by Eric on August 10, 2009
Sorry for the tabloid like headline, I had to give it a go.
I once childishly believed in the God of the Bible. By that, I don’t mean it is childish to believe in the Judeo-Christian God, I mean I was a child and I took the stories as true as I took my craving for Wendy’s Double Bacon Cheeseburger—facts of reality. In my teens, I thought to make myself a better, more rational man, logic required me to become atheist. I did and I’m okay with the idea of no afterlife and no God. This life is all I have known and no matter whether or not there is a God or afterlife, I want to make the most of it.
But I don’t like how atheism has connotations of rigidness, joylessness, and I don’t really care to wage ideological war with fundamentalists. And from the way I see it there really is no debate.
There is an attitude of reverence for everything I’ve seen in Einstein’s and Emerson’s writings. I think you know it. The kind of wow feeling we get when we look at oceans, rivers, or ponder how big the universe is.
That’s God no? I don’t see God as having any will with which to smite us down for killing an insect or even another human. I don’t attach any will or manlike qualities to God. I’m okay with that. And in case you’re logically retentive in the anal sense this is not my philosophical treatise. I like thinking of God in everything.
This is why I call myself a pantheist over an atheist. I don’t think the two are very far apart. I’ve seen many scientists who have a reverence for nature and life. I think if I called myself an atheist the reverential attitude about the world is not one which springs to mind for most people. By calling myself a pantheist, people have to at least question me more about it, something I want, or they can think I’m a pagan-wiccan-watches-Charmed-all-the-time weirdo—it’s up to them.
As for my attitude about other religiions there is only one which I call an enemy to today’s world and that’s dogmatism. The rest of the differences, muslim, hindu, christian are only differences in the story. They all believe in the almighty dude, dudes, and/or dudettes in the sky whose given them rules to follow which coincidentally provide an okay basis for civil society. In other words, cool with me.
Do I like Richard Dawkins? Yes, I think he’s a funny and fascinating guy. Do I like Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris (all three are as well known as an atheist can be for being an atheist)? Yeah they’re all good. I also have a favorable opinion of Ayatollah Montazeri of Iran (the guy under the supreme leader Khamenei who called for vote recounts). I don’t think religion really matters to whether or not I like a person. Religion, except in extreme dogmatic cases, seems to play a mouse-sized role in someone’s personality.
That said, I have the impression a lot of people are religious because they fear death. I think I fear death as well, I’m unsure, but I’m certain I fear the emotional distress my death would cause those who love me.
I think reincarnation would be cool and if there’s no afterlife I don’t see the need to worry about it. Frankly, I see death by old age as a technological problem which, despite a collectively shared fear of death across cultures, has gone unaddressed except for by people like Aubrey de Grey. I can also imagine backing up my brain every night on a computer and storing my DNA somewhere so they can recreate my body in case of accidental death.
No I’m not a narciccist —at least not a statistically deviant one. I don’t see why it’s necessary for me or anyone else to die. The only ones who I think are at a disadvantage are the mortuary lobby.
I’m not afraid of the changes those technologies would bring to society. It’s all unknown until we do something and, even though many technological changes have spelled doom across the centuries, I’m sure we’ll still be around to figure our way out of the problem or, if needed, reinstate mortality—wouldn’t that be a boon?
Cheers.
You should follow me on twitter here
.
I’ve wanted to start my own business for a while. To do this, I set up goals like a trip to Wales or a month in Germany.
I thought those goals would work because for the past 4 years I’ve been telling myself I want to travel. I really want to travel—to Singapore, to India, to Japan, to Argentina, most anywhere. So I took the “proactive” approach and asked the question I learned from reading Rich Dad Poor Dad, the bestseller from the 90’s, which said don’t say you can’t afford something, ask yourself how you can afford something. The question stuck with me. I felt wiser for it. How can I afford the trip to Wales? Work!
It didn’t work at all and I think I know why.
For my teenage life I’ve told myself I’d be alright without much of anything. I fantasized about how I would survive as a homeless person. I knew I would feel okay if all my things were taken from me. Turns out some part of me knew I would be okay if I never left town and never traveled.
I knew this but persisted with the travel-to-Wales-thing as motivation to start a business. It persisted, in part, because what else is there to want? Plenty really, but our culture and my life taught me wanting meant wanting someTHING. I have wanted a car, books (it used to be all I wanted), and a nice mattress.
I use the library and I don’t want books anymore. To prove it I sold off 80% of my books to free up the space. I don’t want for many things at all.
It was always there but unconscious. It took a 4 hour great conversation with my friend to start and a couple epiphanies to realize what I want. First, during the conversation I realized how comfort totally kills motivation. I could tell myself yes I don’t have everything I want but I’m okay. The okay-ness said it was okay to not work so hard for a business. It was okay to watch a movie and play a game…basically it was okay to waste time and call it “needed fun”.
The idea that to pursue my goals and dreams most effectively means to lose everything and get desperate seems ridiculous. I know it would work to some extent at a great cost. I know desperation works for some people. But it seems so unsustainable and it won’t work for everybody.
It’s self-respect. It’s not having the sucky feeling when I tell my love we’re not doing something because we shouldn’t given our financial circumstances. i like avoiding frivolous expenses but some emotionally beneficial luxuries would be nice to enjoy like eating out, a massage, and for my wife, a pedicure—though I did have one myself in Xiamen, China. I also want the time to pursue jazz piano but not as much as self-respect and not having to say “We can’t”.
I’d pay not have to say “can’t” because of financial circumstances. It really sucks having to tell my love that. Most of all, it’s self-respect.
The feeling I hate most is not having accomplished anything worthwhile by the end of the day. That’s sucks. Or the feeling that I’m wasting my life. It manifests as defeatism in any business pursuit—why bother, there’s no point—that kind of feeling.
If I can look back at my day, at my year, and be proud of myself, that’s worth all the money in the world. That I can’t live without. That I’ll work hard for. And the thing is, I can never stop working for it. I like that. It’s a goal I have to pursue every day. I feel if I have that as my goal, I won’t ever stagnate.
So yeah, self-respect. I don’t want anything at all except to evaluate my actions at the end of the day and pat myself on the back.
####
The past 2 days have been great. I can’t tell you how wonderful and content I feel. My desire to contribute great things to the world is strong and I won’t have my self respect if I’m not working to toward my greatest dreams.
You should follow me on twitter here
.
But it’s done some shitty stuff. This crossfire interview between Noam Chomsky and Bill Bennett seems old hat to me. Both seem to agree America is a great country. What they disagree on is how to think of the crimes of our government. For Chomsky, we must address them. For Bennett, we must ignore them. Bennett chooses to misinterpret Chomsky’s discontent for America as dislike for America thereby prompting his “Well, why do you live here?” remark.
I’m sympathetic to Bennett for wanting to believe the best about his country’s and wanting to disregard the crimes commited by our government as wrongs which couldn’t be avoided. He reminds me of a relative I have who chooses to ignore their son’s alcoholism and see only the best in him. They’re both avoiding disillusionment with something they love.
But I think Bennett and my relative are mistaken in thinking ignorance of problems is the best way to maintain their love and avoid disillusionment. I’m going through my own disillusionment about my world. I can continue to ignore personal problems. But I know they won’t go away.
I think if Bennett starts confronting his disillusionment, he’ll forgive its crimes and become someone who pushes America closer to his ideal of America—thereby deepening his love. I consider Lawrence Lessig and Change Congress as good examples of an organization who is addressing the shitty reality and making it better.
Bennett’s current attitude seems to be the attitude of the mainstream—this saddens me. Why else havn’t school kids learned of American occupation’s of the Phillipines and Haiti, or of overthrowing the government in the Dominican Republic in the 60’s, overthrowing Iran’s government in the 50’s, or of partnering with Stalin in WWII while he ordered the killings of thousands of Russians?
The current torture debate is over the same matter. People who want to ignore it are like Bennett, let’s move on and ignore. The people who want it out in the open say let’s move on and let’s make sure it never happens again by addressing them now. The first keeps the alcoholic at home causing more damage and the latter sends him to rehab and subsequently a halfway house knowing we must always be vigilant against the alcoholic coming near alcohol again.
How have you dealt with disillusionment in your life?
You should follow me on twitter here
.
Old age does not qualify anyone to have more authority in matters of politics. I got this reply from someone during election season when I wrote my reply to some of their political justifications. Instead of breaking down my reasoning and offering intelligent feedback the response was ‘You’ll understand someday’.
“So what you’re saying is you’re not articulate enough to explain to me now? Or you doubt my ability to comprehend what you’re saying in which case you insult my intelligence? Answer me!”
Sorry but age does not qualify ANYONE. Experience does. Study does. If you have experience with small business then you’ll know something about effective small business policies—not necessarily everything but something. Age does not equal experience.
My grumpiness is more about businessmen and the curious alignment of most businessmen and republican or conservative outlooks. In conservative party lines I’ve seen businessmen use their business experience as qualification for their authority on matters of politics.
I get it why they do this. We always try to understand things in terms of what we do understand. We try to understand the brain in terms of computers. We try to understand societies as organisms or extended families. Whatever.
The problem comes in when we start to confuse metaphorical learning—understanding something in terms of another—with straight up knowing. The brain IS NOT a computer. Society IS NOT an organism or extended family. And for pete’s sake, democratic politics IS NOT business.
In business you can remove people you don’t want from your organization, you are accountable to yourself and close counsel. (I’m not talking about big business and shareholders.) In politics, you have political pressures to have a person there, maybe corrupt pressures, maybe other pressures, but you cannot just choose and not have the whole world criticise it. You cannot easily remove people either.
In business you can do target marketing. You can live off of a few thousand clients. You don’t need to be a people pleaser. This allows for more consistency between what you say you’ll do and what you do. In politics, you have to appeal to EVERYONE. This means making promises which will not be fulfilled. Until EVERYONE is educated enough to realize what a stupid promise is or [insert something witty here].
Things which are good in business are terrible in politics. Making snap decisions and being accountable to close counsel leads to cronyism. Treating government like it’s your own organization to boss around leads to stupidity. On a scale this large matters are far more complex than an organization of a hundred, thousand or even ten thousand. 10,000 < 300,000,000. I think it takes a great deal of ego and narcissism to think your brain is more complex than 300,000,000.
And of course, to add insult to injury, in our legal system corporations are treated like people. This is why corporate donations are okay legally. But think about it, for the most part the people deciding to give hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars from a corporation are just a handful of people. A corporation giving money IS NOT like the church collection basket where every employee decides how much they want to give. A corporate donor is an individual donor in the end—a very, very, very powerful invidual donor.
That said, I think businessmen have some insightful opinions to offer. They have testimony to offer as well about the complexity of taxes for a starting out business. Just do not for an instant think running a private organization is like representing constituents or a nation.
Something-I-want-to-write-about-now-but-don’t-for-sake-of-simplicity:The president does not ‘run’ the country.
You should follow me on twitter here
.
What if there were a company which built nations? The company would employ doctors who specialised in preventative medicine, farmers, genetic engineers to hel, infrastructure builders, mathematicians, social activists, linguists, all the people it would take to build a nation-even mercenaries.
It would get funding from the National Endowment for Democracy, NATO, companies who had an interest in seeing a stable government wherever they wanted to work, the U.N., any profits the company made would go in the form of micro-loans to people in the country. The company could also get staff from scholars on Fulbright’s, fellowships, or sabbatical, who are interested in improving people’s lives.
If there can be a private military like Blackwater, why can’t there be a private nation building company which creates rather than destroys?
I wondered if I were the CEO of Chevron and I knew the money my company brought in to the Democratic Republic of the Congo brought death to thousands, how would I deal with it?
If I pulled the company out and stopped pumping oil, GAZPROM, PetroChina, or Sinopec would probably come in and continue doing the same thing. If I hired Blackwater to “remove” the dictatorship, the country would be left without any form of government and the most charistmatic, self-centered jackass would rise up and probably do the same thing all over again.
So what if I had at my disposal, CommuniHall (the nation building company), who could go in, bring basic resources, help set up local governance, prevent crime, and all the good stuff. Enabling me to continue pumping without having to kill people. I’d help contribute to funding the organization if other organizations threw in.
I know there are many organizations which do nation building activities but seperately. Red Cross, Architecture for Humanity, UN, Blackwater(now Xe) could if security meant crime prevention rather than other things.
Just thinking aloud…
You should follow me on twitter here
.
A mini saga in 40 words.
A snowflake struck his nose. After his move to Florida, he took to tanning. His wife, like him, didn’t cook. He croaked at Denny’s around 3 AM. His son moved back to Montana in the LeSabre. He missed snow.
Funny thing, I wrote that just writing what sounded and felt right—but it reveals something on my mind.
If Elizabeth gets in to Berkeley or Yale Law, I want to go. It won’t be for a while now. I’m in Austin for sure until January. After that?
As lovely as it is, something is still off about Austin. This may be true anywhere I go. I’ll wonder what life would have been like if I stay put.
Am I a nomad? Is Elizabeth? Will any place feel like a perfect fit? I don’t know. I know something about Boston and Berkeley, maybe New Haven, excites me. Complacency, like divorce, is not an option for me. Complicity still seems to be, but that’s another topic.
My Dad came back from a drum circle seminar with Ubaka Hill where she told them ”if you’re not living on the edge, you’re taking too much space“. That resonates with me now. My Mom, years ago, took me to New York and Boston.
It was remarkable in itself and more remarkable that at an age when many kids my age had barely been out of the city, I went out of the state. Something about the north, not the snow, but how the cold pushes people indoors to books perhaps? That’s what Mom said anyways.
I know my family wouldn’t like having me so far away. I’m glad of that. If they did it’d mean something else entirely. I’m wondering now, whether intimacy is limited by physical proximity.
I think not. I think physical closeness makes us think we know someone and take them for granted. At a distance each day to someone somewhere else seems like a remarkable event. Something worth spending time listening and conversing about over the phone or in email.
Two days ago, I learned I’ve been alive for roughly 8640 days. Today is Day 8642. I like keeping track of it. It reminds me of my mortality, how life is worth living, how precious and precarious each moment is.
I’d like to say it makes me realize I’m a life neophyte. But I calculated my parents and they’re just above 20,000 days. I think they’re still young too and have much more to explore in life. At least, I’d rather have that perspective about myself when I’ve lived 20,000 days.
I’ll close with a haiku.
snoring little fool
forgot to take out the trash
thanks! said the dachshund
You should follow me on twitter here
.
Two words I’m excising from my self-talk: sleep and tired.
Often I go to sleep because I’m ”tired“. Sometime ago, I started using sleep to escape my day. There was a time I reviled my need for sleep but at this time I embraced it. Then a few weeks ago, I noticed I meant the word tired as an excuse to sleep, an excuse to escape into the reverie of soft sheets and a pillow.
Being tired quickly meant an attitude I had about my day. It meant I didn’t like my day anymore and I wanted to hit the reset button. If it sounds depressing it’s because it is.
Given this, I’d like to excise sleep and tired from my self-talk vocabulary. In the place of both words I’ll use rejuvenate, recuperate, or recover. All thsoe words have a positive sense of getting ready for the nextx day or regaining energy FOR something. It implies I worked on what I set out to do today and I’ve got to rejuvenate to continue doing what I set out to do the next day.
Elizabeth had a workshop in San Francisco recently where she got to know someone who was always positive about their day and ended her day by saying she was ready for tomorrow. I’d like that for myself too.
I have my reasons. I am bursting with ideas, but I’ve been poor on the doing side of things. I have many side projects. To do them, I need a TON of energy. I guess I see being tired as an option I’m not allowing myself anymore.
I’m drinking more water, taking my vitamins, exercising, and now taking care of my attitude too.
I like that.
” Look at the time, it’s time to get ready for tomorrow! I love rejuvenating…“
You should follow me on twitter here
.
by Eric on May 17, 2009
Photo thanks to Addictive Theory from Flickr.
I have a bandaid on my wedding ring finger because I fear the wrong things.
I don’t like it, but I worry (read: fear) people disparaging me. I repress the fear. It comes out as nail biting anxiety while I work hence the bandaid on the wedding ring finger.
Sometimes I scratch the 5 O’Clock shadow whiskers on my face, feel a squeeze in my stomach, and for whatever odd reason sniff my fingertips instead of biting my nails.
It’s like everyone I know and love will undoubtedly turn into Ebert & Roeper giving their 2 cents on Date Movie. Not good.
I’m stopping myself for a moment, just a moment, to think about things I’d rather fear. I’d rather fear going another day without learning anything new, useful, or relevant. I’d rather fear all the things I learn won’t translate into my helping others around the world be free of suffering from malaria, hunger, or access to fresh water. I’d rather fear things like that.
I’d rather fear not giving myself completely to Elizabeth emotionally, not connecting with those I love and care for enough, and not remembering to play with my dog.
I get melancholy moments sometimes. I havn’t figured why melancholy moments consistently feel like all the meaninglessness fell away for me to see reality. In those moments I think about productive and unproductive fear. Fearing personal poverty, ruin, emotional breakdown, disparaging remarks, et cetera have not, historically, inspired me to greatness.
I have two dogs—great little mini-dachshunds. For a very long time and still now, they both raise the back fur and growl at the most harmless papillon’s, shih-tsus, and poodles who hang out on the trail. I walk on, I touch their shoulder to snap them out of it. They persist. I would rather not persist in fearing the wrong thing anymore. They have an excuse unlike me…
You should follow me on twitter here
.
by Eric on April 27, 2009
Photography is such a freaking weird business. People pay you to to take a picture of them. The closest analogy to it is like Leonardo da Vinci doing the Mona Lisa—is that what I’m doing with photography?
I’m determined not to think of it as art. Art as a term has snooty connotations. What excites me most about portraiture is getting people to do thing they wouldn’t normally do and catching them in the act. I like to create new experiences for them which they’ve never had before or hadn’t done in a long time like rolling down a grassy hill. It seems more theatrical to me. I’m creating a silent play, which depending how it is arranged in an album can be something of a story.
Amazon Services allows you to advertise your services next to a realted product. What product is most related, assuming the end product of my service is an album, what is another product which is similar.
Is it a book? Those are written about someone else.
Something which tells their story and gets them to do things they normally wouldn’t do.
Amusement parks? It’s closer. How many people normally go on roller coasters?
Movies help you imagine doing something you wouldn’t normally do. I like to imagine myself in the Matrix and Braveheart. So portraiture is like a personalized movie? Only if we had a costume designer, set designer, and a makeup artist—far too expensive.
Maybe like a personal journal? It’s all about you, helps you see yourself in a new way, work intensive at times, except you don’t share your journal with others. With portraiture you want to share your pictures with people who want pictures of you.
Portraiture is like a shared journal—wait—this sounds like blogging to me. It’s also off in the intellectual property aspect of it. Bollocks.
Portraiture is more like a Las Vegas show. You pay to do it once(the session), if the show was great you pay to buy merch(your album and what not), you have to pay to see it again—the difference is the show is the interaction of you and me.
If that’s the case than portraiture is not a service or product but a performance or entertainment. If it’s a performance than you have to arrange it like a show with props, acts, scenes, etc. Or like improv with offers, ‘yes and’, and the circle of expectations. There’s also genres. Each performance falls within a genre. What’s my genre? Romantic comedy? Horror? Film noir? Circus?
If that’s the case, then the only products related to my brand of portraiture are others thing which relate to my genre.
Any better analogies for portraiture?
You should follow me on twitter here
.
by Eric on April 24, 2009
Hero worship exposes a lack of independent examination.
—Dr. Temperance Brennan (AKA Bones)
I see two ways of looking at heroes.
- You worship them, have posters up, etc.
- They are standard bearers—whom you compare yourself against because they embody a complex set of skills and ability which you cannot measure on something like the SAT.
The second is far more interesting to me. I do this in photography. I’ll take a picture, look at the best photographers’ pictures, and compare. Are mine as good? Yes? No? Oh bollocks no. Try again! I try to reverse engineer what they did to reach a similar or better result. I recall Ben Franklin doing something similar with writing.
I think hero worship (this one will hurt) is similar to worshipping God or Jesus, you are bound to feel good while you do it but it’s doing the WWJD everyday which benefits most.
You should follow me on twitter here
.