Outside of a Dog

Advice for the Proletariat

2008-04-15T14:58:00.000-07:00

Multitasking: The art of doing as many things as possible, as poorly as possible.

Wealth

2007-12-06T15:03:00.000-08:00

I have yet to do anything in my life worthy of extraordinary wealth. Someday that will change.

Tragedy

2006-04-24T14:58:00.000-07:00

I do not want to spend the rest of my life worrying about the next tragedy, or in my case, the first tragedy. There is nothing I can do to prevent it.

Bad things will happen, no matter how much I hope against hope that they won’t. Planes will fall out of the sky, cars will crash, and hearts will stop beating. For this I have no solution. Attempting to fight against these disasters is only bringing them into my life. Fighting against tragedy is a negative act in itself. You must avoid travel to stop accidents, you must kill to stop fighting, you must stop living to prevent loss of life. I would be fighting one negative with another, and it is a battle I can not win.

Bad things will happen. However I have found a solution, and a course of action that will not drown my soul in the process. To fight against tragedy my life can be a source of anti-tragedy. I can not live my life striving to stop bad, but I can live my life to do good.

From the moment you wake up in the morning to the moment you drift away to sleep you can tailor your actions to make the world a better place, even if all you can affect is your own small world surrounding your own small life. This is the only way to truly win the fight against tragedy.

What exactly it means to ‘do good’ can certainly be debated. If you are not careful your concept of what is ‘good’ and what is ‘bad’ can be so skewed that you end up creating more problems than you have solved, a favorite pastime of evangelical Christians. But you can examine your own morality and your own actions. You can reason through your everyday decisions, and be convinced that what you are doing is ‘right’. The steps toward this ‘good’ are small, not drastic, but they are absolutely necessary if you want to shelter yourself from the eminent regret and loss of a tragic and wasted life.

My solution can be summed up like this: I can not spend my days fighting against all the bad things in life, but I can know that every day that I exist makes the world a better place.

Wisdom II... the other kind

2006-01-13T06:01:00.000-08:00

"He may look like an idiot and talk like an idiot, but don't let that fool you. He really is an idiot."

Another kind of wisdom from the eminent Groucho. Perhaps a prophetic reference to a certain Chief Executive we all know and love?

Quality

2006-01-08T12:00:00.000-08:00

"My personal feeling is that this is how any further improvement of the world will be done: by individuals making Quality decisions and that's all... We've had that individual Quality in the past, exploited it as a natural resource without knowing it, and now it's just about depleted. Everyone's just about out of gumption. And I think it's about time to return to the rebuilding of this American resource--individual worth. There are political reactionaries who've been saying something close to this for years. I'm not one of them, but to the extent they're talking about real individual worth and not just an excuse for giving more money to the rich, they're right. We do need a return to individual integrity, self-reliance and old-fashioned gumption. We really do. I hope that in this Chautauqua some directions have been pointed to."

--Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, 1974

Objectivism

2006-01-08T11:55:00.000-08:00

I wonder if Objectivism is all one needs to be happy. I somehow doubt that is the only thing. There are many pieces missing.

I have no doubt one can be happy as an Objectivist, but will one always be happy as an Objectivist. If not, what more is needed? What are the missing pieces? The real goal is, after all, happiness.

But I suppose just knowing what you need to be happy doesn't make it magically appear.

Wisdom

2006-01-08T11:48:00.000-08:00

Wisdom is a strange quality. It is separate from knowledge, somehow separate from common sense. The only way to gain it may be living through and understanding painful experiences.

Philosophy

2006-01-08T11:44:00.000-08:00

I sometimes wonder if this is actually a search for a new philosophy, or if this is simply a search for someone who has said what I already believe.

Atheism

2005-12-16T03:00:00.000-08:00

As an Atheist you are forced to account for your actions in life, not in the afterlife. You are forced to live in reality, not fantasy.

A religious zealot prepares his whole life for the moment after death, waisting the precious time he has here, and thinking only of what he believes will come.

An Atheist, in the moment right before the end, may look back on his life and be proud of what he has left to the world, knowing he has used his time wisely.

my head

2005-12-09T04:24:00.000-08:00

I feel like someone kicked me in the back of the head last night... did someone kick me in the back of the head last night? No, I don't remember any kickinig. Just drinking, lots of drinking.

The idea of me actually getting any work done is absurd.

The Pathetic Masses

2005-12-06T06:18:00.000-08:00

Why is it that the struggles of the handicapped, disfigured, or severely disadvantaged pull at your heartstrings and make you want to go out and volunteer at a soup kitchen or donate one of your boats to charity, but the struggles of the merely pathetic only make you want punch someone in the head?

political nonsense

2005-12-06T04:53:00.000-08:00

this blog is not for political nonsense. i will not be spoutinig political nonsense such as this:

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When people say their self interest is not linked to society they are wrong. Your own self interest and the interests of society are one in the same, if not always, than often.

It is fine for a person to think he is responsible for himself. But he is part of society, and the well being of society has a direct impact on his own well being. He might say that the state of other people in the country doesn't affect him but that is bullshit. He benefits from a healthy and productive society on a whole. Everyone is linked. Sure, you're supposed to be responsible for yourself and you're supposed to be productive in life, but if the world is crumbling around you there's no point.

So, I know for MY OWN happiness and MY OWN safety I want the society to be healthy. I want people to be able to see a doctor if they need to, I want children to be able to go to good schools, and I want them to have food on their plates. It is not our responsibility to provide everything for everyone, but it would be possible to provide these basic things for people without economic hardship. (In fact, there is so much waste in our current health care system that, basic universal health care could be provided for essentially what the government currently spends.)

When you say things are bad in Europe and social programs are not working here you are creating a causal relationship that doesn't exist and comparing countries that are very different in many ways. You're saying "they have a lot of unemployment in Germany because of their social programs" (correlation is not causation). And "if we were to have their social programs we would have a lot of unemployed people too." (Again, the causal link does not exist.)

The US is a different place, with more money, more space, more industry, more powerful federal government, more potential productive output than Europe. The programs that we should have are an entirely different thing from what they have in Europe. And yes, people have the right to do what they want to do, UNTIL what they are doing infringes on the rights of others. People shouldn't be allowed to destroy the environment at will, and ruin the world for generations to come. Without environmental regulation there is no way to ensure future generations will have air to breath and soil to farm.

Also, republicans like to bitch about taxes, but I'd like to see what else could have been done with the $85 billion spent on the first year of the Iraq war. And god, think of what could have been done with what we're going to be spending over there for the next 10 years. (And maybe I should point out here that under Clinton we were running a budget surplus, and under Bush we are running up a MASSIVE budget deficit, with no end in sight. I don't really see how that counts as sound economic policy.)

Finally, as someone who realizes that the world is shrinking, that one person, or one country can no longer pretend to be independent from everyone else, it is infuriating to have a president who cares NOTHING about international institutions. That's all well and good while we happen to be in power, but to think that the US will be in charge of the world forever is naive and short-sighted. The balance of power in the world will eventually shift, maybe sooner than we realize. The US will not always be the only Super-Power. When that happens, we will be kicking ourselves for not creating the international institutions that can help to even out the balance of power and ensure the world is run in a fair way. Right now the US cares nothing about being fair, only about being in control, and that's going to come back and bite us in the ass.

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... that is not the type of thing I will be doing.