Stereotypes

The interesting thing about stereotypes is that almost universally we are told that they are lies or misconceptions, but in most cases, they are close to being truth. This is no fault of their own however, it is simply that they exist that this happens. Take the stereotype of blondes; blondes are ditzy airheads who barely think about anything, and if they do, it's on the lowest level that is humanly capable. I know highly intelligent blonde girls who have changed their thinking to reflect this; they don't get jokes even after they've been explained, they are incredibly gullible, but they know more about fashion and make-up than I will ever know about anything. This is the problem, they change their thinking and start believing what they are told. This self perpetuation is one of the biggest problems with any form of discrimination, be it racism, sexism, ageism, beardism or anything.

For example, there are very few male nurses, despite the fact that much of the work of a nurse is better suited to males - lifting, holding etc. This has given the conception of nursing is that it is a woman's job, so no man will do it, so it is a woman's job. This is a self perpetuating cycle that firstly limits nurses - they get the jobs that 'men' shouldn't be doing, and secondly of men - they shouldn't be nurses. Did you know that in order to get trained medical professionals to care for the wounded in the marines they had to change what they called nurses, they are now known as medics.
Or, again with the medical theme, there are very few female doctors, despite the fact that in most cases, men lack either the necessary rationality to be able to treat the sick and injured and the humanness to be have a real bedside manner.

In Australia, Black Aboriginal people are often treated as lower people because they have a reputation. There are a larger proportion of the Aboriginal community that get caught in alcoholism, narcotics, petty crime and violence than other groups. This has meant the acquisition of their reputation. This reputation now precedes every one of them every time they do anything. What it has also meant is that large amounts now also believe it for themselves. Which means that they have no hope but to get caught in alcoholism, narcotics, petty crime and violence, for no greater reason than that is what happens to all of them.
This particular case really gets to me because it has caused a large part of a generation and much, not all but much, of a race to get caught in self destruction.

The same thing is seen in every minority group - Including interestingly those who deserve it, but that's for another time.

I'm not saying that all stereotypes are bad and should be exterminated with the greatest of non-prejudicial judgement just that we have to be careful how and why we use them.

On God and happiness

There is possibly no variation of Christian Doctrine that has been more damaging than the so-called Prosperity Gospel. This is the one that says that God wants you to be happy and that he will achieve this by giving you health, prestige and most importantly, wealth. It is most damaging not just because it takes something that was never anywhere in the bible and adds it for no reason, but also because it diminishes every other part. It makes Jesus out to be nothing more than a great cosmic Santa who wants you to be good and talk to him every so often.

You can see the damage that it causes in two places. Firstly in the place that most of us will see more clearly, the early morning televangelists. These people have massive followings and all of them say that Jesus wants to make us better or to give us more than what we have. These people get a following of themselves rather than a following for Christ and this is where the damage comes in. There are thousands of people calling themselves Christian because they follow the teachings of a televangelist. Because of this they won't listen to actual teachings and have left themselves out of the truth.
The second place that you see it is in third world countries. Missionaries who go over to poor communities and tell people that Jesus wants them to have education and hospitals and food. This is an effective way to build up a congregation quickly since the only way that you can get these blessings is to confess your sins, come along to church every week and be good. There is a word for these people in India - Rice Christians, people who follow the teachings of Rice. The damage here comes because firstly these people do not have a relationship with God, but with their now satiated gut. If and when this fails then God is a sick joker who lies to people in order to play some twisted power game. This response is one that is contagious and that is where the next damage is found.

However there is some side truth to this statement. Not in the way that might be initially expected, but there is some surprising truth there. When you read the Old Testament there are many repeated moments when God allows people to try happiness. The biggest example went down something like this
"Are you absolutely sure you want compete Self-Autonomy? Are you sure that you want everyone forever to be the final say on what is wrong or right? Will that make you Happy?"
"Yes it will"
"Fine; there it is. And you will suffer for it."

I am of course referring to the Garden of Eden.

This approach is not dissimilar to what is being called experiential parenting, where you teach your kids through experiences rather than through lessons. For example in order to teach your kid not to stick his finger in the power socket, you let him stick his finger in there and then let him learn what will happen when he does that. However it is also similar to the other approach where you tell your kid that sticking her hand in a ceiling fan will hurt or that knives are sharp. You tell them that if they do that, it will be bad.


The third thing that is a part of this is that if the outcome of Christianity is an eternity in heaven, literally, then why would you want to taint it with the second-rate crap that makes up physicality?

Weakness of modernity

My theory, that I have held for a long time, is that Civilisation makes us weak. In particular, modern civilisation and being civilised. This in part comes back to this post but is also a separate issue. It was once said of humanity that the difference between humans and animals was that animals adapt themselves to their environment and humans adapt the environment to us. The weakness in this is that once we adapt things to us, we then adapt to only working within that framework - if most people today were to go for a 'camping' trip, they would take a caravan with power, would not go anywhere a great distance from the shops so they can buy food when they need it, and would still only be out for a weekend. If the same people were to go camping and had to carry their tent, food, clothing and everything else for a week, they would likely die (except that they wouldn't try it without someone who knows what's happening dragging them along and showing them what to do).

The mark of any civilised society is half measures. Things like life sentences; exactly the same as the death sentence, but it takes a lot longer and costs a lot more.
Lets even look at the death sentence; In places that are regarded as civilised that have the death sentence, it is done by lethal injection, a cocktail of toxins that anaesthetise the body and then paralyse the heart and lungs, supposedly ensuring a painless death. Now this person has been deemed too harmful to remain alive anywhere and for the sake of a few pain-free milliseconds incredible research and expense has gone into a nice easy death.

One of my pet hates is political correctness. Now before you say, 'Alphonse, you censor nigh on everything you say, that's being politically correct', no that isn't being politically correct, that's not being a bastard and toning down your more extreme outlooks. How does this fit in? The next mark of civilisation is tolerance; we have to let everyone have equal time and opportunity on everything that they want and we can't say anything negative about it, which frankly to me is sheer stupidity. It means that you can't say anything that may insult someone even out of context of by mistake, you can't be seen to favour someone that you can't offer a reason for and you have to allow equal correctness for everything. The part that I find most annoying besides the stupidness of it all is the people claiming that Christians need to be tolerant of other religious viewpoints, and then being intolerant of Christianity itself.
Political correctness is another half measure. With it, you are allowed to think things like 'All people who take up a career in politics are half-witted morons incapable of a single cogent or logical thought', but you will never be allowed to voice this opinion for fear that someone who either has or would like to take up a career in politics feels that your information is not only incorrect but insulting. We pride ourselves on our freedom of speech (which was only implied in a 1950 odd supreme court decision limiting government censorship of news media) and yet we disallow it for ourselves - that is stupidness.

Our inability to cope with death comes in as well. Recently the Australian Military has suffered massive losses in the war in Afghanistan, more people have died in the past few weeks then for most of the rest of the decade. So lets bring everyone back and leave the job unfinished. This would be a logical response if there were a large amount of deaths. 5 people and a dog do not constitute a large amount of deaths in a war. And yet due to our civilised society we forget that the Army is a place where you expect to get in life threatening situations; you don't join if you think that getting shot is the biggest worry you personally will have. But people can't cope with the idea that anyone would be willing to be injured or killed for something greater than what they conceive themselves to be. And then the biggest folly of this is that we hold up those who have made a great sacrifice in a time of war - look at the VC, something like 90% of the people who have received the greatest military honour have done so post mortem.

And the final weakness is Darwinian. No I don't accept evolution. Natural selection is completely different. And natural selection is what is being limited by civilisation. Now we know that genetic diseases get passed on and in some cases we can cure them. However in most cases all we can do is treat the symptoms and prolong life. The prolonging of life means that the genetic disease can be passed on to another person who again has the symptoms treated. The right to healthcare is something that has never come out of a non-civilised society and it has made us weak. We expect to be able to not die. When we hear that it's terminal, we either give up there and then, or we flail wildly about and expect that someone will be able to cure it. It firstly makes humanity weak and then makes us expect that our weakness will be rewarded with strength.

That's the modern condition.

Whispered Words - Part 5 - Neither Of These Can Be Trusted

Part the Last. In which Alphonse tries to tell you everything he has said is wrong. Read Parts 1,2,3 and 4 if you previously have not.

That isn't quite true. What I am going to try to do is to explain why not all of what I've said is gospel truth (beyond the fact that I am an imperfect demimortal).

We already know that Fear is not to be trusted on all occasions. Now we need to know that Truth can't always be trusted. Remember assumption 4, "Both Truth and Fear are impartial." If this holds then they can be trusted equally. If we can't trust Fear at all times them we also can't trust Truth at all times. Right?

True, but we also need to show it in a different way. In part 3 I explained the filters that fear lacks. What I didn't say is that Truth does have filters. Truth is filtered in the same way as you. If we wanted to put this another way we would say that Truth is the rational part of you and Fear is the Irrational part of you.
And we can't always trust rationality.
Because it lies.

Yes that's right. I just said that Truth can lie. Irrationality lacks this ability, but rationality can always lie. I would almost argue that the test of a rational being is the ability to either lie or to withhold the truth.

But back to the filters. If you miss something, it means that Truth won't see it unless you pick it up subconsciously. If you don't, then it won't come to light. Which means that truth can't tell you anything that you can't tell yourself - an unfortunate side effect of sharing your filters. And can you always trust yourself? Then can you trust Truth? Do you know when to trust either party?
If you answered no to any of these, then you have a problem. It you can't rationally trust your rationality then there's not much you can trust.

Just a bit of mind screw to finish the week.

Whispered Words - Part 4 - Truth and Fears Overlap

Instalment the D-th. Read the previous posts first if you haven't already. In this post we look at something that may seem to contradict what has come before. Yesterday we looked at Fear not being Truth - Today, I'd like to tell you that Truth can be Fear.

This again is one of my assumptions; in this case number 2.5 which states that "[Truth and Fear] will also sometimes come into line with each other. Truth is neutral, that's accepted almost universally. So we can assume that at times Truth and Fear will say the same thing." and again as part of corollary b "Truth will at times agree with Fear"

In practicality, this means that some if not all of the first generation of your fears are real. However the rest of corollary b says that "[when] there is agreement, Fear will always be able to go further, something that Truth will never do; this is called the worst case scenario. Because Fear is Irrational, he will always take the opportunity." It is only the first generation that is trustworthy after that we get back to Fear and Truth being different.

Remember how Fear is irrational and therefore lacks certain filters. What Fear doesn't lack is the ability to sometimes speak the truth. This will do three things. First of all, at some times fear will seem to be speaking even louder. When this happens, it means that Truth is saying the same thing - so Very loud fears can't be ignored. However don't mistake very loud for very irrational - they are very different.

The second thing it will do is add plausibility to everything else that Fear says. The justification for this is that if you can trust something of what someone says, the rest is more likely to be true. The Third thing that it does is take plausibility from Truth. The reason for this is that if a truth is echoed by an implausible witness, then the veracity of the statement is put into jeopardy.

In the short term, these will make very little difference, but over time it will either become a lot easier to trust Fear, or it will be a lot easier to doubt Truth. So the trouble that comes up is that either you can grow complacent or gullible, or you can grow to be untrusting of anything you hear.

Stay tuned for the season finale tomorrow.

Whispered Words - Part 3 - Your Fears Aren't Truth

This is the Third part in my discussion of the consequences of the some song lyrics that I found interesting. Click here to recap on the introduction and Click here for Yesterday's discussion. Today we move on to a second seemingly obvious consequence of these words - Your Fears Are Not A Definite Truth.

Like Yesterday, this comes fairly easily from the song. In fact, it was so clearly, I mentioned it in the first part. Assumption 2 states "[Truth and Fear] will sometimes conflict. Otherwise only one would be required." Fair enough, but what is the consequence of this assumption. There are a couple.

Firstly, DON'T LISTEN TO YOUR FEARS. They may well not be truth. I wouldn't go so far as to say that they are in this case lies, merely misdirections, possibly unrealised.
The side assumption that we made for corollary b was that Fear is irrational (yes this will still be discussed later, maybe in about a week). Do you trust everything that is told to you be anyone in hysterics? Do you trust anything that is told to you by a lunatic? Before you answer, remember that a person in hysterics will do two things; 1, they will lower their inhibitions - that's almost what the definition of hysterics is - and so they are more likely to be saying everything that they think, truth or not. Secondly, because of this, they are more likely to tell the truth, or what they perceive the truth to be. Now how do you answer. Perceptions can be right, but they can also be wrong and so you have to take it with a grain of salt.
What about loonies? Before you answer this one, remember that lunatics (even though I dislike the word I'm going to keep using it) have less filters on the way that they see. This gives them a less polarised view on what they see compared to you. Yes that's right, walnuts are saner than you and even almonds, the nuttiest of nuts, can make a fairly good play. And remember that the filters that they lack may be the ones that cancel paranoia so they may be extra paranoid, or it may be the complete opposite.
With this side assumption we can say that Fear will just say what ever pops into his head, whether he is right or wrong and he will either lack the intelligence to decide which is which or the willpower to shut up when he knows he is wrong.

Secondly, if Fear has the loudest voice (corollary a) then he will be the one who is easier to listen to. Again obvious (he is 3dB louder) but this means that what I just said is harder. It isn't impossible, it's just more difficult. We know this, in a loud room it's harder to hear a quiet voice, even if it's right in front of you and it's easier to just sit and catch snatches of all of the conversation that's happening.

Thirdly, we have a problem. We can't use a polygraph test to test Fear, because he thinks he is telling the truth.
Yes this is a real problem, because even though your fears aren't truth they are at some level plausible. Which makes your job harder again (in case it wasn't hard enough yet)

Once again I don't have any hard and fast rules for this, and in this case I don't even have any real guide lines that you can apply. Really all I can say is to feel out the situation before you believe what's happening.

Watch this space again tomorrow.

Whispered Words - Part 2 - These Are Just For You

Yesterday, we started looking at a couple of lines from a song in terms of what consequences of the lyrics can be drawn. Today we start looking at one in particular - These voices, Truth and Fear, are just for you.

Now this part comes fairly clearly. The song states "They whisper words into my ears", not 'ears in general', not 'ears not mine', not even just 'they sit next to me and chat about things'. This is a private conversation that does not get overheard by anyone bar you (and presumably Fear and Truth). So why did this get mentioned if it's right there in front of us. It wasn't for the lazy trip into very basic logic, instead it was for the consequences of this. The consequence is fairly simple - It's you that has to follow up on what is told to you. You and no one else can make whatever decision follows.

Assumption 5 (and corollary c) state that Fear and Truth are available for any and every circumstance. If these hold then we can also say that in any and every circumstance there is something that can be told to you from either your fears or the impartial neutrality of Truth. If we then add that the information comes only to you, then It is up to you to make every decision that comes to you based on the foreseeable options and outcomes.

From this comes something else as well. A smart man will tell people what he knows, but an intelligent man will never reveal what he knows. You have a couple of things that have been revealed to you that may not have been revealed to others. It may be that all that you have extra is a fear, but that is something that no one else has and will give you an extra insight. If it happens that you do want assistance in the decision making process, then you have to decide how much of this added insight you may or may not have and how much you are willing to give out. There will be some times when you can gain an advantage from not revealing information. But there are other times when you will be disadvantaged by holding things back. Unfortunately I can't give you any rules that apply in all situations. The best that I can give you is to learn through observation, feel out the situation. Often, unless the person you ask looks at things in a very different way, asking them will provide you with no advantage anyway.

Back to the main point though. No one will get the exact same things given to them. Listening to the same voices in different ways will give you enough of a noticeable difference. I think it's also fair to say that everyone will get these voices in a similar capacity to you and the writer of the song. This means that everyone will be getting their own set of 'instructions' to do with as they will. But it's up to you which of your revelations will be revealed to any other parties.
And remember, if everyone else is getting similar styles of things, how many people are telling you about them.

Back again Tomorrow

Whispered Words - Part 1 - Introduction and Assumptions

They whisper words
into my ears,
One speaks of truth
and one speaks of my fears.
- VAST from the song Three Doors

Which leads to some interesting discussion points which will take a while to fully explore. Thus, I have decided in my less than infinite wisdom to take a week and touch on all of them.

Firstly: There's some assumptions that need to be made.
Secondly: These Are Just For You
Thirdly: Your Fears Aren't Truth
Fourthly: Truth And Fears Overlap
and Finally: Neither Of These Can Be Trusted


So to Begin, Lets make some assumptions. These must all stand on their own or not at all.

1) There are Two Points of View. For Simplicities sake picture the cartoon angel and demon sitting on your shoulder, only make them both voices and don't imbue them with either a sense of divine goodness or infernal evil. Name one Truth and the other one Fear. Now, at this stage, you don't know which is which.

2) These will sometimes conflict. Otherwise only one would be required. This seems logical, but we need to put it down so that it can be disputed or agreed to.

2.5) These will also sometimes come into line with each other. Truth is neutral, that's accepted almost universally. So we can assume that at times Truth and Fear will say the same thing.

3) These can at times be blocked out. They're only whispering, you can ignore that.

3.5) You will still know that they are there and you can't always ignore them. It's happening in your ear - that can get very annoying and you will notice it.

4) Both Truth and Fear are impartial. Logically Truth is impartial, but why does Fear get this status? This is a necessity. If Fear wasn't impartial, he wouldn't be speaking of MY fears, he would be simply speaking of fears. This is a subtle but important distinction.

5) This is the last assumption. They may not always speak, but they will always be ready to speak. At all times there will be at least one foreseeable 'pessim' (a word of my own creation. n, a single pessimistic view) or a potential downside to any action that you do or don't make. And at all times there will be truths that are clear. Therefore there is no occasion when neither of them can vocalise their viewpoint.


There follow some corollaries that also can be made from these.

a) Fear will seem to have the louder voice. I'm going to move into audio nerd speak here because it's the way I understand things, but it can be applied anywhere. Fear is speaking of my fears and nothing else (point 4) therefore what he is saying will come into line with what I am thinking. This doubles an identical signal which raises the output noticeably (by 3dB, but that's irrelevant).

b) Truth will at times agree with Fear, but Fear will not agree with Truth. (to make this point, we have to make an assumption about the nature of Fear outside of this discussion. Fear is Irrational. I'll discuss this some other time maybe.) Truth is completely impartial and so at times when Fear comes into line with Truth, Truth will echo this (point 2.5). At this point though, because there is agreement, Fear will always be able to go further, something that Truth will never do; this is called the worst case scenario. Because Fear is Irrational, he will always take the opportunity.

c) They are always there. If they are always ready to speak (point 5) then they will have to have been there to gather the available data. This requires their presence at all times.

d) You have some measure of power over them. You can chose not to listen to them (point 3) and if they are impartial (point 4) then they can't provide their views. All they can do is make more noise until you decide to listen.

Come back Tomorrow for the first consequence.

Idealism

Last time, I said that despite most teenagers having little more on their list of 'things I want' than a good looking counterpart who's willing to spend large amounts of time naked, they are also more likely to be idealists than others. Why? Lets start by looking at a timeline of human ages.

Child -> Strong sense of Justice based on equality (as long as I am more equal than others). However, a child seldom sees more than what is in the backyard at home
Teenager -> Strong sense of Justice based on equality. Now however, they can see more, they have been exposed to things beyond their immediate location.
Adult -> Strong sense of Justice based on how much you've done to deserve it. At this stage the person has decided that they have to attempt to get what they can. This may be in order to set a better life for their offspring (so you don't think that I'm saying that all adults are bastards) but it's still a protection of their own self as it were rather than a sense of giving to others. You may give to charities or sponsor a child in order to 'do the right thing'.
Elderly -> You have realised that it's too late to do anything now. You may give to charities in order to leave at least a bit of a legacy.

Yes I have over simplified it. No I don't think it's particularly wrong.

Teenagers are simply at the stage when they want things to be equal but can't make a huge difference on their own. As they develop the ability to do things on their own, they become caught up in thinking that 'I can't do anything big enough'. This means two things. One, that they recognise that the problems are big. Two that they underestimate the power of little people doing little things.

Micah Sifry put it this way, "Nobody feels your pain, Nobody wants to give peace a chance, Nobody will stand up for what is right, Nobody will tell the truth. Nobody, but you, that is Never forget a small group of people an change the world. Nobody else ever has."

Teenagers can see that the world is screwed up, usually by looking first at themselves, and then looking at other people and seeing massive inequalities. However the perception of teenagers is that they are small people incapable of tidying their room, let alone doing anything properly good or major. And this perception is carried on by teenagers. And so they can't do anything.


P.S: over the next week I'll be doing something a bit different. 5 posts on a subject. Stay tuned

On the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time. - George Orwell.

Really? Are you absolutely sure on that one?
If I were to ask almost any young person on the street what their long term goal was, it would probably be something like: "I want to be rich, royalty or a ninja." When you ask the average teenager their goals,you get something decidedly more short term, possibly something like this: "To get me a girl." Admittedly teenagers are also more likely to be idealists than other people and I'll talk about that another time. And when you get older you are even less likely to want to be 'good'. You're more likely to just want to just be nice and quiet in a little place somewhere until you can retire. And once you've retired then you just want to spend the rest of your life either with your family or as far away from them as possible.

I know that we can argue all night about our conception of what we laughingly to as 'good', but in all of these there is not much that isn't self-serving.
Call me a sceptic, but on the whole the best that people will do is to buy something for charity. Why do you think that so many charities have raffles? It's because they know that many people will pay to have a chance to get something, and it's cheaper than buying lots of things and selling them at a profit. Some people may have a weekly or monthly donation thing worked out with some charity, but that's a non event; on the whole that is a small part of a disposable income that goes out on a direct debit system so that you never actually see it.
I was talking to a friend about a similar issue, the issue of beggars. He said that it was so sad that no one ever gave them anything, to which I replied, how much do you give them?

Everyone seems to have an abstract concept of what good is, just like everyone claims to have an abstract concept of what bad is (or more precisely a strongly formed concept that essentially comes out as what I think isn't good), but then everyone settles for second best or neutral. Sure, we can justify it; justifying what we do is one of the easiest things possible - prison is full of innocents who committed a crime. But justification is a cop out. Our justifications always come short. Things like "I'll help later", or "I can't afford it at the moment" don't hold much water because we won't help later, and we can afford it now.

But anyway... Yeah.

In saying that, George Orwell has struck upon something. We don't want to be bad (which points to a natural law sort of thing). Our definition of bad tends to be (to steal a word from Orwell) Un-good. So we can claim that we want to be good in general. It's just that we manage to fail sometimes and we want a bit of leeway so that we can do other things without feeling too bad about it.

Playing a Mark

This is generally a phrase used in terms of a long con act, the mark being the target and playing being the con. Over the last few months I've noticed again that the last half of my life has essentially been one long con played to different marks and for no real prize; kind of adds a new level to the amount of stupidity that one person can do. But that was an aside. [Editors note: Just in case you hadn't noticed yet, Alphonse has problems staying on a point]. But that out of the way, how often do you play a mark? And I'm actually curious; how often to you act as someone that you aren't for whichever purpose? Do you act differently at work than you would like to be acting? Are you an actual confidence trickster who makes his living out of being whoever you need to be?

Psychologically there's a couple of reasons that people do this. It's either out of the desire to gain an advantage, or out of the need to allay a threat, perceived or real. You see this easily in the school yard: Kids lie to get out of trouble, or they lie to gain an advantage over others (ie, cheating).
It's interesting that one of these is often considered to be a positive thing - no one complains when a kid says that his dad will beat you up if you take his lunch [Editor's note: It has obviously been a while since Alphonse was that age] - but everyone will complain if you cheat on an exam. The same action has two completely different responses.

This wasn't the point that I was wanting to get to, but it's where we are now [Editors note: Told you he couldn't stay on a point]. No move made out of weakness is viewed negatively. As a clear and obvious example, a valid defence for homicide is that it was in self defence, and I think there are now precedents that would allow pre-emptive defence in the case of good evidence for a threat. Which would mean that you can take a pre-meditated action and essentially claim that it was an instant response to information that may or may not have been true. I'm not sure if this is the actual case as I don't have to keep track of legal precedents in homicide law any more.

Anyway, the point of that part is that a move made out of weakness is applauded when the same movement made out of strength, even to prevent weakness from occurring, is frowned upon. Even against the normal fairness of the world, that don't seem right.
Just something that struck me as interesting as I started to write about something completely different.

Wise Words from the Train Journey

A couple of days ago on my way home, I happened to listen in on parts of a conversation between two elderly people behind me. I say conversation, it was mostly the older man sharing some of his observations on life. There were three main conclusions that he had come to that I heard. There was his theory on a long marriage, his theory on a reason for life (or not death) and one that is fairly hard to simplify.

His theory on a long marriage is that after about 40 years, you and your wife or husband are the same person; you love her/him the same as you love yourself. This is why he says that after a long marriage, you very rarely see a divorce.
His reason for not being dead is that he still has dreams. Without dreams, he says, you're dead. There has to be something that keeps you wanting to be alive, and that thing is positive hopes for the future, no matter how good or bad it is now.
These are both moderately interesting and to some they may be profound thoughts. The next one is even better.

Following on from his dreams, he says that if he were to experience one moment of perfect joy, one moment of profound happiness (my paraphrase, his words were closer to a moment that he wanted to have extended infinitely), that he would like to be destroyed at that moment. As an interesting aside, this is close to the deal made to Faust by Mephistopheles in the poem by Goethe, the difference is that Faust at that moment gave his soul to the devil. Now as far as I can read it there are two major reasons that you would want this.

Firstly and most simply, you want to go out on a high point. What he wants is to do is die at the highest point of his life; a bit of a downer some might say, but what could be better than having the last thing that you know being perfection (or as close as you can perceive it). This is something that many people don't think about in their interpretation of death. If death is an end, then the moments leading up to it don't really matter. But enough of that semi-morbidity.

The second reason is slightly different, but definitely related. If you have a moment of perfect happiness, then everything after that will be less than second best: the best meals will taste like tofu, the most awesome music will sound like a three year old on the violin, the best literature will read like a Hansard and the greatest joy will feel like a pale imitation of sadness. If nothing can match it, then what is the point of anything else?

Multiply/Fracture

Some recent thought has led me to an interesting point. Decartes theorised that the body and the mind or spirit are separate or different parts. By way of a proof, he offers this
1. The body is tangible, therefore, both finite and divisible.
2. The spirit is intangible, therefore, both infinite and indivisible.
Therefore, they can not be the same part of a person. As a secondary point, if the body is merely the vessel of the spirit then they share the same relationship as a house does to the people living inside it or a bag does to its contents; the inner is what is of interest and the outer, while we may grow to be attached to it, doesn't actually have any use beyond containment.

Now the first part leads to an interesting question. There is a condition known commonly as Multiple Personalities and more scientifically as Dissociative Identity Disorder. Where it could get interesting is when you look at in in terms of Decartes' theory. If the mind and body are separate, then this is definitely possible. However it leads me to one of two conclusions. Either there is more than one mind in the body, or, there is only one mind, but it is fractured. You either have to look at either Multiple or Split (fractured) personalities.

When you look at documented case histories, most diagnosable cases fall under multiple; you have two (or more) different but fully recognised people bumping around in your head. Which is where my thinking took an interesting turning. Everyone acts different around different people or in different situations. How do you talk when your girlfriend is around? Is it the same as when you're with a bunch of mates? How about when you're at work or class or which ever? Is it the same as when you're at the pub? No. You have different personalities for different circumstances. You may only change some things, like your choice of language, but there are recognisable changes that separate different parts of your character.
It follows then that everyone has somewhat fractured personalities. What that means, I don't really know, but it is an interesting point.

Deadness

Now last time, I said that I would discuss the preconception that suffering (and for the purposes of this post also death) are innately bad or evil. I should make it clear from the outset that I do no agree with this. I would put forth that in and of itself, death and suffering are not bad. Death is at most neutral and suffering depends on the outcome. Before I explain this I should say two things. Firstly that this is somewhere where agree to disagree is a very valid answer and if you don't agree, possibly the best answer. Secondly, I came to this conclusion through means that out of context (which is where they are sitting) can be easily ignored; please don't if you want to understand where this comes from.

I'm going to begin with suffering. Yes, suffering can be, and often is, bad. However, this is not because suffering is an end, or rather because it somehow has been imbued somehow with the metaphysical properties of bad. It is often bad because no good comes of it. Yes, suffering caused deliberately is disgusting. However, often medicine is disgusting and that has a good outcome. If suffering has a positive outcome, I believe that it can in hindsight be called a good thing. The problem is that suffering is called bad before people have the chance to get out of it, and that label sticks.
It will always hurt, but hurt isn't always a bad thing. The simplest example is that the body uses hurt to tell you to stop putting your hand on the hotplate. If you don't do it again in the future, then that (very minor) suffering was a good thing.
So in the context of the last post, the Suffering of Christ was a good thing because it had a good end

This second part is going to be harder to put down.

William Drischler proposes this viewpoint that I agree with. "Death is neither good nor evil and that is why people have so much trouble accepting it." I think that this is the way that lots of things work. I will use the example here of money because I can take a very will known quote and make my point. Timothy 6:10 'For the love of money is the root of all evil.' Too often people interpret this as 'For money is Evil' when it never says that. It says that a devotion to money or greed is what causes most if not all evils. Money in and of itself is not bad, neither is it good. What it is, is neutral. But if the end of a neutral thing is bad, then humanity tends to put neutral things in the bad pile.
The song 'Thoughts of a Dying Atheist' by Muse features this line. "[Death] Scares the hell out of me and the end is all I can see". The end that is seen is nothing, so it isn't a positive, so by extension it is bad, and therefore, or so the argument goes, death itself must be bad. This relies on the argument that the end justifies the means - the method of something takes the qualities of the end of it. Not many people actually like this argument any more though, so why is it still the viewpoint in this case. I don't know and so I won't answer.

Death in and of itself is merely a change from one state to another - a change from a state of life to a state of not life. And so I can't see how it in and of itself is a bad thing. Especially when it is one of the three ultimate guarantees (birth and taxes being the other two). State changes are bu definition not bad, they just are.

Easter

Someone commented today that saying Happy Easter is a contradiction in terms - since Easter literally means suffering, how can that be happy? This leads me onto my next post, but before I discuss that particular one, I will answer the primary assumption.

The context of this was saying that since Easter was the death of Christ, we shouldn't be celebrating it - It isn't a happy occasion. Now, from my understanding, the death of Christ should be the happiest day of the Christian calendar. If Easter is indeed the day that Christ rose from the dead (I don't intend to make this an argument so just run with it if you don't agree) for the purpose of taking the sins of his chosen on himself, then it is the most unbelievably amazing thing that has ever happened, not a cause for mourning. At the time, I can understand that response. In retrospect however (which is what we've got the advantage of) it should be a cause for dancing in the streets (if you feel liberated enough to take advantage of this possibility).

And if that isn't enough reason for celebration, there's small, almost elliptical balls of chocolate to eat. What more could you ask for?