends, and trying not to be a burden to other people.
Anonomous good deeds - good deeds are best unplanned and unadvertised. When people have nice things happen to them that has no name or strings attached, they are more apt to enjoy it without wondering if they owe anything in return, and are more likely to pay it forward since they can't pay it back. I also think that people should always do good for good's sake and have that be the motivating factor. Doing good works for credit, whether a belief that God rewards them or society will reward them... is not the right motivations.
Evolutionary, but not selfish thinking - The story of evolution has become more artistically and philosophically fulfilling to me than religious explanations, even apart from the whole truth aspects for it. There are parts where I think the stories are pretty much the same, and I like those parallels. I think society can benefit from an evolutionary mindset by allowing us to see ourselves as both one of many species, as a unique species with special obligations to not fuck up the world. Science can slowly shed light on what makes us human, but it never tells us what to do with itI don't like it when evolution is used as a justification to care about one's own reproductive fitness or personal life at the expense of other human needs or suffering.
Humanism - I think people are "improving" as a species in their own way, and I like thinking about that goal.
Pastafarianism - I have been touched by his noodly appendage.
What I don't believe in:
1. God as an Asshole - The God of most kinds of Christianity is a petty dick most of the time. If you read the old or even the new testament for what it is, even adjusting for the intended historical audience and modern interpretations... he just was. A lot of people bypass this by ignoring a lot of it, and believing in a good God anyways... but most of the time these people still believe God tortures people for eternity for becoming what the world made them or not saying the magical religious words or doing the right religious rituals. If there is a God, and I can only guess there is and never test... he's not an asshole.
2. Objective reality - I hate the "well its true for you" line, or mixing up the concepts of perception and reality. What I believe is not instantly true, and my perceptions influence how I live my life, but the world is a lot bigger than things which directly influence me. I find these statements selfish and ignorant at best, and dangerous at worst.
3. Rituals and Rules - just never got most of that stuff. I don't follow any rule unless the rule has logical, or deeply personal underpinnings.
4. Blind leaps of Faith - Nah. I'm ok with uncertainty and running theories as to the nature of the world around me. I won't make an absolute sweeping statement about their being one God with all these attributes any more than I would assume that there is nothing bigger than humanity. I don't know how conscious the universe is of itself or whether God is apart of that, but I don't like the thought of human needs and values topping out the moral and mental universal charts. We are just too damn retarded.
research, ethics, grants, stats, and rats
Busy as hell here, thus not posting.
And when I do post, I should be working... but often enough I can't get into gear.
So, what's new:
Done with the NSF grant, and I want to be my advisor when I grow up. He was editing with me until 15 minutes before the grant deadline because I'm a procrastinating bitch.
Prelims and essays for profs which are smarter than God: I can really imagine one prof explaining to God why he doesn't exist and getting him to back down.
Research hasn't been happening much, not so much due to me but due to equipment malfunctioning.
Etc - I've been too busy to notice I don't have much of a social life or an artistic venue. Or maybe I just stopped caring. I've looked into dating people, but thus far... no one really gets my attention, when I do have time to talk to them. A lot of people at Cornell are very career focused... the first year of grad school especially demands I be a bit selfish with my time. Most people are as busy as I am, so it's slow going to find people who share my values. I have people to have a drink with or hang out with... but other than Mark and Tali, no one that I interact with more deeply now. It would help if I had a car: there's some people I knew from high school who it would be cool to see more of, but as it stands now that's kinda hard.
And most people I've are either non-academics who I can't speak nerdy to, or they have an academic stick up their ass (one guy explained to me the philosophical flaws of Harry Potter and how he could write it better).
Walking Away From Olemas - I got into pretty invigorating philosophical and scientific talk with a new friend last night, which was cool. It's been a while since I tried looking past the daily hassles to the big picture of why I live or what I want to accomplish with my life. I'll be going to Boise Idaho over Christmas (As well as stopping by Ann Arbor for a couple days) so I imagine some of those conversations will come up. I'm about to post on that next.
And when I do post, I should be working... but often enough I can't get into gear.
So, what's new:
Done with the NSF grant, and I want to be my advisor when I grow up. He was editing with me until 15 minutes before the grant deadline because I'm a procrastinating bitch.
Prelims and essays for profs which are smarter than God: I can really imagine one prof explaining to God why he doesn't exist and getting him to back down.
Research hasn't been happening much, not so much due to me but due to equipment malfunctioning.
Etc - I've been too busy to notice I don't have much of a social life or an artistic venue. Or maybe I just stopped caring. I've looked into dating people, but thus far... no one really gets my attention, when I do have time to talk to them. A lot of people at Cornell are very career focused... the first year of grad school especially demands I be a bit selfish with my time. Most people are as busy as I am, so it's slow going to find people who share my values. I have people to have a drink with or hang out with... but other than Mark and Tali, no one that I interact with more deeply now. It would help if I had a car: there's some people I knew from high school who it would be cool to see more of, but as it stands now that's kinda hard.
And most people I've are either non-academics who I can't speak nerdy to, or they have an academic stick up their ass (one guy explained to me the philosophical flaws of Harry Potter and how he could write it better).
Walking Away From Olemas - I got into pretty invigorating philosophical and scientific talk with a new friend last night, which was cool. It's been a while since I tried looking past the daily hassles to the big picture of why I live or what I want to accomplish with my life. I'll be going to Boise Idaho over Christmas (As well as stopping by Ann Arbor for a couple days) so I imagine some of those conversations will come up. I'm about to post on that next.
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