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[25 Dec 2009|06:13am] |
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This would all be more funny if I was actually okay. I swear ;)
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[25 Dec 2009|04:26am] |
I can’t sleep. My hands hurt.
Ethan won’t shut up.
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[24 Dec 2009|01:57am] |
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I made it all up.
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[19 Dec 2009|12:21am] |
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handcuffs.
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[17 Dec 2009|11:44am] |
The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums.
- G. K. Chesterton
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[16 Dec 2009|01:03pm] |
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both the best and the worst in people is often more than one expects
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[06 Dec 2009|03:10am] |
For Stan
Why!?!?!
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[29 Nov 2009|03:23am] |
Recently I watched a movie called Bella. They stereotypically portrayed the Mexican family as very dramatic. They were full of life, excitement and passion. It reminded me of how families from Spain and Italy were portrayed.
I watched it, of course, right after thanksgiving. I had thanksgiving dinner at my cousins. She brought her boyfriend. I brought my Magic cards.
Why are there always so many questions? I want to write but it feels so… pressured.
Soul Cartographer of momentpeace
in the palm of her hand
the blood rushes down hallways
dark and swift
traveling through the maze
beneath her skin
the hush of a psalm
on her sleeping lips, her grip
of nails and frailty
pressure and release
i watch her chest
the dreams pool
at the foot of skull peaks
sharp and scalding
steams erupting
because her tears hiss
rather than drop, empty
songs wrapped in sleep
i cross her arms over her chest
say my old, Egyptian prayer
and try to believe in something more
for a dream of momentpeace
we rest fitfully,
as if death was upon us
but in the horror of the night
there is a loss and loneliness
and anger.
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[17 Nov 2009|09:45am] |
"I'm not making the call until he's out of the house."
"Why should he be out of here? It's his house too..."
"Because he's... full of tension."
That's me. Full of tension.
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[14 Nov 2009|10:35am] |
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I’ve taken this detachment to the extreme. However, I don’t think any of you extremists can blame me. There is no winning when even my emotionless commitment becomes construed as “emo”.
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| some things never change... |
[13 Nov 2009|01:07pm] |
Scott: mark said goats was meh
Chris: So it could be really good. Why even ask him when we clearly don't have the same tastes in movies. It's like asking a slave owner if he wants cotton or rice. It just doesn't matter.
Scott: its exactly like that
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[10 Nov 2009|12:07am] |
Therapy, medication, food, exercise...
Come on people. Where is the creativity these days in the fight against depression?
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[09 Nov 2009|07:21pm] |
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Grand-Prix Paris had almost 2000 people. It was the biggest one yet. Good to see my favorite game alive and kicking.
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[04 Nov 2009|01:24pm] |
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Release me.
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[23 Oct 2009|02:28am] |
We don't hear from him very much anymore, now do we?
=)
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| “The Golden Rule” and “For the Greater Good” |
[23 Oct 2009|02:22am] |
I could go through all of Gensler’s revisions of the golden rule and the problems that stem from them. But, frankly, I’m sick of all my arguments being research projects. I don’t see why so many people in my life demand sources and fall back on experts and research in these fields when a lot of the time what I read and learn just infuriates me. Honestly, a lot of these people are talking from what I perceive to be a very flawed perspective.
I also feel like most of the time arguments can turn into “research wars” where you come up with data that supports both sides and then you end up falling into the pit of “qualified assessments” and what that really means. It’s garbage. I don’t care what the experts think. I care about what YOU think and why you think it.
You might make the argument that you think the way you do because you learned it from an expert. However, I find that most people hold beliefs because of their own experiences, feelings and thoughts on the matter. And when you pull up documentation you’ve just gone and found someone who agrees with you… and that doesn’t really mean anything to me.
Anyway, why I don’t believe in “the golden rule”. People shouldn’t be treated as you want to be treated. They should be treated as the individuals they are. Some people say that the golden rule is more about consideration than the ethic of reciprocity. Good for them.
However when I say that I want to treat someone in a way that I consider to be good for them… it doesn’t hold any reciprocity. Do you spank the sadist and the masochist?
So both ways of looking at the golden rule are wrong.
Example #1 – I love magic cards. I give magic cards to Ginger.
This is the flaw of reciprocity. Ginger might get annoyed with magic cards. They might not be her cup of cardboard.
Example #2 – Hitler loves seeing Jews murdered. I murder Jews in front of Hitler.
This is the flaw of consideration. Treating people solely through consideration of them can lead to bad decisions if there is a flawed ethic in the other party.
So instead of the Golden Rule I replace it with the “Rule of Collaboration”. You ask and understand the other person’s desires. You understand your own desires. You find where, if anywhere, the two coincide. And then you work towards achieving that for both parties.
Obviously, there are problems in this too.
One, people are finicky and dishonest. You can’t really be sure what they want.
Two, people (including yourself) can be misguided. So I might run into the problem that both me and my fiancé both like diamonds mined by six year olds in Africa..
So the argument for the greater good is that you’re supposed to take the meaning behind it. You’re supposed to make informed, educated decisions that are on the upside of the moral scale.
Except who determines the moral scale? What is good? Why should I value Albert Einstein over Stalin or Jesus when making a decision? All I have is doubt.
The Greater Good faces most of the same problems that I just brought up… so I won’t beat the horse to death. Apparently, I like to see it being tortured.
I said to Shamrock today it took me a long time to decide on my ethic of non-violence and she was surprised. But then I asked her the same thing that Noah asked me at that Italian Restaurant years ago where my friends tried to shush me for getting into my argument too vehemently.
Would you kill a person to save a thousand? And she said yes.
My ethic of non-violence is absolute. It’s one of the few things I believe in and I cling to it with the broken idealism and wanton abandonment of logic that is appalling to most. I stand by the fact that we should have been willing to die a pacifistic lifestyle preaching non-violence even in dire situations like world war 2. It stands against reason. It stands against human history. We have countless examples of violent reform. We have less well known peace leaders in our history than I can count on one hand.
So, yes… it took me awhile to come to my ethic of non-violence. It took me awhile to stubbornly say – “this is something I believe in”. Yet if I asked anyone off the street “do you believe in non-violence?” they would say yes.
They don’t! They believe we should only be non-violent until we have to be violent. And you know who decides when it is time to be violent… the individual.
I know this all too well. Because even though I said I believed in it and committed to it… I was backed into a corner that broke my own resolve. I still haven’t forgiven myself for it. It still haunts me. And that’s fine. Because all I can do is get up and try again. Fight the good fight… they say. I wish it never happened and then I wouldn’t face this dark hypocrisy.
I just don’t get it. I don’t get how people sit and argue these awful negative things. Yes, I want people to think like me. Yes, I want people to look for positive ways to improve the world instead of harping on how “unfair it is”.
The world will always be unfair. There will always be discrimination based on something. It doesn’t matter if it is age, color, culture, sex, cliques, interests or whatever else we can come up with. Nerds vs Jocks, Judgment vs Perception, Red vs Blue.
I don’t feel like staring at the history of violence and making the decisions based on our future that way.
And this is not “ignorance is bliss” talking. I’m not avoiding facing the facts, here. I’m talking about approach. We should always gather as much knowledge as we can. We should always use that knowledge to support people, encourage and move in a positive direction.
I deal with a person in my life who comes home every day and complains about something.
I used to say I was less patient with my friends because I was patient all day with the children. My patience has worn thin.
Anyway, The Golden Rule doesn’t work. For the Greater Good doesn’t work. Quantum theory doesn’t work. Time is not a coordinate system. The only reason I believe in non-violence is because I force myself to (and it often hurts to think in this way… because it doesn’t just happen naturally). So go on… walk through life however it is you are. I’ll try to listen and fail to understand people until the day I die.
Enjoy my highly hypocritical post.
-MK
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[22 Oct 2009|09:46am] |
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"My head is down, O'Neill"
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[21 Oct 2009|11:58pm] |
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Roil Tide! Roil Tide! Tie yourselves down!
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[21 Oct 2009|12:50pm] |
The other day at work I was helping one of the fifth graders with his math homework. It was a word problem that was fairly complex and I had a lot of fun trying to explain it to him. Sadly he seemed more interested in me just handing over the answer and I think the way I approached solving the problem was possibly more complex than it had to be… but I couldn’t think of an easier way to do it.
It went like this: Billy went trick-or-treating and had a lot of candy. First he ran into a ghost that took half of his candy +3 pieces. Then he ran into a zombie that took half his candy +2 pieces. Then he ran into a vampire that took half his candy +1 piece. Billy only had 5 pieces of candy left. How many did he start out with?
So I went through the process of explaining that we had to work through the problem backwards. I said first we want to know how many pieces he had before the vampire took his candy. So I helped him write out the equation:
(Billy’s Candy/2) -1 = 5
Then I explained how to balance both sides of the equation.
I was able to get him to work through each equation but I had a lot of trouble explaining to him how to create the equation. Oh well.
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[21 Oct 2009|09:02am] |
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Last night I had a dream where my car stalled out on the ramp between two expressways. I got out and started walking to work and repressed that the disaster even happened. Some cops came and got me while I was walking on the side of the expressway. The next thing I know I'm getting a ticket and being shipped to the hospital.
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