Marathon

On Sunday I run my marathon. I am simultaneously looking forward to it and not looking forward to it. I am dreading the pain, but I am also incredibly curious about what condition I will be in near the end of the race and thereafter. I am also wondering what I will do with my free time once I have finished and how I will explain the experience to others (so far, I’m planning to say “eh, whatever”).

A marathon is a fairly basic concept- it is simply a run of one hundred thirty-eight thousand three hundred thirty-six feet. Still, it gets a lot of attention as if it is greater than just that. Sure, the marathon is obviously a long grueling race that places a severe amount of physical pain on the body. It is not just pain that the body must deal with, though. A marathon takes between two and seven hours to complete. Whether one is an Olympic runner or a fatty in one’s fifties, there is a whole lot of time to one thing- think.

Thinking. Thinking about pain. Thinking about soreness. Thinking about distance. Thinking about one’s own ability. Thinking about one’s own worth. Thinking about whether one can finish. Thinking about whether one can quit.

Normally, we try to avoid thinking too much on our own. Boredom and loneliness kick in perhaps as a defense mechanism. People that spend too much time alone thinking end up going crazy. Like the Unibomber or homeless people, they end up talking to themselves about insane theories and lose the ability to socialize properly. I think most of fear jail not because of beat downs and shower rape, but because of the years and years dedicated to thinking and being alone. Certainly the abundance of time to think was one of the worst parts of being unemployed and, ironically, is one of the worst parts of being employed as well.

It seems odd that there is optimal amount of the thinking self to deal with on a day-to-day basis. We become irritable and crabby when we have too little “me time” yet too much is also intolerable. Sunday will be between four and five hours with myself and it is a self that will be in a lot of pain.

It will likely be a difficult meeting. I hope I can tolerate it.

Cairns

Long ago, a great man once said “there is no other place I want to be, right here, right now, watching the world wake up from history”. Actually, it wasn’t a great man (it was Jesus Jones) nor was it long ago (it was 1991), but all this speaks to a point.

When celebrities come, people flock to them. I have seen massive crowds gather to catch a glimpse of Keanu Reeves or Arnold Schwarzenegger. I have seen people get exited about the presence of my R-list actor buddy at a party. I even saw an old Taiwanese man race down the street knocking over people to see the mediocre teen pop star Sun Yan Zi walk by. Why are people attracted to fame?

Additionally, when “large” events occur, people like to talk and brag about what they were doing at that particular moment. Where were you when Kennedy was shot, the Berlin Wall came down or during 9/11? Whether it is Woodstock, inaugurations or the Pope’s funeral, people want to be right there, right then. Why are people attracted to “experiencing” history?

There is a theory that human beings seek integration. Somehow, by being at great events, near great people or by hanging celebrity photos on the wall, one’s place in society and the universe is known. With these known figures and known events, one’s journey through life is marked with cairns.

Others theorize that people seek immortality. According to legend, a man named Herostratus burned down the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, one the Seven Great Wonders, in order to have his name remembered. How you burn down stone, I don’t really get, but I’m not an architecture buff so someone will have to explain that one to me. In this case, the person desires to ascend to cairn status.

Lastly, some think that humans seek power:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my works. Ye Mighty, and despair!

Somehow, by being known, by having moved earth and by creating cairns, one’s greatness is proven. If Jesus Jones had been older and greater, would you have listened to their words more? Do great things stand the test of time more that mediocre things? People seem to think so, but in reality, pots are the main things that stand the test of time and they are pretty mediocre.

Ashes to ashes, dust in the wind or whatever cliché you wish to apply the issue, we do know that all men, kings or paupers, come to the same end. Even the supposed great men of history are forgotten or changed by time into something that does not resemble who they were. Whether it is a statue that was meant to pass on an image or a text meant to pass on ideas, people usually do not even record them honestly in the first place. Nearly every photo one owns shows a smile. Is the truth a lifetime of continuous happiness? Even if recorded correctly, within a matter on months, truth is almost unrecognizable. Remember when we went to war for WMD? Suddenly we didn’t. Remember when Bon Jovi rocked and then didn’t and then did again? Now put that revisionism in the perspective of ten thousand years of human civilization.

So, the next time Lindsey Lohan is walking by, relax a little and let her walk by unmolested. After all, both of you are going to die and be forgotten.

Dreaming of Tantalus

My sister was venting to me the other day about how hard her life is at the moment. Whether her life as a graduate student is actually difficult in an objective sense is highly suspect, but I wont go into that right now. She does truly believe her life is stressful and she is in tears every few days dealing with the gravity of her dissertation and various job offers. A person upset about job offers? Yes, it does seem odd.

Neo-classical economists would say that, theoretically, more choices should increase someone’s well-being. They believe that personal choice, free from any sort of “parentalism” (choices made by someone else for an individual’s supposed best interest), is most likely to make someone happiest. They believe that the individual knows one’s own preferences best and the individual can choose better than anyone else could since anyone else would know one less well. Offering more choice gives the individual more chance of finding what will fit him best and consumption should increase.

Empirically, though, the neo-classicalist position does not hold up because there are transaction costs in actually making a decision. Learning about options available takes time and actually committing to a decision can be stressful. Many people irrationally fear making a wrong decision or being cheated so much that they would rather not choose at all. Studies have shown that given too many choices and too much information, consumption actually decreases.

This seems to be the situation with my sister. She has an offer for a tenure track position at a university. I asked her if she wants to be a professor and she said, “I don’t know”. I asked her if she wanted to do government analysis work or work for an NGO and she said, “I don’t know”. I asked her what she wanted to do and she said, “I don’t know”. Any decision she makes may well affect her life for the next decade. They are all good options, but choosing one is apparently daunting for her.

Though she is unlikely to admit it, I believe my sister’s main problem is she does not know what she wants and, thus, she does not know how to achieve what will make her satisfied. There is definitely an advantage in knowing exactly what one wants. With a clear focus, one is more likely to be driven and one is more likely to achieve one’s goal. On the other hand, if one fails to achieve exactly what one wants (i.e. Tantalus), one may become quite depressed. Having no idea allows oneself to be open to several options.

Still, as economics and standardized tests show us, there are transaction costs to being indecisive. At some point, you have to fill in a bubble and move on.

Cancerous Schemata and the One Track Mind

Though it rarely comes up, back in college I took quite a few cognitive psychology classes. In fact, I was only a couple classes short of being able to declare it as a major. On occasion, someone will say something like “man, I had this weird dream” and I’ll reply with “eh, dreams don’t mean anything; they are nothing more than a reorganization of memories that your brain places into a logical narrative during REM sleep”. These ejaculations, though, are few and far between. My studies do not often affect my interactions and conversations with others, but they do affect the way I perceive my life, others’ lives and world. Bored today, I started searching through other people’s blogs and read a few strangers’ words. It is amazing how many people suffer from what I refer to as “cancerous schemata”.

A schema is a cluster of memories in the brain that represent an object or an idea. Your eyes merely take in colors, but it is your brain that recognizes colors of a particular shape, size and location and invokes meaning from them. Along with this meaning comes an enormous flood of information related to the particular subject. For instance, say you look at a car. You suddenly know that a car has four wheels and either two or four doors. It has a hood, windows, an engine and a gas tank. You can drive it, park it, lock it and get tickets. You know that you sit on the forward left side and push a brake and gas pedal. There’s a radio, a rear view mirror, a trunk, a jack and a seat belt. They come in different types like SUV’s or sedans and they come from different countries like Germany and Japan. They usually cost between $12,000 and $70,000 and often reveal social class. The list of things you instantly know and can readily recite is simply unfathomable.

Now, along with the schema and it’s related information comes the schemata of the related information. You look at the car, but may also think about a road and everything a road is. You may think about gasoline and everything it is or you may think about the money to buy a car and everything it is. Like dominoes, information chains are triggered in your mind to lead you to the most useful information. The rest of brain and the experiences it holds may affect what you think about and the path or your stream of consciousness. A lawyer may look at a car and think mainly about traffic law while a scientist may think about the combustion process.

In college, I theorized that “one track mindedness” was the results of a particular schema growing to such a large size that nearly all objects and subjects triggered it. My example was my freshman year roommate who wouldn’t stop talking about being Jewish. Everything, and I mean everything, brought up in conversation with him somehow came back to being Jewish.

I think my theory still holds up, but I now would like to add the term “cancerous” to these overgrown schemata. Reading through random people’s blogs, I came upon a great number of people who couldn’t stop talking about a subject. Most notably, many people can’t shut the hell up about God. Taking a shit must somehow involve him for these people. I know it may sound strange, but there’s more to life than God. Additionally, a massive amount of partisan blogs exists where individuals take very strong stances on issues they know little about. They accept information that supports their belief and reject anything that does not support it. Apparently the schema of “conservatives are good” or “liberals are good” is so great that it influences all other information. These individuals have gotten to the point where a schema is so dominating that their brain cannot function properly and people snicker at them for having “J.C. on the tip of their tongue” or being a political freak.

Is there chemo for these cancerous schemata? I’m not sure. I suppose people can get tired of subjects once there is no more new information to collect. Additionally, a new schema could grow to rival the dominating one as well. Still, I know all sorts of people who continue to discuss the same old subjects for a lifetime (or at least as long as I’ve known them).

Then again, perhaps these huge schemata allow people to become dedicated to a subject. Is that why I’m a dilettante?

Antipopes

When is a door not a door? When it’s a jar.

The same seems to be true of popes. Catholics believe the pope is infallible. So, what happens when the pope errs? Well, since the pope is incapable of doing that, that person must not be a real pope (logical geniuses these Catholics are). Yes, believe it or not, in history there have supposedly been individuals who have risen to post of pope who are not really popes. These “imposters” are referred to as antipopes and are considered to be agents of the devil. There have been around fifty of them in history and they occur with a frequency at a little under twenty percent of the time.

Now at the time, these antipopes were considered to be the real popes. Only years after they died did the church and later popes decide they sucked and chose to name them “antipope” retroactively. Additionally, fringe Catholic sects like the one Mel Gibson belongs to and those who reject Vatican II also think the current popes including John Paul II and Benedict XVI are antipopes.

The existence of the antipope may seem weird, but this sort of this is actually quite common.

After Hayes and Bush II became president, there were a number of individuals who called these elections unjust. I seem to remember quite a few “Not My President” T-shirts around. Additionally, children often refuse to refer to their deadbeat biological parents or new stepparents as “mom” or “dad”.

Why this resistance? Well, just as Catholics irrationally believe in the infallibility of pope, Americans irrationally believe in the honor of the president and humans irrationally believe in love of the parent. The American is beat into him that presidents are great men by movies, school, society and the actions of past men who have been president. Children with parents also have “love them!” beat in by society, but also have biological issues forcing them to love them as well.

God forbid we believe that a pope can be fallible, a president be unhonorable or a parent be unloving! No, that would be too complicated. Instead, people stereotype and hold the term true. Real Americans are patriotic, thus a protester must be un-American. Murderers are not men, but monsters and they aren’t just pants, but Dockers.

Perhaps we should call Hayes and Bush II antipresidents. A bad parent or a step-parent could be an antimom or an antidad. Good workers are occasionally replaced by antiworkers and good police officers are sometimes impersonated by anticops. Antigirlfriends hold the position of girlfriend but are mean and deprive their boyfriends of sex.

Or we could think of people as individuals. Whatever.

(If you didn’t like today’s blog or any other, please consider them antiblogs)

The Schizophrenic Next Door and Within

In case you didn’t know, Friendster and MySpace are incredible tools for stalking. In many ways, they are better than Googling someone and this is especially true for my socio-economic class and circle of acquaintances. A Google will lead to a trillion pages about people with similar names (various high school track stars and a carpentry teacher come up when Googling my name). If your stalkee has an account with Friendster (like nearly everyone I went to college with) or with MySpace,(like nearly everyone I went to high school with), you get to learn all about them and see what they’ve been up to.

So, I typed in my brother’s name the other day and found some of his accounts online. Now, I’ve never been too close with my brother. He’s five years older and, frankly, is pretty mean (at least to me and the rest of my family). My mother thinks he’s a hermit and my sister thinks he’s a dick. Obviously, we love him and all of that crap, but we’re kind of genetically predisposed to do that. To my surprise, I find he has written this about himself:

Hey there! This is Chris: Caring, courteous. Honest.
Respectful, resilient, receptive. Intelligent, insightful.
Sensitive, and surprising. I would love to meet new,
friendly, fun people from the Milwaukee area. I am a
friendly, honest, handsome professional with a great
unscripted and comforting sense of humor. I love to chat and
listen with the right person, partake in outdoor excursions,
jog through the park, play soccer, swim, ski, hear new live
music travel to sunny locations as time allows, cook with a
melange of ingredients, and set up imaginative evenings on
the town. I'm an easy-going resident M.D. at a local medical
center, who balances a busy work and social life- and has
almost everything he needs to live life to the fullest. I'm
the best trusting friend you can ever have.

Huh?!?! Did he just call himself caring, courteous, respectful, receptive and sensitive? No he di’n’t! Enjoy exercising? Cooking? Did he just use a French word?

How can this be? Is he delusional? Perhaps. Am I? Again, perhaps.

More likely is that human beings present a different side of themselves to different people. This is not a conscience thing nor is it a personal choice. Certain people bring out aspects of one’s personality and quell other aspects. For instance, an old acquaintance, G.P., was a pretty negative and sarcastic guy. Around him, I was like him- negative and sarcastic. Around some people, I’m vulgar and, around others, I’m even tactful. Some people make me chatty and around some I cannot think of a thing to say for the life of me. Some people make me relaxed and others make my skin crawl. Around my parents I fall into the role of a child and around work I fall into the role of a worker.

This is one reason why people become rather silent and awkward when friends and family from different circles meet each other. When worlds collide, the individual is unsure how to act. Does one act like one does in World A or in World B? Unsure, the individual goes blank and acts like no one until a familiar environment is reestablished or a new persona is discovered.

So which is the real you? All of them really. This is why traveling or changing environments to “find oneself” is actually rather aptly named. By removing oneself from one sphere and entering a new sphere, one may act completely different. The lazy can become motivated and the depressed can become happy. The boring can become quirky and the closed minded can become open. All of these can happen in reverse as well, I suppose.

Like elements, each person in our lives as well as ourselves may react differently when in a new environment reacting with other elements. The result, like my brother, may be surprising.

Dreaming of Sisyphus

Each of us is bestowed with a number of negative qualities. Additionally, throughout life, many of these negative qualities are battled against. Some of the fighting is done by the self and other fighting is led by others. For instance, every day many of us brush our teeth. In this case, the individual has taught oneself to continuously wage war against the forces of tooth decay. In other situations, like when parents or significant others nag someone to exercise or take out the trash, an outside force must be the conscience.

These battles of “maintenance” come in many forms. Many study to stay sharp and informed. Others exercise to look fit and live longer. Many of us worry about our character and spirituality and try each day to a better person. Additionally, others also worry about this fight as well. Friends, family and lovers tell us when we are not living up to their standards. They nag us.

These battles are not actually “maintenance’, but are instead a slow decaying unstable equilibrium (if you would like learn more about this topic, please see February’s “Stable and Unstable Equilibriums”). We hope for “maintenance”, but each of these battles will eventually be lost. Sooner or later, our teeth decay, we stop exercising and we stop worrying about our human character until we become crippled, denture wearing grumpy seniors. Sisyphus has us beat as he has the will and ability to push the boulder forever.

Why each of us does this for ourselves is not very surprising. We like to fight the inevitable. That is what makes a great human beings. Fighting quixotically is noble, moral and romantic. Ironically, this crazy quest makes us sane, fulfilled and gives us purpose.

What is more peculiar is why others fight these battles for a given person. It is understandable that parents would fight these battles at first for their children. Nagging a child to perform “maintenance” is done in hope that the child will start doing it himself. Eventually, many kids do brush their teeth, do their homework and think of other’s feelings all by themselves. Temporary action can, on occasion, lead to perpetual action.

Later is life though, people are much less likely to change (see December’s “Change (Or Lack Thereof) Revisited”). None-the-less, spouses and significant others still attempt to get each other into the act of “maintenance”. Curiously, even when many fights have little to no chance of being taken over by the individual, outside forces still press on. Some spend years trying to get the fat to exercise, the depressed to be happy and the uncultured to be cultured. Some even try to keep vegetables like the Pope or Shiavo alive.

Yes, nagging goes on. People believe that by forcing someone into a never-ending battle for a temporary period that they will fight the never-ending battle on their own. What they do not see is that nagging itself is another never-ending war. People rarely perpetuate action on their own unless they are innately inclined to do that action or they are taught at a young age to do that action. It is a tall order to get people to do something continuously for the rest of their life especially when it is a losing battle. It is something to keep in mind when choosing companions.