Fear and the overcoming thereof

Fear is dumb. Wasting all your time being afraid is dumb. Sometimes people tell me that I am brave for travelling alone. They are wrong. It's easy to do something daring when the choice is made by Past You. Sorry, Future Me, but I already bought your plane tickets! In reality, I am a very fearful person and it's dumb. People are sometimes fool enough to think that I am brave but it is just because I'm not afraid of things that other people are afraid of. I am, however, afraid of stupid shit like talking to people. I actually decided that I would rather starve (for a meal) than talk to a food-selling person. What the heck. It's the most idiotic thing I ever heard. Sometimes I did manage to get frustrated enough with myself to force myself to face my fears and buy food from a person or go to a restaurant alone, but somehow it didn't make facing people any less scary. whatever.

I'm not really sure how to stop being so afraid. Probably it involves facing your fears more than once. If I can, I would like to teach My Future Kids not to be afraid. Or at least to teach them not to let their fears cripple them. I want them to feel so absurdly safe that they feel like they can do anything. I want them to feel so absurdly safe that they /can/ do anything.

This seems like an appropriate time to include the litany against fear from Dune

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

On the Difference Between Knowing and Doing

One day, My Future Kids, like Current Me, will be subject to irrational frustrations. Perhaps they will also know that they are being irrational at the time. I'm not really sure what to do about that, other than to stew in my own frustration and also my meta-frustration over being irrationally frustrated. So fuck.

I know I shouldn't be mad at people, but of course knowing and doing are not the same. I don't really have any advice for this. Life sucks and you might as well acknowledge it, I guess.

There are further stories about how I propositioned a person and then got mad at them for various reasons, none of which are legitimate but which did compound with existing frustrations nonetheless.

I know that Person does not deserve my ire and I'm trying not to let it impact my behavior, but it can't be helped sometimes. Blah. Sorry, My Future Kids, sometimes you will be mad for no good reason and you will know it and you will not be able to stop.

It's gonna be the future soon

My typical life strategy is to not think to much and do some stuff and everything will work out. This has worked for me in the past, but I admit that I am concerned about the future. In comes my secondary life strategy- break down the problem, preferably while blogging. So here goes.

I don't really know what I'm going to do with my life and I've got that choice paralysis. Senior year is upon me and the time has come to choose a direction. So from what I can see, these are my options:

0) Do nothing/ do whatever (aka the easiest and most profitable option, or you know, whatever. Believe in the heart of the cards!)

Happiness and fulfillment is a journey, not a destination. My life directly after graduating won't dictate the entire rest of my life. Seriously, chill the fuck out, me. 

Counterpoint- You will probably want stability in your adult life. That means a final decision at some point. Also, just doing whatever isn't necessarily helpful towards achieving goals and being the person you want to be. You'll be alive, probably, but what else will you be? Have a little ambition for Pete's sake.

Countercounterpoint- Doing many things and picking your favorite is a pretty good strategy in general. Anneal yo' life, bro. 

Counter{3}point- Many options in life take time. Years. And you only have so many. Do you really want to try everything? It takes like ten years of hard work to become and expert in anything. YOU'RE ONLY GETTING OLDER, BUB.

Okay here comes the hard part. Addressing the myriad possibilities post-graduation.
1) Go to grad school. Probably I would go for AI or some shit, but I don't actually know what that really means.

If you want to do something great, probably you will need some schooling to do it. You could be a code monkey for the rest of your days, but will it get you to the top of Maslow's hierarchy?
Counterpoint- Counterpoints are manifold.
1) Grad school is an investment of years and years of your life and you don't even really know what you want to go for. You're dumb.

2) Who needs greatness to be happy?

3) Like the tip of Maslow's hierarchy is a place you can actually get. Like Maslow's hierarchy is even a real thing. Screw you.

Countercounterpoints-
1) How do you know what you want to do until you do it?

2) Um, you? Maybe?

2) Get a job. As a software developer this would be easy and bring in the fat stacks. (Note that I have an offer already, so I can be cavalier)

You need to get some kind of money-generator sometime. And software development is perfect for a talentless fuck such as yourself.

Counterpoint- What if being a dev isn't what you want to do for the rest of your life?

Countercounterpoint- Oh, I'm sorry a fun job and lots of money isn't good enough for you. Fuck you.

3) Run away.

Perfect for not having any money or any lasting relationships. This is obviously the best plan.

 It's probably not a coincidence that my current plan is all of these. ie Run away, go work, and then maybe grad school.

4) Surprise bonus option: become a crack whore

Just kidding. Never be a crack whore. Do literally anything but that and your life goal of never being a crack whore will be met. Do not disappoint me, Future Me.

How to Trick People into Thinking They Like You

The key to tricking people into thinking they like you is to make them act like they like you. That's it. I thought it would be useful to compile a list of tactics.

1) Get them to do favors for you. This is known as the Benjamin Franklin Effect where doing one favor for a person (you) makes them more likely to do more favors for that person than if that person (you) did a favor for them. The theory is that when they see themselves doing nice things for you, they think that it's because they like you. Suckers. Apparently this is a technique ol' Benny F. used to make friends.

2) Scare them. This is known as the misattribution of arousal. The adrenaline rush of fear is similar to the adrenaline rush of attraction. People can't really tell the difference.

3) Like them. And show them, I guess. This is the principle of reciprocity. People like people who like them. People are nice to people who are nice to them. 

4) Play hard-to-get. Make them uncertain of how you feel. I don't know if there's a good name for this effect, so here's a link instead. As much as I enjoy pretending that the world works the way I think it should, it does not. Though I would like for people to be able to say what they feel and get on where their lives, sometimes uncertain states are more optimal. I hate this, that's why it's last. Anyway, the theory behind this one is that when you are unsure of how much someone likes you (in this case, likes you), you are more prone to thinking about them and when you see yourself thinking about this person all the time, you conclude that you must like them.

I think I've talked about most of these before, but now here's a list with links. If I find any more, maybe I will add to the list. Probably not. Anyway, the common factor in all of these tricks is that they make people behave, on some level, like they like you. So really, you can generalize from there. 

The Old Ways

I think it's interesting how the past gets glorified. In some ways it makes sense: we glorify our formative years because they shaped us and we turned out great. In some ways it really doesn't. Like in certain works of literature, they talk about these powerful, ancient ways that have since been lost to the passage of time. Like there's some finite wealth of knowledge that's slowly trickling away. Are you seriously telling me that these swords forged by elves of the First Age are the best there is despite several ages in which to improve the craft? ages presumably in which swords are still relevant so there really isn't any advantage to learning how to make better things instead? I'll grant there there may be ancient techniques for ancient skills that could be superior to our modern techniques for ancient skills but only because we found we no longer needed those skills before going back to them under different circumstances.
Every generation looks at the younger generation and shakes its head. Why is that? My first thought was that the world is changing enough now that every generation is different. But really this has been happening since there were generations^†. Though change is not a modern phenomenon. Maybe every generation really is different. The source I cited below concerned younger folk doing such things as wearing shoes and taking baths. Or maybe we just forgot how shitty we used to be. Past Me thought (then Current Me) was pretty great. I now know that I was wrong, but perhaps I while never fully understand how wrong. I think my current iteration is pretty great, but more than likely I will change my mind about that too.
When I started writing this post, I was thinking about how quickly the world is changing. I was thinking that with the acceleration of technological advancements, the world will change ever more rapidly. But maybe I am wrong. Maybe this change is solely from this new level of connectivity we have. We're close to the point of being as connected as humanly possible, though not quite at the Mind Link I envision for the future. But barring some merging of texts, chats, and emails, we're pretty close to as connected as possible in the foreseeable future. So maybe that's it. That's the big thing. Maybe at some point we'll figure it and equilibrate.  Our technology will improve, but maybe the way interact won't change much. I'm not really sure.
Once, for an APUSH (technically just USH) assignment, we had to choose what we thought were the 5 or 10 or 1 or whatever most important/ influential events in the last century or so. We got a list. The most important event I chose was the invention of the internet. My teacher was a bit outraged. I think he wanted something like Pearl Harbor or some shit. I didn't defend my choice to him. In later reflection though, I stood by my choice. I think I still do. Though, to be fair, I never really was very good at history. Anyway, screw you, Cwod.

Hm. I was planning on talking more about our view of younger generations with a little bit of anecdotal evidence. Well, here goes. From what I see of the internet, the 90s was the the ideal time to be a child and it's a travesty when ten-year-olds have cell phones and ipods. Though I suppose I could technically fall into the category of "90s kid," I was only only sentient for a small portion of the 90s. I guess "oughts kid" really just doesn't have the same ring to it.
I've been reading a few articles about how different the cultural landscape is now. And it is. But also it isn't. I read an article about how modern-day hookup culture has destroyed dating culture. I don't think that's true. I think it depends on what you're looking for. Clearly, if you want to hookup with someone, do that and if you want to date someone, do that. Just don't try to convince yourself that they're the same and don't settle for when when you want the other. The article suggested that hookup culture is, by and large, ultimately unsatisfying. It might have implied that this is particularly true for women, but I couldn't find the article, so I won't put words into its mouth. And maybe hookup culture is more of a thing than it was, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. I don't actually know if hookup culture is more of a thing. I know that my family is fairly conservative about the premarital sex thing and my impression is that most parental types are, which I don't really understand because they were totally there in the 60s. Well, mine were. I don't know. My data points are really limited to: Teacher Aunt, who had two boyfriends in high school, and married and then divorced one of them; Father, who apparently never dated ever and I have no idea how he managed to get married; and high school Robots Mentor who got a girl pregnant when he was 18 and got hitched to someone else some several years later.
But I'm getting off track. What was the track again? Nevermind. The article mentioned that people were tending to have casual dates like getting coffee with more people than fancy-dinner types with fewer people. That doesn't sound so bad to me. My current philosophy states that you (or maybe just I) should date many people casually and let nature takes its course where you see people you do like more often and increasingly seriously and people you don't like as much drop off. Starting off with the nice dinner is so much pressure on the datiness of it all. Though I can't speak from experience, it may be nice to feel courted, but it just seems really uncomfortable.

Anyway, the point of this is that different != bad, and that I should be wary of this when attempting to raise My Future Kids. As much as I enjoyed my Midwest suburban childhood, there are many excellent child-raising environments. And maybe I should think about not teaching My Future Kids to learn from my mistakes but rather how to land on their feet when they have no idea what's going on. I think this is one of the lessons of adulthood and one of the things that School tries to teach us. The answer of course is to Google often and to be very wary of Yahoo Answers.



^†I was going to cite a rather famous quote concerning the children of Ancient Greece, but apparently the quote is not by Socrates as it is often attributed, but in fact taken out of a 1907 dissertation by Kenneth John Freeman. But the point still stands.

Confidence

I've been thinking about confidence lately. Cojones, if you will.

It's hard to be confident when nobody likes people who aren't confident. It's a bit unfortunate, but sometimes you need to pit in a bit of effort to get the positive feedback ball rolling in your favor.

I've been thinking about what gives me confidence. I think I have a few strategies.
The first is a look at statistics. I believe that all people are worthy of being loved and get to have desires and should be able to think about themselves sometimes, and very nearly everyone can make a positive contribution to society as long as they're not preventing other people from contributing to society. Even if they're literally worse at everything than every other person. It's an economics thing. And when all people are  in their own way worthy, I find it extremely unlikely that I am somehow that marvel of probability that is not worthy of these things.
The second comes from introspection. I think about what I feel and what I want and I think about my actions (before and while I perform them) and (hopefully) find my actions justified.

Of course, it's a lot harder to be confident at School where everyone is super cool and does all this awesome shit and people are more like the person I want to be than I am. But then I come back home and the people are just like they were in high school and I have to wonder if they're like that all the time or just because they're back home too.

I had pretty low self-esteem back in my high school days. Maybe everyone did. Eventually I got over it. Sometimes when I experience personal growth, I get annoyed that other people have not experienced the same kind of growth. It's not reasonable, but I almost feel like they're trying to drag me back to darker, less enlightened days. But not exactly like that. Maybe they just remind me of how I used to be when I rejected that version to move forward. I feel no pity for them. I'm not sure. Maybe I think that because I got over it they should too. Or maybe I distance myself from them in the same way I distanced myself from Past Me. I'm not really sure. All I know is that sometimes I think that maybe I should be feeling sorry for some person and I check and find that I am not feeling even a little bit sorry for them.

I said something that surprised me the other day. I spoke of my high school iterations. I like that. I like the idea that all the Past Me's are just versions which are constantly being improved. It's like I can love those fuckups because they were the necessary steps to get to Current Me instead of hating them for being fuckups.

Crazy Bitch Theory

Reader, I am annoyed. I am annoyed with the wishy-washyness of our communication. I am annoyed with how hard it is to say things when it matters. I am annoyed with how hard it is to say "I'm sorry but I don't like you, please go away now." I wish it were a thing that people said. I wish it were a thing people could expect when applicable. I am annoyed that it is not. And I'm annoyed that it's currently unreasonable to expect this of someone. I am annoyed with the uncertainty associated with precarious social situations. I am annoyed that uncertainty results in further attraction in uncertain individuals in applicable situations. It's true, there's a study^†.

I developed a theory today. A theory of crazy bitches. The theory is that the vast majority of "crazy bitches" could be cured by simply stating "I'm sorry but I don't like you, please go away now." One might think that  ignoring someone would imply the "I'm sorry but I don't like you, please go away now" message, but it doesn't. It induces uncertainty. And annoyance. This is mildly humorous to exactly one person (me), because for a paper, I used the exact opposite argument. When one calls, texts, etc. someone, all they really want is a response. When they don't get one, they are of course inclined to do so more. While I'm on the psychology kick, I'm going to guess that this may be a form of operant conditioning.
Of course, some bitches just be crazy and there is no easy cure for them.

I implore you, Reader, to test my theory. Do you have a crazy bitch in your life? Try the ol' "I'm sorry but I don't like you, please go away now"! It's times like these that I wish I had a hoard of readers to do science for me.

UPDATE: I was also annoyed that it was so difficult to express one's dissatisfaction to relevant persons. The astute reader may have guessed that this post was inspired by actual events. In this case, I sucked it up, declared a commitment to openness and communication, and expressed my annoyance. A dialougue was then able to commence. Communication, Reader! It works!

^† The idea behind this is that when you're uncertain how much someone likes you, you tend to think about that person more often. You notice yourself doing this and conclude that you must be attracted to this person because you're thinking about them so much. Brains are actually not very good at telling what's going on sometimes. Something similar happens when you encounter someone in a mildly scary situation like a scary rope bridge or something. The physiological response for being scared of falling to your doom and the response for being attracted to someone are pretty similar so your brain confuses them. It thinks that you are having this adrenaline rush because of this person you are with instead of the gaping chasm below you and you thus become more attracted to this person than you would if you were both on solid ground.