Japan Part 2

The ride to Osaka took about 5 hours. I found it convenient that they served beer on the shinkansen. Japanese beer selection was strictly limited to Sapporo, Asahi, and Yebisu. I couldn’t really tell the difference between the three of them but they were refreshing. We arrived in Osaka late and checked in to a hotel. The next morning we went to see the Osaka Palace. This was where the guy in charge used to live. It has since been converted to a museum about the feudal history of Japan. It had two massive moats built from stone, each piece carved into shape and weighing a billion or so tons. The palace was originally built in 645 so I’m guessing the moats must have been built around that time. They were massive. The palace stood in the center.



It was an interesting experience waking up in a city and traveling directly to a building that has existed for over 1,300 years. I’d never been to a place that had a history of more than a few hundred years. There was a balcony around the top of the palace, five stories up. From there we could see the inner and outer moats and the circle of trees creating a park around the palace. Here within a modern industrial city there is a patch of their ancient history, preserved and converted to a museum. The view was amazing.



After visiting the museum we walked around the park and I continued to admire the moat. Then we did some shopping in a Korean market that was tucked away in some tight alleys. I ate a Korean omelet with tentacles in it and a pastry shaped like a fish and filled with red bean curd. I’m now a fan of red bean curd. Then we were off to Kyoto.
In Kyoto there were numerous shrines and temples for us to pick from. We decided on taking the philosopher’s path from our hotel to a nearby temple (the Silver Temple). The path went along a waterway which was very low but teeming with gigantic fish. At some point I realized that I’d noticed a number of cats and I started looking for them. I realized that there were cats swarming around this area. On a bench under a sunbeam there were cats piled on top of each other just lounging around. I didn’t try to frighten them away but I got pretty close to take pictures and they didn’t seem to care, although they kept an eye on me.





This was the time of year in Japan when schoolchildren are sent on extended field trips to explore Japan. There were children in uniforms swarming through the silver temple. They were lively but didn’t disrupt my experience, and they were extremely cute. The temple itself was a two story building set in the middle of a pond and we walked along a rail on the shore. There were rocks protruding from the water which were piled high with sunbathing turtles. We also visited the Golden Temple which was a similar design. The Golden Temple was about 700 years old but it had been burned to the ground in 1955 by an angry monk and was rebuilt precisely as it had been. This event was acknowledged but in every other way the temple was treated as if it were the original, as if the burning down of the structure did not constitute a need to start over. The complete destruction could be thought of in the way that a broken window or loose door hinge would be.
We also visited the Ryoanji rock garden which is the one which made rock gardens famous. The site had other rock gardens as well, meticulously groomed into elaborate patterns and shapes. The Ryoanji itself was a powerful experience. I felt like “garden” is a misnomer for these things because a garden is something from which lush diversity springs up and things grow in organic, ever changing patterns. The Ryoanji has been kept exactly the same for over 600 years. It was a completely different experience than that of a garden. It was calming and fulfilling. We stayed as long as we could.



After a rush to the train station we were headed for Fukuoka. There was a lot of traveling time on this vacation but the rides were smooth and comfortable and the distance we could cover was well worth it. We travelled the 400 miles from Kyoto to Fukuoka in less than four hours. We arrived in Fukuoka after midnight. I decided to stay in one of the capsule hotels I’d heard so much about. Jenn couldn’t join me (no girls allowed) so she checked in to a Comfort Inn. The capsule hotel was like an upscale hostel. I was issued a locker key to keep my things in. The capsule itself did not have a latching door, only a thin screen to pull down when I was ready to sleep. The capsules were stacked two high just like bunk beds with the difference being that in this case each resident had their own personal space. The capsule was spacious with plenty of head clearance. I imagine a claustrophobic might not like it but I found it very comfortable. It had its own climate control, television and radio. There were showers and sinks laundry service. And no shoes allowed anywhere, those were stored in lockers in the lobby.
I dropped my stuff off and met back up with Jenn and we went to find a late night dinner. We walked through a more red light type district ended up at a ramshackle ramen stall by the waterway. I ate a lot of food in Japan and it was an amazing experience, but this ramen was the single most delicious meal I had. The older, extremely intoxicated gentleman sitting to my left began pouring beer into my glass, which I quickly learned is commonly done between friends and friendly people. I thanked him energetically and he began speaking to me in semi-slurred Japanese. I kept smiling and telling him in Japanese that I could not understand him and that I did not speak Japanese. It didn’t even slow him down. He would laugh and then resume talking. Soon the two guys running the stall were also trying to explain to him that I couldn’t understand, to no avail. I did get a picture of him though, as well as a picture of him and me together.



We spent quite a while at that stand. The food was incredible and the atmosphere was something entirely new to me and I wanted to hold on to it for as long as I could. I had starting getting used to my surroundings. My brain had finally gotten used to the fact that nobody was speaking English. Eventually we headed back downtown and parted ways to our respective hotels. Our next destination was Kurokawa, which I’ll save for next time.

Japan Part I

I spent the last sixteen hours of my time in Japan travelling to Haneda Airport in Tokyo to catch my flight home. Three trains and a plane and for the majority of that time I was by myself for the first time in ten days. As I was waiting at Kansai Airport awaiting my connecting flight, a wave of sadness washed over me. This didn’t surprise me as my adventure was coming to an end and I was all alone in a vast cavernous airport, but it was a frustrating and unpleasant way to be feeling when I hadn’t even left Japan yet. So to battle it I sat down and began writing down notes about my favorite moments from the week. Four pages later I had written about pretty much every moment of the entire week, and I no longer felt sad. I had just let the week wash over me and jotted it down as it went along. I’ve been wanting to post about my experiences but it’s been hard because it’s all so much and I haven’t known where or how to start. So I finally said screw it, I’m just going to start. I’ll try to keep things roughly chronological.

I’ll dive in with the food. I have always been a picky eater. For most of my life I was fine with that and deathly afraid of anything unfamiliar. It’s only been in the last few years that I’ve embraced unfamiliar food, and even then I’ve been particular about WHICH food I embrace. When Jenn and I arrived at the airport at 2am (6pm our time) we immediately walked to a restaurant. As I looked over the menu I decided that while in Japan I would not shy away from any type of food, no matter what. The absolution was very important, as any exceptions could be a slippery slope right back to only eating rice. I normally practice vegetarianism but I put that on hold in the spirit of embracing the cuisine. I’m happy to say that I stuck to my decision and tried dozens of foods which just a few years ago would have left me politely requesting more bread. I even tried octopus and raw egg (not together). I didn’t love everything but there wasn’t a single thing that I didn’t enjoy. And I discovered that unfamiliar food tastes better when you try it with an open mind.

We ate at many different types of restaurants. Many of the “sit down” restaurants give you your own enclosed space rather than tables on an open floor. We were given a device that looked like a doorbell which was for summoning our server. These restaurants generally do not have entrees, instead you have many different dishes of smaller size. During a typical dinner we probably summoned our server seven or eight times to order the next round of food and drinks. The servers were always friendly and enthusiastic. In one establishment the entire serving and kitchen staff would monitor the door and whenever someone entered the staff loudly welcomed them in unison.

The positive atmosphere emanating from the staff was not unique to restaurants. Every time I entered a business of any kind, from hotels to convenience stores, I was cheerfully greeted by the staff. I couldn’t communicate verbally when Jenn wasn’t around to be my translator so shopping involved a lot of gesturing and smiling but I never felt like a pest. I felt like my business was being appreciated in a real and immediate sense. I was told that Japan has a very strong sense of loyalty and when it comes to employment and that all employees typically identify themselves by their job, regardless of what it is. This can have negative consequences as well. Apparently it is often difficult to change careers or even jobs in Japan due to the disloyalty it implies. In America people change jobs constantly and very rarely do they give a second thought to any sort of obligation unless they’ve signed a contract. For better or for worse though, the custom made for a pleasant experience every single time.

While in Tokyo we visited Akihabara, the famous “Electric Town,” which lived up to its name. Our mission was to find a special flash drive for my friend Scott (we never found it), but we also took time to check out the arcades and other types of stores. We looked at vacuum cleaners, refrigerators, rice cookers, televisions, back massagers, cameras, and pretty much anything that requires electricity. Many of the first floor establishments were selling models and figurines of anime characters, largely sexually themed. It was interesting to see how things America considers “adult” and “not for children” were not hidden from children in the way they are here (there were beer and cigarette vending machines too). The “adult” items were generally mixed in with everything else. One of the shops was a gun store which confused me until Jenn explained that they were all models, not real guns. They looked real to me. There were swords too, and I’m pretty sure those were real.

We stepped into a video game arcade that was four or five stories tall. I wasn’t interested in playing so much as just seeing what it was like in there. Every floor was unbelievably crowded. Smoking was allowed and the rooms had that haze in the air. Various ashtrays adorned the games with people staring at their screens with intense focus, pausing for the occasional puff. There was one floor entirely dedicated to a single game called Milky Blood. The room had easily forty units set up and every single one was taken. Many of them had lines of three or four people waiting. I watched over someone’s shoulder and decided I wasn’t going to bother trying. All of the machines were linked together and the players were fighting each other in a massive free for all battle royale involving samurai, kung-fu fighters and giant robots. And it was all in Japanese. I wouldn’t have stood a chance.

While I was in Tokyo I first experienced the thing I am most thankful for. I am a white guy from California and before Japan I had never experienced being a minority. Suddenly I was in a place where nobody looked like me or talked like me. I couldn’t read signs or newspapers or train maps. I wasn’t familiar with the customs and was constantly worried about acting inappropriately. I found myself closely observing other people doing things like making purchases or climbing steps so that I could copy their behavior. I was very aware of the fact that I was the anomaly. Even though I consider myself an open minded person, it was an incredibly humbling and sobering experience. I’m comfortable with the fact that the world is very large and I am very small but this experience gave me new perspective on just how big the world is and how miniscule I am. This is not a bad thing, quite the contrary. I want to have as clear a perspective as I can regarding the world and my place in it and I am grateful for the chance to briefly see things through the eyes of the minority. And getting a glimpse of just how large the world is has made me want to see more of it.

We may have started in Tokyo but our vacation involved a lot of travel. We had purchased Japan Rail Passes for the week, meaning that we could ride any train that was part of the JR line, which includes the Shinkansen bullet trains. The Shinkansen reaches speeds of 150mph and it’s smoother than a BART train. Being inside didn’t feel odd, it just felt like a smooth train, but looking out the window was disorienting at first because my body didn’t feel like it was going as fast as my eyes told me it was. I spent hours staring out the windows at the endless scenery. The three things that I remember most were houses, power stations, and rice paddies. Our destination was Osaka and I’ll save that for next time.

Roles

Roles are more than a description of behavior. A role is a form of personal identity, a belief about one’s self. When an actor does a particularly impressive acting job, they are said to have “really enveloped the role,” meaning they went beyond the dialogue and blocking and truly assumed the identity of the character they were portraying. Roles are a fabrication, created by human beings as part of our pattern seeking nature. They have no presence or meaning past our own imaginations.

Human beings constantly construct and define roles. They tend to define people according the roles those people seem to be playing. People also tend to assume roles, which is to say that they define themselves according to the role they perceive themselves as playing. There are two major factors which lead to role playing: low self confidence and external influences. Low self-confidence leads to an inability to establish self-identity and external influences leads to an assumption of a pre-existing identity, the role.

Human beings have the authority to identify themselves in any way they see fit. This authority is theirs and theirs alone, it can not be taken from them. However, they can be persuaded to relinquish it. In order for this to happen, their self confidence must be sufficiently lowered so that they willingly hand over their authority. The vacuum left behind is quickly filled by roles.

A child who has not been filled with self confidence and has failed to develop a self identity will then look to the world around them for definition. They will define themselves based on how they are treated rather than their own observations. They will assume their given role and they will define themselves by it. A girl who is conventionally attractive will become a “pretty girl,” a boy who excels at sports will become an “athlete” or “jock,” a girl who doesn’t fit in socially will become a “weirdo,” and a boy who is attracted to other boys will become a “fag.” They will believe that these labels carry some divine weight. And with all the other kids reinforcing these roles they soon become hopelessly trapped, unable to see beyond their assumed identity.

The key to self identity is high self confidence. Self confidence is the humble recognition of authority over one’s identity. If a person has high self confidence then it does not matter what roles their environment pushes them toward, they will not relinquish their authority. A high school student might be pushed very strongly by her peers toward a particular role, but with sufficient self confidence she will not relinquish her authority. She will recognize that others are attempting to define her and remind herself that nobody has authority to do that but her. At that point the external influences become nothing more than irritating noise.

Self confidence is hard to establish, especially at a young age, and high school is a place where external influences are especially powerful because children actively label each other in an attempt to establish their own identities. But these problems persist far beyond childhood. People with low self confidence can spend their whole lives acting out roles, believing they are something that they are not, clinging to what little satisfaction they can find as they march onward down the path their role has laid out for them.

Alcoholics Anonymous is an example of people being pushed into roles. I appreciate the mission of AA, which is to help people who are having trouble with alcohol. But during AA meetings everyone introduces themselves as an alcoholic. I believe the motivation behind this is to help them admit to themselves that they have a problem. I am in favor of this. However, by calling themselves an alcoholic they are actually reinforcing the role that they have assumed. “I am an alcoholic” is a shortened version of “I identify myself by my alcoholism.” This is not the only way to interpret the sentence but it carries this weight. I think it would be more productive to say “I have a problem with alcohol that I want to address. I drink alcohol to the point where it disrupts my life and I want to stop.” This is also admitting the problem, also acknowledging personal responsibility for it, but not applying a label which could be internalized.

My whole argument boils down to one idea: We are all susceptible to roles and therefore we must always remember our authority over our identity.

The song “Time to Pretend” illustrates my idea very well by describing an extreme role, that of the celebrity. Many celebrities have enough self confidence to avoid succumbing to the celebrity role but the ones that do are a perfect illustration of the dangers of allowing yourself to be defined by a role.

I'm feeling rough, I'm feeling raw, I'm in the prime of my life.

Let's make some music, make some money, find some models for wives.

I'll move to Paris, shoot some heroin, and fuck with the stars.

You man the island and the cocaine and the elegant cars.

This is our decision, to live fast and die young.

We've got the vision, now let's have some fun.

Yeah, it's overwhelming, but what else can we do.

Get jobs in offices, and wake up for the morning commute.

Forget about our mothers and our friends

We're fated to pretend

I'll miss the playgrounds and the animals and digging up worms

I'll miss the comfort of my mother and the weight of the world

I'll miss my sister, miss my father, miss my dog and my home

Yeah, I'll miss the boredem and the freedom and the time spent alone.

But there's really nothing, nothing we can do

Love must be forgotten, life can always start up anew.

The models will have children, we'll get a divorce

We'll find some more models, everything must run it's course.

We'll choke on our vomit and that will be the end

We were fated to pretend

It's okay to change your mind

Every piece of machinery has operational conditions. A weed whacker is very effective for whacking weeds, however it has conditions such as requiring oil and gasoline in order to operate. A car is very effective for transportation but it also has conditions such as requiring a hard, flat surface in order to operate. When operating machinery it is important to be aware of the required conditions. If you don’t put oil in the weed whacker or you drive the car on sand, the machinery will lose its effectiveness. Sometimes machinery does not work precisely as it was designed to and special action is required. If someone attempts to operate that machinery without knowing about the special action, again the machinery will lose its effectiveness.

The human body is also a piece of machinery and therefore is also subject to operational conditions. For instance, the human eye requires light in order to function. Often the human eye does not process light optimally and corrective lenses are required. The rest of the human body is also subject to defects. Sometimes human legs do not operate properly and a wheelchair is required. The human body can not function in sufficiently cold temperatures so sometimes a fur coat is required. In these situations not recognizing the conditions of the machinery will again lead to substandard performance.

The human mind is part of the human body and is also subject to operational conditions and defects. A common and well known defect is depression. Millions of human beings suffer from depression. Many modern humans are fortunate enough to have access to medication to treat their depression. These medications are just like corrective lenses, wheelchairs, and fur coats. They correct for a defect and allow the mind to operate more effectively.

Even if you don’t suffer from depression, your brain is still a piece of machinery and it still has operational conditions. If you are not aware of these conditions then you run the risk of limiting your brain’s effectiveness. I would like to focus on one specific aspect which affects many people. This is the human tendency to treat their ideas like property which must be protected. The more they invest in an idea the more reluctant they are to alter or abandon that idea because they feel their investment of time and energy has imbued the idea with value. This tendency is a defect because it can keep people from growing and developing new ideas and letting go of old, outdated ones.

When two people debate they are presenting opposing arguments. This is a wonderful opportunity for both people to refine their perspectives by sharing their positions with each other. Opposing viewpoints need not be mutually exclusive and two people who disagree on a topic can have a lot to offer each other regarding that topic. Person A has a chance to put their ideas to the test and see how those ideas stand up to criticism. Person B is in the same position. Ideally they can both walk away with a more refined understanding of their own position.

The problem arises when people refuse to change their position to allow for new information or perspective, even when their own mind is telling them to do so. They take their mind’s wavering as an attack and they double down on their position. This is because their idea is precious to them and they don’t want it to be destroyed. When their mind gains new information or perspective which it considers valid and contradictory to its current position they freak out.

A study was done to illustrate this phenomenon. During the Bush/Kerry election, scientists gathered test subjects from both the far left and the far right. In isolation, these subjects were exposed to blatantly contradictory statements spoken by their preferred candidates. The scientists monitored the brain activity of these subjects as they processed this information. There was brain activity indicating an internal argument. This brain activity was then shut down by the “conscious” part of the brain and dopamine was released (dopamine is a neurotransmitter which essentially translates to “you did a good job”). The subjects were rewarded by their own brains for cutting off the debate which threatened their established position.

All human beings are all subject to this phenomenon. The only way to minimize its influence on our lives is to be vigilant for it. If we are conscious of this behavior then we can take steps to correct for it. Just like corrective lenses can bring eyesight into focus, conscious awareness of the quirks of the natural thought process can bring a new level of focus to the human mind.

Ideas are not property. They are not absolute nor divine and they should always be subject to change. The value you place on your ideas should come from their strength and their strength alone. If new information weakens your idea then you should lower the value of the idea in correspondence to its strength, rather than increasing your defense. If ideas lose too much value you should be prepared to abandon and replace them.

I subscribe to the theory that cats can not speak English. I believe this very strongly as I feel there is overwhelming evidence to support it. If I were to walk through my front door and be greeted with “Hello there!” from my cat, this would directly conflict with my currently supported theory. My first conclusion would probably be that I had gone crazy. But if I were to then bring my neighbor over and he confirmed that yes, the cat is speaking English, there would be no other explanations available and I would have to abandon my theory that cats can not speak English. It would be absurd for me to continue insisting that cats can not speak English. Despite all of the evidence which made my position so strong moments earlier, the introduction of an actual talking cat has completely destroyed it. But pretending that it hasn’t been destroyed will only keep me from moving past it. I would just keep denying the evidence right in front of my face because I was too proud to accept that I had been wrong.

This is a silly and extreme example but it applies to more conventional scenarios. If I am arguing a point (say a political one) and I am presented with information that directly conflicts with my point, that would be the time to amend my position to account for the new information. This could mean dropping my position entirely and adopting a new one. But human beings tend to have trouble doing this. They feel invested in their ideas, like their ideas have some intrinsic value and must be preserved even as they’re being torn apart. Some people will come up with any explanation, no matter how absurd, to preserve their idea in the face of conflicting information. This is a natural reaction and it is because of the way our brains are wired. But it also limits growth and advancement and we are best off if we correct for it.

My point is not that anytime someone presents you with a perspective which is not your own you need to adopt theirs. When you’re presented with new information which conflicts with your current position you should process it and see if it carries any weight in your mind. If it doesn’t then you can respond with your reasons why it doesn’t. But when it does hold water it’s in your best interest to recognize and acknowledge this and to incorporate the new information into your perspective.

When you’re discussing/debating/arguing a point with someone else, be aware of how you are really feeling. If you are presented with information that makes a lot of sense to you and conflicts with your current position, allow that new information in and see where it takes you. Allow yourself to let go of outdated ideas and embrace new ones. I’m not preaching any specific ideas of any kind. You are free to believe whatever you believe. But just try to make sure that it’s what you really believe and not just something you’re clinging to because you’re too invested in it to let it go. Don’t feel threatened by information which contradicts your beliefs. Give it a chance and perhaps it will lead you to an even stronger belief.

What is it that I think I want?

How do human beings make decisions? When you’re presented with multiple courses of action how do you determine which is best? When you ask yourself a question such as “what do I want to do?” you feed the question into the black box that is your subconscious brain and you await a response. There is a philosophical argument that free will does not exist because we are all slaves to that black box. Something other than our conscious mind decides what we want to do and then tells us. I find this to be only half true because human beings have a conscious mind which allows us to reflect on the information which comes out of the black box. I have come up with the following analogy to function as a working model for the decision making process. The analogy involves a kingdom and in this kingdom reside:

Subjects: The subjects represent all aspects of your physical self which you have conscious control over. This excludes bodily functions which you have no conscious control over. Your heart beats on its own, your hair grows, your stomach digests food, your intestine absorbs nutrients. They do their thing and you have no say in it so they are not part of this argument. But anything that you can control, from your eyelids to your lungs to your arms and legs, they are the subjects of the kingdom. These subjects are versatile and dynamic and can be put to an almost infinite variety of tasks. The subjects operate under the guidance of:

The King: The king is your conscious mind, the part of you that can make conscious decisions. Whenever the king gives an order, the subjects always obey. The subjects are completely loyal to the king and will do anything he orders them to, even if the result is harmful to the kingdom. They would march off of a cliff if told to do so by the king. They would put poison in the kingdom’s drinking supply if the king said to. The king is in charge and makes all decisions but he is highly influenced by:

The Advisor: The advisor is your unconscious mind. He has no authority over the king OR the subjects. The subjects will only obey the king. The advisor provides the king with suggestions about what orders to give, and the king consults him constantly. The advisor is masterful in his sales pitch. Regardless of what he is suggesting, he will always present it in a very persuasive fashion. Like a master salesperson, the advisor can plant ideas into the mind of the king so that he thinks they were his own. Think of the used car salesperson who convinces the customer that he WANTS to buy the ’84 Fiat with no windshield (I also like the Far Side comic of the master salesman who has just sold refrigerators to a tribe of Inuit). The advisor could make an appealing pitch for poisoning the water supply if he were so inclined. All of the suggestions which the advisor makes so persuasively come directly from:

The Rulebook: The advisor is slavishly devoted to the rulebook. He can not come up with his own ideas and can ONLY derive them from the rulebook. His skill lies in persuading the king, not in coming up with the ideas. He is also closed off from anything external to the rulebook. He is as slavishly devoted to the rulebook as the subjects are to the king. He would advise the king to poison the water supply if the rulebook told him to. The rulebook is the combination of your genetic makeup and past environmental influences (Robert Anton Wilson cleverly referred to these as the biogram and the logogram) Genes (the biogram) are naturally selected to optimize survival and reproduction of themselves within their environment (the logogram).

The rulebook was created through natural selection over millions of years with the effect of perpetuating only information which would benefit the kingdom. Natural selection is the process of editing out sections of the rulebook which are counter-productive to the prosperity of the kingdom. However, the current rulebook is tailored to an environment which bears little resemblance to the one the kingdom currently exists in. There have been some severe changes to the environment which have led to direct clashes between the rulebook and its environment. These clashes tend to obstruct and sometimes completely pervert the original advantage of any given rule within the book. The resulting information the rulebook contains is full of:

The Revisions: The revisions are the result of our modern environment perverting the original messages of the rulebook. They are NOT revisions to the original text, more like new interpretations. The original text remains intact but in the few thousand years human beings have been living in this foreign environment the list of revisions has become very long. The original messages of the rulebook have been almost completely lost in a sea of revisions. And unfortunately the advisor is unaware of these revisions and treats them as if they were part of the original text.

Many of the original rules have survived the revisions and continue to directly benefit the kingdom. The rulebook says to eat when you are hungry. The rulebook says to sleep when you are tired. The rulebook says to get out of the way of that bus. And the advisor, crafty as he is, has no agenda other than to persuade the king to follow the rulebook. As a result, many of the advisor’s suggestions continue to aid the kingdom. Unfortunately a lot of them do not, and the advisor is just as persuasive with the bad suggestions as he is with the good ones.

Imagine someone you know with an aggressive temper, someone who has difficulty controlling their anger. Their rulebook contains the information which makes them that way. A few million years ago, before the revisions, these traits would have been instrumental in maintaining the kingdom. It would have been helpful for defending the kingdom from invaders. However, post-revisions, these rules might translate to “punch someone in the face if they get in your way.” This is a decidedly counter-productive suggestion in our current environment. When you apply the modern logogram to the established biogram you can get very mixed and unpredictable results.

The obvious solution would be for the king to scrutinize the suggestions that come from the advisor. But this is harder than it sounds. The advisor is not only persuasive, he is also persistent. The king may reject his advice but that does not stop him from continuing to try. The king must be able to continue saying no because the advisor will keep trying and trying. Who can live like that? Eventually the king will wear down and the advisor will finally be able to get into his head. However, the king has an ace up his sleeve because he knows where the advisor is getting his information. The king knows how to manipulate the manipulator and directly influence which rules the advisor will consult

Imagine that you have come home from a long hard day at work. The advisor is telling the king that the subjects should rest. The king knows that the subjects have been resting an awful lot lately but the advisor is being very persuasive. Then you get a call from your friends inviting you to come over and play Agricola. The advisor consults his rulebooks and says “no no, your majesty. The subjects clearly need to rest.” But the king knows that the advisor is reading strictly from the rulebook. The king knows that going out with friends would be a positive thing for the kingdom. So he rejects the advisor’s suggestion and sends the subjects out to play games. You arrive and see your friends, get to talking, bust out the game, and suddenly the advisor changes his tune. Now he starts telling the king “the subjects should stay here and keep doing this.” The advisor is still reading from his rulebook but now he’s reading from a different passage because the environment has changed. By having an understanding of the source of the advisor’s suggestions, you can bend them to your will.

This analogy is not a perfect one but it does outline my main point. The next time you “feel” like doing something that you pretty much know is not the best thing to be doing, think about where the desire is coming from. It’s likely the result of some seriously faulty information. Ask yourself, “what is it that I think I want right now?” With practice you can recognize not only bad suggestions from the advisor but where those suggestions are coming from. And always remember that the advisor has no power over you. Sometimes just remembering that is all it takes to resist his suggestions.

Do you like girls or boys?

As we humans explore our individual consciousnesses we discover that some things are appealing to us and some things are not. We generally don’t condemn things strictly because we don’t prefer them. I may think that cauliflower is disgusting but I recognize this as my own preference and I know that there is nothing inherently bad about cauliflower. You can eat all the cauliflower you want and while I may not want to watch, I have no objections. We have preferences about food, music, television, clothing, etc. We also have preferences regarding sexual attraction. Some people prefer boys and some people prefer girls. Sexual orientation varies wildly but there is one constant: it is always there.

Through my interactions with other human beings it has become apparent to me that sexual orientation is analog rather than digital. Far from rigid, it flows on a continuous spectrum and all humans lie somewhere on this spectrum. The following is a breakdown of relevant stages within the spectrum. Any quantitative breakdown of an analog system will be at least somewhat inherently incomplete so bare with me.

1) Fiercely heterosexual - the thought of homosexual sex is unpleasant.

2) Comfortably heterosexual – exclusively prefer opposite gender but not turned off by thoughts of homosexual sex

3) Mostly heterosexual – prefer opposite gender as a rule of thumb but with exceptions for specific people

4) Bisexual – truly equal preference, could go either way

5) Mostly homosexual – prefer same gender as a rule of thumb but with exceptions for specific people

6) Comfortably homosexual – exclusively prefer same gender but not turned off by thoughts of heterosexual sex

7) Fiercely homosexual – the thought of heterosexual sex is unpleasant

This scale of 1-7 is completely arbitrary so for the purposes of this writing I will refer to people being either higher or lower on this spectrum, with lower meaning more heterosexual and higher meaning more homosexual.

We are all somewhere on this spectrum. When a person defines themselves as exclusively heterosexual, this indicates that any homosexual desires they may have are completely overshadowed by their heterosexual desires. Depending on just how far down on the spectrum they are, they are quite likely to feel as if they have absolutely no homosexual desire whatsoever. They are way WAY far down on this spectrum, probably even lower than a 1 (remember the table is not exhaustive). This argument applies to someone who identifies as exclusively homosexual as well.

The extremes on this spectrum never have to choose because they are never presented with more than one option. The opposite end of the spectrum is never presented to them (by their own mind) as an option. But once you get into the 3-5 range then there does begin to be an element of choice regarding any specific situation. These people are not obligated to make a choice and stick with it steadfastly but they are presented with a choice in each potential relationship or casual sexual interaction. Typically, the more heterosexual you are the more limited your likelihood of choosing the same gender in any given situation (and vice versa the more homosexual you are).

When someone claims that homosexuality is a choice, they are implying that they themselves made this choice at some point in their lives. After all, why would they think it’s a choice if they themselves never had to make it? Based on my above argument, sexual preference is only a choice for those people who lie somewhere in the 3-5 area. Therefore if you claim that homosexuality is a choice, you have just outed yourself as being at least moderately homosexual.

This reveals a particular irony about many of those who speak out against homosexuality as something negative. The people who preach that homosexuality is something to be ashamed of are often the same people who preach that it is a choice. In other words, they are simultaneously condemning a state of mind while revealing that they themselves possess that state of mind. They probably assume that since they made a choice that everyone around them made a choice as well. If they were truly heterosexual (1 or 2 on the table) then they would know that homosexuality is NOT a choice because they would know that they never had to choose.

As a slight aside using this argument, I want to share an experience from middle school. One of the guys in my social studies class came to school wearing a shirt with a print of Nirvana’s album “Nevermind,” which contains an image of a baby swimming toward a dollar bill on a fishhook. It’s a pretty fabulous picture. But you can see the baby’s penis. A little baby penis, barely a nubbin on this human infant. Our teacher ordered him to turn the shirt inside out on the grounds that it was obscene. Not just inappropriate for school, but obscene. I personally don’t feel the shirt was inappropriate but I KNOW that it was not obscene. It’s a BABY! By saying it was obscene my teacher was implying that she herself found it obscene. This to me, indicated that my teacher had some deeply ingrained psychological trauma. In other words, she outed herself as being at least moderately perverted.

Anyway, regardless of where you lie on the table, it is in your best interest to identify your location as best you can and accept it. However, environmental factors can have incredibly powerful influence on our ability to do this. Imagine a young boy coming into adolescence in a frightfully anti-homosexual home and community. Imagine that this boy lies on the higher end of the spectrum (5-7). But everything they ever been taught is that homosexuality is evil, vile, sinful, disgusting and degrading. Perhaps they are told that homosexuality is the devil tempting him. So he does the right thing and refuses to indulge those feelings. Imagine that he is a 7 and has managed to convince even himself that he is a 1. It’s hard to imagine anything more psychologically scarring than this. You can compare it to having black hair but convincing yourself that it’s actually blonde (while believing that black hair is vile and disgusting). Every time you look in the mirror, you see your blonde hair. Every time, you have to remind yourself that it’s actually black. I think it’s pretty obvious that this would make it really hard for you to establish your identity. Adolescence is already tumultuous enough, imagine adding this onto it. The thought of it makes my stomach turn.

Now imagine a society where sexual orientation is accepted as something completely neutral, like hair color or ice cream preference. Imagine a child being raised in an environment 100 free of any stigma attached to sexual orientation. At that difficult time in his life called adolescence, when he is struggling to develop his identity and sense of self, he is not discouraged in any way from acknowledging his true feelings. He is not compelled to commit to one gender or the other but rather allowed to explore his feelings and decide for himself which gender he will choose to be in a relationship with at any given time. And he is free to change his mind, but his decisions will be based completely on his own feelings and not on any external factors. Doesn’t that sound nice? Do you think human beings will ever reach that point as a species? I sure hope so.

Good and evil do not exist

I like the Lord of the Rings as much as the next guy. Good guys versus bad guys. The heroes versus the evil forces which are bent on, well, just being evil. It makes for excellent entertainment. But I feel that these stories are dangerous because they instill in us a concept of actual good and evil in reality. As a result we are more inclined to see people who act in harmful ways as evil people. That is why they act that way, because they are evil. And evil is in combated with good. So we the good must combat the evil. This mentality leads to actions which fail to address the actual cause of this “evil” behavior. It does little or nothing to prevent the “evil” behavior from continuing to occur, and in many cases actually increases the likelihood of more “evil” behavior from other “evil” people. Good and evil are fabrications of the human mind. They do not exist in reality. And continuing to believe that they exist in reality is holding back the human race.

Imagine you crunch through a complicated calculus problem and get the incorrect answer. People can refer to this answer as “bad” or “wrong” but for the purposes of specificity let’s call it what it is: incorrect. Certainly nobody would say that your answer was “evil,” but “bad” and “wrong” are words which carry the same connotations. Criminals are widely considered to be bad people and the crimes they commit are wrong, not incorrect. But your calculus answer is just incorrect. So you look back through your work and try to discover where you made an error. If you find an error then you correct it and run the numbers again. If your answer is now correct then you’re done. If it is still incorrect then you look for other errors. This scenario applies directly to human behavior, with “correct” meaning “not hindering (and perhaps even facilitating) the peaceful coexistence of human beings,” and “incorrect” meaning “inhibiting or directly countering the peaceful coexistence of human beings.” Errors are “genetic/environmental influences which have contributed to the incorrect behavior.”

There are psychological conditions which are not experienced by the majority of human beings but are nonetheless correct. Homosexuality is one. Affinity for penguin figurines is another. Even enjoying Barry Manilow is correct (although this one is a gray area if you ask me). There sadly are people who instist that homosexuality is incorrect but if you are reading this then I can safely assume that you are not one of them (and they are not the target audience of this writing anyway). There are people who own exotic pets and people who bike to work. The list of rare but correct psychological conditions is essentially endless

There are also psychological conditions which are not experienced by the majority of human beings and are decidedly incorrect. Violence is incorrect, from spousal/child abuse to outright murder. Bigotry and prejudice are incorrect. Theft is incorrect. Discrimination is incorrect. Even disrespectful behavior, harmless as it can be, is incorrect. You get the idea.

When society is presented with incorrect behavior it is in its best interest to approach that behavior in the same way you approached your math problem. What errors have led to the incorrect answer? What steps can be taken to fix the error (or more often errors) so that the correct answer can be reached? No matter what form the incorrect behavior takes and no matter how severe the consequences of that behavior, the important thing is finding the errors which led to that behavior and correcting those errors. It’s not evil, it’s incorrect. And it needs to be corrected, not condemned.

When incorrect behavior presents itself in more extreme forms, the desire to condemn it as evil becomes much more powerful. I will use the obvious example that you knew was coming: the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. That was evil, right? So much time and effort invested into the wanton destruction of property and the killing of innocent people. Some of the culprits knowingly sacrificed their own lives to do inflicting this unimaginable pain and suffering. That was some seriously incorrect behavior which absolutely must be corrected. But it was not evil and should not be condemned as evil. If we condemn it as evil then we do nothing to prevent it from happening again.

The errors which lead to radical terrorists are an example largely of environmental influences. These are people who are brainwashed by radical extremists into believing that they are doing the good work of their noble god. They don’t think they’re going to heaven, they KNOW they are. They have absolute certainty that what they are doing is good. And our reactions reinforce that certainty. As we sweep through the Middle East to wipe out the evil, more and more of them become convinced that they are good and we are evil and that they must wipe us out. There are no positive potential outcomes to that scenario.

If pain and suffering could be quantified, the amount inflicted by terrorists worldwide would be off the charts, off the table, out the front door, and probably somewhere in higher orbit. But they were acting with noble intentions. They are brainwashed. They are deluded and are taken advantage of. But they are not evil. If we call them evil then we are not acknowledging the errors that have led to their behavior. And since 9/11 there have been countless thousands more just like them created by those same errors. Our main effort to counter terrorism has been to drop over 500,000 tons of ordnance throughout the Middle East. That is the sort of violence that created the error in the first place yet it continues to be our strategy to defeat it. In our feverish rush to counter the incorrect behavior known as terrorism we have not only neglected the true origin of that incorrect behavior, we have also fed into it like throwing gasoline on a fire.

I do not condone incorrect behavior. I am steadfastly against terrorism, abuse, molestation, theft, bigotry, prejudice, racism, and all things which work directly against the peaceful coexistence of human beings. Correcting this behavior is imperative to us as a species. I am not being “soft on terror” by proposing that the men aboard those planes were not evil. I am not being soft on violence by proposing that there are factors, both genetic and environmental which are directly leading to child and spousal abuse.

Right now there is genocide taking place on this planet. There is also exploitation, degradation, oppression, and discrimination (and many other tions) happening in abundance. These things have got to go if we are going make it as a species. But as a species we will never get rid of them if we keep thinking of them as evil things being done by evil people. Condemning incorrect behavior as evil does NOTHING to prevent it from continuing to flourish and spread. In fact it inhibits the prevention of the behavior by letting us off the hook. “We caught the evil people and we punished them! No more evil! Oops, here are a few more…and some more…” The errors will keep happening and the incorrect behavior will continue to be the result.

Imagine the future, at a time when human beings are never taught about good and evil. They are taught that correct behavior is correct. Not virtuous or good, just correct. They are also taught that incorrect behavior is incorrect. Not bad, not evil, not shameful, vile or disgusting. Just incorrect. Now imagine that within this future society a young man discovers that he is attracted to young boys. He realizes that he suffers from pedophilia. He feels no shame in this, no self-hatred, no guilt. It is not good or evil, it simply is. He also knows that pedophiliac behavior is incorrect and the most important thing to him is correct behavior because he wants to facilitate the peaceful coexistence of human beings. He seeks help from a medical institution. He tells them “I am having compulsive desires to act in a manner that I know to be incorrect. Can you help me?” They do not look down on him, shame him, or condemn him in any way, shape or form. They don’t call him evil and they don’t treat him like he’s evil. They treat him like a person with an error (in this case a genetic one) that requires correction. And through medication, counseling, and treatment, he is able to live his life to its fullest potential without harming a single child. To me this seems a preferable alternative to the current system in which a pedophile can be so shamed by his own behavior that he is incapable of confronting it, and instead attempts to live a normal life with the occasional “indiscretion” that he can’t even fully accept (see the movie Happiness for an example of this). Since the concepts of good and evil do not exist, the man feels nothing regarding his condition except that it is incorrect and needs to be corrected. Just like an error in a math problem.

The pain and suffering is what humanity wants to eliminate. And if these things are ever to be eliminated then humanity needs to do away with the concepts of good and evil and start addressing these problems objectively. We need to acknowledge them and accept them as serious errors in our equation that we really need to revise if we are ever going to get the correct answer. The correct answer is a world where ALL human beings can live their lives, enjoy their experiences, and pursue happiness and fulfillment to the best of their ability. And everyone has the right to that.