Useful day today...

...went out with Ma for a lot of today - wandered in places, looked about, got a few gifts of movies and a shirt. Beyond that, conversation excellent. Talked with little sister after her mini band camp today. Conversation still excellent. I like my family. (Scary, ain't it?) And then I've been working on putting up new content for my webspace. Probably more to put up as I think about it. Once I get finished with this next piece, I'll probably put it up for commentary. I think I'm starting to turn the wheels of my outlook on life again. For good or for ill, this could be a major point in my life.

jamiecotc has been experimenting a tad with making his main character, Chelsea, come to life in three dimensions. Each time he posts and image, it looks a little more like her. I think he'll have it down soon.

Whee for bed. I've probably already wrecked my sleep schedule for tomorrow, so that getting up for work will be bad on Monday. But oh, well, tomorrow's a new day, and I might find something else that's interesting to do!

Well, then...

I've managed to work something else out of my brain. It's probably going up to my webspace, but I thought I'd let you guys have some whacks at it to see if it were worth anything. Comments appreciated.
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Don't eat hot dog buns on Fridays. Forget about voting - it's useless anyway. Spraypaint toy soldiers in hidden places of your municipality. ITHFP - beware of pranks. And one last thing:

Break all of the rules at least once, including this one.

Quick - what did your brain do right there? Was there an initial moment of confusion, or did you just keep reading? If you kept reading, go back and think about that last statement. Try to work it out logically. I'll wait.
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All set? Good. How many loops did you go through before you stopped? Not too many, I would assume. You recognized that it was a paradox and promptly ignored the statement as unworkable. For a moment, though, you were vulnerable to a memetic infection. Let me try again.

If a tree falls into the sun and there is nothing there to hear it, does it make a sound when it meets its fiery doom?

Hopefully you laughed there. That would make me feel better. But whether you laughed or not, work it out. And while you're at it, tell me this: Who are you? No, really. I don't want your name, your position, any of your hundred thousand relationships to other people, animals, plants, religions, ideologies, political machinations, deeds, philosophies, or any of that other stuff. Who are you?
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Not so easy, this time, is it? Generally, there are two reactions to this question. The first is a brush-off, like the paradox above. It stems from a confidence that there is some unique part of you that you can point to and say, "This is me." Force that confidence to prove itself. Make absolutely sure it's not a connection to something else, however slight. You - waving you hand, what is it?....A soul? Didn't I just say NO CONNECTIONS? No, it doesn't count because the concept of soul is a meme linked to some religions. It's a connection. In that same way, thought requires "mind". But the concept of "mind" requires thought. You won't get anywhere in that loop.

About the only thing that might be able to answer that question is this - the mutations of DNA that make some parts of your genetic sequence totally different from any other person on the planet. That's it. And since you're comparing yourself more than six billion other people, the probability of you having something unique is very slim, indeed.

So what now? All the things that you think are yours have been dictated to you by outside forces. You're a number to the government, to advertisers, to capitalism. Your philosophy of life has been shaped by external factors - your parents, books, teachers, people around you, impersonal forces like "logic" and "reason". You are no more unique than anything else. Isn't that even the tiniest bit scary? You've been a victim of the greatest illusion in history - the illusion that you decide your own fate, when the truth is you probably haven't had much of a hand in it.

So how do you combat this menace? Start by making your own decisions. Make some Chaos - stop being so goddamn serious. Make yourself laugh. No, better yet, make someone else laugh. Don't eat hot dog buns on Friday. Break out of the prison of your mind. Fall in love. Learn Linux. Salute your boss with a Turkey Curse. Make it your firm belief that it is a mistake to hold firm beliefs. And remember, break all of the rules at least once, including this one.

And that second reaction I was talking about? Generally, it's enlightenment of some sort, enough to get someone started on the path. Time's wasting, get going wasting time!
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Heh - interesting day today.

First off, some bad news for us U.S.A. people - 2004 election postponed until 2008.

Second, just for you, TK - Thoughts in Captivity.

Third, for anyone who's ever wondered, the difference between n00bs and newbs.

Finally, the post I made earlier today has been knocking around my head for a while now - it's turned a few things topsy-turvy and set some others in motion. I'm beginning to think that the best retort to the question of "Who am I?" is "Tabula rasa." But it's a blank surface that everyone, has an irresistible urge to write on, and now there's all sorts of stuff scribbled on it, in the margins, in all sorts of hands of different sizes, styles, etc. And then the worst part is when the surface looks at itself in the mirror, it believes that the writing on the sheet is what's important. It's not! The writing can be scribbled anywhere, on anything. Depending on what sort of tool the writer is using, the writing may have varying degrees of effectiveness, (pen works nicely on paper, but isn't quite so effective on stone.) but in the end, it's just writing. At any time, the writing can erased, replaced, overwritten, appended, etc. Destroy the surface and the writing goes with it.

What's worse about the writing tools, is that each tool wants to write more of itself (or things that are like it) on the surface until it's completely covered with that writing. Since the space to write on is limited, they fight over how much writing is on the surface at any given time. Some tools will fight off other tools more successfully than others. Others will be elbowed out of the way by new tools that scribble themselves on the surface. And the surface looks at the writing on itself, and decides that it likes certain tools and doesn't like other ones, and so it will start letting the tools it likes write on itself more and getting rid of the other tools.

Then the surfaces started comparing the writings they had on themselves, and made exchanges of tools, and then began to think that whatever tools they thought wrote best would write best on everyone else. So they started to interfere with the other surfaces, trying to get them to write with particular tools and avoid other ones. They might even go so far as to destroy surfaces that wouldn't write with their tools. To combat this, some surfaces figured out a way to have tools write on them, but not permanently, so that they could see whether they liked the writing before they let it become permanent. While this helps the problem somewhat by preventing the aggressive tools from setting in permanently, the surfaces started arguing over whether or not having the layer was a good idea.

Wise is the surface that recognizes the writing for what it really is! The surface that recognizes that the important thing in dealing with another surface is not the writing, but the fact that there's a surface underneath all the writing is enlightened beyond measure. These surfaces often want to help the other surfaces realize that the writing is immaterial. So maybe "Tabula rasa" really is the right answer. This might just be the beginning of an Erisian myth. Anyway, I'm off to bed, having work in the morning and all that.