Idol Worship

Idol worship is a terrible, terrible sin. It is a sin of sheer stupidity. It is so stupid it just has to be a sin. Anyway, the whole idea is this: You make something, then you fall to your knees and kowtow to it. So maybe I'm a weirdo, but the thought of bowing to my own creation is a bit odd. I mean, shouldn't my creation be bowing to me? It kind of defeats the purpose, having myself take the effort to make 100 items, only to be bowing to them in turn. It would be marginally more meaningful to bow to a rock or a tree, though. At least you didn't have to take the trouble to make them...

A Creepy Moment

Sometimes, things just happen at night. Perhaps it's a bit of the third eye popping open at an inopportune time or something. Anyway, I was brushing my fangs at night and caught a mind's eye glimpse of a rather grotesque face. Now, that's usually a sign that something's up. That's especially so when the glimpse was that vivid. Then when I got back to my room and picked my handkerchief off the floor, it was covered in ants. Apparently, it picked up a potato chip that was swarming with the lil creatures. Creepy, perhaps. I've had worse when ants swarmed out of one of my containers a'la Stephen King.

Of course, it's the same sort of weirdness as having a drop of water fall on your lap when there was nothing on the ceiling, along with water dropping and falling in the shape of a rather interesting sign. Ah, the wonders of being where I am. heh. Of course, negotiation is much preferred to intimidation. Feeding off fear is one thing...but I feed off fear too. Doesn't work too well for some, does it?

Pink Everything!

How odd, that pink is chosen as the color of the gay community. No, it is not quite the community
that chose it so much as the power hegemony that opted to label gays with "pink". It's pink everything nowadays, apparently. Pink dollars, pink photography for gay marriages et cetera. My question would be: Why pink! I mean, if there's a color, perhaps we could always go with purple.

Purple is the land between red and blue. Red being females, blue being males. (don't ask me which dumbass came up with that color categorization). Pink, though? Pink is a rather feminine color, and probably would look more at home on the shoulders of lesbians. Then again, a goodly number of lesbians would not be too happy with that as well. Could it be that gay men like to wear pink? I suppose that would be odd, but it would imply that gay men are intrinsically feminine. Strange...I could've sworn that most gay men I've seen in real life aren't quite feminine...

Bimbo No More

The archetype of the bimbo is not far from that of the prostitute. A bimbo is thought of as a stupid attractive woman of questionable morals. That is, she uses her sexuality to get ahead, much the way a prostitute "sells" her sexuality to get economically ahead.

I see a problem here. The problem is not that intellect is something that one should flaunt. Presented with that idea, I would simply propose that women are on average smarter than men because men think about sex more and thus are less capable of focusing on the important intellectual things. Of course, that would sound downright misandrist and somewhat questionable. Not that it is a far cry from the things leveled against women that are taken as "fact".

The problem is that sexuality has become something that is deemed by our society to need to be closely guarded. Virginity is highly prized. Selling of the "body" (really merely selling sexual favours unless one is unfortunate enough to feel attachment) is met with scorn. Getting ahead with one's natural sexual attractiveness is somehow inferior to getting ahead with one's intellect. All this is a proposition to keep the female "self" for the male. Sexual and relational commitment must be reserved for one's husband, and virginity should never be lost before marriage. The "right" way to get ahead in life is through one's skills and not one's sexuality.

Perhaps some will not see a problem in basically being told to keep one natural aspect of the self shackled simply because others said so. And it is not necessarily a "natural" aspect that is brutal like going out there and killing things. I am for commitment and sexual fidelity, of course. The problem is that sexual fidelity works both ways. How strange, then, that a man who is a virgin up till the day of marriage is...not highly respected. A woman's intellect that is automatically discredited due to her gender becomes a commonplace thing.

It was found that an identical resume slapped with a female name would lose credibility in the eyes of recruiters. How, then, is a woman to use intellect properly in the face of opposition such as this? In the absence of due respect for a woman's intellect, what more is there left for a bimbo to get ahead with? Oh heaven forbid it to be her sexuality...

The Subtle Self

Most humans have difficulty seeing the subtle self. I felt that disability when walking around one day. I was dressed casually, in a t-shirt and jeans. Not something a rich kid would be wearing. I carried my pack as was usual, along with a sling bag. In my pack was a rather expensive laptop and a tripod, with a professional camera in the sling bag. To the untrained eye, I was just another passer by. To my wallet, I was lugging thousands of dollars of equipment. Were I to turn up at a posh restaurant, I would probably have looked out of place and rather shabby.

It is the same with the subtle self, that cannot be seen with physical eyes. It takes a certain amount of empathy and awareness to be able to spot what lies below the veneer of human likeness. How strange, then, that many are content to stare ceaselessly at that veneer, and deem it to be all there is to a person.

Housewife

What's wrong with being a housewife? Patriarchal society seems to have devalued domestic (women's) work so successfully that the very thought of a woman aspiring to be a housewife is...rather weird. The association of non-domestic work with "success" and ambition has led to scorn being reserved for such worthy aspirations as wanting to be a housewife.

If one considers being a mother and a housewife as unremarkable, unambitious work, one has clearly never considered where the population came from. It is the mothers who brought up the children, often in the absence of active involvement by the father. The houses need to be kept relatively neat for a safe environment that is disease-free. There is much that rests on the shoulders of a housewife.

Despite all this, I do not see awards or rewards for being a great housewife. Nothing noteworthy about finding a use for lemon juice on carpet stains. That much should be under the purview of the (likely male) chemists. Are you going to turn lemon juice into carpet cleaning fluid? It is this preoccupation with productive (money-earning) work that problematizes domestic work. After all, was it not patriarchy that decreed that the man support the house and the wife do domestic work without pay? Isn't the definition of slavery forced labour without pay?

Malthus Revisited

I've long suspected that Malthus was right, in that growth is likely unsustainable. I look at the fisheries and their massive hauls. I see the massive waste of fish that nobody will buy before it rots. I look at the supermarkets heaped to the ceilings with goods, and wonder at how much would be bought before the sell-by date.

The issue of unsustainability is not merely that of human needs growing faster than what the environment can provide. It is also a matter of massive inefficiency and the irrationality of human *wants*. Humans want more than they would likely ever need. In wanting money and to drive "progress", they rape the world's resources and overconsume what they steal. All this...to drive productivity of goods that people may never actually consume. How ironic that, in the pursuit of competitiveness, humans are succeeding at business and at killing themselves. They will not last very much longer. Of course, that is not the concern of the world. The world goes on.

Thou Thinkst Overly Much

I feel Asians think too much. With every action, there is an interesting preoccupation with "face" and what others would think about that action. Sometimes, it's even about having a thought. I mean, it's nice to be considerate of others' feelings but there's a line between paranoia and consideration.

I like the idea of thinking in terms of the self first. What one should first do is ensure that one can live with one's actions. If one's actions do not satisfy oneself, there is no point in trying to satisfy others while one is at it. I do not think there is meaning to exclusively pleasing others. What would concern me is that can those Asians think in terms of themselves as well as in relation to others? After all, they do seem to have a thing for balance and compromise. This would be a good thing to have, compromising between self-centeredness and being collectivistically satisfying.

Life's Puzzle

I feel like I'm living a puzzle. I have the pieces from here and there, but I have yet to find a way to put them all together. It is strange, since there is probably something coming that will call for my use of the full puzzle. A piece of learning here, a bit of lore there. I guess everything will come together with time.

Earning Game Money

It seems that economies based on money tend to go in certain ways. This can be seen in online games where players need to have money to buy stuff. Due to scarcity, some of the rarer and more desirable items will cost more. Of course, players would like to have that item. Often, those prices are so steep that no regular player would typically have that much money on them. What do they do? They wind up killing monsters to get money, or items that can be sold for money.

Strangely enough, that is precisely what many people are doing. Most people have real goods they wish to purchase, and go out there to earn money so they can purchase it. It's like farming for money, except in a non-game context.

Then some would ask why this is so, since playing games is fun and slaying monsters is not really work. Well...perhaps that is so for them. It would be like people getting paid for their hobbies. For most people, however? They do not work to gain skills (or "level up")...they're just repeatedly farming gold so they can buy the next best item...

I Forgot

Sometimes one can forget things. Sometimes those forgotten things can be once in a lifetime opportunities that cannot be regained. Ever wondered what that feels like? Strangely enough, when one actually manages to forget that, the pain does not hit immediately. I mean, if it's so important, it's quite unlikely that you'd forget in the first place.

Then comes the crunch, perhaps sometime in the distant future when you look back at what you've lost because of your forgetfulness. But for now? It's a sort of...non-feeling, and perhaps that of liberation. Knowing that even though an opportunity has passed you on, its passing allows you to pick and choose from others that you may ignore when you were busy clinging to the first. I forgot. And it doesn't hurt. Yet.

Double Standards

Humans love to establish double standards. The only thing they like more than establishing double standards would be to make them up to suit whatever they strongly believe. An example is human free will and sexuality. Nature? Nurture?

Clearly, humans have free will. They choose to believe it, anyway. They can make rational choices, and are obviously able to make hard choices at will. Humans are clearly not slaves to their urges. Even if a man is violent, the man can obviously choose to not hurt others. This is how free will comes in.

It all sounds very coherent until natureis considered. After all, it is the natural order of things for sexually reproducing species like humans to be heterosexual. How else do babies come along? Now, the only logical thing would be to follow these heterosexual urges and leave it at that. It is the natural thing, after all. Where did free will go? Suddenly, it becomes "right" to follow nature and thus free will becomes irrelevant in the face of this "right" sexual orientation.

Now, now...if people "choose" to turn gay, they obviously won't reproduce. Aren't all you Darwinians out there glad that nobody is sullying your gene pool?

Skill Spamming

From what I know, working in the "real world" is remarkably like skill spamming. That is, repeatedly using skills x, y and z over and over again, because work simply does not require you to use skills a through w very much. Strange, but true. They can teach you a thousand skills in school, yet only a few ever turn out to be really useful out there.

For me, it looks remarkably like someone trying to play an entire symphony with a limited range of notes. I do not think great symphonies should or would use a fraction of the musical scale to achieve its aims. Sure...maybe that would work for novelty pieces. But I think the truly great symphonies simply will not stoop to skill spamming...

Occult Symbols

There are many things written about the "real" use of occult symbols. Perhaps the pentacle is used to summon the devil, or that it represents the five prime elements. Whatever the symbol or its alleged use, it must be remembered that a symbol is what it is: A construct made by humans to represent something. The pentacle can mean whatever its user intends it to mean. As can an ankh, or the Star of David. What matters is the faith of the user. That very strong belief that the symbol can and will do what the user believes that it will. Therein lies the power of symbols.

Advertising Stress

Almost everyone knows that the models in adverts are unrealistic. That is, they simply do not represent average people in reality. In fact, the models as pictured in ads may not exist at all. Strangely enough, this knowledge does not seem to stop impressionable young minds from taking these unrealistic standards as the very picture of perfection that is to be striven towards.

It is probably a matter of the unattainable being the most desirable. Still, it is a terrible thing how people can believe visual media to the extent that they become distressed over not being able to be like these virtual goddesses and gods. Perhaps it is the impact of a photograph, and the implicit belief that photographs reflect reality. Cameras can, do and will continue to lie. It should be time that people wised up and quit believing what they know to be lies.

The Siege Mentality

There is a problem when things cause the siege mentality to emerge in people. Take for example a moving standard by which you are gauged. That standard moves by the quality of your peers. Ordinarily, that would not be an issue. It is fair, since you are evaluated in relation to your peers.

Now put this in the context of a job interview. 5 candidates, 1 opening. Clearly, something has to give. For the purposes of this discussion, the assumption would be that the 5 candidates all want the opening and are unwilling to cede it to anyone else. Naturally, the response would be to engage the siege mentality. That is, assume that everyone will do their best to get that job opening.

The act of fighting for the opening causes quality inflation. All 5 candidates will try to put their best foot forward to best one another. Now, assuming that there will be 1 candidate selected regardless their quality, the best thing for everyone to do would be to put in as little effort as it takes to get in. After all, if everyone is of uniformly poor quality, they would be equally matched as they would if they were all of uniformly excellent quality.

This does not happen, of course. Everyone strives for excellence, creating an artificial constant of stress. Yes, this would improve quality. However, quality at what cost? What will society become, given that it is driven by such ceaselessly shifting measures?

It's...Very Hard

Few things can be as intimidating as something that is said to be "very hard" to do. I worry less when someone tells me that something is impossible. It just means the person who told me that is entirely inept, or it's truly impossible to accomplish. Something "very hard" just pretty much throws it in my face that I would have to put in an incredible amount of effort over an extended period of time to achieve what I want to. Were it said to be impossible, I could just declare it bunk and go ahead to achieve it anyway. I'd get an ego boost in the bargain. Either that, or I could convince myself that it cannot be done, and put my legs up for the entire duration. But if it's very hard? Oh crap...People seldom exaggerate things that way. For some reason, that thing has a very good chance of turning out to be quite true.

What Ethics?

There can be few things as irritating as ethical people. No, not the sort that are against genocides and gender discrimination (those would be moral rather than ethical, I feel). I'm talking about those who just love to set up rules to bind themselves, just so they can fulfill some strange code of ethics that make sense only to themselves. I think it is horribly inefficient to come up with self-imposed restrictions that do not add value to the project at hand. I note this is especially common amongst those who read between the lines when it comes to instructions: If instruction A is there, it implies that it also requires B and C and D. For me, I'd much prefer to do things above and beyond the requirement in order to add value to everything that falls within the bounds of instruction A. I mean...who's against a bit of padding to make things look good...

Women's Money

Strangely, women being unable to earn as much as men has been taken as evidence that women should stay in the domestic sphere than as a clear injustice that must be dealt with. Female power has historicallybeen slipping at every turn in classic patriarchal societies. In the absence of apparent superior choices, it is inevitable that women choose a steady level of reduced rights than a slim chance of full rights as citizens. This could be due to a focus on the dominance of one sex over the other, than as the drive towards giving both sexes equal weightage.

I think complacency is perhaps the biggest threat to human rights in general. This is not only concerning women's money, but the rights to freedom of speech, expression and even common behaviour. When things are horribly oppressive, everyone starts coming up in arms against perceived injustices. Then someone bows to these demands, people feel comfortable and they start resting on their laurels. No wonder dictatorships can arise under the guise of democracy...

Housework

I hate housework. C'mon...someone tell me they actually like that. Housework is the precise thing that has practically zero productivity and seems to be self-regenerating. Anyone who says that housework can ever be finished either doesn't do housework, is lying or simply doesn't have anyone living in the house. My mere presence is enough to make kipple and housework appear out of nowhere. I tidy the room like mad, drop a book where it is convenient and I find myself seeding the growth of yet another horrible mess.

So the question would be...how much would I pay for someone to do my housework, if any? The answer is that I probably wouldn't. Well...that or minimum wage. Then again, if one considers that I would never want to work for a minimum wage, it is illogical to expect me to do housework professionally. What happens, then, to those poor domestic helpers and engineers? Clearly, they are under-appreciated! If anything, they should at least be paid a significant portion of the opportunity cost of working professionally. And don't get me started on childcare...