I want to believe that real Americans still exist, the ones who forged a great nation with the power of their will and strength of their ingenuity. Somewhere, perhaps hidden amongst the over entitled cowards who wait for weekly handouts and the bloated bureaucrats who dole them out. Maybe among those who don't believe that 20 years of work should be rewarded with an inalienable god given right to 40+ years of pay. Or the ones who understand that although the system is NOT designed to be fair, it is one of the few that can be beaten if you simply have the ability to THINK and TRY!
There must, there absolutely must still be true patriots among us who can pull our collective heads out of socialist leaning asses long enough to get some fresh air before it's simply too late. As a history enthusiast I can tell you that this has all happened before. Great nations like great anything (athletes, models, cars, homes, relationships, etc.) must be maintained. Right now our country is suffering from an extreme case of deferred maintenance. We were handed a mansion and we've been throwing a spring break party so wild that it would make Ancient Romans blush.
However you may feel about money and profit, you cannot deny that capitalism has its uses. Despite what the blasted weed smoking slackers advocating the forcible redistribution of wealth would have you believe, the pursuit of profit has created all of modern civilization. For us jaded New Yorkers capitalism may be synonymous 12 bottles of Dom, a Ferrari and a pair of supermodels fighting over your black card. But capitalism means that an African dairy herder can use a solar panel to charge her cell phone so she can accept orders for milk from neighbors scattered across thousands of square miles. It means that a Chinese rice farmer can access the sum total of human knowledge with the taps of a few keys to increase his crop yields. It means that people who have been ruled by a madman for over four decades can organize a resistance in the face of automatic weapons fire and air strikes.
Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We all know that line. The key word in that famous sentence is: PURSUIT. We should all be allowed to pursue our dreams wherever they may lead us. Just because that dream is never realized doesn't mean the game is rigged. There are winners and there are losers. Throughout our lives we will all experience what it feels like to be both of those. In ye olden times losing usually meant starving to death in the unforgiving wilderness. These days, at least in America, at least for now, losing just means someone else won more.
However the stakes are changing and most of us have no idea how high they're getting. Losing in the United States of America will be a fond memory if we actually lose the United States of America. The message set forth by the founding fathers have universal appeal. Our cultural influence (hegemony some would call it) has spread to all corners of the globe. Everyone wants to be a winner, to create a better life for themselves. Before they have the luxury of delving into what it means to be a virtuous human being, they must first deal with the raw and real task of accumulating wealth. A simple fact that an increasing number of Americans take increasingly for granted is that wealth = security. Security=freedom. Freedom=happiness. The logic is unassailable. Without our position as the world's wealthiest nation we would never have had the time to develop this national malaise of the spirit coated in self-loathing.
At the conclusion of the Second World War the United States found itself with no natural predators, no serious competitors, no other contenders to the throne. So we happily expanded the franchise that is USA. That's not to say there weren't bumps in the ensuing six decades, but on a macro level we have successfully exported the notion of life liberty and the pursuit of happiness to nearly every other culture on the planet.
For anyone who's ever worked for a difficult boss and quit, I'm sure you'll understand that being given freedom is nothing like getting freedom for yourself. The USA as the oh so generous giver of freedom has bequeathed the tools of independence upon a world that is ever more resentful. The USA has not been anything near a saint, in fact it's become more of a weakened tribal elder who's edicts are met with a mixture of pity and derision rather than obedience and respect.
Some may argue, "so what? We don't want to be the world's police any way." It's much better to be the police than to be policed especially if you've spent the last sixty odd years policing those who would police you. How's that for a tongue twister?
Our entire way of life is provided for by the vastness of our wealth which funds our security which in protects our freedom and ensures our ability to pursue happiness. Again the linchpin of this beautiful system is wealth. Times have changed and we have changed them. The United States is still the world's foremost military power and despite their best attempts no other nation or even group of nations could hope to impose its will on the United States through brute force. However our vulnerability lies in our wealth.
Our wealth is and has been under attack by forces both foreign and domestic because that is the only place that we can be attacked. Whether the genesis of these attacks are by design, by accident or a simple unfortunate confluence of self-imposed short sightedness coupled with opportunistic exploitation by others is far too complex for me to explain credibly. However these attacks are occurring.
We have become a nation of obese and insolvent crybabies who are too busy consuming the contents of our diapers to realize that we're about to bagged and sold to a nice cannibal couple who are going to raise us as dinner. I'm going to try to explain the danger with as little hyperbole as possible.
At some point in the not too distant past we became convinced that stuff = happiness.
We began to trade our dollars for stuff; oil, cars, cheap clothes, crappy housewares and a multitude of junk.
Those who sell this stuff to us began to hoard our dollars.
We ran out of dollars. But we still wanted to buy stuff.
Sellers: "Hey you ran out of dollars, but your credit's good here."
US: "Gee golly mister, are you sure? I mean we can always come back after we've made more dollars."
Sellers: "Don't be silly Sammy, you'll make more money when you grow up, so why not spend it now?"
US: "You're right. I'm gonna make trillions one day, gotta spend money to make money right?"
Sellers" "Why yes Sammy, you're absolutely right. Now why don't you try our newest crack coated candy"
US: "Crack coated? Isn't that addictive? Aw hell, you only live once."
So Sammy begins paying for crack with his credit card. Through a combination of complacency and simple old fashioned greed (wanting more for nothing) we as a nation have become addicted to cheap products. These products are all maintained at artificially low prices because we wouldn't want to appear to have inequality due to unequal distribution of means. Everyone should be able to ball with big TVs, big houses and big cars. This consumerist mindset became woven into the fabric of American identity.
Now larger numbers of people could settle for lower paychecks and pointless jobs because they only had to work X number of hours to obtain the latest widget of wonder. That is the fundamental logical disconnect that will be exploited by those seeking to end America's dominance by forcibly eroding its wealth. Our national addiction to cheap excess will ironically be the one thing that causes everything to become expensive.
Right wing madness with a heavy dose of conspiracy theory right? Why would other nations want to hurt their biggest customer. Who would buy their cheap products if we, the big old US of A didn't. The USA has 350 million some odd people. I can think of two places off the top of my head that can replace that client base many times over. Starts with a Chin and ends with a dia. There will come a time in the not too distant future where those countries who export so many of the goods that we've come to depend on will no longer need to do so. They will have sufficient domestic demand to offset their need for our business.
What happens then?
Well we go to the back of the bus and stay there until we've learned our lesson.
Our national debt to income ratio makes a sub-prime Las Vegas stripper property flipper look like Warren Buffet. How many things in the past few years have become backed by the "full faith and credit of the United States Government?" It's that credit that continues to fuel our daily lives. At some point the other nations of the world will say "Sorry Sammy, but you're tapped. Your credit is no good here. Come back when you have some Francs, Yuan or Kronens"
Once that happens we'll stumble out onto the street wondering where did it all go wrong right before the nasty symptoms of junk withdrawal kick-in. The subsequent spasms will shake our great nation to its very core and may even threaten our very survival as a Union of federated states.
So those are the problems. What are the solutions oh wise one?
We are staring up from the bottom of an ever deepening pit. How will we get out of it? The best way to get out of a hole is to stop digging. As a nation we must begin to recognize and reward true talent and not penalize it. Wealth creation should be as important a part of education as anything else. We have to revive the entrepreneurial spirit of self sufficiency that created this great nation in the first place.
These are lofty goals and they cannot be achieved without a healthy dose of brutal honesty. There are many in this country who are dead weight. They are a drag on society for a host of reasons. But the worst aren't the criminals, not even the criminally stupid, but the ones who seek only to make money without any thought to creating wealth. Those are two very disparate activities which are often erroneously lumped together by those too stupid or too lazy.
Will we wake up before it's too late? I hope so, but I've also learned to never underestimate the power of idiocy.
God bless America, someone has to.
Friday, February 25, 2011
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Hope
I have been asked to write something more uplifting than my usual exhortations on existential futility. I just glanced back at my title and it read "Hoe." How's that for a Freudian Slip? I suppose my inner survivalist really wants to embrace agriculture.
Being grateful for what you have, counting your blessings, thank heaven for small favors, appreciate the little things in life, it could always be worse, things will get better, down but not out. These platitudes may seem trite and meaningless, but they definitely have their uses. Hope is not a good marketing plan, but it is a good operating plan. Hope (with an small dose of delusion to counteract general cynicism) has been the driving force behind plenty of greatness.
However hope alone is relatively ineffective. It needs to be tempered with determination, faith and a little bit of luck.
What's the difference between stumbling and running? Absolutely nothing as long as you're headed in the right direction.
As you can see by the herky-jerky nature of this post that I am having some trouble expressing myself in a positive manner. Maybe it will work better if I tell a story.
I have failed on far more than one occasion. I have failed personally, professionally, emotionally, physically, financially, mentally, academically, scientifically, logically, intellectually, romantically and probability. At times the weight of these failures was crushing my will like an egg under a boulder. One disappointment after another in such precise succession that it seemed as if my life was the Mets starting lineup. I would like to tell you that each of these failures made me a stronger man. Every setback was just another hammer blow forging a blade of success in a furnace of trial against an anvil of reality. But that was not the case.
Several of those failures simply resulted in even more failures in other areas of my life. To combat the growing disparity between the person I was and the person I could be, I simply retreated (ran away) from my real problems. Using endless bottles of alcohol, large doses of dopamine, obscene amounts of money I created a beautiful mirage of a life. Rock bottom for me was simply an excuse to break out a bigger drill. The deeper I drilled the more people wanted in on the action. Unsustainable lifestyles are the fodder for dreamers across our great nation.
Throughout all of this I never lost hope. No matter how good/bad things got I always held out hope that they could be better/worse. Without hope I would have given up a long time ago. Then again without hope I probably never would have engaged in such a self-destructive cycle to begin with. Alas self-destruction has an undeservedly bad reputation. After all how great is your self that it shouldn't be destroyed and recreated in a better form?
Having emerged from the abyss relatively unscathed I realize that there's nothing to be afraid of. Hope will never abandon you even if you decide to abandon it. It may sometimes be misguided, but it will always take you where you need to go. After all, it could always be worse.
Being grateful for what you have, counting your blessings, thank heaven for small favors, appreciate the little things in life, it could always be worse, things will get better, down but not out. These platitudes may seem trite and meaningless, but they definitely have their uses. Hope is not a good marketing plan, but it is a good operating plan. Hope (with an small dose of delusion to counteract general cynicism) has been the driving force behind plenty of greatness.
However hope alone is relatively ineffective. It needs to be tempered with determination, faith and a little bit of luck.
What's the difference between stumbling and running? Absolutely nothing as long as you're headed in the right direction.
As you can see by the herky-jerky nature of this post that I am having some trouble expressing myself in a positive manner. Maybe it will work better if I tell a story.
I have failed on far more than one occasion. I have failed personally, professionally, emotionally, physically, financially, mentally, academically, scientifically, logically, intellectually, romantically and probability. At times the weight of these failures was crushing my will like an egg under a boulder. One disappointment after another in such precise succession that it seemed as if my life was the Mets starting lineup. I would like to tell you that each of these failures made me a stronger man. Every setback was just another hammer blow forging a blade of success in a furnace of trial against an anvil of reality. But that was not the case.
Several of those failures simply resulted in even more failures in other areas of my life. To combat the growing disparity between the person I was and the person I could be, I simply retreated (ran away) from my real problems. Using endless bottles of alcohol, large doses of dopamine, obscene amounts of money I created a beautiful mirage of a life. Rock bottom for me was simply an excuse to break out a bigger drill. The deeper I drilled the more people wanted in on the action. Unsustainable lifestyles are the fodder for dreamers across our great nation.
Throughout all of this I never lost hope. No matter how good/bad things got I always held out hope that they could be better/worse. Without hope I would have given up a long time ago. Then again without hope I probably never would have engaged in such a self-destructive cycle to begin with. Alas self-destruction has an undeservedly bad reputation. After all how great is your self that it shouldn't be destroyed and recreated in a better form?
Having emerged from the abyss relatively unscathed I realize that there's nothing to be afraid of. Hope will never abandon you even if you decide to abandon it. It may sometimes be misguided, but it will always take you where you need to go. After all, it could always be worse.
Friday, December 31, 2010
1 year late
Edit
1 year late
by Antonio Wong on Friday, December 31, 2010 at 6:40pm
I had a grandiose summation of the decade planned out in my mind. A bittersweet nostalgia-filled recap of the first 10 years of the 21st century, a decade I began as a teenager and ended as a senior citizen. The pompous pontification, random references and revisionist recollections were all lined up. Unfortunately that decade ended last year. We are 364 1/2+ days into the first year of the second decade of the 21st century.
All days are not created equal. Today is December 31st, 2010. Right now, the crowds are gathering in Times Square, all manner of flesh is being stuffed into everything from too high shoes to too small dresses to too full ovens to too late guest lists. People all over NYC are preparing to do what people from Hong Kong to London have been doing for the last 12 hours. Get completely wasted and convince themselves that the passing of a particular moment in time when the last digit on their date stamp turns over to 2011 will usher in a new era, a clean slate, a fresh start.
Father time will fire a magic bullet into the temporal ether and erase the follies of the previous x number of years and this year will be different.
This year you will finally make it. This year you will figure it out. This year you will eat less, make more, drink less, love more, spend less, live more. This year you won't just be livin' on a prayer. This year you weren't born to follow. This year you will stop Always using Bon Jovi songs to make sweeping generalizations about life. This year you will stop giving love a bad name. However unlikely it is that this year will bring about any of the changes you so desperately seek. Take solace that this year will go by one day at a time just like all the other ones before.
A new year is just as good a time to start as any new minute you may come across. Change is possible, but not because you break open a new calendar or watch a thick Italian girl drop from the sky. Change comes when you commit to it without fanfare or proclamations.
Genuine sustainable change is a chain of individual decisions to go one way instead of another. Take enough steps to the left or right and eventually you'll turn around, take too many and you'll be headed right back where you were going before.
This year I turned in my wristbands, hand stamps, private booths, corner tables and the rest of the ballyhooed nonsense that preoccupies the minds of so many.This year I relapsed briefly and retraced some old ground. This year I discovered the power of no. This year I learned new answers to very simple questions.
Happiness is so ridiculously easy that constantly overlooking it is equally simple. Your life is like a gated community with varying degrees of security. Just about everything that makes its way in gained access with your full permission however unintentional it may have been. I have long since lost my wherewithal to try and help others see past the blinders of their own petty ignorance. I have also realized that it was my own petty arrogance that led me to believe I had a right and a duty to part fools from their stupidity.
Instead I have focused my efforts on keeping what I cannot change at bay. All that seeks to undermine my hard fought sanity and freedom will be held beyond the gates. Anything that threatens this peace will also be summarily exiled. It may not be the most elegant of systems nor does it engender much social interaction, but it damn sure is effective.
This year is mine.
1 year late
by Antonio Wong on Friday, December 31, 2010 at 6:40pm
I had a grandiose summation of the decade planned out in my mind. A bittersweet nostalgia-filled recap of the first 10 years of the 21st century, a decade I began as a teenager and ended as a senior citizen. The pompous pontification, random references and revisionist recollections were all lined up. Unfortunately that decade ended last year. We are 364 1/2+ days into the first year of the second decade of the 21st century.
All days are not created equal. Today is December 31st, 2010. Right now, the crowds are gathering in Times Square, all manner of flesh is being stuffed into everything from too high shoes to too small dresses to too full ovens to too late guest lists. People all over NYC are preparing to do what people from Hong Kong to London have been doing for the last 12 hours. Get completely wasted and convince themselves that the passing of a particular moment in time when the last digit on their date stamp turns over to 2011 will usher in a new era, a clean slate, a fresh start.
Father time will fire a magic bullet into the temporal ether and erase the follies of the previous x number of years and this year will be different.
This year you will finally make it. This year you will figure it out. This year you will eat less, make more, drink less, love more, spend less, live more. This year you won't just be livin' on a prayer. This year you weren't born to follow. This year you will stop Always using Bon Jovi songs to make sweeping generalizations about life. This year you will stop giving love a bad name. However unlikely it is that this year will bring about any of the changes you so desperately seek. Take solace that this year will go by one day at a time just like all the other ones before.
A new year is just as good a time to start as any new minute you may come across. Change is possible, but not because you break open a new calendar or watch a thick Italian girl drop from the sky. Change comes when you commit to it without fanfare or proclamations.
Genuine sustainable change is a chain of individual decisions to go one way instead of another. Take enough steps to the left or right and eventually you'll turn around, take too many and you'll be headed right back where you were going before.
This year I turned in my wristbands, hand stamps, private booths, corner tables and the rest of the ballyhooed nonsense that preoccupies the minds of so many.This year I relapsed briefly and retraced some old ground. This year I discovered the power of no. This year I learned new answers to very simple questions.
Happiness is so ridiculously easy that constantly overlooking it is equally simple. Your life is like a gated community with varying degrees of security. Just about everything that makes its way in gained access with your full permission however unintentional it may have been. I have long since lost my wherewithal to try and help others see past the blinders of their own petty ignorance. I have also realized that it was my own petty arrogance that led me to believe I had a right and a duty to part fools from their stupidity.
Instead I have focused my efforts on keeping what I cannot change at bay. All that seeks to undermine my hard fought sanity and freedom will be held beyond the gates. Anything that threatens this peace will also be summarily exiled. It may not be the most elegant of systems nor does it engender much social interaction, but it damn sure is effective.
This year is mine.
Friday, November 19, 2010
Drive
Climb into 3 tons of steel, start a small explosion using electricity and gasoline and lumber onto strips of asphalt with other metallic boulders hurtling in different directions at about 73 feet per second all while navigating through a maze of lights, signs and increasingly blind pedestrians using bits of rubber and reflective glass. However this seemingly death defying act of sheer madness is orchestrated on a daily basis by hundreds of millions of people and it's actually quite enjoyable as long you're not driving near any taxis or Chinatowns.
Yet people are far more terrified of necrotizing fasciitis and paying for health insurance than from getting into their cars every morning. That's very understandable because driving is fun whereas flesh eating bacteria and deductible payments are not. What is it about driving that is so darn enjoyable anyhow?
Personally I always feel a soothing sense of tranquility on long drives. Whether it's a familiar trek down the Garden State Parkway or a quick run from McCarran onto 1-15, something about having a destination and the wherewithal to reach it provides a small sense of fulfillment and that ever elusive illusion of control.
It isn't always easy. There are plenty of obstacles that stand in the way of a comfortable drive; traffic jams, traffic cops, cabbies, texters, mobile makeup artists, state troopers, BICYCLISTS, truckers, soccer moms, drunk dads, minivans, fallen trees, falling rocks, carjackers, moon walkers, panhandlers and squeegee men. Then there's the cost of gas, cost of cars, cost of tolls, cost of insurance, cost of not having insurance, cost of parking, cost of parking tickets, cost of fighting ticket, and the cost of taxes to maintain the unions that "maintain" the endless roads, byways and highways.
Despite all of this crap, the simple joy of driving still emerges victorious.
Life is hard. Taking control of your life and deciding what you're going to do with it is even harder. The odds against success are enormous, but difficulty is not to be confused with impossibility. Think about the odds you had to beat to be sitting here right now reading the miscellaneous thoughts streaming from my semi-consciousness.
Your odds of just being born were about 1 in 390 to 412 million multiplied by approximately 1 in 800 depending on your father's virility. So just to enter this world was about a 1 in 320,000,000,000. Now multiply that by the odds of being a facebook user (1 in 12) that reads my notes (205 out of 500,000,000) Very small is a gross exaggeration of how unlikely this whole endeavor is.
So now we know why Han Solo didn't much care for odds.
Chances are you won't succeed, but then again the chances were that you should never have existed to begin with. So what are you waiting for? Get out there and get some drive!
Yet people are far more terrified of necrotizing fasciitis and paying for health insurance than from getting into their cars every morning. That's very understandable because driving is fun whereas flesh eating bacteria and deductible payments are not. What is it about driving that is so darn enjoyable anyhow?
Personally I always feel a soothing sense of tranquility on long drives. Whether it's a familiar trek down the Garden State Parkway or a quick run from McCarran onto 1-15, something about having a destination and the wherewithal to reach it provides a small sense of fulfillment and that ever elusive illusion of control.
It isn't always easy. There are plenty of obstacles that stand in the way of a comfortable drive; traffic jams, traffic cops, cabbies, texters, mobile makeup artists, state troopers, BICYCLISTS, truckers, soccer moms, drunk dads, minivans, fallen trees, falling rocks, carjackers, moon walkers, panhandlers and squeegee men. Then there's the cost of gas, cost of cars, cost of tolls, cost of insurance, cost of not having insurance, cost of parking, cost of parking tickets, cost of fighting ticket, and the cost of taxes to maintain the unions that "maintain" the endless roads, byways and highways.
Despite all of this crap, the simple joy of driving still emerges victorious.
Life is hard. Taking control of your life and deciding what you're going to do with it is even harder. The odds against success are enormous, but difficulty is not to be confused with impossibility. Think about the odds you had to beat to be sitting here right now reading the miscellaneous thoughts streaming from my semi-consciousness.
Your odds of just being born were about 1 in 390 to 412 million multiplied by approximately 1 in 800 depending on your father's virility. So just to enter this world was about a 1 in 320,000,000,000. Now multiply that by the odds of being a facebook user (1 in 12) that reads my notes (205 out of 500,000,000) Very small is a gross exaggeration of how unlikely this whole endeavor is.
So now we know why Han Solo didn't much care for odds.
Chances are you won't succeed, but then again the chances were that you should never have existed to begin with. So what are you waiting for? Get out there and get some drive!
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Hindsight. (Irrelevant yet strangely powerful)
I lack the psychiatric and neurobiological credentials to properly explain how our brains use hindsight and confirmation bias to create a wildly inaccurate subjective reality. Suffice it to say that this nifty little mental parlor trick is the linchpin of nearly every facet of modern society. It ensures the smooth functioning of everything from casinos and bottle service to elected politicians and online dating. Our minds are designed with a critical flaw; we can only perceive the present, ponder the past yet cannot predict the future. However we are constantly forced to make decisions regarding the future and the only available data comes from events which have already occurred.
Now any finance jockey and/or degenerate gambler can tell you that past performance does not guarantee future results. Nature has done a pretty good job so far. I suppose evolution was far more concerned with us not jumping off cliffs and eating poisonous mushrooms rather than picking a good IPO or the right horse in the Third race at Churchill downs. Having the ability to predict the future would make for some very interesting TV, but I guess it would lead to pure chaos. Temporal mechanics is a messy subject.
Hindsight is a smug little son of a bitch which sits on the periphery of your mind and taunts you incessantly. It is the employer of every talking head on television and windbag at the bar fueling the endless choruses of "woulda coulda shoulda." Every single moment passing into the next is the result of an impossibly infinite array of probabilities collapsing into a single instance of actuality. Anything can happen, absolutely anything yet our little minds try to tell us that "I knew that was going to happen."
Is it a little insane that I am sitting here in the middle of the night railing against how my brain functions? 10 years ago tonight I have absolutely no idea what I was doing. If I knew what I knew now I would have bought all the right things, could have owned a piece of all the right companies and should have been drunk of of 60 year old scotch on a Saturday night instead of lamenting over the inefficiency of the human condition. But there's that asshole hindsight acting up again.
I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. I would like to. History suggests that it will involve food, TV and a fair amount of driving. Hindsight, for all of it's evil, doesn't work alone. He has an equally sick partner in crime called hope, don't get me started on her. The two of them together make Madoff look like a girl scout. I think I finally understand why it's so important to enjoy the things you do while also taking the time to do the things you enjoy.
Lamenting over the things you could have done only paves the way for more self-destructive disassociation from reality and responsibility . Hindsight is as powerful a drug as they come and should only be used as a recreational tool.
The world owes you nothing so don't take it personally.
Now any finance jockey and/or degenerate gambler can tell you that past performance does not guarantee future results. Nature has done a pretty good job so far. I suppose evolution was far more concerned with us not jumping off cliffs and eating poisonous mushrooms rather than picking a good IPO or the right horse in the Third race at Churchill downs. Having the ability to predict the future would make for some very interesting TV, but I guess it would lead to pure chaos. Temporal mechanics is a messy subject.
Hindsight is a smug little son of a bitch which sits on the periphery of your mind and taunts you incessantly. It is the employer of every talking head on television and windbag at the bar fueling the endless choruses of "woulda coulda shoulda." Every single moment passing into the next is the result of an impossibly infinite array of probabilities collapsing into a single instance of actuality. Anything can happen, absolutely anything yet our little minds try to tell us that "I knew that was going to happen."
Is it a little insane that I am sitting here in the middle of the night railing against how my brain functions? 10 years ago tonight I have absolutely no idea what I was doing. If I knew what I knew now I would have bought all the right things, could have owned a piece of all the right companies and should have been drunk of of 60 year old scotch on a Saturday night instead of lamenting over the inefficiency of the human condition. But there's that asshole hindsight acting up again.
I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. I would like to. History suggests that it will involve food, TV and a fair amount of driving. Hindsight, for all of it's evil, doesn't work alone. He has an equally sick partner in crime called hope, don't get me started on her. The two of them together make Madoff look like a girl scout. I think I finally understand why it's so important to enjoy the things you do while also taking the time to do the things you enjoy.
Lamenting over the things you could have done only paves the way for more self-destructive disassociation from reality and responsibility . Hindsight is as powerful a drug as they come and should only be used as a recreational tool.
The world owes you nothing so don't take it personally.
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Will
It has been over two months since my last rant.
The biggest reason for the hiatus is a lack of new material. Being a hermit does not impart the level of inspiration that literary loners would have you believe. Another reason is that long impassioned diatribes against the follies of the world are ironically foolish. Cathartic, but mostly foolish. Perhaps the lag between entries means that I've become a much calmer person.
I do find it much more difficult to get angry these days. In fact it's much more harder to get happy, sad or even annoyed. Age seems to bringing with it an ever growing sense of detachment from the effects of day to day occurrences. What a long winded way of saying that life has become boring! But boring doesn't quite describe this most recent stretch of life. Numb seems to be more apt. A general numbness to stimuli seems to plague me.
At first I thought it was burnout from way too much work and excitement in the past few years. But then I took a very long break from everything and everyone and then even went on a nice long escape twice in the past few months. But still the numbness is pervasive. The need for instant gratification and stimulation overload are to blame. Perceptually there is too long of a lag between the exertion of will and desired outcome.
That lag is the explanation for why New Year's resolutions consistently fail. There is definitely plenty of faulty engineering with our brains. We perceive existence from one moment to the next yet if we are to achieve success on any meaningful level then we have to take actions for which there is no immediate positive feedback. In a nutshell that explains the power of chocolate cake and strippers over granola bars and 401k contributions. Luckily for me I'm allergic to chocolate and financial planning.
Free will is a grand notion which has very misleading implications. We all have to ability to choose a great deal of our own actions. Consequently most people believe that those actions have a disproportionately large effect on the eventual outcome. I'm going to avoid the obvious poker/life analogies that are springing to mind. The harsh reality is that while are choices may determine who we are, chances are what really dictate the action.
You can argue that chance is the aggregate result of individual choices colliding and collapsing upon one another in an ocean of whims and decisions, but that doesn't change the fact that a single individual has little to no control over randomness.
Where does that leave us?
Row row row your boat. The constant exertion of your free will towards your desired result is the only way to steer yourself towards your destination. But there's no guarantee you'll get there. There's even a chance that if you do nothing you still might get there. So why in the hell should you row at all? I don't know. You could just lay back and see where the currents take you, but that usually leads to some unpleasantness involving sinking or getting the boat repossessed.
Nautical themes aside, force of will is necessary, but not nearly as effective as I'd like it to be.
That's a very weak conclusion and it is leaving me most unsatisfied.
When will power alone isn't enough to achieve the desired outcome, what can you do to supplement your will? If I knew, I'd be out doing it instead of puzzling it over here on an idle Thursday night.
What do you do?
The biggest reason for the hiatus is a lack of new material. Being a hermit does not impart the level of inspiration that literary loners would have you believe. Another reason is that long impassioned diatribes against the follies of the world are ironically foolish. Cathartic, but mostly foolish. Perhaps the lag between entries means that I've become a much calmer person.
I do find it much more difficult to get angry these days. In fact it's much more harder to get happy, sad or even annoyed. Age seems to bringing with it an ever growing sense of detachment from the effects of day to day occurrences. What a long winded way of saying that life has become boring! But boring doesn't quite describe this most recent stretch of life. Numb seems to be more apt. A general numbness to stimuli seems to plague me.
At first I thought it was burnout from way too much work and excitement in the past few years. But then I took a very long break from everything and everyone and then even went on a nice long escape twice in the past few months. But still the numbness is pervasive. The need for instant gratification and stimulation overload are to blame. Perceptually there is too long of a lag between the exertion of will and desired outcome.
That lag is the explanation for why New Year's resolutions consistently fail. There is definitely plenty of faulty engineering with our brains. We perceive existence from one moment to the next yet if we are to achieve success on any meaningful level then we have to take actions for which there is no immediate positive feedback. In a nutshell that explains the power of chocolate cake and strippers over granola bars and 401k contributions. Luckily for me I'm allergic to chocolate and financial planning.
Free will is a grand notion which has very misleading implications. We all have to ability to choose a great deal of our own actions. Consequently most people believe that those actions have a disproportionately large effect on the eventual outcome. I'm going to avoid the obvious poker/life analogies that are springing to mind. The harsh reality is that while are choices may determine who we are, chances are what really dictate the action.
You can argue that chance is the aggregate result of individual choices colliding and collapsing upon one another in an ocean of whims and decisions, but that doesn't change the fact that a single individual has little to no control over randomness.
Where does that leave us?
Row row row your boat. The constant exertion of your free will towards your desired result is the only way to steer yourself towards your destination. But there's no guarantee you'll get there. There's even a chance that if you do nothing you still might get there. So why in the hell should you row at all? I don't know. You could just lay back and see where the currents take you, but that usually leads to some unpleasantness involving sinking or getting the boat repossessed.
Nautical themes aside, force of will is necessary, but not nearly as effective as I'd like it to be.
That's a very weak conclusion and it is leaving me most unsatisfied.
When will power alone isn't enough to achieve the desired outcome, what can you do to supplement your will? If I knew, I'd be out doing it instead of puzzling it over here on an idle Thursday night.
What do you do?
Friday, July 16, 2010
There are 10 types of people in this world
"There are 10 types of people in this world. Those who understand binary and those who don't."
-mathematical humor on a T-shirt
On most mornings I drive across the Williamsburg bridge to get into the city. Generally traffic is miserably congested and strangely lopsided. One roadway is bumper to bumper while the other one is smooth cruising the entire length of the bridge. There are four lanes divided into an inner and outer roadway. The inner roadway has limited clearance so trucks and other large vehicles are forced to use the outer roadway. Conventional wisdom would suggest that in the absence of additional information, the lane without trucks would move the fastest. So the inner roadway should be the route of choice.
However you have to take into account the fact that there are far more cars than there are trucks and the majority of trucks are forced onto the Manhattan and Brooklyn bridge because of height restrictions on the Williamsburg. Also truck drivers tend to be more experienced and if they're out on the road in the morning then they are on a route and should be moving with some urgency. So a simple analysis of the situation would reveal that the outer roadway is ideal.
But at the end of the bridge the outer roadway is further divided. The right lane must turn right onto Clinton St; a small thoroughfare with heavy pedestrian traffic clogging the crosswalk which in turn jams the right lane back about 1/3 of the bridge length. Drivers attempting to make lane changes at the end of the bridge also back up traffic on the outer roadway.
So no we're back to square 1. Take the inner road way.
However at the end of the inner roadway the bridge opens into an S shaped wall of orange cones which creates a brief bottlneck between the first and 2nd traffic lights on Delancey. This causes a merging nightmare as frustrated morning drivers refuse to yield to each other.
So what the hell do you do? Which way has less traffic? Which route will be a 3 minute zip and which one will be a 25 minute stop and go exercise in road rage?
You have to choose.
Left or right.
If you guess correctly then you will be rewarded with an expeditious crossing of the east river and be on your way into Manhattan with a smile on your face. If you guess incorrectly then you will have to endure a snail's crawl across the span while watching the drivers who made the correct choice rush past you. As you roll forward inches at a time it begins to feel as if every car whooshing past you in the other lane is filled with a smugly self-satisfied driver laughing hysterically at your predicament.
So as you get on the bridge whether from the BQE ramp, Roebling street or through Washington Plaza you face a choice. Cars appear to be moving quickly in both lanes, but you know better than that. You know that one way is heaven and the other way is hell. But time is running out. This is a decision that will affect the rest of your day, your week or even your year.
Left?
Right?
PICK ONE!
Pause.
Go into bullet time. Everything slows down as the breadth and depth of experience washes over you. Take into account the time of day, the traffic patterns around you, is it a Jewish holiday, is school in session, have the medium sized rigs already made their delivery, what day of the week is it, do you see any Chinese commuter vans (they always know which lane is clear.)
There are 3 seconds left until the fork in the road.
Think faster!
Two. Why oh why didn't you just wake up earlier today.
One.
Then your eye catches it. A flashing orange light and a long slow road of traffic. It's a lane closure!!! One of the roadways is experiencing a lane closure. This makes the decision crystal clear.
The lane closure is flashing brightly in the outer roadway.
Which way do you go?
-mathematical humor on a T-shirt
On most mornings I drive across the Williamsburg bridge to get into the city. Generally traffic is miserably congested and strangely lopsided. One roadway is bumper to bumper while the other one is smooth cruising the entire length of the bridge. There are four lanes divided into an inner and outer roadway. The inner roadway has limited clearance so trucks and other large vehicles are forced to use the outer roadway. Conventional wisdom would suggest that in the absence of additional information, the lane without trucks would move the fastest. So the inner roadway should be the route of choice.
However you have to take into account the fact that there are far more cars than there are trucks and the majority of trucks are forced onto the Manhattan and Brooklyn bridge because of height restrictions on the Williamsburg. Also truck drivers tend to be more experienced and if they're out on the road in the morning then they are on a route and should be moving with some urgency. So a simple analysis of the situation would reveal that the outer roadway is ideal.
But at the end of the bridge the outer roadway is further divided. The right lane must turn right onto Clinton St; a small thoroughfare with heavy pedestrian traffic clogging the crosswalk which in turn jams the right lane back about 1/3 of the bridge length. Drivers attempting to make lane changes at the end of the bridge also back up traffic on the outer roadway.
So no we're back to square 1. Take the inner road way.
However at the end of the inner roadway the bridge opens into an S shaped wall of orange cones which creates a brief bottlneck between the first and 2nd traffic lights on Delancey. This causes a merging nightmare as frustrated morning drivers refuse to yield to each other.
So what the hell do you do? Which way has less traffic? Which route will be a 3 minute zip and which one will be a 25 minute stop and go exercise in road rage?
You have to choose.
Left or right.
If you guess correctly then you will be rewarded with an expeditious crossing of the east river and be on your way into Manhattan with a smile on your face. If you guess incorrectly then you will have to endure a snail's crawl across the span while watching the drivers who made the correct choice rush past you. As you roll forward inches at a time it begins to feel as if every car whooshing past you in the other lane is filled with a smugly self-satisfied driver laughing hysterically at your predicament.
So as you get on the bridge whether from the BQE ramp, Roebling street or through Washington Plaza you face a choice. Cars appear to be moving quickly in both lanes, but you know better than that. You know that one way is heaven and the other way is hell. But time is running out. This is a decision that will affect the rest of your day, your week or even your year.
Left?
Right?
PICK ONE!
Pause.
Go into bullet time. Everything slows down as the breadth and depth of experience washes over you. Take into account the time of day, the traffic patterns around you, is it a Jewish holiday, is school in session, have the medium sized rigs already made their delivery, what day of the week is it, do you see any Chinese commuter vans (they always know which lane is clear.)
There are 3 seconds left until the fork in the road.
Think faster!
Two. Why oh why didn't you just wake up earlier today.
One.
Then your eye catches it. A flashing orange light and a long slow road of traffic. It's a lane closure!!! One of the roadways is experiencing a lane closure. This makes the decision crystal clear.
The lane closure is flashing brightly in the outer roadway.
Which way do you go?
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
If you can't stand the heat
Buy an air conditioner.
If only all of life's problems were so easy to solve. But they are. Earlier today I watched a short documentary on minimum wage workers, aptly titled "Minimum Wage." Imagine Morgan Spurlock sitting at his desk. Having spent months chronicling the harsh struggles of the working poor in their futile conflict of sustenance versus solvency he needed to come up with a title. He spent 30 days working minimum wage jobs to experience what millions of Americans have to deal with on a daily basis. What should he name his documentary about living on minimum wage? Eureka! MINIMUM WAGE!
One more problem solved.
But let's move on to bigger problems. Minimum wage is not an issue that the Facebook demographic has to contend with. However the plight of the minimum wage worker is universal, financial inadequacy, or more colloquially, being broke-ass.
American society has a hypocritical adoration and false sympathy for the noble poor who live on nothing even though we all want to be a billionaire so freaking bad. What is the difference between what a laborer is worth and what a laborer is paid?
PROFIT....gasp.
This applies to all employees whether you're scraping roadkill off a highway or batting for the Yankees (Mets players are probably the sole exception to this universal principle.) Somebody is making money off of you. That's how the system works. Supply and demand in all of its infinite combinations.
Recoil in liberal horror as the harsh reality of a capitalist market based economy crashes on your bleeding heart.
When did profit become a dirty word? Why do corporations get away with using hordes of minimum wage or even below minimum wage workers? The same reason why the land is littered with drug dealers and prostitutes. Because people are willing to do it. This is not because they don't know that there are other opportunities, but because they settle for what they can get instead of what they can reach.
The driving force behind our entire economy and cultural psychology is bridging the gap between the haves and have-nots. Whether it's; food, freedom, security, iPads, iPhones, iPods, cars, yachts, mansions and lingerie model trophy girlfriends, consumption is key.
Once our basic needs of water, food and shelter are met, everything else becomes a whirlpool of advertisements, social programming and general white noise to occupy our sentient minds which would otherwise implode trying to figure out why the universe exists.
How the hell did we get go from economics to existentialist metaphysics? Back to minimum wage.
There is a large supply of people on this planet and all of them have a host of physiological demands. However since we decided to move past living in caves we also have a massive manufactured psychological demand for stuff. As the supply of people increases geometrically the artificial demand for stuff must also increase. Because we've done such a fine job of producing and distributing food, because there has to be something else to occupy the masses with once they're full.
How on earth does all of this justify minimum wage?
Minimum wage jobs have extremely high rates of turnover because people cannot survive on it. It is the inherent in unsustainable nature of this labor which drives people to seek out more gainful sources of employment or entrepreneurship. It takes some measure of being poor and hungry to motivate people to become rich and fat.
But then why do some people get stuck in these dead-end jobs for their whole lives? That's not right. That's not fair. They deserve better. No. They don't.
Social Darwinism. Those who are satisfied with their lot in life stop striving for a better one. Those who are unsatisfied with their life, but take no meaningful steps to improve it are getting exactly what they deserve. Those who try and fail are simply unfortunate, but they can live their lives satisfied in the knowledge that they've already gone much farther than most who simply bitch and moan.
Many of the greatest innovators in the history of humanity have started with little or nothing. Through sheer force of will, faith in their vision and fortitude of spirit they have forged nations, bent light, built cities and created gold from every substance imaginable.
So either make an effort to realize your dreams or resign yourself to the fact that even though your life will be a menial nightmare you are helping someone else create wealth.
Earn or burn, there's always a choice.
If only all of life's problems were so easy to solve. But they are. Earlier today I watched a short documentary on minimum wage workers, aptly titled "Minimum Wage." Imagine Morgan Spurlock sitting at his desk. Having spent months chronicling the harsh struggles of the working poor in their futile conflict of sustenance versus solvency he needed to come up with a title. He spent 30 days working minimum wage jobs to experience what millions of Americans have to deal with on a daily basis. What should he name his documentary about living on minimum wage? Eureka! MINIMUM WAGE!
One more problem solved.
But let's move on to bigger problems. Minimum wage is not an issue that the Facebook demographic has to contend with. However the plight of the minimum wage worker is universal, financial inadequacy, or more colloquially, being broke-ass.
American society has a hypocritical adoration and false sympathy for the noble poor who live on nothing even though we all want to be a billionaire so freaking bad. What is the difference between what a laborer is worth and what a laborer is paid?
PROFIT....gasp.
This applies to all employees whether you're scraping roadkill off a highway or batting for the Yankees (Mets players are probably the sole exception to this universal principle.) Somebody is making money off of you. That's how the system works. Supply and demand in all of its infinite combinations.
Recoil in liberal horror as the harsh reality of a capitalist market based economy crashes on your bleeding heart.
When did profit become a dirty word? Why do corporations get away with using hordes of minimum wage or even below minimum wage workers? The same reason why the land is littered with drug dealers and prostitutes. Because people are willing to do it. This is not because they don't know that there are other opportunities, but because they settle for what they can get instead of what they can reach.
The driving force behind our entire economy and cultural psychology is bridging the gap between the haves and have-nots. Whether it's; food, freedom, security, iPads, iPhones, iPods, cars, yachts, mansions and lingerie model trophy girlfriends, consumption is key.
Once our basic needs of water, food and shelter are met, everything else becomes a whirlpool of advertisements, social programming and general white noise to occupy our sentient minds which would otherwise implode trying to figure out why the universe exists.
How the hell did we get go from economics to existentialist metaphysics? Back to minimum wage.
There is a large supply of people on this planet and all of them have a host of physiological demands. However since we decided to move past living in caves we also have a massive manufactured psychological demand for stuff. As the supply of people increases geometrically the artificial demand for stuff must also increase. Because we've done such a fine job of producing and distributing food, because there has to be something else to occupy the masses with once they're full.
How on earth does all of this justify minimum wage?
Minimum wage jobs have extremely high rates of turnover because people cannot survive on it. It is the inherent in unsustainable nature of this labor which drives people to seek out more gainful sources of employment or entrepreneurship. It takes some measure of being poor and hungry to motivate people to become rich and fat.
But then why do some people get stuck in these dead-end jobs for their whole lives? That's not right. That's not fair. They deserve better. No. They don't.
Social Darwinism. Those who are satisfied with their lot in life stop striving for a better one. Those who are unsatisfied with their life, but take no meaningful steps to improve it are getting exactly what they deserve. Those who try and fail are simply unfortunate, but they can live their lives satisfied in the knowledge that they've already gone much farther than most who simply bitch and moan.
Many of the greatest innovators in the history of humanity have started with little or nothing. Through sheer force of will, faith in their vision and fortitude of spirit they have forged nations, bent light, built cities and created gold from every substance imaginable.
So either make an effort to realize your dreams or resign yourself to the fact that even though your life will be a menial nightmare you are helping someone else create wealth.
Earn or burn, there's always a choice.
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