Homogenized but not pasteurized

I feel a twinge of guilt whenever I go into a fast food chain or even a chain of restaurants now. It has nothing to do with eating processed or healthful foods. It has everything to do with homogenization of culture. In an ironic twist, the very signs and brands that I felt comfortable with in my early life now cause me discomfort when thinking about the world - when thinking on a global scale. Clearly, this is something I should explore further. Any suggestions are welcome.

True or false?

I'm trying to get through some of my Netflix queue during what's left until fall semester starts. It seems to be going in the wrong direction though, because for every one thing I watch, I add two more. Today, I watched among other things, Breathless and an episode of Fawlty Towers. Sure, the latter is funny. But these two works also touch a nerve with me.

The protagonists are just, well, to put it bluntly they're total assholes. Pompous, arrogant jerks. It's just difficult for me to stomach the behavior of such people, even in a work of fiction. At least when I interact with strangers in passing that seem to be the source material for such caricatures, I can write it off as someone having a bad day. Rather than the synergistic result, not even a simple sum, of an awful childhood compounded by poor education. No. I definitely prefer to believe that all people have the potential to be good (starting as tabula rasa). But it's so hard! Fiction like that then serves as a reminder, not an escape.

Big G and U

People bitch and moan about the government constantly, without ever realizing that the government is really a reflection of the current state of culture. How could it not be?

1. Government has as much flexibility in power as people demonstrate complacency.
If given an inch, yes, government will take a foot. But that's true of any rational agent. Government is not a nebulous entity, but run by actual people, flesh and blood. If offered powered, it will be taken. Naturally, this is why coup d'etats actually work. If kings were gods, then none would be deposed.

2. People don't understand the current state of affairs nearly as well as they think they do.
Unfortunately, this applies to politicians, in the U.S, say, Congressmen, as much as it does to ordinary citizens. But let's face it, do the average citizen really understand how a cap and trade system for carbon emissions functions like a Pigouvian tax on a negative externality? No? Then why do so many people sit on their asses railing against one like they do? Can the average citizen provide a definition of socialism and distinguish it from communism and capitalism? That minimum wage laws are a form of socialism, but the stock market is capitalistic? So why do people whine about pigs making their fortunes on the stock market while ignoring the minimum wage, while in the same minute declaring this or that administration to be socialists that are taking our country to a nose dive? Are you fucking kidding me?

3. Equality is contagious.
If you are among those people that believes that your neighbor can do anything they want as long as the law has the ability to differentiate them from you, then I both pity and despise you. What is marriage? It's both a commitment made public as well as a potential financial windfall (although this does occasionally go the other way, screwy tax laws). So what's wrong with two people in love proclaiming such a commitment and being rewarded appropriately by the government? Don't give me the argument that marriage has been a cornerstone of civilization, because that's just a load of bullshit. If you want to make that argument, then I counter that marriage ceased to be a cornerstone of civilization ever since Henry VIII defied the Catholic Church and decided that divorce was a-okay. If you support divorce, then you by default must abandon the historical view of marriage, because it's now tried and true that marriage is, like all other institutions, SUBJECT TO CHANGE. If people continue to embrace diversity and equality, it will catch on. Faster in some areas than in others, but it will become the status quo instead of a "liberal" novelty.

I'll come back to this topic, I'm sure, another night after another six-pack. But for now, to be continued.

Pieced together from one side of a conversation: confessions of a cynic

Here are some bits and pieces from my side of a text conversation. I find it awkward to have conversations about anything but the simplest subjects via text, because there is always so much that I want to say that I never get around to. Partially due to the character constraints, and partially because it is amazingly fucking annoying to type on a touch-screen phone when compared to the wonderful tactile feedback of an actual god damn keyboard.

"Internal-external disconnect. People have different values than I do. Or place different value on things. Makes friendship tenuous. Someone gets 'bored'."

It still amazes me to this day that it's so hard to find people that feel even remotely the same about subjects important to me. Qualities that are important in people, important in life, important in society. And I don't just mean internally, because I think a lot of people have strong feelings about any given topic, but most of those feelings aren't necessarily worth discussing, because they're already set. So what's to discuss?

"My schema: people become 'friends' with me when they need something. I'm a cynic. And I always assume that I'll be left behind otherwise."

I'm not just a cynic; I'm a misanthrope. Until people demonstrate otherwise, and I almost used prove, but prove is such an ugly word, best left to the elegance of mathematics, but yes, until people demonstrate that they actually desire my companionship or conversation, I'm going to be watching and analyzing. Determining what it is a person wants from me, what need I can possibly fulfill, and having done so, what happens next. People don't generally come back to me out of the blue. It's because, well, they already got what they wanted. Not everyone is like that, but why waste effort on the ones that are?

Now poaching from an entirely different conversation from a different media: maybe I'm just afraid that I'll mistake someone's social frivolity for sincerity. Maybe I already did and I've since incorporated that into my schema without ever thinking twice about it. Fear feeds cynicism. I'm fairly certain I've written this down elsewhere.

"The converse is true too. I have to feel like I provide some value or worth to someone else."

Therein lies the rub. Any given instant of great utility creates a diminishing marginal benefit later. Unfortunately, being keyed into that concept means feeling a lesser value of self-worth over time. Two ideas come together here. First, that the benefit of putting more effort into something or someone should equal the cost of pouring in more effort; second, that some schedule of reinforcement comes into play. So, there has to be a payoff every once in a while. A few laughs. Maybe some drinks shared and good stories swapped. The simple things in life. And it can't be too hard, too out of the way to get, unless the payoff is just that good. Usually it won't be, but that's okay.

Lately, it just hasn't been that good.

Turning point

Every day I think I get a little closer to a turning point that would be comparable to an epiphany. There's this kernel of knowledge in the back of my mind, something that I know I should be listening to and following, acting out, and yet I just can't quite bring myself to do it. Not yet. But every day I get nudged a little closer in that direction.

I think I spent the last part of my high school years and a good portion of time thereafter in a state between people that I felt I belonged with and people that I wanted to belong to. Somewhere along the line, I found a good group of people. Friends I really cared about and enjoyed spending time with. But the saying goes that all things must come to an end; sometimes this is a cause for celebration, and sometimes this is a cause for sorrow.

In any case, that left a gap of sorts, one that I've been trying to fill ever since. Instead of following the advice that I should have all along, I've tried to create structure after structure to replicate the one before. Naturally, success has been nowhere to be found. And instead of just going with what I knew all along, that I'm not in the right place, not with the right people, I've been trying to force the issue.

So it's time to round the bend. I can finally truly give up on trying to have friends in this city and feel good about doing it. If I meet a someone or two that I feel truly connected with, then great. In any case, I've finally figured out what I want to do with the rest of my life, so for now I'm just going to put my head down and get to it.

The painting.

You know, I was thinking earlier today that I seem to enjoy finding situations of increasing complexity. But then I came to the thought that perhaps all human interactions are incredibly complex. Just that with experience comes the ability to discern the minutiae that creates the texture of those interactions.

For example, being able to identify a single broad brush stroke in a painting, but bit by bit seeing each one for what it is, until you begin to see more of a composite image out of these individual brush strokes. You start to make out the lines that together define a tree trunk. Eventually a horizon comes into view. Elements of the sky come into focus. In the end, you might get a glimpse of the whole painting.

So then it wouldn't be so much that the situations are more complex as it is that I have a better grip on what is actually going on. Not really a bad thing at all.

Another silly chemistry metaphor.

I don't remember what exactly got me to thinking about this. Yet somewhere I got an idea in my head for a metaphor to describe emotional states. Oh. Yeah. Now I remember what it was that I was thinking about. But I'll just gloss over that ...

So here we go. Let's start with some basic chemistry first. Atoms consist of protons, neutrons, and electrons. Nuclei have a set composition at least to a certain degree. The number of protons determines what element you have, and neutrons the isotope. So maybe I could try to fit radioactivity in here but I won't. This is going to get stretched pretty thinly as it stands.

Electrons are generally more interesting, as they are heavily involved in chemical reactions. Like emotions and human interactions. In a neutral atom the number of electrons is equal to the number of protons. Pretty elementary. The electrons, however, are not clustered in one spot like like the other particles in the nucleus. Instead they wander about probability clouds, or orbitals.

If you do the math, the probability of finding a single electron around a single proton (a hydrogen atom) can be mapped out, and we end up with a sphere. So there's the first orbital. And two electrons with opposite spins can reside there happily, but when you add a third you end up with a new orbital. Also a sphere, but larger and there are locations where you won't find that third (and fourth) electron. The next orbital holds up to six and actually resembles lobes along an x-, y- and z-axis. Point being, the orbitals get more complex and more importantly, they fill in a specific order.

The reason they fill in a specific order is due to the energy state of the orbital. Lowest energy states fill first, because that's the natural order of things. All things being equal, things tend toward the lowest energy state. Furthermore these energy states are quantized. We can give discrete energy values to each orbital and there is no in between. So we can measure how much energy an electron absorbs or emits if it jumps from one orbital to another.

Now emotions can't be quantized. At least not in the sense that I can tell you that I feel x number of units of affection for this person but I feel y units of love toward this other person. We do qualify our emotions, however, with descriptors that attempt to identify the degree of an emotional state. You might go from "I like you" to "I like you very much" and eventually to "I love you". And so on. Sure, we could discuss context as well, but I'll assume that's mandatory for communication between two or more people. Here I'm thinking in terms of measuring just myself, so I can provide my own context for my qualifiers. An emotional particle in a box, if you will.

I suppose I always thought of emotions developing gradually over time. But it seems to me that the onset is so rapid, that often a new state is achieved through some combination of experience and rationalization. Okay, so your mileage may vary. But it would generally follow that to achieve a "higher energy" emotional state, say to fall in love with someone, then the previous "orbitals" need to be filled in order to have a stable emotional state. What causes these to be filled can vary. An environmental trigger. Something he or she said or did. The possible factors are numerous.

Let's return to the atom for a moment. It is possible for a photon to come along and hit our electron, causing it to absorb a specific amount of energy thus exciting it and causing it to jump to another orbital. We actually observe this on a daily basis. When the electron returns to its original state another photon is emitted, and depending on how the energy is conserved it can be of a different wavelength. This is used in fluorescent light bulbs. Phosphorescence is a slower decay. But back to our person.

So something out of the ordinary happens to this person. And there's a jump in emotional states. But because the excitation is temporary, because there isn't a stable shell, this emotional state is bound to return to its ground state. But we as humans don't fluoresce or phosphoresce or such. The energy still has to go somewhere though. An outburst. An abnormal change in emotional state. Something cathartic might alleviate that perhaps.