Procrasti............................................

Ok, firstly, there is a reason that I haven't posted anything recently - Yes, I have been busy with real life commitments like study and doing anything here would have been mostly for the purposes of procrastination. As I do enough of that already, I thought it would be a good idea to not take up half a day writing and re writing a page of something about something. So, my rhetorical question (which I will answer here myself) is How do we procrastinate and secondly, why do we procrastinate. {Editors note: check this one out for how to procrastinate properly. Alphonse has no real idea - he just bludges}

The first question is easy. Procrastination is possibly the easiest thing that we ever do. Procrastination is just not doing what it would be more beneficial or necessary for you to be doing at the particular moment in time that you are in. Whether it's watching a movie, reading a book, playing a game, going for a walk, having a nap, baking a cake. The list goes on almost forever.
This isn't to say that the activity that you are using to procrastinate is a bad thing, for example going for a walk is often a good thing; it gets your cardiopulmonary systems working, clears out your brain, stimulates the appetite, helps you sleep at night, provides you with fresh air, tops up your vitamin D reserves. But if you should be doing something else it isn't a good thing. The actual action isn't wrong, it's the motive or the justification that's wrong.

The second question is also easy (makes you wonder why it is that I even need to be writing this down). We Procrastinate, because we want to, or we don't want to be doing what we should.

Yep, that's actually all I have to say about that, but surprisingly, it's taken me well over two hours - I kept finding other things to do.

Defining an Identity

In the movie Fight Club, there is a scene where a convenience store assistant is asked at gun point "The question, Raymond, is what did you want to be?" In the movie Hitman, Agent 47 tells us he is going off to do "What I do." Both of these approaches to life are interesting, especially when you consider that in both cases, we are finding out about their job. In the case of Raymond K Hessel (Fight Club) his identity was bound up in the job; he was going to be a Veterinarian. In the case of Agent 47 (Hitman) his job was merely a job, an almost all consuming job at the start of the movie, but by the end, just an unwanted job.
The difference is in how it's referred to. In the first case, it was what he was, in the second case, it was what he did. We all understand both of them to be the same and yet there are major differences that go beyond the syntax. One happens when it is your source of identity and the other happens when it impinges upon what your source of identity would rather be; no prizes for guessing which is which. Both can be dangerous.

We all understand 'working for the weekend'. This is a danger that we can fall into all to easily when a job is what we do. It comes with an attitude of TGIF and can lead to almost medical cases of Mondayitis, a serious condition through most of Australia.
However, on the other hand, along with different fingers, it is also true that when a job description is what you is, that's all you are. At this point you lose track of other things that happen - like life.

The Rules

As far as I know, Isaac Asimov has come closer than any author to creating a, for lack of a better term, code of conduct. This code is called the "Three Laws of Robotics". The absolute brilliance of this is implied in the name - the entire code is wrapped up in three small rules that manage to cover almost every circumstance.

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Basically, the rules come down to 'people can't be allowed to be hurt', 'orders must be followed' and 'look after yourself', three rules that most people themselves try to live by which makes it even more incredible that Asimov thought of them. He synthesised altruistic human nature into simple rules.