Poking My Head Out...

I was about 10 years old when this picture was taken, and haven't hidden in many laundry hampers lately, but nevertheless the image pretty much captures my mindset right now:



At any rate, there are several things I really want to blog about -- but it's nearing the end of the work year and things are tremendously busy right now at my place of employment. I've been having to use most of my higher brain functioning for keeping up in that environment recently and that hasn't left me much cognitive energy in the evenings for complex writing.

Happily, I've had a nice long vacation approved (I'll be off work from December 6 - January 5!) so during that time I hope to produce some posts that will be a lot more interesting than this one.

Hourglass V Blog Carnival Posted

Laura at psique has posted (and hosted) Hourglass V - the fifth installment of the Hourglass Blog Carnival.

The Hourglass Blog Carnival occurs monthly and serves to highlight all sorts of interesting biogerontological topics, from the hard science (just what are those mitochondria doing anyway?) to the social aspects of longevity.

This month's Carnival covers a range of subjects, from economics to cognitive neuroscience to the interplay between calorie restriction, aging, and the sense of smell. So if you're at all curious about any of that visit the carnival!

Unfortunately I wasn't able to get a proper post together for this month's Hourglass (work and the general end-of-year bustle have been eating up my brain-bandwidth lately) but I'm always happy to see what other folks are saying about longevity, and thanks again to Laura for hosting this month.

NOTE: We are still looking for a host for Hourglass VI, so if you (or anyone you know with a blog and an interest in longevity) wants to try your hand at hosting, please contact Chris Patil (of the Ouroboros aging-biology blog).

More On That Joy Of Existence (and Not Being Empty)

First of all, I consider existence in general (and by extension, my existence) to be a joy. Not that I think it's always pleasant, much less for everyone -- but certainly that I think there's very much worthwhile to do, think, perceive, and experience.

Life is an utterly precious thing.

Whenever I pause for a moment to consider what it means to be a person in reality, it is sometimes almost too awesome to bear.

Like I almost want to crawl under a blanket or table or something and let in little bits of it come in one micron at a time, through interlaced fingers.

I can do certain things: art, a bit of writing. I'm not bad at math. I've always loved science.

Other people I know can do different things, and I have no doubt those things hold as much joy and value for them as my preferred things do for me.

I don't understand first-hand what it's like to really enjoy baseball, for instance, but I would not begrudge someone else their love of it, or the associations it lights up in their brain.

Anyway, though, there's a fear I have. I don't know if I've ever put it into words before. But it's based in both (a) some things that have happened to me, and (b) some things I've seen happen to other people.

And that is basically the phenomenon where someone is very obviously (to me, at least) doing and/or saying things that speak very much to the validity of his/her experience of existence, but who is in turn being accused of emptiness.

There are some things I've come to be able to articulate.

But I couldn't always articulate these things.

And I wasn't any emptier then than I am now.

I've also seen other people, who perhaps aren't articulating certain things in ways easily recognized by their peers (or by anyone), but who nonetheless are very clearly responding to things around them and having inner experiences.

I am talking here about various different kinds of people: autistic, nonautistic. Verbose and taciturn. Old and young. Different people get thought of as empty for different reasons.

With me, it seems to (at least in some cases) be a matter of insufficient patience.

I know I am Real and not empty.

But there are people who've said: oh, tell us what you think. Communicate. Please. We'll be here if you need someone to listen.

Only they don't actually listen (or read).

Instead, they tell me to just tell them something verbally (instead of writing it).

Or they tell me they don't want to read something so long.

Or they don't respond at all.

I've read a lot of people's writing.

I regularly read a lot of people's writing.

Some conversations I'm okay stepping into, but others I'm not. Others I'm leery about because of the degree to which, even when I generally like and respect those involved, there's a tendency to want to shove people into categories that make them easy to dismiss.

This is not to say that everything has genuine substance. There are definitely some cases in which this isn't true. Advertising is a good place to find a whole lot of nothing: I mean, what does "Made With 100% Juice" actually tell anyone?

Also: some really destructive patterns I've come to recognize, and I try to avoid getting into altercations with people exhibiting them. There are also some things that bother, scare, or just plain repulse me ("pickup artistry" is one of these things; it makes my skin crawl).

But: I tend to think that, perhaps to a fault, people trying to communicate about certain subjects (especially those pertaining to figuring out how reality works) all have something to say.

If not with their words, with how they experience life. Which can't always be seen from the outside, especially not immediately.

Hence, I give a lot of people a lot of "benefit of the doubt".

Overall, when it doesn't seem like someone's trying to push a weird agenda I can recognize, I at least make an attempt to get to know over time what they might be getting at.

This has, more than once, put me in the bizarre position of seeing two people each accusing the other of "not saying anything"/"having nothing to say", when from where I sit, they're both saying something.

It may not be something I agree with, but it's definitely not nothing.

And frankly it worries me that this happens as often as it does.

I do have a lot of hope for the future and willingness to work toward a good future -- but I think that in order for a good future to actually come into being, we shouldn't be so quick to presume someone else is empty just because we can't understand what they're saying. Or to presume we do understand what they are saying and that there simply isn't anything there.

Because even though there are cases where people are just spouting fluff, I don't think that's the usual case. And I would much rather risk being wrong or looking silly than risk doing something that essentially works toward erasing someone.

Pledge to Repeal Prop. 8

Some election outcomes made me (cautiously) hopeful regarding the direction of the USA. I am not one of those who sees Obama as some kind of rock-star, but he at least seems to be using his brain, which is more than I'd be willing to grant the Bush administration.

Others, however, felt like a kick in the face to civil rights.

A (married, straight) friend of mine said, in the election's aftermath:

"I woke up this morning, checked the results, and for the first time actually did feel like my marriage has been undermined. Because now what I have, and what was granted to everyone is being taken away from people for no good reason. I feel like I'm a member of a white's-only club, you know? I'm so angry about this."

I am currently somewhat embarrassed on behalf of my state, and for what it's worth, I'm sorry I didn't do more to help curb the bigotry that resulted in Proposition 8's passage this week.

I actually expected better of my neighbors, and I hope that eventually the folks who voted "Yes" will come to appreciate the gravity of what it means to write discrimination into law, into California's constitution, via a measure that specifically stated its purpose was to "eliminate [a] right".

But, it's not a time to moan and whine so much as figure out what to do about the situation. I'm not sure exactly what avenues are best yet, but via Dale C., here's a place where you can sign the pledge to repeal Prop 8.

Obviously it's going to take more than just signing a pledge to actually accomplish anything, but one has to start somewhere. We have all this great technology (computers! internet! blogs!) -- let's put it to good use in helping communicate that bigotry will not be allowed to write itself into law again.

Disclaimer on Being "Outside" Politics, Ideologies, and Such

I don't claim some vantage point "outside" politics or anything; I used to, but that was because I thought "politics" meant "being dogmatically loyal to a rigidly partisan agenda", and I certainly wasn't that.

But: I would like to be able to communicate more with people who aren't going to presume that because I think public healthcare might be a good idea, that means I think The Government should be able to threaten people with firearms and steal their underwear. Or that because I think technological innovation is nifty, that means I identify (or should identify) as a libertarian. And so on.

I sometimes feel like I spend massive amounts of time and energy explaining what I don't think, based on the assumptions people make about one or two things I say.

Probably someone who tried could find some common thread between my various views and values, but I don't see it as useful to spend time or energy figuring out what ideological moniker to stick on myself.

I am often deeply frustrated when supposed political-ethical discourse consists of people throwing abstractions back and forth at one another. I know that language itself is a kind of abstraction and that I am no more "outside" abstractions than I am "outside" politics -- but due to how my brain functions, I tend to see things at what might be described as a fairly high resolution.

For example: sometimes at work I have to make drawings, usually in situations where I need to communicate to someone how they should build or modify something. I can sometimes modify hardware myself, but there are some things I'm not authorized or trained to modify, and there are experts in the company whose whole job is to assemble and fix and change some things. So when I am working with one of them, my primary objective is that of communicating exactly what needs to be done. And what I often end up doing is drawing something very very detailed and very realistic.

This is my natural approach; it is not something I do to show off. In fact, it's one of the only ways I can actually communicate what I need to in that context -- if I try to just draw a bunch of blocks or squares representing the object(s) in question, whether or not the other person recognizes it will depend on the coherence of their internal symbol-systems with mine. So it actually takes a lot more cognitive effort -- and time -- for me to come up with a "stick figure" or block drawing version of something than for me to just draw the actual darned thing as I see it.

The same often goes for learning (and explaining) things. Whether the subject is engineering, social justice, or science fiction, I often need to delve way into the subject and get a sense of all the pieces before I can even hope to talk about it from anything resembling a high-level perspective.

I find it practically impossible, for instance, to open up a book and read about what some ideology supposedly is, and come away with an actual sense of what I've just read. When I do recognize ideologies, it's because I've had enough experience feeling out patterns in actual reality to be able to look at words and see something familiar. I've been accused of, at various times, both "arrogance" and "re-inventing the wheel" because of this, but I honestly can't learn about that kind of thing any other way.

Furthermore, I am generally unable to ignore things -- even when those things threaten to undermine or operate in ways inconvenient to notions I'd much rather be true. Even if I try really hard (and I have, in some cases). I can't un-see things I've seen, or forget or disregard stuff that bothers me, or pokes holes in an idea just because reality would be tidier and prettier if I could.

When I have tried to do that kind of thing, it has eventually (and invariably) led to the cognitive equivalent of being hit by a truck. Or suddenly finding myself dangling over an abyss.

This is definitely a weakness in some contexts -- for one thing, it often makes me feel like the whole world (and everyone in it) is in fast-forward and I am always struggling to keep up -- but it's also a strength in others.

I know I'm not the only one who thinks this way, and I don't think having this kind of brain puts me in some special superior club, but I do think it's worth noting, because it definitely impacts the way I write and the observations I make.