Creative combinations: Lennon and McCarthy

Brooks thinks that Lennon's chaos and depression needed McCarthy's meticulous pop to make a final product. And he thinks all creativity relies upon the dialectic:

But sometimes it happens in one person, in someone who contains contradictions and who works furiously to resolve the tensions within. When you see creative people like that, you see that they don’t flee from the contradictions; they embrace dialectics and dualism. They cultivate what Roger Martin called the opposable mind — the ability to hold two opposing ideas at the same time. If they are religious, they seek to live among the secular. If they are intellectual, they go off into the hurly-burly of business and politics. Creative people often want to be strangers in a strange land. They want to live in dissimilar environments to maximize the creative tensions between different parts of themselves.

Another interesting note is that ADHD and giftedness are hard to distinguish, thought to be parallel, and may be in "co-petetion" [sic] with one another. The ADHD helps generate constant novelty, while the giftedness acts as a filter, recognizing good ideas from bad. Although tons of people say things about how famous writers, inventors, scientists, etc., were ADHD or 2e, the truth is that you have to have focus and drive to be successful on that level. And drive is not necessarily easy to get or keep.

PS: I'm reading Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land right now.

Commitments

When do beliefs and facts collide?

When you decide at the outset that something is true, your commitment may blind you to contrary evidence and rational expectations. Let's compare the intellectual commitments of science versus, say, politics or religion: In science, we presume the uniformity of nature. This means we assume that the laws of gravity, electromagnetism, etc., are fundamental properties of the universe, rather than contingent features that are subject to change. This presumption is useful because it allows us to interpolate and extrapolate data. A simple example would be inferring the age of the earth from geological processes, or isotope decay, or measuring the distance to stars. This premise is very, very difficult to falsify.

And that's the beauty of skepticism: start with very basic assumptions, and continue to question them as new evidence and information arises. Religious belief is quite different for two main reasons: 1) some religions require obedience and faith that is defined as without evidence, and 2) the commitments of religious people are sometimes so complex that they don't even realize how difficult their position is to defend. The first reason is rather clear and doesn't need much elaboration, in the sense that belief in a Garden of Eden or Resurrection or whatever clearly defies common sense and every scientific principle known to man.

Tell me what you think about your motivation

The secret of effective motivation? Steer away from instrumental (external) consequences and incentives. Focus on cultivating the internal drive. Sounds good and all...but how easy / practical is that?

"Way of the agnostic" in NYT

Gutting writes on love, understanding and knowledge in the context of religion. He basically argues that religious people should appreciate those who want to partake in the community and aesthetics of religion although they find its knowledge/belief claims "a bridge too far"...

But love and understanding, even without knowledge, are tremendous gifts; and religious knowledge claims are hard to support. We should, then, make room for those who embrace a religion as a source of love and understanding but remain agnostic about the religion’s knowledge claims.  We should, for example, countenance those who are Christians while doubting the literal truth of, say, the Trinity and the Resurrection.  I wager, in fact, that many professed Christians are not at all sure about the truth of these doctrines —and other believers have similar doubts.  They are, quite properly, religious agnostics.

He presents such agnosticism as a sort of "middle way" between "no arguments" atheism, which is the presumption that the burden of proof lies on the religious, and the presumption by religion that faith justifies knowledge.

One of the more interesting passages takes me back to quite a few dialogs that I've had with believers over the years:

It may well be that physical science will ultimately give us a complete account of reality. It may, that is, give us causal laws that allow us to predict (up to the limits of any quantum or similar uncertainty) everything that happens in the universe.   This would allow us to entirely explain the universe as a causal system.  But there are aspects of our experience (consciousness, personality, moral obligation, beauty) that may not be merely parts of the causal system.  They may, for example, have meanings that are not reducible to causal interactions.

I would wager all my earthly goods that many people believe in religious knowledge claims because of these aspects of our experience. Religion has done a great job of packaging together some really hard-to-swallow claims about history and science with a much easier-to-swallow sense of appreciation for these aspects of our experience, and insisting they be taken together or not at all. Many believers I know have pointed this exact thing out to me before after a long dialog in which they may see that I have some good points/arguments in favor of rejecting some of their knowledge claims about history and science.

Here are some recent posts dealing with those same issues:

1. Accepting these knowledge claims is not evidence that theists have lower IQs - http://nonserviamergofiatlux.blogspot.com/2007/07/new-iq-study-on-theists-vs-atheists.html
2. The roots of anti-intellectualism in Evangelical churches - http://nonserviamergofiatlux.blogspot.com/2008/06/correlations-between-reading-and.html
3. Some people have assumed for years that with the advance of science, religion would disappear. They were wrong, largely because of these "aspects of our experience" listed above: http://nonserviamergofiatlux.blogspot.com/2006/11/more-things-change.html
4. Some religious people mistakenly see science and liberalism as threats, although they really aren't. http://nonserviamergofiatlux.blogspot.com/2008/05/kennedy-parishoners-on-threats-to-faith.html
5. The existential "cost" of atheism as regarding beauty, morality, meaning, etc. http://nonserviamergofiatlux.blogspot.com/2008/04/on-morality-and-hope-vs-godlessness.html

Kon Leong on career/goals

A wise guy. In the good way:

If you experiment in different jobs and functions in those two or three years out of school, you will have a much better shot at finding your sweet spot. And the sweet spot is the intersection between what you’re really good at and what you love to do. If you can find that intersection, you are set. A lot of people would kill for that because, at 65, they’re retiring and never found it. So don’t put so much emphasis on initial compensation. Don’t listen to all the harping from the family. Try to find your sweet spot and, once you find it, invest in that. You don’t want to get degrees just to do work you don’t really like. If you’re miserable, even if you make a lot of money, that’s still 40 years of your life.

He says a lot of other smart things in the interview, so it's worth reading (e.g., his innate strength is that he can "zoom in, zoom out")...

Dust in the wind

This was a moving article, with a quote that jumped out at me:

All of our accomplishments are few. All of our accomplishments are minor: my scribblings, his book, the best lines of the best living poets. We embroider away at our tiny tatters of insight as though the world hung on them, when it is chiefly we ourselves who hang on them. Often a dog or cat with none of our advanced skills can offer more comfort to our neighbor than we can. (Think: Would you rather live with Shakespeare or a cute puppy?) Each of us has the ability to give only a little bit of joy to those around us.

The author was responding to "Far from the Tree", a book about special-needs and exceptionally-gifted children, and the "burden" that their parents bear. Her Down-Syndrome daughter, she argues, brings her much more joy than any of her work or other pursuits.

Losing our humanity, one status update at a time

I have a blog. And a twitter feed. Just in case you didn't know.

I've had experiences with posting things online and then later regretting it. I've had things end up documented online that I now worry -- a little -- could end up costing me a job one day, or the respect of peers and colleagues. In a very real sense I've grown up in the digital age and learned its pros and cons the hard way.

An article in last week's NYT Magazine explores this in depth. Entitled "The Web Means the End of Forgetting", it explores how people have lost jobs and been haunted by things posted online. If you think the article is too pessimistic, it still certainly reinforces the idea of blogging anonymously and being very careful in who you friend on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc., and what you put there. If you think the article gets it just about right, you'll pull your real name off of these platforms (or close them entirely) and begin to try to clean up your digital history.

Here's a snippet from that article that sums it up:

We’ve known for years that the Web allows for unprecedented voyeurism, exhibitionism and inadvertent indiscretion, but we are only beginning to understand the costs of an age in which so much of what we say, and of what others say about us, goes into our permanent — and public — digital files. The fact that the Internet never seems to forget is threatening, at an almost existential level, our ability to control our identities; to preserve the option of reinventing ourselves and starting anew; to overcome our checkered pasts.

Humans deserve the ability to have "supid moments" forgotten and forgiven. We don't deserve to be labeled and solely categorized on the basis of one or two things that make their way online. People used to get to choose the words on their tombstones. Now it seems that tools on the Web -- and the way we use it -- will ensure we're remembered for something we'd rather not be. And maybe even assigned value on that basis. Everybody knows that people are nicer in person, both in the way they treat each other and in the fullness of their character, than they are online. But we all forget that when we find sites like LOLFacebook Moments and laugh at others' misfortunes there.

In this week's version of the magazine, another article, "I Tweet, Therefore I Am" -- looks at the way these social media change our concept of the self and blur the line between who we are versus who we present to others. Here's a snippet from that article that really makes me pause:

“On Twitter or Facebook you’re trying to express something real about who you are,” she explained. “But because you’re also creating something for others’ consumption, you find yourself imagining and playing to your audience more and more. So those moments in which you’re supposed to be showing your true self become a performance. Your psychology becomes a performance.” Referring to “The Lonely Crowd,” the landmark description of the transformation of the American character from inner- to outer-directed, Turkle added, “Twitter is outer-directedness cubed.”

The fun of Twitter and, I suspect, its draw for millions of people, is its infinite potential for connection, as well as its opportunity for self-expression. I enjoy those things myself. But when every thought is externalized, what becomes of insight? When we reflexively post each feeling, what becomes of reflection? When friends become fans, what happens to intimacy? The risk of the performance culture, of the packaged self, is that it erodes the very relationships it purports to create, and alienates us from our own humanity.

We all enjoy feedback, and so are much more likely to put things on Facebook that people will click the "Like" button on. We want to be witty. We want to post photos that we look good in and "un-tag" the ones we don't. We want to have this online self that is the "real" us but at the same time it is exposed to so many people who don't know us that well we can't help but want to put (only) our best face forward. And that's nothing to be ashamed of. But it makes us forget that the most enjoyable part of connecting with others is in sharing the intimacy of bearing your true self. Warty, witless me.

We craft and contrive images and words for the consumption of others using social media that we would not use with a friend face-to-face. I have to wonder how much our actual self begins to adjust to this social bias, this sense of others' expectations. And so I think some of us who jumped on Facebook back in 2005 not only lost a sense of what real "friends" are by having 400 on Facebook, but also a sense of our humanity.

I'm really thinking about changing my online self now. I've done it before. Maybe in so doing I'll help save my actual self.

Mindset

Comment on MJ's Hall of Fame speech:

Yes, there was some wink-wink teasing with his beloved Dean Smith, but make no mistake: Jordan revealed himself to be strangely bitter. You won, Michael. You won it all. Yet he keeps chasing something that he’ll never catch, and sometimes, well, it all seems so hollow for him.

I read a chunk of Dweck's Mindset this summer and was thinking about that as I read about how MJ rolled off grievances and pointed out when coaches and teammates underestimated him in the past. Dweck's major thesis is that people's growth-oriented mindsets are what set them apart from those who see talent as a fixed finite quality that we either have or don't. She points to athletes who find fault with everyone but themselves versus those who continually see ways to improve themselves.

You have to wonder if the drive to improve himself would've been there at all if not for this obvious resent he held for those he felt hadn't given him a fair shot. Maybe anger is a better motivator for improvement than idealism. Could he have spent hours upon hours perfecting his game without all the wrongs he suffered? We'll never know.

Cleaning things up some

After hearing about someone getting fired at Hammond School for what they had on their MySpace page, I decided to take privacy to the next level. I made my Blogger profiles private, am in the process of killing the links and references to them I had on my index pages, and have whittled down my list of "allowed readers" to 18. If you're reading this, I must think you're a genius.

Seriously, though, it's sad that someone can't have a private place to enjoy freedom of speech without worrying about losing their job, but there are consequences to actions, even when they're protected constitutionally. Right, Maurice's BBQ owner Maurice Bessinger? So I'm also googling my name and variants of it and my email addresses and trying to go through and do what I can to make finding material about me online as difficult as possible. One good thing: the revolutionary war hero by the same name makes it harder to search for me.

If in the future you find yourself unable to read the blog entirely, don't think it's personal. It's just me being a little overly cautious. Even people whom I trust cause me to worry because they may forget to log out of their computer somewhere and someone else, whom I don't trust, may see it or use it against me. I've whittled down my Facebook and MySpace friends list and changed the privacy settings there for the same reasons.

If you're bored enough to wonder how many times I've changed my mind about whether to make this blog private, public, or somewhere in between, read this or figure it out yourself from the various postings.

The many motives of blogging

It seems that blogs bring to mind one of two sorts of person: 1) thinks they have really important things to say and needs a soapbox, 2) wants to "overshare" all the inane trivia of their life with a world who, by and large, doesn't give a fuc*. I don't know exactly how I stumbled onto a blog post about oversharing, but this led me to learning about Lena Chen. This led me to finding out things about her I really didn't want to know (NSFW: or see), but out of it all came a sliver of good, as she wrote something I find strong rapport with:

Part of the reason why I write about my life is because I am scared of not remembering anything about it. I have a terrible memory, no doubt an ironic symptom of childhood bullying that taught me the art of forgetting terrible memories. (Truth: I routinely have problems with recalling things that happened before the age of 12). Unfortunately for me, I never quite unlearned how to forget. Now that I am full-grown and expected to remember things like faces and names, I find myself standing around dumb-founded as all my friends recall events at which everyone but me seems to have been present. I routinely fail to recognize guys with whom I’ve gone on single dates, or even people I went to high school with. It seems I am a spectator to other people’s memories but never the one doing the remembering herself.

And it’s not just memories either. It’s skills like how to use JSTOR (thank you, high school debate) or how to swim (thank you, community pool) that I must relearn because I’ve somehow magically forgotten despite everyone’s insistence that there are some things, like riding a bike, that you remember forever. Well, trust me, if there were ever a person who could forget, it’d be me. In Ibiza, for example, this was precisely my problem. Here I was with miles of unpolluted ocean before me, and I was terrified of wading too far out because I hadn’t swum in years. I was always scared to go into pools as a kid until I braved swimming lessons during early elementary school. Then I promptly forgot and had to learn again, this time during a summer around age 10. I don’t think I’ve really swum again since. Eventually in Ibiza, I gave it a go at a shallow beach but I conceded defeat after several gulpfuls of seawater. This was a performance from someone who used to relish jumping off diving boards several yards above her head.

Although my ability to remember how to do things physically (ride bikes, swim, ride 4wheelers, play ping-pong, pool, &c.) is not a problem, I strongly agree with her motive of wanting to document her life out of fear of forgetting. I found myself last week in my hometown talking to a friend I literally went from K-12 with, and she reminded me of universal remote controls at Richlands Middle School, as well as other funny tales, that I had completely forgotten about.

Now I'll have to write a post just to explicate the details on that.

Blog-as-journal/memoir works for me. I must confess that I have this creepy urge to see how many people would read my blog after I died, and how long people would still find it on the web. In 2000 years, will the internet as it exists today still be archived somewhere? In a million years, will aliens from some far-off system store the entirety of the internet on little cubes and put them on a shelf somewhere?

The status of this blog being private has changed a few times, for a few different reasons:

1. I began writing a blog in Nov 2005. It didn't have many readers. One day, I wrote something on Sternberg and it got linked to, and from there, I had a lot of interest in keeping readers. Some of the original research I did has been incorporated into this article at Expelled Exposed.
   
2. A few people from my hometown, and relatives, learned of my site and I learned of that. I got nervous and made it private. I stupidly deleted a lot of my posts. A lot of this had to do with the fact that I was no longer religious. If you hunger for more details, here they are.
3. I obviously changed my mind and began writing again on a public blog. Once, I realized I was in trouble with getting my Ph.D. finished because of the time I was spending online. We see where that worry took me...
   
4. That trend was fairly unbroken until I graduated from UF and started the job search. Then, I decided to go private again, because I was afraid that parents at my new job would find this site and I would have to deal with a bunch of BS from it.
5. I planned to write less through the work year; I'm pretty much still in that same boat, and my writing over this summer has increased only because of free time. Once my son is born, that won't be an issue.
   

Also, I think I have lots of really important things to say and I need a soapbox.

NCOBS and Transcendentalism

I just completed a 4-day course at NCOBS, running Sat 5/10 to Tue 5/13, and it was great. More on why...

I was wrong when I said:

In other news, I'm going on a NC Outward Bound trip with my students from May 10-13. It's an outdoor experience with no showers or toilet paper (read the fine print).

There actually was TP. I was able to actually avoid having to poop in the woods, though, as the urge didn't really hit me until the evening of day two, when we came down from the summit of Table Rock and there is a parking lot and outhouse there that we were allowed to use. Also, we wore rain gear so much (especially Sunday night, during the storm) that I didn't get very dirty at all, and I was able to clean up some with baby wipes and such in the aforementioned outhouse. So, for me at least, the typically-cited discomforts of "roughing it" were not really discomforts at all.

• Day 1: Got all our gear together (Eric called this the "Duffle Shuffle" IIRC) and walked about 10 minutes to the intersection of multiple trails, called "five points" I think. They taught the students how to make a shelter of their tarps and set up camp.
• Day 2: Went to the summit of Table Rock via the Devil's Cellar. It was tough for me, as I am so out of shape. I also had overloaded my gear by trying to be tough and packing two of the four dromedaries, the 5-L water containers. I had to get T.U. to carry one for me after a few minutes of hiking. Both my soles of the shoes I borrowed from C.S. blew out, and my feet got very wet. We camped at the base of Table Rock, just off a campsite, and a large storm blew in that night. It was damned cold and some trees fell, but we had heavy-duty rain gear, which blocked the wind and cold out entirely. I went to bed early, though, as my feet were hurting.
• Day 3: We walked down the S.O.B. trail ("shortness of breath") to near base camp and went rock climbing and repelling. Best day by far. We camped that night on a platform just off from base camp.
• Day 4: Awoke at 5:45 AM to do a 4.2 mile run around the trails. I had to run in Crocs(R) because the low-top hiking shoes had blown out. The run's a story in itself. We left around 1 PM.

And to compensate for the extreme wind and cold of Sunday (I didn't pack warm clothes) I got the beauty of the Devil's Cellar and Table Rock summit views. See my pics. Our guides names were Luke and Eric. I talked with Luke a bit alone and discovered what an interesting fellow he is: went straight from high school to being a nature guide, basically. He and Eric and I were all 26: Eric was born in August while Luke was born in October.

Luke seemed very at peace with himself. It's a very physical job, and he had injured his ankle, but he never once complained, although he used walking poles to help support the weak stride. This made me think of how his life for the past eight years was probably going to get more complicated soon, just as mine was. My fault, in retrospect, was in thinking, "How long can he do this job, and what will he do later in life?" I thought this before the solo time of introspection, and realizing that this was a faulty notion occurred to me then.

We did our solo time while at the Devil's Cellar, spending a few hours alone with a journal and the stated intent of reflection, introspection and enjoying the views. We were also told to write a letter to ourselves during this time, one which would be collected by the guides and then mailed to us 6 months down the road. I took a few minutes to do this, and wrote a letter to myself about Transcendentalism. In April '07, I quoted Thoreau. I didn't realize that in May '08 he'd come back to me with a vengence:

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan- like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether it is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to "glorify God and enjoy him forever."

Still we live meanly, like ants; though the fable tells us that we were long ago changed into men; like pygmies we fight with cranes; it is error upon error, and clout upon clout, and our best virtue has for its occasion a superfluous and evitable wretchedness. Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!
...
However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poor-house. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the almshouse as brightly as from the rich man's abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace. The town's poor seem to me often to live the most independent lives of any. Maybe they are simply great enough to receive without misgiving. Most think that they are above being supported by the town; but it oftener happens that they are not above supporting themselves by dishonest means, which should be more disreputable. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old; return to them. Things do not change; we change.

Walden

What I wrote in the letter to myself was about how I had changed over the years. As I reflect now on my life's choices, I look back and see a boy, dumb as he was, who had a real sense of adventure and thought that life offered many exciting mysteries to solve. I used to stare out of the classroom window of Mrs. Reynold's chemistry class and Mr. Blevin's biology class and contemplate going off into the woods with but a backpack full of gear. I felt the call of the wild in some way.

Growing older, I am now more concerned with security and comfort. Have I lost for that? Am I the less for it? The fact that I feel cynical about life...did the "meanness" of it get to me? Have I forgotten the wisdom of KISS?

I pondered these things in my solo time.

I also snuck in a nap.

I ponder these things still -- is it the case that the responsibilities we accumulate throughout life, with a family and with debt obligations, lessens the vigor of life itself? Will the way that our human evolution has occurred reverse itself to some degree later on? Will we move back away from urbanization to live simply and close to nature? Ideally, our technology and progress would simplify life, but the real does not meet the ideal. Not in that.

I don't know if any of the students (4 girls, 5 boys) got what I got from it, but I really enjoyed the peace, the absence of an itinerary or schedule or clock. I think we forget the part of our biology that is 100% animal. We are human, yes, but humans are social animals that have moved away from where their biology evolved -- nature red in tooth and claw -- and perhaps we are the less for it.

Maybe Luke had things figured out. Worrying about how you'll support yourself is the hallmark of the modern man. Living in the present is difficult. That's all the more reason to cultivate it.

Personal reflections

The decision to finish with an M.S. in Chemistry rather than staying to complete my Ph.D. is something I've been mulling over in recent days. For one thing, I attended Hammond's 2008 commencement, and I was looking at everyone else's robes and hoods and thinking about the pride of wearing doctoral regalia. Shallow, eh?

With a baby on the way, (now at 23 weeks, 8 inches and ~1 lb., we've decided to name him my son) it sometimes seems that my career options are limited by the responsibility of raising a family and keeping a steady income stream. I look back and wonder if I'll ever live to regret the decision not to finish, given that it seems now my professor was right: if you leave with the statement, "maybe I'll come back to finish it later," you probably won't ever do so. And I think that subconsciously I knew that, even then.

Timeline of my thoughts: I look at my blog entry preceding the defense of my research proposal, then the one directly proceeding it, where there is a hint of wanting to quit:

It's a relief, I guess. I'm also just tired, and I've been thinking of taking the M.S. and getting a job...*sigh*

However, about five days later, in one of my blog posts, I refer to finishing the Ph.D.:

I certainly agree that my wife takes priority over everything else, that staying healthy is tied with my Ph.D. in close second, that running the AAFSA group is a distant third, but should still take huge precedence over blogging...

However, then on April 22 I admitted I was looking for jobs and was making the blogsite private again as a result. So it really seems that I made my final decision to quit the Ph.D. program some time between April 11 and April 22. About the only big thing I know that happened between those times was the shooting at VT, but I really don't think that influenced me (unless it was subconscious). I didn't go for my Hammond interview until the end of June, and I was notified I got the job only a few days later.

It's so funny, because as a kid and teen and even in college, I was so concerned with the question, "what will I do with my life?" My view then was that carefully choosing my career path and following crucial steps in the process would produce unbounded happiness and success. What seems to have happened, instead, is that a somewhat-arbitrary set of circumstances simply showed me, along the way, that I would be happier changing course from my originally-perceived "perfect" career path(s). And it appears to be the case that teaching chemistry to highschoolers at a private school in Columbia was never "in my sights" as a goal, yet happened nonetheless.

I know that for some people, this would be a nightmare: I have a childhood friend that I think of as almost preternatural in his ability to plan and determine his own course in life. He was valedictorian, an athlete, he wanted to go to med school since I can remember him, and all he's accomplished has proven, at the least, that some people have a powerful drive and deliver on their own goals. I was just never that way. Maybe I never will be.

I wonder, as with kids who are not planned, if some of life's surprises are the best things to happen to us. The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry, and perhaps our preconceived notions of our own happiness and success are often flawed, much to our chagrin. Lou Holtz reportedly said that,

"Life is ten percent what happens to you and ninety percent how you respond to it."

If that is indeed the case, then I wonder if I will one day look back upon my responses to life's happenings (i.e., my decisions) with regret or with pride. At the least, I have more options available to me if anything about my present choices should prove to be beyond accommodation and incapable of living with.

Here are my pipe dreams career-wise:

1. Go to law school, perhaps while working as a teacher by going to USC, and become an IP attorney. With my technical background, I qualify for the USPTO exam.
2. Get my left scaphoid non-union fixed and my 90° wrist bend back so I could enlist and attend OCS to become a pilot for the Navy or Air Force. (The age window is closing fast, however)
3. Sign up with the Effa Bee Eye or the CIA. The new FBI drug requirements will help (modified 12/06), as I experimented a little during my senior year of high school. The CIA's requirements seem extremely lax, but, as with most things in the CIA, they're probably just unpublished publicly and highly flexible. However, I haven't used any illegal substances since I was 17 (roughly since November of 1999), so I should be good with either one.

At least in theory, all of these are open to me and I could work them out financially if I really wanted to go for them. For the time being, I'm happy teaching at Hammond. Perhaps Lou Holtz was right, and this is just my response to what life handed me, but I don't feel like I'm "settling for less".

Spock is My Hero, Too

I was just reading over an article in Skepchick entitled, "Logic vs. Emotion," and had some thoughts. The writer tells us her childhood hero was Mr. Spock, the paragon of Stoicism, and she discusses the commonly-held misconception that atheists/skeptics are emotionless creatures, by choice or by necessity.

Human beings are animals. As animals, we have biological and physiological functions over which we have very little control. Our emotions are the result of biochemical responses to stimuli, responses that are shared qualitatively by many other primates. The selective advantages to these responses are fairly clear: emotional bonding to our mates occurs as a function of oxytocin and other chemicals, functioning as a "glue" which confers beneficence to reproductive fitness.

As some of us are obviously predisposed towards more emotional displays than others, it doesn't reflect upon any notion of free will (laughable as that is). We really don't have a lot of control over our levels of sentimentality or propensity towards weeping. And it may be the case that the more control we have (genetically speaking), the more proclivity we have for rational thinking, rather than wishful thinking. But no matter how rational we are, we cannot deny the animal part of us that feels.

I think the problem isn't that we some of us lack control over our emotions, and make decisions emotively. I think the problem is that the nature of some decisions is that there is no logical argument that can be constructed from known true premises.

As Donna Druchunas writes:

What I have outgrown is my naive belief that logic trumps personal experience and emotions in every situation.

Examples here would include how to handle forgiveness in a relationship, whether or not to change careers...&c. Even if we can throw a few true premises in, like, "Well, she's never cheated before," or, "I'll make more money as a patent attorney than a teacher," there are always lacking threads to join these premises together to reach a conclusion. For example, you just don't know if she will have the capability or opportunity in the future to cheat, or whether or not the job market will be in the future where it is today. Thus you can't rely on these premises to take you to a straightforward conclusion.

Spock is my hero because he uses reason as far as he can, and then admits when there is uncertainty involved in a decision. Humans must live with and make decisions from uncertainty and doubt. That doesn't mean we can't rely on logic and reason, jettisoning them in favor of how we feel, as most analyses can include at least some logic. It's just part of the human condition not to know everything about anything.