Sometimes I'm pretty sure the only reason I keep writing this blog is because I want to make up for years of typing my questions into Google and hoping it comes up with answers. This was a habit that I picked up during a particularly bleak time in my life, and like smoking, it's been hard to shake.
This isn't a question of the time wasted in trying to pick signal out of the massive noise that is the Internet; it's unhealthy because you're never going to find satisfactory answers from other people's questions. No one asks exactly the same questions.
Showing posts with label soul. Show all posts
Showing posts with label soul. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
Wednesday, March 20, 2013
Give up your goals.
Give up your goals. You'll find that even if you do reach them, you'll never feel like you've arrived. It seems that we replace one goal with another as soon as we reach it, and that in part can be explained by how the reward systems in our brains work: in effect, it's an addiction. You need an ikigai, but that doesn't necessarily imply that you have goals. It just means you have a reason to get out of bed.
Give up your goals. Focus instead on directions. One benefit of that way of thinking is that you don't feel quite the same need to torture yourself because you set out to do something and continue to do so well past the point of meaninglessness. I liken this to the Buddhist monkey trap parable: a small hole is drilled into a hollow log, a piece of fruit is placed inside the hole, so that when a monkey grabs the fruit, he can't remove his hand from the trap without letting go. And he won't let go because he's attached to the fruit.
Another great thing about direction is that you can always change it when it no longer proves growthful. Or you can keep going down that road, even though you're suffering for it, because you recognize it as a growthful process and not some symbolic measure of your worth as a human being. Journey, not destination. You cannot fail when you abandon your goals and instead seek only directions.
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
Slash and burn.
I'm in Denver, mountains in sight from the hostel window. I've spent a lot of time lately in the peaks, since it's healthy to go there once in a while and shake off the dust from the valley. I've changed my social environment and my residence, slammed the door on a lot of unsatisfying relationships, and have not made any particular effort to foster new ones. That's fine. But I have to return to the valley sometime.
I had a thought just before I sat down to write this, so I went outside for a smoke. Ran into an old colleague I almost never see. The fact that she was happy to see me, someone she only sees once a year at most, lifted my spirits, and I walked back upstairs. An image came to my mind on my way back up: a meteor punching through our thin eggshell of an atmosphere at a window-shattering 40,000 mph, a small boy standing on a mountaintop with a baseball bat, poised and ready to knock that rock back into space.
I asked myself: whatever happened to that boy?
I call it 'slash-and-burn agriculture of the soul'. Akhilandeshvari, a relatively less well-known Hindu goddess whose name means something like 'never not unbroken', would likely appreciate this metaphor: what I mean by it is that people like me tend to push themselves very very hard in frantic hot-blooded pursuit of a goal, an ideal, a target, and burn their souls to cinders in the process. But like the ashes from acres of macheted and burnt scrub, these are times in my life that ablate everything that needs torn down and rebuilt. Friendships that need to fade, jobs that need re-defined, plans that need re-drawn.
When I got on the plane yesterday, I felt like my entire grad school experience was an unmitigated failure. And, taken from a certain set of standards, it just might be: I have no publications to my name, no awards won, no exotic adventures gone on in the name of ethnography. Anthropology was interesting to me for a while, particularly since it answered some key questions I had when I first pursued it, but dammit, I want to slay some fucking dragons, and anthropology hasn't inspired me to slay any dragons lately. It did when I first moved into the Birdhouse, and I wanted to be Philippe Bourgois. I played chess with drug dealers and shared shitty beer with people who have it way way worse than I do, as a white male (albeit from a less than economically privileged background). It was good. But that time has been over for a while.
As for what's to come now, who knows? It's exciting, like looking at your hometown receding in the distance from under the wing of an Airbus. I might see snow here tomorrow. That's exciting. I didn't bring my boots. That's fine. I'm here with the all the cool-headed detachment of someone who's already broken up with someone, but just hasn't pulled the trigger yet. I'm slashing and burning like crazy these days, and marveling that such green shoots can spring up so quickly from between the still-smoldering cinders. Let it burn.
Monday, March 4, 2013
Unlearning masochism.
I'm feeling myself slide into that all-too-familiar state of burnout. Like an engine run at redline a few miles without oil, I went from drumming along fine last week to being absolutely drained this week. A few weeks ago I began to notice this sinking feeling every time I sat down and planned out my week: "Who am I gonna screw over this week because I overcommitted?" My students? My advisor? The students she charged me with organizing undergrad research? My friends? It's almost always the last. Because it's a positive feedback loop: you cut social engagements because of your workload, and disappear from the lives of your loved ones for long periods of time. They learn that it's futile to call you because you never answer.
This is where you fight back.
Last semester I experienced full-blown psychosomatic revolt --- one weekend, my body refused to let me get out of bed. This semester, the rebels are threatening to burn down the presidential palace and execute me by firing squad if I don't concede to their demands.
It's too easy to replicate the way that your fellow grad students, co-workers, and bosses valorize burnout, as though it's proof you're a hard worker. It's not. It's proof you're a spineless idiot and a poor planner. Ironically, it's the grad students who served in the military that have the least masochistic attitudes to work. One I know works 30 hours a week while pursuing a doctoral degree, and still somehow finds time to bike across the country. Utterly, unspeakably badass.
The biggest valorizers of the burnout cycle seem to be those who still have something to prove. You know, like me. No more. No more.
This is where you fight back.
Last semester I experienced full-blown psychosomatic revolt --- one weekend, my body refused to let me get out of bed. This semester, the rebels are threatening to burn down the presidential palace and execute me by firing squad if I don't concede to their demands.
It's too easy to replicate the way that your fellow grad students, co-workers, and bosses valorize burnout, as though it's proof you're a hard worker. It's not. It's proof you're a spineless idiot and a poor planner. Ironically, it's the grad students who served in the military that have the least masochistic attitudes to work. One I know works 30 hours a week while pursuing a doctoral degree, and still somehow finds time to bike across the country. Utterly, unspeakably badass.
The biggest valorizers of the burnout cycle seem to be those who still have something to prove. You know, like me. No more. No more.
Saturday, March 2, 2013
Perfectionism and failure.
Hi. I'm Sven, and I'm a perfectionist.
Looking back, I know why: I got more validation from what I could do than from who I was. Key figures in my life made it clear to me the costs of being less-than-perfect. My grandmother was one of those people, and though I've cut her completely out of my life (for better or for worse), I still act in ways that originated in my frantic avoidance of missing her expectations. Not just her: teachers praised me for being really fucking smart. My peers too. That was all I heard when I was a kid, and I still wince when I hear that.
So perfectionism is why we fail. We internalize the abusive discourses of this society that compel you to avoid failure at all costs, and I don't know about you, but it's cost me dearly: I've run from relationships, turned down jobs, cancelled my grand plans, and am ruining my health. This cannot be my life anymore. Even if I 'fail'.
So what Buddhism has to say about my condition is that I'm suffering because I'm attached to striving. You can hardly blame me: my culture undervalues compassion in favor of efficacy, and tells us that without the approval of others, we are losers. Buddhism gently disagrees and offers a third way between mindless self-indulgence and the self-inflicted suffering of asceticism. Life sucks, and it's mostly because we make it suck for us and for others.
More on this sometime later, but I had a good birthday, and this string of bad days is really hammering some things home.
Looking back, I know why: I got more validation from what I could do than from who I was. Key figures in my life made it clear to me the costs of being less-than-perfect. My grandmother was one of those people, and though I've cut her completely out of my life (for better or for worse), I still act in ways that originated in my frantic avoidance of missing her expectations. Not just her: teachers praised me for being really fucking smart. My peers too. That was all I heard when I was a kid, and I still wince when I hear that.
So perfectionism is why we fail. We internalize the abusive discourses of this society that compel you to avoid failure at all costs, and I don't know about you, but it's cost me dearly: I've run from relationships, turned down jobs, cancelled my grand plans, and am ruining my health. This cannot be my life anymore. Even if I 'fail'.
So what Buddhism has to say about my condition is that I'm suffering because I'm attached to striving. You can hardly blame me: my culture undervalues compassion in favor of efficacy, and tells us that without the approval of others, we are losers. Buddhism gently disagrees and offers a third way between mindless self-indulgence and the self-inflicted suffering of asceticism. Life sucks, and it's mostly because we make it suck for us and for others.
More on this sometime later, but I had a good birthday, and this string of bad days is really hammering some things home.
Thursday, January 31, 2013
Ikigai
Ikigai (生き甲斐) is a Japanese word that basically means 'why you get out of bed in the morning'. I've been searching for mine ever since that word became a part of my lexicon, because without ikigai, life becomes a series of disconnected moments that don't make much sense, except in distantly removed hindsight, and usually then with some considerable regret.
I'm turning 27 soon: three times three. Three is a very significant number to me, because it reminds me of the uselessness of dichotomous thinking. Good and evil, love and hate, black and white --- these categories almost never apply in the real world. There's always a third option.
So, I submit to you, dear reader, my ikigai, a couple of years in the making: I want to map foodsheds. I want to be a net benefit to everyone around me. I want to love without expectation, care without judgment, give wisely but freely of myself in the service of those who come after me. All of this is linked, because all of this is my life.
So back to mapping foodsheds: the reason I think this is a worthy reason to get out of bed in the morning is because we've always lived in a world of limited resources. I'm getting rather tired of hearing people talk about relocalization and alternative economies as though they were unmitigated goods for everyone. They won't be. The future will suck for almost everyone, but it'll be worth the fuss, because the alternative is Malthusian misery for all but a very vicious and lucky few --- and that's not the kind of world I want to see for those who come after me.
Peak oil and climate change have gone from warnings to realities. If you're under the age of 27 (and most of my readership is), you've never experienced a year that wasn't abnormally hot compared to the last hundred-fifty or so years since climate records started to be consistently kept. That's sobering.
These are realities, people, and this is what I'm going to do about it: I'm going to contribute to projects already underway to assess the agricultural capacity of arable land in the United States, and I'm going to come up with a figure, even a rough estimate, of what kind of life we can expect on what amount of arable land we have left. I can tell you right out: it's not going to be a pretty number. The seven billion humans on this planet only exist because we're afloat on a bubble of cheap energy, and we're coming to the end of that cheap energy. If others want to talk about relocalizing, then the least I can do is give them solid facts and figures to substantiate their discussions.
My work in food waste? Connected --- we want to minimize waste and maximize our use of what we discard, in order to support more localized and less energy-intensive food systems. Motorcycles? It's an unfortunate reality of American existence that unless you happen to live in New York or San Francisco or Boston, your life without motor transportation will be considerably limited, and I choose the less-expensive and riskier option. Growth and destiny in interpersonal relationships? In a resource-limited world, all we truly have is each other. No thought, word, or deed is isolated from context, and nothing is every truly futile. Good night.
I'm turning 27 soon: three times three. Three is a very significant number to me, because it reminds me of the uselessness of dichotomous thinking. Good and evil, love and hate, black and white --- these categories almost never apply in the real world. There's always a third option.
So, I submit to you, dear reader, my ikigai, a couple of years in the making: I want to map foodsheds. I want to be a net benefit to everyone around me. I want to love without expectation, care without judgment, give wisely but freely of myself in the service of those who come after me. All of this is linked, because all of this is my life.
 |
| Source: Columbia University |
Peak oil and climate change have gone from warnings to realities. If you're under the age of 27 (and most of my readership is), you've never experienced a year that wasn't abnormally hot compared to the last hundred-fifty or so years since climate records started to be consistently kept. That's sobering.
These are realities, people, and this is what I'm going to do about it: I'm going to contribute to projects already underway to assess the agricultural capacity of arable land in the United States, and I'm going to come up with a figure, even a rough estimate, of what kind of life we can expect on what amount of arable land we have left. I can tell you right out: it's not going to be a pretty number. The seven billion humans on this planet only exist because we're afloat on a bubble of cheap energy, and we're coming to the end of that cheap energy. If others want to talk about relocalizing, then the least I can do is give them solid facts and figures to substantiate their discussions.
My work in food waste? Connected --- we want to minimize waste and maximize our use of what we discard, in order to support more localized and less energy-intensive food systems. Motorcycles? It's an unfortunate reality of American existence that unless you happen to live in New York or San Francisco or Boston, your life without motor transportation will be considerably limited, and I choose the less-expensive and riskier option. Growth and destiny in interpersonal relationships? In a resource-limited world, all we truly have is each other. No thought, word, or deed is isolated from context, and nothing is every truly futile. Good night.
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
Destiny versus growth: loneliness
You are never more complete than when you're laying awake in bed, cocooned in blankets and still cold, with only the sound of your own heartbeat to keep you company. People run from loneliness as though it were some kind of affliction, when it is, in fact, an opportunity. No friend, no lover, no confidante can ever compete with learning to live quietly within your own heart. Our society rightly does everything in its power to keep us from getting to that point, distracting us with an endless series of empty promises and gaudy distractions. If fewer of us felt incomplete and broken, then we wouldn't need to consume an endless series of companions in our quest to avoid facing our lonelinesses.
It's strange how we fear loneliness more than almost any other kind of suffering. In fact, people will often trade their loneliness for even greater suffering. But some of us are fortunate to be so lonely that our only choice is to deal with our loneliness, to befriend it, to understand it and hear its side of the story. Make peace with it. When we're that kind of lonely, it's glorious --- it's God sharing with us a piece of his life. Because if there is a God, he must be profoundly lonely.
It's strange how we fear loneliness more than almost any other kind of suffering. In fact, people will often trade their loneliness for even greater suffering. But some of us are fortunate to be so lonely that our only choice is to deal with our loneliness, to befriend it, to understand it and hear its side of the story. Make peace with it. When we're that kind of lonely, it's glorious --- it's God sharing with us a piece of his life. Because if there is a God, he must be profoundly lonely.
Friday, January 18, 2013
Oh shit moment
There are two kinds of 'oh shit' moments when it comes to motorcycles: the best are the kinds you get when the bike is in motion, and you almost die. My first such 'oh shit' moment was when I was taking my first curve at 60mph; I felt my bike creeping across the centerline of the road, and I thought I could do nothing about it but high-side into a ditch and die. Instead, my training took over, sharply relieved of its duties the part of my brain that feels fear, and ordered me to shove down on the right handlebar. I complied and got back into my lane, trembling, but alive as fuck!
Then there's the 'oh shit' moment you get when the bike's stationary, and you're wrenching. Zen riding only comes through Zen wrenching, but sometimes you do stupid shit when wrenching and you wonder if the bike will ever run under its own power again. It's like when you know you're on the out with your significant other, because she won't return your phone calls: is she just busy? Is she sleeping with another man? Is she dead? That uncertainty --- it's a killer.
Today was the latter. I was fiddling around with the Noble Savage. Objectives: check valve clearances, replace breather tube, put vacuum cap on vacuum port, check for leaks in fuel line after having installed the new manual petcock, and clean her up a bit. Easy peasy, and nothing I haven't done before.
So when you're doing valve clearance checks, you have to rotate the engine to top dead center on the compression stroke (hereinafter TDCC). This is so that both valve rocker arms have free play, which you need in order to slip a feeler gauge in between the tappets and valve seats. It's easier to rotate the engine if you take out the spark plug and put a straw in the spark plug port, so you can watch the cylinder rise and fall as you rotate it.
I didn't have a straw long enough, but I did have an ivory chopstick!
So I stuck the chopstick in the spark plug port, and started rotating the engine, when I heard the butthole-clenching sound of the chopstick snapping off inside the fucking cylinder. Foreign objects inside cylinder are bad bad news. They can clog oil passages, score cylinder walls, break valves, and really fuck your day up.
So after profanity, I remembered my breathing and thought of solutions. I wanted a cigarette, but it's been day six, and I'm not about to let a mere chopstick cause me to relapse into smoking. The only way out was through! So I tried the following: (1) compressed air to blow the pieces out (nope, didn't work), (2) coat-hanger-and-chewing-gum trick (only picked up carbon, no chopsticks), and (3) picking up the bike and shaking it upside down (I wish).
I even thought about ghetto-rigging a vacuum cleaner up to the spark plug port and sucking it out, but realized our vacuum sucks at sucking, and we didn't have an extension cord long enough to make it work. We'll pause here for a second and talk about risk-taking, but first, these words:
Over here at Sven Williams, we're not about avoiding risks; we're more about assessing the probability and potential for catastrophic damage from risks, and going ahead anyways knowing full well that what we're doing is a bad idea. It's better to take a foolish risk and be fully aware of the consequences, than it is to avoid a risk that you know little to nothing about. This is typical Sven reasoning, and it's most of the reason why I'm constantly slipping on snail trails.
So here's what I was thinking: A cylinder is made of steel and is subject to enormous thermal and physical stresses. That chopstick is made of ivory, a keratinous substance not unlike fingernails and hair, and is subject only to tons of sriracha sauce. Bitch-ass chopstick ain't got shit on a 652cc motorcycle engine!
Weighing the risks, I tightened everything up, put the gas tank back on, pulled the choke, and fired up the engine. Starter whirred and whined futilely, and the piece of chopstick clattered around inside, taunting me with visions of ruined valves and cylinder head scoring. I hit the starter button again, this time longer. You don't want to do that too much, or else you'll melt the starter, but dammit, I'm Sven and I live fast and die young! YOLO baby!
Ultimately, it took more than a couple of tries with the starter to get the engine running, and with every clattering sound made by the chopstick piece inside the combustion chamber, my butthole clenched until it was tight enough to fuse hydrogen into helium. Helium into carbon. Carbon into iron. Because of the fact that iron has the high binding energy of any element, it can't undergo nuclear fusion any further, so after the fifth or sixth time with the starter, my butthole was about to go supernova.
I am a Knight of Svendinavia, and will not be bested by a mere eating utensil! If I tank that engine, I'm taking the entire solar system out with it! I am Sven and I feast upon the corpses of the gods slain dead at my feet!
Finally, the engine turned over and started idling. My butthole relaxed, and the solar system was safe another day. There was a burnt hair smell wafting from the exhaust pipe, and it was overpowering, but if something catastrophic were to happen to the engine, it would happen in pretty quickly. I decided to let the bike idle high for about ten minutes to cook anything out, periodically going over and holding the throttle wide open for a few minutes, potentially pissing off some neighbors, but fuck 'em; the Noble Savage must live! I have never known love until I found motorcycles! Live dammit, LIVE!
She's fine now. I'll keep listening to the engine to make sure it doesn't crap out on me, but I'm putting at least a hundred miles on her this weekend with all the running around I'll be doing, so if something goes wrong, I'll find out fairly soon. Stay tuned for future episodes of Sven and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, in which I talk about how a tin can makes a good seal between the exhaust header and muffler, and other ghetto fixes!
Then there's the 'oh shit' moment you get when the bike's stationary, and you're wrenching. Zen riding only comes through Zen wrenching, but sometimes you do stupid shit when wrenching and you wonder if the bike will ever run under its own power again. It's like when you know you're on the out with your significant other, because she won't return your phone calls: is she just busy? Is she sleeping with another man? Is she dead? That uncertainty --- it's a killer.
Today was the latter. I was fiddling around with the Noble Savage. Objectives: check valve clearances, replace breather tube, put vacuum cap on vacuum port, check for leaks in fuel line after having installed the new manual petcock, and clean her up a bit. Easy peasy, and nothing I haven't done before.
So when you're doing valve clearance checks, you have to rotate the engine to top dead center on the compression stroke (hereinafter TDCC). This is so that both valve rocker arms have free play, which you need in order to slip a feeler gauge in between the tappets and valve seats. It's easier to rotate the engine if you take out the spark plug and put a straw in the spark plug port, so you can watch the cylinder rise and fall as you rotate it.
I didn't have a straw long enough, but I did have an ivory chopstick!
So I stuck the chopstick in the spark plug port, and started rotating the engine, when I heard the butthole-clenching sound of the chopstick snapping off inside the fucking cylinder. Foreign objects inside cylinder are bad bad news. They can clog oil passages, score cylinder walls, break valves, and really fuck your day up.
So after profanity, I remembered my breathing and thought of solutions. I wanted a cigarette, but it's been day six, and I'm not about to let a mere chopstick cause me to relapse into smoking. The only way out was through! So I tried the following: (1) compressed air to blow the pieces out (nope, didn't work), (2) coat-hanger-and-chewing-gum trick (only picked up carbon, no chopsticks), and (3) picking up the bike and shaking it upside down (I wish).
I even thought about ghetto-rigging a vacuum cleaner up to the spark plug port and sucking it out, but realized our vacuum sucks at sucking, and we didn't have an extension cord long enough to make it work. We'll pause here for a second and talk about risk-taking, but first, these words:
 |
| DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME |
So here's what I was thinking: A cylinder is made of steel and is subject to enormous thermal and physical stresses. That chopstick is made of ivory, a keratinous substance not unlike fingernails and hair, and is subject only to tons of sriracha sauce. Bitch-ass chopstick ain't got shit on a 652cc motorcycle engine!
Weighing the risks, I tightened everything up, put the gas tank back on, pulled the choke, and fired up the engine. Starter whirred and whined futilely, and the piece of chopstick clattered around inside, taunting me with visions of ruined valves and cylinder head scoring. I hit the starter button again, this time longer. You don't want to do that too much, or else you'll melt the starter, but dammit, I'm Sven and I live fast and die young! YOLO baby!
Ultimately, it took more than a couple of tries with the starter to get the engine running, and with every clattering sound made by the chopstick piece inside the combustion chamber, my butthole clenched until it was tight enough to fuse hydrogen into helium. Helium into carbon. Carbon into iron. Because of the fact that iron has the high binding energy of any element, it can't undergo nuclear fusion any further, so after the fifth or sixth time with the starter, my butthole was about to go supernova.
I am a Knight of Svendinavia, and will not be bested by a mere eating utensil! If I tank that engine, I'm taking the entire solar system out with it! I am Sven and I feast upon the corpses of the gods slain dead at my feet!
Finally, the engine turned over and started idling. My butthole relaxed, and the solar system was safe another day. There was a burnt hair smell wafting from the exhaust pipe, and it was overpowering, but if something catastrophic were to happen to the engine, it would happen in pretty quickly. I decided to let the bike idle high for about ten minutes to cook anything out, periodically going over and holding the throttle wide open for a few minutes, potentially pissing off some neighbors, but fuck 'em; the Noble Savage must live! I have never known love until I found motorcycles! Live dammit, LIVE!
She's fine now. I'll keep listening to the engine to make sure it doesn't crap out on me, but I'm putting at least a hundred miles on her this weekend with all the running around I'll be doing, so if something goes wrong, I'll find out fairly soon. Stay tuned for future episodes of Sven and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, in which I talk about how a tin can makes a good seal between the exhaust header and muffler, and other ghetto fixes!
 |
| Peace! |
Monday, January 7, 2013
Why I do this to myself.
So I just got out of my first meeting with my thesis committee and it went wel---OH SWEET MERCIFUL BUDDHA WHY DO I DO THESE THINGS TO MYSELF?!? Why couldn't I get a job or a debilitating drug addiction or a couple of illegitimate kids or whatever normal people do? Because I don't know what normal people do! That's why I'm an anthropologist's apprentice: to find out.
So that still leaves the question: why do I do these things to myself? I'll tell you why: because Ilove knowledge am embroiled in a torrid affair with knowledge, one in which there are no safe words, and one in which I have abandoned all sense of reason, balance, and moderation. I am the sub, and Mistress Sophia is flicking my switch, and you know what --- that's knee-tremblingly hot.
Much in the same way that Hannibal Lecter could appreciate a fine Mozart sonata with his liver-and-fava-beans casserole (editor's note: please find better analogy next time), I find an inherent beauty to parsimonious explanations to complex and often incoherent realities regarding humankind.
That's why I'm in anthropology. It's not the dubious joy of explaining to people that I don't dig up dinosaur bones or hunt for treasure, and it's not the extra initials I get to put after my name after I've gone through the rites of passage, and it's not the ability to use polysyllabic words when I'm Boris Yeltsin drunk --- it's the scaffolding upon which I can hang my understanding of human beings, answer my questions, and use said understandings and knowledge to save the world.
I am an anthropologist. I am both an instrument to gather data, and a part of the sample from which I derive my data. I am human. I study humans. I'm studying you right now, in a totally ethical and non-creepy way. So open up, baby bird, because I'm about to show you the LIFE OF THE MIND!
So that still leaves the question: why do I do these things to myself? I'll tell you why: because I
Much in the same way that Hannibal Lecter could appreciate a fine Mozart sonata with his liver-and-fava-beans casserole (editor's note: please find better analogy next time), I find an inherent beauty to parsimonious explanations to complex and often incoherent realities regarding humankind.
That's why I'm in anthropology. It's not the dubious joy of explaining to people that I don't dig up dinosaur bones or hunt for treasure, and it's not the extra initials I get to put after my name after I've gone through the rites of passage, and it's not the ability to use polysyllabic words when I'm Boris Yeltsin drunk --- it's the scaffolding upon which I can hang my understanding of human beings, answer my questions, and use said understandings and knowledge to save the world.
I am an anthropologist. I am both an instrument to gather data, and a part of the sample from which I derive my data. I am human. I study humans. I'm studying you right now, in a totally ethical and non-creepy way. So open up, baby bird, because I'm about to show you the LIFE OF THE MIND!
So stay tuned.
Sunday, January 6, 2013
Holding grudges.
It was the mud-splattered peak of the rainy season, and two monks, a master and his student, were on pilgrimage. They came upon a creek, and a woman standing alone on the banks. Despite the prohibition of their order against touching women, the master offered to carry the woman across the stream. When the three made it to the other side, the master bade the woman farewell, and the two monks continued on their way.
Finally, the student broke the silence, and asked the master: "Why did you so knowingly violate the rules of our order and carry that woman across?"
The master stopped and looked back over the road. He turned back to his student, cleared his throat, and replied: "I left her there at the river. Why do you still carry her?"
Finally, the student broke the silence, and asked the master: "Why did you so knowingly violate the rules of our order and carry that woman across?"
The master stopped and looked back over the road. He turned back to his student, cleared his throat, and replied: "I left her there at the river. Why do you still carry her?"
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