Mini-Review and Miscellany

As of this month, I'll have been writing in this blog for a year. So much has happened over the past twelve months that I doubt I've even begun to process it all to any significant degree, and I don't see things slowing down anytime soon.

When I started writing here on Existence is Wonderful, I had no idea what would happen as a result. I started writing here weeks before actually giving anyone the URL, and I initially used a pseudonym (Nydra) on the basis that all I was doing was collecting information about, and arguments in favor of, healthy life extension in one place. Around this time last year, I was heavily involved in a powerfully intense discussion about longevity, its feasibility, and its implications on a BBS I've been a member of for several years. Some of my BBS friends seemed amenable to the idea of healthy life extension, while others were more cautious and wary (mainly on the basis that radical life extension wasn't "natural", though there was some debate over what "natural" truly meant, and I'm sure that debate persists in many circles today and will likely continue to do so for some time).

Over the past year, I've covered a lot of ground with regard to my initial intentions for this blog. I've stated my original purpose. I've discussed some of my rationale for doing whatever possible to ensure longer, healthier lives for all people. I've also branched out into topics that I didn't originally intend to cover on this blog, but that became sort of unavoidable when I saw what kinds of discussions were going on in the circles I found myself getting more and more acquainted with.

My goal in writing is never to simply produce content for content's sake. I'm not sure how people who write professionally, and manage to consistently write well (in terms of producing texts that are informative, interesting, and possibly significant in helping to hasten progress), do what they do. In my case, I can't just produce words that mean something on command, even if my material survival depends on it. In my case, writing is a lot like breathing -- it happens because it has to happen, as something my brain and body do in response to being a self-aware person in a complex environment. But unlike breathing, writing isn't rhythmic or consistent, even though it's something I'm frequently compelled to do.

Having spent a significant percentage of my life as a student, I know full well the difference between forcing words in order to fulfill an obligation, and producing them when they seem to want to come of their own accord. I do my best writing when my head is full of information that has somehow managed to organize itself in a particular way -- in those cases, it's almost like I am looking at some sort of large, complicated, multidimensional mechanism and my role as a writer is simply to describe that mechanism. At work, one of my primary tasks is to write test procedures -- sets of instructions for assessing the performance of, or troubleshooting, particular pieces of hardware. I enjoy this aspect of my work because it allows for plenty of chances to get into that zone where I take on the role of the person standing there looking at something and committing its essence to legible code and symbol.

An essential component of being able to write test procedures (or more generally, descriptions of how something works and how it might be honed in order to work better) is getting to know the hardware. This can be done through many means -- through direct physical contact with it, through seeing it from different angles, through disassembling it as much as possible without being irreversibly destructive, through reassembly, through reading of specifications, through charts and diagrams, and through hours and layers of background-processing after taking in huge chunks of information at a stretch. The more data I have about the hardware, the better the procedure will turn out, because in some sense in the process of observation I end up internalizing something of the hardware's essential structure (or at least, that's what it feels like -- sort of like I'm building up detailed models in my head over time).

So, when it comes to writing about things I care deeply about -- ethics, longevity, social justice of various sorts -- I am compelled to make the best possible attempts I can to develop the same kind of intimacy with the data, with the feel and content of the various important systems involved -- that I would if I were evaluating an object or piece of hardware with intent to understand and describe. And it can take different amounts of time to develop that level of intimacy, depending on the subject matter, on how much access to which kinds of information I have at any given time, etc.

In other words, I'm in something of an "absorbtion" phase at the moment. But expect more content soon...I've become quite interested in the evolutionary role of parasites in terms of the human immune system (and how that might relate to aging). Additionally, I've been formulating some thoughts on the fine-line dichotomy between "heroes" and "monsters" (inspired by my recent discovery of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" -- there's a few episodes in there that made me think about some of James Hughes' zombie essays), and I've also got a partially-written piece on free radicals and antioxidants that was prompted by a conversation I had with my father the other day.

Also, and this might be something of a tangent, but this entire post is pretty tangential at this point: I was discussing the whole phenomenon of online writing with a friend recently. One of the concerns she expressed was the fact that if she writes something now and posts it publicly, what happens if she changes her mind later on about something she wrote? I responded by stating that if I were following the course of someone's developing opinion set and self-concept over time, it would look a lot weirder if nothing about that person's opinions or interpretations of events changed over time, than if their later writing and apparent mindset didn't resemble their earlier material in the least.

People are not static entities, and as each of us encounters and integrates new information about ourselves and about the world, it's perfectly valid and undeniably sane for our expressed opinions and observations to change in terms of their tone and content. Existence is Wonderful is barely a year old at this point, and already I can look in the archives and find examples of statements that sound both awkward and ignorant in comparison to my present understanding of things. I expect that to be the case for years to come, (and, more than likely, so should you if you're in the habit of writing and posting your writing online). Though there's nothing wrong with holding principles, and there are certainly points at which any person is likely to encounter a "best possible fit" explanation or an undeniable fact that continues to be true into the indefinite future, viewpoint evolution is part and parcel of existence as a dynamic entity, as a mind equipped with a feedback system.

So, in other words, don't be afraid to write because you think you might change your mind later. Be more afraid if you find yourself writing and writing and never changing your mind!