Change (or Lack Thereof) Revisted

I recently had a conversation with friend about women, relationships, marriage and all of that crap. Out of this fairly typical discussion came a statement, made by him, that has been resonating with me all week.

“People don’t change”

Now, I know what you’re thinking. Technically, people do change. They become older and with that they become more confident or less confident, smarter or dumber, more liberal or more conservative. Their interests meander and their view of the world might shift. Just a few weeks ago, I wrote a blog about how people do change and at what rate. But, my friend didn’t mean that and I knew he didn’t mean that. He meant generally and at a fundamental level, people don’t change.

So, I’ve been wondering, fundamentally, am I the same person? After all the school and all the work, all the travel and all the various people I’ve known, am I really different? Do I still have all of the same insecurities? Do I still have the same hopes? Do I still have the same sense of humor? Do I still like the same things? Do I strive for the same ends? And what the hell is “fundamentally”, anyway?

When I was around twelve, I moved. Eleven years later, my brother decided to move back to the town we had grown up in and I came along to help him. I went back to my old neighborhood and there, mowing his parent’s lawn, was one of my childhood friends. I had seen him nearly every day for my first twelve years and had not spoken to him for next eleven.

He looked up from mowing and recognized me immediately. There was no double-take or any sort of shock or confusion. He simply said, “wow, how have you been?” We went out for beers and though my friend was older, had facial hair and was now a borderline alcoholic, I would say he was exactly the same. He had the same mannerisms, the same sense of humor, the same diction, the same good nature and the same desire to do nothing special with his life. Perhaps it wasn’t surprising since he hadn’t moved, but I remember that evening him making a comment that I was same as well. All the travel, all the school, all the experiences and I was still the same weird kid that used to claim he wasn’t shot when playing war in the woods and would argue endlessly about whether he was safe at first.

Perhaps people don’t fundamentally change. If true, this has a pretty profound impact on how we live our lives. Education and experience would not be to enhance one’s being, but would be only tools to live life more easily, on par with acquiring a car or a cell phone. One would have no reason to get back together with old flings as experience proved that the two personalities were and are incompatible.

And perhaps this is why we find so many fake and pretentious people. They are unable to actually change themselves so they are left with putting up fronts or surrounding themselves with aspects of the person they want to be. Perhaps all apparent change in our lives is nothing more than a mere ruse that tries to hide our true soul from the world.

So, do we actually change? I don’t know. I hope so, but I kind of doubt it. It seems genetics and early childhood experiences have formed the bulk of what we are. Anything else is probably just marginal.

How to Strike Back as an Agnostic

I am sure that at sometime in the past and at sometime in the future, someone will ask you the question “do you believe in God?” The religious have the easy answer, but what about the rest of us? Can you say “no”? Well, many like to criticize the atheist as being hypocritical. How can one be sure of there being nothing? Isn’t that just as arrogant as being sure there is a higher power? Okay, valid point. “No” is not an option. What about “I don’t know”? Well, many, including me, choose the title agnostic. The agnostic though is bombarded with jokes about being indecisive and weak-minded. The religious assume that we haven’t thought about the issue enough while the atheist thinks we are thinking about too much. So, for all you agnostics out there, I have a decisive response you can give that will shut the religious up and make them seem simple.

Q. Do you believe in God?

A. I believe that question is a false binary.

They will likely crinkle their brow and look confused. “Huh?” Now, you have them on the defensive. A false binary, you can continue, you are presupposing that God either exists or does not exist. There may be more options out there than that. In fact, “existence” and “non-existence” are a characteristic of this world and since we are talking about things that are not of this world, “existence” may or may not apply or may apply in a partial way.

Still, confused, they will probably say something like “things exist or they don’t”

Ahh, but that is not necessarily true. There are many things that exist in a partial way that still affect this world. For instance, time, light or the square root of –1 all don’t “exist” in a traditional or absolute sense but have a massive impact on this world. And these are things that are part of our reality. A higher power would supposedly be outside of our reality. Applying the rules of this reality on it might be like applying the rules of soccer to the stock market or trying to teach a ficus plant to fuck missionary style.

Will you convince anyone of your position? Probably not, but that was never the point of the conversation in the first place. Two people chatting are unlikely to find the true answer to a 20,000 year-old unanswerable question. The point was to see how one thinks. This answer will tell people that you’re different, thoughtful and not going to take crap from anyone. Onward, Agnostic Soldier!

Holiday

Every year around the holidays, nearly everyone participates in actions that are similar to every previous year of their life. Whether it is propping up a tree or eating one’s mother’s cooking or watching “It’s a Wonderful Life”, there is an element of repetition to the holidays and “holiday” is general. The more important the holiday, the greater the repetition. On Labor Day, one may do something new, but on Christmas, Thanksgiving and Independence Day, it is the same old shit.

Holiday is ritual and it seems to provide function for society. Durkheim claims there are three major functions to ritual:

1) Links the individual to the social whole or to society.
2) Regulates individuals with binding standards of conduct, encouraging some things and discouraging others
3) Renews collective beliefs and sentiments.

Essentially, holiday is a form of conformity whether on a social level or a family level. By doing what everyone else does, one will become part of them and fit in. Now, despite the subject of a number of punk songs, conformity is good for the most part leading to positive things like reading, not murdering and using toilet paper. Of course, most people take conformity too far and become soulless readers of Cosmo and Maxim. If everyone jumps off a cliff and one does it too, one will be part of the idiot collective.

Conformity though is somewhat different from ritual in that conformity can actually be dynamic unlike ritual which appears to be static. The collective participates in new movements, fads and changes that the individual, despite one’s best efforts, must conform to (i.e. e-mail, cell phones, knowing who Paris Hilton is). Ritual, on the other hand, does not change or if it does, it does very slowly.

So, if conformity can offer a connection to society even when it changes, what is the function of ritual being static? Durkheim and I would assume that people that participate in the ritual think that there exist sentiments associated with those rituals and people want those sentiments to be static as well. For instance, with Christmas, people want goodwill and giving to remain in society. By continuing to celebrate Christmas, there is hope these sentiments will continue as well.

Now, I think Durkheim is missing something. Rituals may exist under the guise of “remembering and maintaining the past”, but I theorize that the past never had those sentiments or if they did, they were weaker than today. Christmas is not to remember to the tradition of goodwill and giving, but is an attempt to implant those feeling into people by pretending it existed in the past. Families gather together not to remember and keep their relations, but to create a relationship that never really existed. This is not to imply that families do not have love. They do, but the love does not exist in the form that the holidays try to present it in. Essentially, holiday is not really maintenance of tradition, but an exercise in how one would like the present and future to be.

Loaded Terms

When human beings want to mislead someone, they will often use loaded terms. Loaded terms are words or phrases that have emotional overtones or connotations that evoke strongly positive or negative reactions far beyond the specific meaning of the word as defined by, say, the dictionary. There are obvious ones that anyone with an IQ above 45 can identify and these can be found in the lexicon of Republicans (i.e. freedom, liberal, Patriot Act).

There also seems to be more subtle ones as well that most people don’t even think about. For instance, “childish” and “childlike” mean the same thing, but one has a positive spin and one has a negative spin. “Gay marriage” seems to evoke different feelings than “same-sex marriage”. “Dilation and extraction” is refered to by many as “partial birth abortion”. At least in all of these cases an option exists. One can choose to use one term over another to control the meaning and overtone.

There are a whole slew of terminology in the English language where one does not have that choice. Essentially, one is forced to use loaded terminology to communicate because there exists no viable alternative. Time is an example. In English, we are mostly forced to speak of time as if it were money. “How much time do we have?” “How do you spend your time?” “I don’t have the time to do that.” Now, you can try to get around it by refering to it as a distance. “How long until we are finished?” And you can speak of time like it’s a river or something. “How do you pass the time?” But, for the most part, unless we want to sound weird, we are trapped using the money analogy. The result? Americans and other English speakers feel like time can be wasted and and feel guilty about sleeping and watching TV. They must invest time and spend it wisely. They work when they are young in order to have their returns when they are old. Much of the world doesn’t think this way and perhaps they are happier because they are not so worried about it.

Other inescapable terms include round numbers and names. Puerto Rico seems to be denied statehood because fifty is nifty and everyone seems to get depressed at thirty years of age. The Dark Ages will always be seen as a negative period when it wasn’t really that bad and men named John will probably be met with a different reaction versus people named Lance, Dick or Adolfo.

Of course, maybe all terms are loaded in one way or another and we are doomed to suffer from bias on everything. The way we speak and write tells us so much about a human being. Whether someone uses “much” versus “a lot” in their writing can completely change your opinion of someone on a subconscience level. It is ironic that communication, the very thing that attempts to eliminate subjectivity by forming shared experience, is hopelessly subjective. The best we can do is try to minimize is.

The Walking Dead

So, Severely-Fucked-in-the-Head-Girl invited me to a dinner party she was having. If there is one thing I hate about DC life, it is all the goddamn dinner parties. Human beings in their twenties and thirties have this weird insecurity about adulthood. Recently IKEA has tapped into this with that whole wine glass commercial and the “living an adult life” bullshit. Swedish mother-fuckers. Look, I know I am an adult. My hair-line is receding, my black socks outnumber my white socks two to one and I own mutual funds. Whatever-the-case, the consumption of brie, wine and mini-quiches still goes on in order to fill this void in other people’s lives.

Though I find SFitHG to be thoroughly entertaining and quite interesting, parties leave little opportunity for one to socialize with the host since they are busy, well, hosting. Instead I was left chatting with various people who work at SAIC, State Civil and State Foreign Service.

I used to believe that in order to be an interesting person, one had to have interesting things going on in one’s life. I have been proven wrong on both fronts of this theory. On the one hand, I have a legion of friends who have nothing interesting going on in their lives who are incredibly stimulating intellectually. I know first hand how boring Shoffy, Bulworth and Rogue Progressive’s jobs are and yet I could chat with them endlessly about the finer point of things that don’t even have finer points. The same goes for Snazzler, a real life Jewish carpenter. I mean, he builds stuff, and yet he still has an entertaining insight on life. Boring lives perhaps, but interesting people none-the-less. (Perhaps all of them have secrets lives I don’t know about)

The other hand of this argument punched me in the face last night. Country experts, world travelers and terrorism gurus with zero personality. Mortgages, decorating homes, commute times and the virtues of I-Pods dominated the evening. This conversation actually happened:

Me: I can’t believe I’ve entered this phase of my life. A world where everyone talks about mortgages. What have we become?

Man: Yeah, well, the reason everyone talks about it is because the market is crazy right now. Just last year, my wife and I were looking for a town home in the Tyson’s area and they were priced at $375,000. We looked again this year that they are $450,000….

I thought he was fucking with me, but no, he actually tried to engage me in a conversation about something I had just finished calling excruciatingly boring. What was he thinking?

And perhaps that is the real problem- thinking. People can travel the world and not contemplate their surrounds, the world or themselves (you can lead a horse to water…). On the other hand, even a man trapped in a wheelchair with movement of only his pinky can have insight about the universe that surpasses us all. Thinking is the key and once people stop doing that, they are nothing more than zombies…who may need their brains blown out by a shotgun before they bite you.

Occasionally Nice Guys Finish First

We all live in a world of insecure, self-interested, guised human beings who treat us differently based on whether we act nice, mean, tactful or tactless. So, how does one act in order to be most successful with people? How can you make like them you as much as they like Sally Fields?

The answer: occasionally nice guys finish first. Please don’t confuse this with: occasionally, nice guys finish first (I’m an adept comma user). No, nice guys finish last for several reasons, but people that are mean all the time also fail. The real trick is to be occasionally nice, but a complete dick most of the time. Why is this successful?

-Insecurity

People, for the most part, are insecure. They seek out affirmation from others in order to feel worth. If one is mean to them in a real way or in a teasing way, they wonder “what did I do wrong?” and they try to act nicer in order to compensate. Now with the many people, one can keep treating them like crap and they will keep taking it. With most, though, there is a breaking point in which they say “fuck it, he’s just a dick”. One has to ease off before that breaking point and occasionally act nice. This will give your victim a feeling of accomplishment and will continue to engage them. Why not just act nice all the time? Because that will spoil people. If people do not have to earn one’s kindness, they wont bother. Why buy the cow?

-Empathy

People, for the most part, are self-interested dicks. When they choose friends, they usually do not want someone who is nice to them. Instead, they want someone who they can relate to; they want a peer with a similar perspective that can give them real advice on how to navigate through life. Nice people suck at advice and they have bad senses of humor because they do not really understand human relations. Why not act mean all the time? Well, then you will attract only other dicks and they are annoying.

The “Real You”

People, for the most part, put up a front. Many people try to act nice all the time. Still, eventually, they are going to fail and occasionally act mean. Disproportionate attention is give to these small moments and people assume the guard has been let down exposing the “real you”. Frightened, people flee. Now, if one does the reverse and acts mean all the time, eventually, you are going to fail and occasionally act nice. Again, disproportionate attention will be given to these small moments and people will assume the guard has been let down exposing the “real you”. Rather than being frightened, they will be endeared.

Joy

A while back I was channel surfing late at night and came across a hunting show. The two hunters, dressed in camouflage were trying to get close to a mule deer so they could shoot it. The mule deer saw them, got spooked and took off running. Extremely pissed was the best description of the hunters’ reaction. They had missed a kill and it had ruined their day.

One of the things hunters fail to mention when they talk about the merits of hunting is the rush they get from ending a life. Oh, they will say that they appreciate the beauty of nature (right before they blow it away) and they will speak of the need to keep down animal populations (those bleeding heart environmentalists!). They will even claim that they love eating the animals they kill (yup, nothing like tough gamey meat every meal for a month). The real reason they like hunting, though, is the thrill of the kill. It is a challenge. But why not knitting or video games? Why not basketball or a crossword? Those are challenges. No, to them, there is something thrilling about blinking something else out of existence.

Yesterday, Scott Peterson was sentences to death. The crowd outside the courtroom gleefully cheered. Smiling jurors were given their 15-minutes of fame with interviews. They said Peterson did not seem emotional enough.

When advocates of the death penalty mention the merits of the system, they claim it is a deterrent (as if life in prison and anal rape is not good enough). They also claim that it is justice and that is gives families a sense of closure (as if life in prison and anal rape is not good enough). They fail to mention the thrill and the glee involved with the death penalty. They fail to mention the joy and the tears of happiness that people get from putting someone to death. They fail to mention the thrill of blinking someone else out of existence.

"Authority"

Throughout one’s life, people are told things and expected to believe them. After all, the function of communication is the exchange information. Occasionally, though, people do something called lie that is intended to misinform. Based on this misinformation, they hope that one will act in a way that benefits the liar. Fully aware that people are out there to misinform, people search for authority in a source to determine if the source is reliable. To battle this, liars, in turn, create false authority. It is a twisted game. There are several ways to gain authority, but the methods are imperfect.

1) Personal Experience.

Generally, if an individual has a personal first-hand experience, people believe them. For instance, I lived in China and when I tell people that China is X or China is Y, people tend to believe it. Often, what I say contradicts their previous beliefs which causes them confusion. Do they believe me or do they believe a book or the news? It’s difficult for them. After all, people lie or can be weird. I run into people all the time that do not believe my stories of the Middle East. No, no, I tell them, everyone was quite friendly and there was little hatred of Americans. But the news or a pamphlet tells them something else. Who should they believe?

For instance, last weekend I went to a party and began talking to my friend’s wife. She told me that her father-in-law owned a jewelry store. Huh, I knew her father-in-law; he was a government contractor. I inquired about this. She replied that the jewelry store was a part-time gig. Really? No, she was joking and ended up thinking I was gullible. But there was a moment I believed her. Why? Because her personal experience trumped mine and she knew the father-in-law better. None-the-less, in this instance, it turns out the person with less personal experience was right.

2) Experience Through Knowledge

A second way to gain authority is to study an issue. Often people say they “read” something, as if the written word is better than the spoken. Often they read it in the newspaper. Ah, but which newspaper? Which reporter? Liars battle newspapers’ authority by calling them biased or creating their own “news” sources. What about academia? A book, a class or a degree can help you gain authority. But, again, liars like to call them biased and battle back with psuedo-intellectualal sources.

In economics, there are now infinite sources of “credible” individuals that claim cutting taxes is good for the economy and individuals that claim cutting taxes is bad for the economy. Who to believe? One could study this issue for decades and still not know the answer. Even for an issue that is clearly truth (i.e. evolution), an infinite number of sources exist to “debunk” this truth with “factoids”.

3) Authority Through Age, Fame or Popularity

A third rather weak method for authority is through age, fame or popularity. For some reason, if a practice or saying is old, famous or popular many believe it is true or has merit. This can come in the form of a proverb, a quote or a law or can come in the form of democracy. It is the reason why buildings are constructed in classical style and cultures fallaciously claim to thousands of years old. It’s the reason celebrities appear in commercials, why people quote Jefferson and why soda companies claim they won popular taste tests.

Using this method does not really make the things fact. First off, the past sucked. People got sick, they were rather stupid, they killed each other and the world worked rather poorly and significantly differently. People believed for thousands of years that the sun revolved around the earth, women were the servants of men and bathing was dangerous. Second, the majority is not always right. The majority of people in America believed Saddam helped plan 9/11, the majority of people in China believe that Mao was a really great guy and the majority of world thinks that an apocalypse is looming. Third, fame and success usually have mostly to do with luck, not due to a single practice (so stop looking to Trump as an example to follow!).

So, how do we find truth? Well, I suppose we can’t perfectly. But, we can get close by maximizing are sources, questioning people’s motivations and gaining as much first hand knowledge as possible. If you want to know about a country, go there. If you want to know about a subject, read from as many sources as possible. Use logic to determine if something is reasonable and always, always, always ask yourself why someone wants to communicate an idea to you. Is it just information exchange or are they looking for another soldier for their cause?

Glass Half Empty, Glass Half Full of Shit

Recently, various people in my life have been telling me that I’m full of shit. Well, actually, people have always said this, but the reasons have changed over the years. Being “full of shit” is a rather ambiguous phrase. It seems to have several meanings based on the context so I’ve been trying to determine which shit I have so I can flush it away somehow.

When I was young, like many boys, I would make stuff up. It was typical stuff like claiming I had a video game that I didn’t really have or saying I had a friend with the Boardwalk game piece but not the Park Place game piece in the McDonald’s Monopoly game. This prompted the first appearance of the phrase with “shit” being synonymous with “lies”. I grew out of this phase by at least age 10. Saying things I knew were wrong just didn’t seem very much fun and, frankly, I was not very good at it.

From about age 11 to 13, I became a rather argumentative person. In order to win an argument, I would make up facts much in same way Bill O’Reilly or Rush Limbaugh do (except my “facts” would be much more believable and closer to reality than theirs). Again, I was full of shit, but “shit” was more lies of knowledge rather than lies of experience. My family retaliated with two very effective tools that humbled me quickly. The encyclopedia was one and the phrase “oh, you must be right!” said in a bitingly sarcastic tone was the other. I retaliated by studying things so I would know the facts and be calmer when discussing things (I’m still working on that last part).

Education and knowledge are great things, but they certainly didn’t decrease my reception of the phrase “you’re full of shit”. In high school, my friends accepted I knew a lot of “random, useless knowledge”, but acquaintances were puzzled why a 16-year-old would have background information on the environment, the Bible or World War II history. People assumed I was lying like a 12-year-old. Some would ask why I knew this information. “I read it,” I would reply. Now they assumed I was lying like a 9-year-old.

Things became more complicated as I became more complicated. I started forming opinions on a conscience level that differed from my beliefs on a subconscious level. I started exploring lines of thought just see if they had merit. I started reading what radical academics thought that opposed mainstream thought. To top it off, I became incredibly sarcastic and cynical to the point where I couldn’t decipher my own belief in the first place. When I speak, am I speaking truth, half-truth or something I’d like to believe? Am I speaking what I logically know, what I believe in my heart or what society has taught me to say? I have no idea.
Needless to say, the “you’re full of shit” line continues to this day. When it’s spoken, I’m not sure if the person means “you’re consciously lying” or “you don’t really mean that” or “you have your facts wrong” or “your perception is way off” or “you’re in contradiction”. To top off this confusion, there is a new anti-intellectual movement in American that rival’s Mao’s Cultural Revolution. So even if I am clear, honest and correct, someone may still say I’m full of it.

The Rate of Growth

When finding individuals to date or marry, people usually try to find someone their own age. I know, I know, there are all of those trophy wives and people with fetishes, but I’m talking about 95% of society. When you ask people how much older or younger someone is willing to do go, their answer depends on their age. Rarely is a 17-year-old high school senior willing to date a 14-year-old high school freshman. At the same time, no one would care if an 85-year-old married a 70-year-old.

Why this there an opening up to age differences as one grows older? Some would claim that the difference between older people is smaller than the difference between younger people. Inherent in this claim is the idea that human maturity and experience has logarithmic growth. People seem to believe that a younger people change more rapidly than older people. On a physical level this may be true, but I don’t necessarily believe personality is affected like this.

My greatest period of personal change probably happened between 22 and 24. During this period, I gained a completely new outlook of life, the world and my place in it. During high school, on the other hand, I was pretty much the same person through the four years gaining only knowledge, confidence and a disillusionment with women. What was the difference? Experience. When I was 22, I moved to China and changed nearly every aspect of my life. Something new happened to me every day. High school was fairly routine- I did my homework, played sports, watched TV and hung out with friends.

Now there is a correlation that exists with most people regarding age and new experiences. Older people tend to be boring stick-in-muds that have lost the desire to try new things (not all, but most). Still, through time they’ve picked up more experience that the annoying immature young. The younger tend to be more open, though again, there are boring mother-fuckers out there. This may be why people search out age as correlating feature of maturity, but ease the rules as time goes on since people “levels out” with experiences. So, in the end, this whole tendency to date someone your own age has everything to do with experiences and little to do with biology.

This does not bode well for the interesting. They are trapped finding people their age immature and boring, yet are not socially able to date up in age too much. Additionally, the more new experiences one goes through, the less people there will be do date. More and more people will seem immature and passé. I suppose if one really wants to find company in this world, the best thing to do is to stop doing interesting things. Yes, the path to maximizing the members of the opposite sex that match you is to become as boring as the bulk of them. Get a job, a mortgage, start watching the Apprentice and let love making begin.

2.5 Seconds

I've decided to train for a marathon in hopes of curing a little boredom and losing a little weight. Yesterday, I ran about 10 miles going from where I live down to Georgetown and back along the canal. Coming back and ran by John Edwards. Yes, I voted for him (though he's no Howard Dean). Who knows, he may be president one day (probably not, but maybe). What did I say or do? Nothing. I jogged right by him.

I'm not a shy guy (at least not around people of the same gender). I'm not dull either. People comment that I can talk about anything to anyone. Reserved? Tactful? No one has ever accused me of that. Still, in that 2.5 seconds that I had running by Edwards, nothing came to mind. And what could have? When you get that 2.5 seconds with celebrities, what do you say? It happens all the time. Terry Bradshaw in at Dullas airport, Keenu Reeves shooting Cold Fusion at Chicago, Arnold Shwarzenegger promoting Eraser in Prague, Cassie from One Life to Live in Belize, Bob Ueker at a Brewers games. Oh, I've had my fair share of celebrity run-ins and every time, I do and say nothing.

Well, not every time. There was that whole graduation from college with Bill Clinton. Yes, when I graduated college, Bill Clinton came and spoke. We got our diplomas and shook his hand. Each of us got 2.5 second with the President. How did people spend it?

1) Suck-ups. Nearly a third of the kids graduating stood doe-eyed, shook hands and said something like "it's very nice to meet you, Mr. President" or "I admire you". What's the point of this? Do celebrities need to have their egos stroked? Do they even want it? I bet it either makes them feel uncomfortable or makes them roll their eyes.

2) Assholes. A handful of kids asked "how's Monica?". Some didn't shake his hand at all. One asked if Bill wanted to get a beer later. One put out his hand and then pulled it away like a fourth grader playing "down-low, you're too slow". On occasion, I've taken this path before. Just the other day I gave the finger to Fred Barnes (a Faux News guy).

3) Idiots. What did I do with my 2.5 seconds? I couldn't think of anything to say so I said "protect the environment, my friend". Clinton responded with "thank you". Yes, my 2.5 seconds with the president of the United States, the most important person in the world, was a complete miscommunication.

4)Do-nothingers. In hopes of not being 1 through 3 or just from hesitation or not caring, most people did nothing. They shook hands and went on their way.

Of course, all of this is a metaphor for life. The universe is 40 billions years old and will be around probably for another 40 billion. We get to be part of if for around 80 years if we're lucky. That's 1/1,00,000,000 of the universe. One second is roughly 1/2,524,608,000 of an 80 year life. So, in the grand life of universe, we get 2.5 seconds.

How do people spend their 2.5 seconds? There are suck-ups who spend their life thanking their life away to God or feelings guilty that they got 2.5 seconds in the first place. There are assholes you spend it narcissistically and selfishly trying to be noticed. There are idiots who don't want to be like everyone else, but are completely misunderstood and dismissed. And then there are do-nothingers who either don't care they have 2.5 seconds or can't believe they are given 2.5 seconds, are fascinated by the time, are paralyzed by the time and then let the time slip by.

Coping with Banal Change

Normally, new eras begin with some sort of excitement, right? A revolution perhaps. Maybe some sort of cataclysmic event. That's the theory, I suppose, but in practice, boredom infiltrates everything in life leaving only an abstract idea of excitement. Not following me? Remember the scene from Big Trouble in Little China where they're about to fight the main bad guy and a pumped up Kurt Russell and his team of fighters run into the elevator only to endure a several minutes of painful and awkward waiting? Never seen the cult classic? Okay, how about the scene in Swingers where they drive to Las Vegas? Ah, now you're with me.

I'm reminded of the first day of college or the day I left for China. These should be pretty exciting events, but I seem to remember arriving in my dorm, unpacking and staring at a wall for a while with the former and a 24-hour plane trip with the later. I mean, I was "excited" in some sort of overall sense just as I'm "happy" with my car, I guess.

Still, I suppose the abstract is better than nothing. Most people have very boring lives. They work a job, watch some TV, drink some alcohol, occasionally have sex and go to sleep. Oh wait, that's me (without the sex part). At least I can list off a few things that sound good when acquaintances ask "so, what you been up to,".

Why all this talk about change and boredom? Well, I have entered a new era of my existence yet it feels a lot like the old. I quit my job at Social Security and have begun one at Homeland Security. The only different so far between the two is that I'm not supposed to discuss the details of my new job (which happens to be sitting in a cube surfing the net and killing time). When, I tell people about my new job, the usual response is "wow, that must be interesting!". Yes, I suppose...in the abstract.

Also in the massive change department is breaking up with my girlfriend of two years. I wish I had an interesting story about the break up, but it's basically I loved her, but didn't want to marry her and felt we were wasting time. The usual response from people is "hmmm, makes sense,". Now, some may think that single life is fun and exciting. I refer to those people as delusional idiots. Single life is lonely, and when it's not lonely, its shallow, and when it's not shallow, its disingenuous, and then its not any of those three, its not single life any more.

Perhaps it's really impossible to feel entertained all the time. The body must have some sort of reaction to events that dulls the senses. Doctors and cops get used to blood, death and tragedy. Still, that seems to happen after repeated exposure. I haven't change jobs or ended relationships enough for me to be numb to that. What I'm feeling seems to be another phenomenon that deals with bracing for events. I read that when people are polled about coming tragedies or excitement, they tend to expect them to be worse or better than they are. Apparently the mind braces for events to prevent shock or to maintain a rational thinking mind. This is why people never have a good time at New Years or feel guilty about not feeling bad enough when their friends and family die. Basically, anticlimacticism is biologically programmed.

So, in end, despite ones best effort to create excitement in one's life on a day to day level, it is useless. You'll either brace yourself for the results or become numb to it over time. What can one do? Well, I can think of three solutions to create excitement and happiness in life. I'm not sure which is most effective.

• Become dumb to lower your own expectations. This can be achieved through heavy drinking, drug use or simply letting go and allowing oneself to drift in the ether of mainstream society. Do you read Maxim or watch Smackdown? You're already there. Great job! Soon you'll be talking about all the excitement you had clubbing and how you'd so do that girl at the gym.
• Focus on the abstract and the long term. Don't ask yourself what you did last Tuesday; ask yourself what you did last year. Don't tell people what you do at your job; tell them what your team does or what your company does. See, now you're important.
• Quixotically try to add excitement through new experiences. Yes, its bound to fail, but at least you'll have some stories to tell and you'll probably meet some people. Misery loves company at all.