I'm not a bad person, really.

Look, I'm not trying to say that I'm more intelligent than most people, just that it's really hard to explain things, no matter how simple I make them, far far too much of the time. I swear, it's like an armor of preconceived dumbth covers most brains, and if you even try to make headway, the pre-programming nabs the idea on the way in and runs off with it.

It's like this:

Ok, I am a bad person.

I'm also getting pretty pissy about having to explain not only that 2+2=4, and why, with several examples, but that it always has and always will because reality doesn't bend to feelz, math is not subjective, emotional investment does not produce either truth or reliability, and deliberately missing the point is not remotely clever.

It would appear that I may be a much worse person by the time I'm done.

Realignment

Some days I wonder where I'd fall in the venerable AD&D alignment chart. Usually I like to think of myself as NG with some Chaotic tendencies. (Self-flattery is fun, really, if untoward.)

Then there's today, when I'm pretty sure I'm straight-up Chaotic Neutral.

Speaking of which, and speaking of Hamilton, this song came on my Pandora earlier, and I've been laughing since.

Temptations To Troll

I've been learning things, as usual. Recently I happened upon a group of resources that are teaching me how influence happens, and why, and it's not so much like peeking behind a curtain as like someone turned a light on. You suddenly see why things happen as they do, when no normal explanation adds up or when there are many explanations that don't ring true. Or, as Scott Adams (expert in such matters) put it, it's like seeing things with an extra dimension: when everyone's playing regular chess, the one who is actually playing 3D chess will do things that look crazy but somehow work.

Naturally, I want to have a go at using this new knowledge. Once some theory is well in hand, trying things out is one of the best ways to really understand. My entire history is evidence of this.

The problem, in this case, is that trying out influence on a small scale, just as harmless amusement, is pretty much trolling, even if the motives are different. It's also hilariously fun. Using such knowledge only for good, or at least in continued harmlessness, is not as easy as I thought it'd be.

In other words, there may come a day in which I stop baiting people who think they're terribly smart; but today is not that day.

Tomorrow isn't looking likely, either.

Updates

Man, have I been neglecting things. Not everything, since I pretty much have to be doing something while I live, and I bore easy; but too many self-imposed obligations have stalled while I dealt with other crap.

So here's what's up, and here's the plan:

Tantalus Has Had Enough

"I cannot hide what I am: I must be sad when I have cause and smile at no man's jests, eat when I have stomach and wait for no man's leisure, sleep when I am drowsy and tend on no man's business, laugh when I am merry and claw no man in his humour... in this, though I cannot be said to be a flattering honest man, it must not be denied but I am a plain-dealing villain. I am trusted with a muzzle and enfranchised with a clog; therefore I have decreed not to sing in my cage. If I had my mouth, I would bite; if I had my liberty, I would do my liking: in the meantime let me be that I am and seek not to alter me."

- Much Ado About Nothing, I, 3

Pearl-chucking

I have a few outlets for my writing, and most of the bits I write (for lack of time and mental focus, related but separate issues) are brief observations. Some of them I put here. Obviously, I guess. The short items that land here are mostly the ones I don't feel like explaining overmuch, would invite useless trouble by putting in a more well-read location, or don't add correctly to a given persona. Longer writings have their places, here of course being one. And here I tend to blather on in ways, and in unfiltered styles and wordiness, that I'd be embarrassed to use elsewhere.

The more common and often-read locations such as social media have a problem, though:

but it rhymes

(Je suis Charles.)

Bad News = Good News

Some of those little discoveries I mentioned yesterday deflate or destroy any number of pretty lies. I could tell people these things up front and their reaction would be either denial or despair, with a big helping of anger at challenging their sacred blankies in the first place. Consider:

• There is no such thing as karma.
• You are neither more nor less than human, and always were and shall be.
• No one can actually empower you.
• Astrology is pretty much nonsense.
• Luck is 100% illusion.
• Fate is bunk.
• You do not have a soul mate.

I need an aspirin.

Every so often I go look at FaceBook to see what my far-flung friends are up to. As I think I mentioned some time ago, not everyone I'm connected to there is a friend in any usual sense, some being more on the "useful" side than the "loved" side of things. Also, some of my old friends and acquaintances have wandered into less than sane waters in the interim, and some people have a maddening combination of really interesting hobbies and mind-bogglingly stupid views of the world. So there is a certain amount of unhinged crazy that batters my brain when I visit the site.

Fortunately, most of the stupid can be tamped down by telling FB not to show me articles from FrothyMouthWeekly or whatever, and that generally takes care of it, stupid mostly being handed around lazily instead of actually getting elucidated by its adherents. Which probably explains its popularity, now that I think about it. However, some of the dumbth is unavoidable, and comes out in self-righteous mini-rants laden with words and phrases that person has never used before, all signalling to anyone outside the echo chamber, "This is what my puppetmaster told me to say!" The merest critical thinking causes it to fall apart, the rhetorical tricks are trite beyond measure, and a mindset of assumed results before considered facts seems to be a requirement. Narrative über alles!

But heaven help you if you try to break down the programming in the least.

It wouldn't bother me so much except that these are for the most part pretty intelligent people. In fact, intellect (or relative lack of same) doesn't much seem to change the resistance to this type of brainwashing. More than a few minutes of observing that fact causes me to despair for mankind. So back I go to selected blogs and even more carefully selected IM correspondents, where I'm kept honest, myself, and I don't have to mutely accept painfully foolish and self-defeating bombast in order to maintain my pragmatic and carefully curated illusions.

Some Sort of Gainer

Since psychologist William Sheldon defined general categories for body types in the mid-20th century, much has been made of how much ease or difficulty a given person has in gaining muscle mass. A fair bit of it is watered down enough to be more or less nonsense. By the definition you usually find, otherwise divorced from the categories as a concept, most people are "hard gainers" even though that properly applies only to the delicate-framed ectomorphs. Or so go the category descriptions. Though my bones are quite dense and quite large, in high school I was a long, skinny thing who lifted for most of a year to add 10# of muscle, and on a frame my size, that was an almost invisible change. Apparently there are exceptions to the general rule.

So here I am, trying to reverse years of neglect and prevent the dangers of extending that period of carelessness. While fat does shed rather more slowly than I might want, I find myself getting visibly improved muscle tone and shape only 1 month after a shift from infrequent machine use to regular free weights.

I find myself worried not that I am a hard gainer but rather that I could have easily had an outstanding physique for years if I had only pulled my self-discipline together.

Wrong Angle Of Approach

There are truths, some pretty basic, essential things for looking at the world in such a way that it makes sense, which are more or less forbidden topics. They're so foundational that messing with them causes all sorts of trouble to the surface of people's minds, which are generally preferred to be placid and undisturbed. But really, after a period of adjustment and perturbation, one tends to be much happier once the shift has been made. After all, you can deny cognitive dissonance like a champ, but it's going to eat at you until you make it go away. It's just that resetting badly set bones hurts like hell.

So I have a desire to help my friends toward a clearer understanding of why, for example, people do what they do, and want what they want. It's only perplexing if you insist on misunderstanding the basics. Clear that up and it suddenly clicks into focus. The benefit to me is that I no longer have to cover my knowledge of deeply politically incorrect realities. Honestly, they were common knowledge not long ago, but unquestioned to the point of being an unconscious assumption, and thus bulldozed by those who would promote themselves at the expense of their own society. You can see how it would be a nuisance to bite back every reference. Imagine if everyone decided the sky was actually green, and only backward brutes thought it was blue. Any casual mention or metaphor regarding the sky would have to be considered before speaking, lest the Green Sky people, who are rightly touchy about their delicate but repeated self-deception, get frothy and shrieky about it. Big nuisance.

My tendency is therefore to couch things in humor. Considering how often and how badly that has gone in the past, you'd think I would never do that again. I think I'm thinking at the time that it's a way to gauge the hearer's receptivity to reality, in a harmless and plausibly deniable way. The oversensitivity of the Green Sky people is not to be underestimated in that way, though. On top of that, humans are more or less a foreign language to me, and my calibration is very easily thrown off by casual settings and moderately familiar conversational partners. As a result I find myself combing through conversations after the fact, agonizing about whether I've managed to horribly offend someone in the name of very mild humor. Yes, it's pathetic. No, I haven't figured out a way to fix it. Not caring isn't an option, in case you wonder.

Where It Stops, Nobody Knows

I fear I am disillusioned with art. All arts. I can do anything; I can do nothing; nothing I do is worth anything; I can rely on the scaffold of my skill and an eager world; I cannot even break even; I'm ignoring what's right in front of me; there is nothing there at all.

It would seem that I am turning, but to which direction I'm not sure. It seems likely I can determine the final direction. The problem is: Should I? Is it mine to determine? Am I more likely to drive into a ditch than choose what is best?

My sense is that I have bought some lies, some very dangerous, negative lies, which (like all of their race) masquerade as sense and caution. It is hard to tell what is the truth, at this point. Emotion has always been the worst and cloudiest state for me, and knowing it is so is only a partial help to clear the air again. Fear is a worse killer than foolhardiness, since it causes things to lie down and die of their own accord, a guaranteed loss against an opponent which might not even exist.

Experience tells me that accomplishment, actual doing, is what will move me from the noxious fog. Fear of failing is what weighs me down. Experience joins in on both sides of this: I know my weaknesses, or think I know, though whether they are lies I can't tell, but the knowledge gives a panicked edge to things. And I also know that risking usually proves a problem false, and minor failures almost directly build toward success. It's a good thing experience tells me this, because nothing else does, right now.

I know generally what to do, just not where to start. Perhaps with the more guaranteed accomplishments.

Not The Idiot Whisperer

The time I have to take in a lot of news quickly is, unfortunately, the time before I'm awake enough to tamp down the urge to react to it. I suspect both that this is not uncommon and that it is not generally something about which people are usually self-aware.

But it's tempting. Two "sides" of a cultural argument, studiously ignoring the obvious inconsistencies in their own side while pointing out the exact same problems in the other, not to mention ignoring an obvious solution; the History Channel screwing with history for a tag line; rivers of feelgoodery that cause more problems than they even try to solve.

The temptation is, of course, to try to reason with all this unreason, and that leads very quickly to madness and frustration. A mantra is needed to stay back from the brink, and only respond once there is brainpower and proper time to do so.

Say it with me, friends:
I am not the idiot whisperer.
I am not the idiot whisperer.
I am not the idiot whisperer.

It soothes my blackened soul.

Related to this morning's amusement, have you seen this? It's titled, You're not a nerd, geeks aren't sexy and you don't "fucking love" science. It sums up so much of what is wrong with... well, with so much. A quick rundown:

1. Pseudoscience is far more popular than actual science, because actual science is a lot of work that most observers can't even identify, and pseudoscience allows for easy self-congratulation.
2. Redefining words to retain their emotional caché while giving them meaning that removes the reason for that caché is both pathetic and ridiculously popular. It invariably results in removing the very impact it tried to make use of.
3. Claiming geekiness is far more more popular than actual geekiness, because actual geekiness is a lot of work that most observers can't even identify, and just claiming the title allows for easy self-congratulation.

One of my favorite parts of the article is this:

If you have to tell people you're a nerd, chances are you're not. Nerds don't have to advertise their status. We know. Being a nerd is a byproduct of losing yourself in what you do, often at the expense of friends, family and hygiene. Until or unless you've paid your dues, you haven't earned the right—or reason—to call yourself a nerd. Being a nerd isn't graceful or glorious. It's a life born out of obsessive dedication to a craft, discipline or collecting some stupid shit that only you care about.

Big reveal: It's ok to not be a geek. There's more to geekery than intelligence, and not being a geek doesn't mean that you're dumb or ignorant, or that you have no interesting interests. Mostly it means that your interests haven't interfered with your ability to relate to the general populace, or that they aren't a result of an inability to relate. Because that's pretty much what the word means. Always has, since it stopped referring to unfortunate sideshow denizens.

You want to know whether someone's a "real" nerd/geek? Remember that until the current blurring of the terms, the obsession with esoteric stuff was more or less secondary in the meaning to the social awkwardness. Being an expert has never been a pejorative. Some geeks are, yes, sexy. A fair few, really. It neither makes nor breaks the definition, since I know any number of terribly nerdy hotties. When I was (tangentially) involved with the Goth scene, I discovered that it was mostly nerds hiding behind very cool, carefully built facades. They didn't tell people they were nerds; they had no desire to. It's a byproduct, an unfortunate side effect, a description of maladroit tendencies. And that's the big clue, the difference Maddox is on about. If it was as awesome to be as everyone suddenly thinks it is, there'd be a lot more doing it for real.

Someone's going to read this and have the politically correct spasm of defending cosplayer women from being called fake geeks. Save it. If you have any association with the cosplay community, you'll know that (a) the supposed problem is miniscule and absurdly overblown, (b) the few jerks who cause the problem are regularly and thoroughly brow-beaten by the rest of the nerds, and (c) geeky cosplayers don't bother calling themselves geeks because, as above, they actually are. Genuine, with a history of being social outcasts and everything. Plus, I seem to recall a lot of noise over the past few decades about women being able to take care of themselves. Which these do, because... they're geeks.

[Addendum: My friend Victor mentioned something tangentially along this topic this very morning, after I'd written the above. Apparently the general idea is occurring independently to a lot of people, in various ways.]

Geek Flag

I'm not sure I can relate what a blessed relief this obscure little blog has been for me. Though as uneven in thought, topic, and writing as imaginable, being able to simply say what I want without any real filter is enormously freeing.  I've done some blogging before, but it was unwisely tied down by having audiences I knew needed some measure of kid-glove treatment. It turns out that a lot of my friends don't get along with a lot of my other friends, and a lot of socially and politically useful people I keep in touch with aren't open-minded enough to manage actual tolerance. Thus, FaceBook and similar venues are really useful for only the most innocuous of communications. As I've mentioned here before, it can be fun to poke at some echo chamber effects from outside their bubble, but it's both risky and unrewarding, merely faint attempts to sow seeds of doubt in untenable views.

You've most likely seen the BBC's modern take on Sherlock. I'm not him, obviously, but the frustration he expresses, especially in the first season, at trying to communicate to most people is very familiar. Some of his actual lines have wandered through my head when confronted with the astoundingly illogical things out there. It's insane.

Then there's the problem of formatting and article length, which every social media site seems abjectly unable to handle. I'm forced into being so concise or so dumbed-down that the result is either full of holes, vague and stupidly mysterious-sounding, or near-nonsensical. And I understand the general restriction on multiple links, but when they can explain, with only one word's space in the post, the entire background on some term or situation, not having them removes much of my already-limited ability to be brief.

Lastly, there is the problem of subject matter. If there's a place for daily pictures of one's breakfast, it would seem public opinion is against FaceBook being that place. Instagram, I suppose, or Pinterest, might do, but I've never had accounts there; you'd have to fill me in on that. But going the other direction, into specialized or erudite subjects, also doesn't really belong on social media. An encyclopedic resource or functional application would naturally use a regular web site; extended musings or an ongoing exploration really wants a blog. So all my geektastic ponderations about conlangs and suchlike go here. This is where I can safely let my geek flag fly.

Do many people see it? No. Most of you are here because I mentioned it to you, and I haven't mentioned it to many. If you return after a first glance, I'm grateful. I'm not sure exactly what this tiny corner of the 'net offers, but I'm glad you're here. Even if none of my ramblings, in the end, really matter, it's nice to have some conversation with you.

Bleh.

I consider passive-aggressive actions to be firmly in the "reprehensible" category. The whole idea is to dodge responsibility by way of plausible deniability, which is a lovely combination of weak, deceptive, and obnoxious. Usually, I use passive-aggressives as a chew toy for my disdain.

Couple nights ago I tried it out. I didn't feel like going to the extended trouble of explaining why I didn't want to put up with something, plus, turnabout and all that. So I gave it a dose of sullen, indirect hostility and when successful followed it with flat-out denial.

What a vile feeling. I have no idea how anyone makes a habit of that.

Envy

Got me a lot of flaws. If you didn't know that already, you will soon - unless you're the sort that figures it's a general fact about humanity and therefore already an assumed fact, in which case, yes, you're very smart, shut up.

Sarcasm. Definitely a major flaw. But not tonight's subject. As the title might have given away, it's envy.

Mark Twain once said, “I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” Fortunately for you, I had time today to write something shorter than it would have otherwise been. One of my other faults is digression, for reasons I shall not digress here to discuss. Just be relieved that great mounds of diluting words got excised from this.

It used to be that envy was considered a bad thing. A deadly sin. Now it's practically enshrined by any number of groups and social mores, all of which exist to help shift the perceived source of the problem from an internal one to an external one. In other words, trying to tear down something good rather than facing one's own failings. A very energetic form of laziness, it'd seem. And oh, the justifications given! But they all have something in common, a crack that prevents them holding up in the light of reality:

Envy comes from a mindset of poverty, of scarcity. Of ignorance.

Sometimes it is supported by a knowledge, somewhere inside, that the lack one experiences is entirely optional. It is not the case everywhere, but in America, long-term poverty in adults is almost always the result of either behavioral issues or serious mental illness. I see this regularly; a friend who runs a homeless ministry sees it daily. It's not the homeless that get all het up about the wealth of the ultra-elite, though, or of people just higher in the socio-economic ladder. It's people at the bottom of the middle class, mostly, who are eaten up with envy, and I strongly suspect it's because of the scarcity mindset on the surface with some strong denial running beneath it.

I suspect this because it's what I see in myself, in my own envy. I can look at people who have done well and wish I had planned and done better. I can look at those who are more fit, enjoying its many perks, and know that many bad choices made the divergence between us, and that many hard choices lie between me and those benefits. Envy comes easily at those moments. It's disgusting. If let to fester, it's horribly self-destructive.

What if it can be turned to better use, though? Energy can be directed: why not redirect a desire for a better life? The first thing to do is to kill the denial. That's all this article really is. Once acknowledged, it cannot be maintained, so into the light it comes. I have to recognize that where I am is in no small part due to my own decisions, and the bad decisions are mostly due to looking for the easy, quickly pleasant route. The hard choices lead to an immeasurably more pleasurable existence, and knowing that will help sustain me. I've no illusions that self-discipline will suddenly spring to me after all these years of struggling with it. But recognizing the need to change will allow the change itself.

Then there's the envy itself, the scarcity mentality that causes so much grief. If I recognize that wealth of all kinds is, in truth, created, not taken - and if taken, it makes it less, as history has shown endlessly - then I can learn from those who have gained more than me, have achieved better freedoms, or whatever goals I deem worthy. If I consciously understand that their wealth does me no harm, and reject that childish view, will it destroy my drive to excel? No, it will ennoble it.

The end result of all this is very nearly the opposite of the trouble described above.

The difference is that I consider envy a failing, and something to motivate me. They consider envy a virtue to be lauded, and a rationale for political action.