After Much Deliberation

When I started this blog I had high expectations for my creative output. I wanted to put something out every few days, and at first I didn’t have much trouble meeting this goal. There were a fair amount of things going on in my life that I thought were worth writing about and I had a good time doing so. Things sort of trailed off as the school year came to a close, and as summer began I found myself having very little creative energy. Perhaps it was that I was in a less engaging environment. It could be that I simply ran out of things to say. It’s also possible that I just got lazy. I had ideas from time to time, but never got around to expanding on any of them. Then something happened that really got me thinking.

I had a few friends over early in August for a friendly game of poker. Well, perhaps it’s a bit of a stretch to say that I was friendly. Throughout the course of the game I was really put off by comments made by one of my friends about how much luck is involved in poker. He was content to bet on nearly every hand under his belief that “anything can happen” on the flop. I had no idea how somebody could believe something that was so obviously wrong. There wouldn’t be repeat champions of large poker tournaments if the game was simply an observance of random chance. The notion that some hands aren’t just better than others is preposterous.

Some-crazy-how he ended up taking second in our ring of six. His philosophy landed him the short stack very early on, but he had managed to claw his way back into the game, lucking out on a number of horrible bets along the way. He said something about how he had been getting better at poker recently, which left me completely baffled- both in terms of how this was very much in contradiction of his philosophy and in that I couldn’t wrap my head around how far beyond bad he must have been before.

Of course, in my mind this was about a lot more than just a game of poker. What I was thinking about was the injustice of somebody saying something completely wrong and then being handed anecdotal evidence that they believe validates their position. Nobody is good at anything simply by merit of having succeeded at something, nor bad because they experienced failure. Results-oriented thinking is bad juju. From my perspective this was a clear-cut case of somebody that “won anyway”, but for whatever reason it really bothered me that he didn’t understand this. And it REALLY bothered me that it bothered me.

A few days later I was having some beers with the guys and as I’m all too often inclined to do I got to running my mouth. Obviously there was no way I could let my friend get away with thinking he was better at a card game than he is. That was, of course, the most important thing in my life. I said some things that were completely out of line about how easy my friend made the game for me and was met with very negative reactions from everyone there. Now, at this point it should be clear to everybody that I’m the villain of this story.

Everybody except me. 

After this incident I came up with what I thought was going to be a brilliant topic for me to write on. It was a work that categorized people into two camps- people that realize their own flaws and strive to improve themselves and people that are content to believe that they already know everything they need to know. It was going to be magnificent and I was going to show everybody just how brilliant Ryan Overturf is.

But the words wouldn’t come out right. Something was off, and I couldn’t grasp what that might be. I shelved the idea and thought that I might be able to articulate my ideas better if I worked on some of the other topics I had on my list, but I couldn’t focus on any of them. None of them were nearly as important as exposing the division between geniuses and fools.

I stopped trying to make the pieces fit after a few weeks. That is until I came across what I considered to be among the worst articles I had ever read. It was an attempt at a sob story about a man who was “chasing his dreams” by quitting his shitty day job because he couldn’t get the weekend off and being a prick to his wife. It was clearly written strictly in the vein of finding somebody- anybody- to agree with him and to help him justify the choices that he had made. After only two paragraphs I wanted to scroll down to the comments section to make sure that everybody else hated this piece as much as I did. Then a strange feeling came over me. It felt wrong to criticize this article, but I couldn’t figure out why. After reading it in its entirety it became clear that if nothing else it was very honest… but considering just how abysmal it was that should only make it worse. 

That’s when it hit me- This was the exact same piece I was working on. 

It wasn’t a conceptual writing or anything, but it was doing exactly what I denied that I was trying to do- justify being an asshole.

For a long time I convinced myself that working towards correcting my imperfections elevated me above those that didn’t seem to care. As if awareness of vices somehow turned them into virtues. I couldn’t in good conscious write about how people should realize their shortcomings while I ignored mine in my ignoble crusade to force people to think.

One of my professors made a comment that really hit home with me last week. He was talking about philosophers in the early modern period and how at that point in time a person could literally master every subject explored by humanity. Science and math didn’t reach nearly as far as they do now. Literature was considerably more limited. The world was, well, much simpler. There is so much more to know today than there ever has been. Before thinking about this it irritated me when I understood certain concepts on higher levels than my peers. I took it as a sign of their laziness- and as a person who has no problem admitting my own sloth this caused me to think very lowly of people. Not in terms of them not measuring up to me, but in terms of them comparing unfavorably to their own potential. While this doesn’t necessarily lead me to an inaccurate conclusion, it does ignore the possibility that they have invested just as much effort into something else that I don’t understand. I by no means consider all knowledge to be equally respectable- and I certainly wouldn’t say equally useful- but difference in substance doesn’t always imply difference in quality.

I have recently made it part of my credo that I have no sensitivity for the egos of others. I stand by this statement, but now realize that in the past I have not always properly scrutinized potential expressions of hubris.

It’s not arrogant to think that you’re good at something when you only ever engage in that activity casually. When my friend said he was good at poker I evaluated his words using definitions unique to my experience and foreign to his. Speaking from my perspective, he’d have been a liar. Speaking from his perspective, he’s as good as he needs to be. An artist need not waste their time on game theory. 

Over the years I have said a lot of critical things to a lot of people, and much of it was not deserved. As hard as it may be to believe, I can honestly say that I had good intentions. Well, most of the time anyway. For every time that I unintentionally crossed the line between tough love and being just plain rude, I apologize, and I hope not to repeat this behavior in the future. 

When it is Broke

There is a very real possibility that the state of Minnesota will be shutting down this week. It’s easy to get caught up in the particulars of today’s politics that have led up to this reality, but there is a fundamental question that seems to be largely ignored.

Why does the current system have such dramatic built-in consequences?

The answer seems pretty obvious to me. It’s clearly a deterrent. The idea was to have a punishment so severe that no rational group would ever come anywhere near this close to evoking it. The problem of course being that the Minnesota State Legislature is elected in part by the same people that elected Michele Bachmann to the U.S. House of Representatives.

Why is it that my laptop installs regular updates when it works fine while there continues to be customs in this country that were clearly intended to serve functions that were appropriate in a different time and aren’t at all appropriate presently?

This archaic shut-down clause is not unlike the Electoral College. The Electoral College doesn’t make sense to most Americans, and that’s largely because it’s inconsistent with what many people seem to think that the United States is about. The Electoral College was a safeguard put into place to essentially limit the power of common people to elect the President. The idea was that Presidential candidates would all be respectable people that would split the Electoral College in most elections. Instead running for President is all about selling out enough to afford an outrageously expensive campaign. Instead we live in the world where George W. Bush got elected over the immensely more qualified Al Gore. Instead we live in the world where John McCain wasn’t stoned to death for so much as considering Sarah Palin as his running mate.

The founding fathers were a group of individuals whose wisdom exceeded that of most if not all living politicians. Even still their first idea for the U.S. government, the Articles of Confederation, was a complete failure. What set them apart was their ability to admit that they were wrong and to get back to the drawing board.

Today there is a stigma attached to changing one’s mind. To being a flip-flopper. It’s almost as if having an open mind is a sin. Reversing this paradigm is of paramount importance. As human beings it’s foolish to think that we won’t make mistakes. More so to assume that just because something has been working that it will continue to do so. Times change and rules only work as a function of context.

It should not only be accepted, but rather encouraged that politicians (and people in general) change their minds. I believe that a well-designed system involves mandatory evaluation on a regular basis. For some reason Facebook feels the need to reinvent itself every couple of years, so why doesn’t the government? 

Lessons Learned

I was planning on recounting everything that happened on my journey to Asia in this post, but I figure that I’ll be talking to anybody that cares anyhow. Not to mention that that’s a whole lot of story. Instead I’m going to pass on a few nuggets that are probably obvious to everybody else that I learned on my trip with regard to traveling internationally.

Change your money about a week before you leave

I wasn’t really sure how much cash I was going to need before I left so I put off changing my money until the very last minute. Most (perhaps all) banks don’t keep foreign currency on hand and it takes about three days for them to have it delivered. Additionally, the exchange rates at the airport are outrageous. You can always take money out at an ATM upon arrival but in order to do so you first need to contact your bank so that they won’t automatically block the transaction (believe it or not, it’s strange when the same check card purchases gasoline in Minneapolis one week and withdraws money in Singapore the next). When using an ATM in a foreign land you can never really be sure what exchange rate the machine is using nor what kind of fee the transaction is charging you, so all things considered I recommend changing money ahead of time and keeping very good track of your wallet.  

Have wheels on your luggage

Okay, this is something that I already knew, but there is something that I forgot…

Make sure the wheels on your luggage work

When I showed up at the airport I set my bag on the ground and began to drag it very slowly behind me. When I turned around to see what the deal was it was apparent that the wheels weren’t turning and that I had left some streaks in the entryway to the airport. Yikes. After that I proceeded to carry my 40 or so pound suitcase along with my backpack a few miles over the course of the trip on my way to and from various airports and hotels.

Be aware of cultural differences 

While we in the U.S. firmly believe that we do everything perfectly, the rest of the world does a number of things very differently. For instance, it is considered insulting in many nations to tip. It takes some time to really get a feel for cultural differences, but you should certainly be on the lookout for legal differences before tripping internationally. I made a running joke while we were in Singapore that I refused to jaywalk because the legal penalty was death. This is kind of harsh, but any country boasting a Jolly Roger on its customs forms as a warning to drug traffickers and a $500 fine for eating on the train invites itself to such criticisms. On that note, I’m pretty sure eating in public is pretty frowned upon everywhere outside of the U.S. They don’t fine you in Japan, but they sure do look at you funny.

If you don’t speak the language…

Then don’t mess around with English. You’re not going to make any progress trying to communicate by spitting out English words hoping to hit a cognate. Outside of the obvious inefficiencies, there is also the possibility that you hit a word that sounds like a word in a different language that means something completely different. Alternatively, you say a word that is extremely similar and the person you’re trying to communicate with still doesn’t take your meaning. While in Singapore my friend Matthias ordered a dish that he thought would benefit from some soy sauce. Nobody at the restaurant seemed to have any idea what he meant. After ten minutes of trying to discern what he wanted using the English that they knew, a man whom I presumed to be the owner explained that in Singapore they pronounced the word “sosss-uh”. The extra “s” is not a typo. While it’s really impossible to communicate something like “soy sauce” nonverbally, one would do well to attempt to communicate nonverbally when confusion arises (as it inevitably will) out of country. At a clothing store in Japan I found a shirt that I liked and when I grabbed it and began to search for the cash register I was stopped by an employee. He said something in Japanese and I made an “I’m just a stupid American” face. After about thirty seconds I pulled out my wallet to indicate that I wished to purchase the shirt and he promptly took me to the cash register.

Do what the locals do

I find that I have the best times on my vacations when I dine at restaurants I’ve never heard of and visit places that aren’t overly touristy. It only took one trip to the Sears Tower for me to learn that most big attractions are little more than manufactured crap. I recommend doing a little research and finding some sort of food special or activity that is exclusive to where you’re visiting. The obvious thing to do in Japan is to find a good place to eat sushi, but there’s sooo much more going on. One stop that I made while in Nagoya was to an all you can eat cake buffet. I kind of wanted to die after eating two plates, but they had some damn tasty cakes. 

10 Seasons Too Many

Did everybody catch the American Idol finale? I sure did! And by that I mean it was on the T.V. while I wasted my time in a significantly more interesting way by staring at my computer screen. It didn’t take me very long to remember that I hate everything about the show. Outside of laughing at the discovery that Jennifer Lopez was on the judge panel I didn’t see any entertainment value in the program.

I usually love championships, and I mean any kind of championships. I watch the Super Bowl every year despite the fact that the game is usually very one-sided and football is like the worst sport ever. There’s just something very wrong about a singing championship determined on the basis of popularity.

If you ask me the format of the show should be reversed entirely. I think that the judges should determine who is the most talented in the final leg and the fans should be able to say who they want to see more of in the initial rounds. The only contestant that I’ve ever seen on “Idol” that I would consider voting for is Larry Platt. Any contest that doesn’t allow Pants on the Ground guy to advance obviously has some fundamental flaws.

I don’t actually know anything about music. This is one of very few things that I have in common with like… all of American Idol’s viewers. It doesn’t make any sense to have a bunch of people who are clueless about something vote on it. That would be like letting ordinary people vote on tax policy… or gay marriage.  

Even if I did know anything about music what would I even be voting on? There are many, many talented singers that never make it in the music industry. So I guess I would be voting on stage presence. And wouldn’t you know it; the world is full of people who can put on a show that never get anywhere as well… Why aren’t we exposed at all to the contestants’ ability to write? I can guarantee that quality writing is rarer than good singing and performing. Of course, that's only requisite for good music- not popular music. 

What I really don’t understand is why people continued to watch the show after Simon Cowell left. He was by far the most articulate and constructive judge of the bunch, yet he was the most hated by the fans. As a performer I can tell you that he’s the only person on the panel that I would actually listen to. We all have enough friends that will tell us that we did well regardless of how terrible we really are. What we all need is somebody to tell us how to do better in the future.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that American Idol is a dumb show that is full of dumb. 

Who Knows, Y'know?

If you’re reading this, then congratulations, you’ve survived the rapture. Wait… that’s supposed to be a bad thing. Man, religion is confusing. I suppose that confusion is the only guaranteed result when one attempts to solve life’s great mysteries. Even still I can’t help but wonder what purpose my extremely unlikely existence is meant to serve. For the final of my philosophy of religion class I wrote an essay about the meaning of life. The writing was really rough but I’d like to think that some of the ideas are worth sharing, and share them I shall! I’m going to cut out a rather lengthy segment on what is called “Divine Command Theory” as pretty much everything I wrote on it could easily be found elsewhere. All you really need to know is that both actions being good because God commands them and God commanding actions because they are good are problematic ideals. Anyhow, here’s like half of the paper. 

“…I have yet to encounter a convincing argument in my life that has persuaded me that the meaning of life is necessarily anything more than simply “to live.”

In Leo Tolstoy’s work “My Confession”, Tolstoy provides the story of how he transitioned from leading a life that he believed to be devoid of reason to the pursuit of a life that was religiously virtuous. Tolstoy begins this work by discussing just how miserable he was during the period in his life when he attempted to rationalize everything and lived by logic and reason. At some point he began to be haunted by the question of why he was even alive. As far as he could discern there was no way to answer this question through reason. Science and rational thought could provide him with the answers to all kinds of questions about the particulars of objects within the universe and their relation to one another, but could not lead him to the answer of why he should continue to live that he so desperately desired. Tolstoy renounced his pursuit of reason after observing countless individuals leading what he believed to be good lives through the pursuit of faith. He believed that these people had truly a discovered the meaning of life- that life is about transcending our finite existence and pursuing an eternal life through God.

When reading Tolstoy’s argument for leading a religious life it is apparent that he was serious about throwing reason to the wind. The idea that religion has worked for many others is nothing more than an appeal to popularity. Just because a certain belief or custom works for another person or group doesn’t mean that it will work for another. In this case there isn’t even a sense of certainty that religion does in fact work as a solution to the meaning of life. Because others are following a certain lifestyle and seem to be happy with it does not mean that the values of this lifestyle are correct. A billion people believing in eternal salvation will have no effect on what happens to any of them when they die. Either they were correct or they weren’t and simply believing does not make the transition from the finite to the infinite a reality. The frame of reference that Tolstoy establishes in the beginning of this piece also suggests a bias in his search for meaning. A man who believes that he is “… an accidentally cohering globule of something.” is probably one with an immense desire to change this viewpoint that may or may not have high regard for objectivism in doing so. Additionally, his dissatisfaction with life by no means necessarily leads him to religion. It could just as easily lead him to lead a life of hedonism, or to simply embrace his nihilism. He may not be wrong in saying that disregarding reason is the only way to determine the meaning of life, and it is of course possible that religion is the answer, but this is far from a definite conclusion. There is a reason that they call it a leap of faith after all. In order to investigate the issue further it is beneficial to explore the motivation of others for pursuing religion as the answer.

…Insert discussion on DCT here…

All of this discussion on the meaning of life gets heavily bogged down when God becomes a factor in the equation, which is why I find Albert Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus to be the most compelling work in this section. In his writing Camus suggests that Sisyphus’s tragic fate of aimlessly pushing a rock up a hill for all eternity is not all that different from the plight of modern man. This is a depressing notion on the surface, but Camus’ argument is one that sees Sisyphus as a happy man. While the rock can be seen as a burden it can also be viewed in a positive light. No matter what happens Sisyphus will always have a rock to push, and at times it could indeed be satisfying just to push the rock, even if he knows the exercise to be futile. Camus goes as far as to state that “[h]is (Sisyphus’) rock is his thing.” Once Sisyphus realizes and accepts the hopelessness of his situation he overcomes it. The only way for his situation to conquer him is for him to hope for more.

As I find myself awake at an unreasonable hour working to complete this paper I can see the link between Sisyphus and myself. This paper will be reflected in one grade that will probably have a marginal impact on the rest of my life which will likely be insignificant in the grand scheme of things. I fully understand that my entire existence could be completely without meaning, but unlike Tolstoy I am not concerned with this idea. Maybe there is a Truth that establishes a fundamental code for morality and maybe there isn’t. So long as I can keep pushing the rock up the hill with a smile on my face and an open mind to embrace the Truth should it present itself to me I’ll be just fine. As they say, sometimes the journey is its own reward.”

This is a far cry from my complete views on life. There’s not even word one on how people should treat one another. It is a good start though, and if I were asked to state in one sentence what I thought the meaning of life was the answer could easily be discerned form this text. 

Keep on keeping on. 

Techschmology

Before I make the following statement I feel it’s necessary to state that I understand the hypocrisy. That being said, I hate technology.

 It all started with calculators. Calculators (not graphing calculators, mind you, we’ll get to those later) are horribly inefficient. In elementary school I was repulsed by the idea of using a calculator for any of the four basic mathematical functions. If I couldn’t find the answer mentally faster than I could punch the problem into my calculator then that was a sign that I should have stayed in bed that morning. Math is sort of like a second language in its own right. If you don’t practice regularly it gets harder. Using a calculator is like the opposite of practice. I think more people would be good at math if they weren’t so comfortable just saying that they were bad at it.

Of course, there comes a point when it’s no longer faster to do things with pen and paper. This is when one will rely on either a computer or their trusty graphing calculator. A graphing calculator has the ability to, you know, graph, which is a pretty handy tool. However, the differences between a basic calculator and a graphing calculator allow the user to have games on their computation device. Which brings me to my next qualm- technology is distracting. Can you think of any classes in High School that were more interesting than playing Galaxian? Maybe. Are any of them math classes? Probably not.

Graphing calculators don’t even compare to smart phones in this regard. I remember when the first generation of iPhone was released. A friend of mine was strangely eager to drop $500 on the new model as soon as it was released. After he picked it up I never saw his eyes again. There are some useful things that smart phones do. I mean, I don’t know what any of these things are, but I have to believe that they exist. Mostly they just make people forget about their surroundings. It’s ironic how much damage that a device designed for communication has done to face to face interaction: a topic much broader than I will bother to delve into for the purposes of this post.

And what the hell is the deal with Angry Birds? Why on Earth should I, a person who neither owns a smart phone nor has any desire to acquire one, have ever heard of that game? I hear somebody mention Angry Birds at least once a week and I can’t for the life of me make any sense of it. Perhaps there’s more value to simplistic handheld gaming than I understand, but that’s an error of judgment that I have no reservations about making.

Recently I started driving with a GPS. I quickly learned that it did not “know” the roads in my hometown as well as I did. I was heading to Minneapolis this weekend which required me to get onto a highway that is roughly a mile from my house. Instead the GPS thought it would be cool to drive two miles and meet the highway further along. I suppose that driving in town longer meant better gas mileage, but the route the GPS sent me on involved taking a left turn over a median that was constructed about a year ago. When I went right to turn around at a roundabout just down the way (which really has no business being there, but that’s another story) the GPS began to recalibrate my position to try to determine a new route. Hooray for satellite positioning. It’s nice to have for getting to places that I’ve never been, but I’ve started to unplug the machine as soon as I even vaguely recognize my surroundings.

So, this might have been more of an incoherent rant than anything else, and I didn’t even touch on the scary side of technology (gogo Skynet), but I think I got my position across. If you can do it yourself, you should. 

A Case of the Mondays

I stared at the rings under my eyes, wondering if they had become a permanent fixture of my appearance. Or worse yet that exhaustion might have become my default state of being. The morning air was cold and my shower had left me unsatisfied. Our hot water heater seemed to be as ill-equipped to handle the weather as I was.

I looked upon the leftovers in my fridge with an expression of disdain. I wasn’t about to throw any of the Chinese that I had been hoarding away, but I wasn’t about to eat any of it either. I didn’t feel keen on taking a trip to the local grocer, so rather than doing so I made my way to a local coffee shop to grab some soup before I consigned myself to the library for the night. Their soup of the day was chicken noodle. Appropriate.

At this point in time I realized that I had left my headphones in my room. The music playing at Mugby Junction would do while I ate my soup, but this would make my time at the library rather unpleasant. The inclement weather quelled any considerations that I had about retrieving them. As I pondered my predicament “Biggest Mistake” by The Rolling Stones started to play from the speaker above my head. This left me no choice but to laugh about my minor misfortune. I’d be returning home for dinner in a few hours anyway.

I wasn’t surprised that the library was crowded when I arrived. Perturbed, but not surprised. It’s always this way at the end of the semester. I wondered where these people did their studying during the rest of the year. To be entirely honest I was more concerned with why they weren’t studying there now. Some day when I have the time I’ll propose my model for priority seating in the library to the university. If the voting took place in the library during the middle of the semester it would pass for sure.

When I finally found my seat I examined my schedule for the week and tried to establish a timeline for when I would need to finish each of my projects. It’s probable that a number of these deadlines should have been set to be met some time last month.   

One seven page paper, one portfolio comprised of revisions of everything I’ve done in my writing class, one PowerPoint presentation and two exams. Easy peasy. As fortune would have it my finals schedule left my Monday and Tuesday completely free. It’s really never as bad as it looks- it’s always better or worse. Personally, I try not to sweat the pressure too much. These things have a way of working out.