goodlooking people have the fame, wealthy people have the power, and smart people have the reputation. and so it is that the handsome and the rich and the intelligent can be assholes and jerks and do however they please and be whomever they want, and the masses will take it as they come. all because fame, power and reputation are there to reward for putting up with all the crap.
now the thing is that should you have neither, or should you have little of either, then you have little justification for being yourself. putting aside the argument of whether this justification is just, lets just accept this for the fact that the world runs on what it runs, not on what is just.
now the average-looking and the working class and the fellow man have little to offer and so little to bargain with, that none of them can truly be himself, but only a fraction of it after working harder than the handsome or the rich or the intellectual man, only to fall short.
it is a tragedy: that because i am not charming enough--because i am not powerful enough--because i am not respectable enough, i cannot survive as well as the gifted to be myself enough. so that at the end of the day, who am i, so dimunitive, that i can demand the things for which i do not have the credit to compensate? who will take my shit for what little i can offer them, of which is also shit?
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Monday, February 14, 2011
intj part quatre
http://greenlightwiki.com/lenore-exegesis/Introverted_Intuition
an almost obsessive trait of mine--the importance of being untainted by bias to obtain truth that cannot be shaken. any bias attached to a particular truth is a weakness to that truth. it is not obvious? i search for immovable anchors of truth because such are the only places worth the effort to find. i am motivated to do it because being wrong is a waste of time in many ways. it is also proof of poor judgment. do we not get ourselves educated to improve our judgment?
the world is filled with poor anchors such as simplistic explanations, overused arguments and positions taken for granted without proper understanding. it is easy to take sides in debates, but rarely does the participant appreciate the position he takes over the veil of weak assumptions held down tight by the rush of adrenaline from being in heated quarrels. why are you here? what is your argument? why are you arguing it? the digger you deep into yourself...
this explains the perpetual fact of my argumentative nature quickly transforming into the polemic style. many times i have gone into arguments coming out realising that when people get into disagreements about something, they are actually arguing about something else more fundamental. its fun to be one of the few who realise this. its not fun to know that people are wasting their time not realising that they are fooled by the very assumptions they adopt so readily.
so i am rarely impressed, and it all has to do with introverted intuition protecting me from too quickly internalising interpretations without first understanding them. this is skepticism in the purest form. this might lead me to reject many opinions especially ones that i have considered before, consequently giving the impression that i am never wrong or always right. on the other hand i already know that it is inherently fallacious to accept the popular opinion simply because it is popular. i already know the the Ni function is the least common of all the 8 jungian functions.
on one hand least deluded, on the other, most hated. such is the nature of nature.
INJs are typically concerned with finding an independent and all-encompassing perspective on whatever interests them, so they can see it without bias, without being fooled or led along by ways in which other interests have set things up, and without a merely partial understanding.
an almost obsessive trait of mine--the importance of being untainted by bias to obtain truth that cannot be shaken. any bias attached to a particular truth is a weakness to that truth. it is not obvious? i search for immovable anchors of truth because such are the only places worth the effort to find. i am motivated to do it because being wrong is a waste of time in many ways. it is also proof of poor judgment. do we not get ourselves educated to improve our judgment?
the world is filled with poor anchors such as simplistic explanations, overused arguments and positions taken for granted without proper understanding. it is easy to take sides in debates, but rarely does the participant appreciate the position he takes over the veil of weak assumptions held down tight by the rush of adrenaline from being in heated quarrels. why are you here? what is your argument? why are you arguing it? the digger you deep into yourself...
...you find yourself uncovering ever more and more hidden assumptions, and you feel the need to distance yourself from those, too, before you get your hands dirty or draw a conclusion.
this explains the perpetual fact of my argumentative nature quickly transforming into the polemic style. many times i have gone into arguments coming out realising that when people get into disagreements about something, they are actually arguing about something else more fundamental. its fun to be one of the few who realise this. its not fun to know that people are wasting their time not realising that they are fooled by the very assumptions they adopt so readily.
..you might feel very impressed upon meeting a man wearing a fancy Italian suit (signs call forth a natural response and need no interpretation); from an Ni perspective, you would consciously say to yourself that he's wearing an Italian suit and this is supposed to make you think he's wealthy or upper-class or really has his act together or something like that, and therefore is supposed to make you feel impressed (signs and what they mean are connected only arbitrarily). Whether he really does have his act together is a matter upon which you reserve judgement. Consequently you don't feel impressed.
so i am rarely impressed, and it all has to do with introverted intuition protecting me from too quickly internalising interpretations without first understanding them. this is skepticism in the purest form. this might lead me to reject many opinions especially ones that i have considered before, consequently giving the impression that i am never wrong or always right. on the other hand i already know that it is inherently fallacious to accept the popular opinion simply because it is popular. i already know the the Ni function is the least common of all the 8 jungian functions.
on one hand least deluded, on the other, most hated. such is the nature of nature.
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Thursday, January 27, 2011
reason for discipline
self-help gurus tend to have the common advice to give: that we as individuals should delimit ourselves in order to attain our personal potentials...the rationale being that we are our own barriers.
the latter is definitely true. the first and most important step invariably calls for a paradigm shift in mentality that allows for massive internal change. this usually leads to progressive results, as a change in method almost always causes a change in outcome. and while it is true that efficiency is attained with repetition, potential does not: though we might become skilled at obtaining an objective over time, the most we ultimately achieve is that one objective--nothing more. it is at this plateau where a man is said to meet the barrier of himself. it is this very person that the gurus refer to as a man's limit, which is then advised to be superseded.
and so i come to the former in the first paragraph: should we delimit ourselves? it would seem obvious at first, but i would like to address the deeper ethical concern: to what end do we make sacrifices for the sake of continual self-delimitisation? make no mistake: there are always sacrifices to be made in one area for the purpose of improvement in another. we cannot be our best at everything--only one thing. if one were to be truly brilliant at a thing, the law says, he must be terrible at at least one thing also.
i myself have on occasion found it difficult to justify a pursuit of things which i desired, be those things clothing, food, love, attention or freedom. i have on all these occasions been aware of not only a feeling of deserving all of these things but also an awareness of my latent power to attain them whenever i wanted, in any amount and in any moment in time, at the expense of other things which i value such as self-respect, respect from others and friendships.
through my own self reflection i have found the secret that millions pay money for the gurus to tell them: you already possess the power to fulfill your desires.
no, i do not write this to inspire in you a courage to harness your inner power. on the contrary i write to speak of my tire of power itself. i grow weary of it though i have yet to use much of it in my short 22 years. my eyes no longer sparkle at power as i do not need any more of it, nor do i feel a need to protect it as i will never lose it. it is not the kind of power that decays over time, nor is it transferrable. so at this point the only thing i see fit to pursue is a life of restraint--placing limits on myself.
frankly, i was and still am in awe of my mastery over scarcity and in general my power to take anything i see fit for the taking. though i feel like i am like God in this way, my limited time on this earth clearly ensures the differentiation. so until the gurus find a way to remove the limit of mortality, i am sticking to my ethic of self-limitation.
mastery over self is a power that makes mastery over things seem meaningless. the greatest tribute to God is to become like Him in the way that He is the epitome of self-mastery.
the latter is definitely true. the first and most important step invariably calls for a paradigm shift in mentality that allows for massive internal change. this usually leads to progressive results, as a change in method almost always causes a change in outcome. and while it is true that efficiency is attained with repetition, potential does not: though we might become skilled at obtaining an objective over time, the most we ultimately achieve is that one objective--nothing more. it is at this plateau where a man is said to meet the barrier of himself. it is this very person that the gurus refer to as a man's limit, which is then advised to be superseded.
and so i come to the former in the first paragraph: should we delimit ourselves? it would seem obvious at first, but i would like to address the deeper ethical concern: to what end do we make sacrifices for the sake of continual self-delimitisation? make no mistake: there are always sacrifices to be made in one area for the purpose of improvement in another. we cannot be our best at everything--only one thing. if one were to be truly brilliant at a thing, the law says, he must be terrible at at least one thing also.
i myself have on occasion found it difficult to justify a pursuit of things which i desired, be those things clothing, food, love, attention or freedom. i have on all these occasions been aware of not only a feeling of deserving all of these things but also an awareness of my latent power to attain them whenever i wanted, in any amount and in any moment in time, at the expense of other things which i value such as self-respect, respect from others and friendships.
through my own self reflection i have found the secret that millions pay money for the gurus to tell them: you already possess the power to fulfill your desires.
no, i do not write this to inspire in you a courage to harness your inner power. on the contrary i write to speak of my tire of power itself. i grow weary of it though i have yet to use much of it in my short 22 years. my eyes no longer sparkle at power as i do not need any more of it, nor do i feel a need to protect it as i will never lose it. it is not the kind of power that decays over time, nor is it transferrable. so at this point the only thing i see fit to pursue is a life of restraint--placing limits on myself.
frankly, i was and still am in awe of my mastery over scarcity and in general my power to take anything i see fit for the taking. though i feel like i am like God in this way, my limited time on this earth clearly ensures the differentiation. so until the gurus find a way to remove the limit of mortality, i am sticking to my ethic of self-limitation.
mastery over self is a power that makes mastery over things seem meaningless. the greatest tribute to God is to become like Him in the way that He is the epitome of self-mastery.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
the perfect system of the unrandom machine
fate part trois
if a butterfly flapping its wings in new york could cause a tsunami at cape town, i would be most interested to know the chain of events at all points in between. but as a human being with finite understanding, i can only perceive a finite number of events. yet from point one to point two there are an infinite number of points, and also events that play a nonzero part in the gestalt of things.
i am interested to know all these points, because then i could truly understand what is happening. many times we observe the events of the world only in digestible blocks: we acknowledge only the occurences that make the larger impacts, and we attribute consequences to those causes, arbitrarily rejecting the rest as not nearly as important. we create a system of understanding called determinism that draws arrows between two adjacent points on the fabric of spacetime. today i realise that determinism is not a system of truth but a truth simulator: subscribe to the theory of cause and effect, and most of the time your results will be satisfactory. then some other times, your results fail due to an innocent misattribution of a single arrow.
but like any simulator, the results are only as trustworthy as the algorithm. unfortunately there is no way to understand truth, only to approximate it.
suppose i found the most impressive computer that could fathom more event points than any other. suppose it was then given the most complex and encompassing deterministic algorithm ever written. this computer could likely predict the outcome of a lottery ball machine. it would observe the dimensions of the ball container, the air density, the mass of the balls, the coefficients of friction, the viscosity of the air, the humidity in it. a hundred thousand time-variant variables for a billion points in time linked by multiple partial differential equations sloshing around in the brain of this supercomputer. for all intents and purposes, any so-called random event becomes simply a series of steps that this computer could print out on a sheet of paper. this computer would outlaw the concept of probability.
if we could observe all things, and knowing the interrelations between these things, and if we could process that infinite amount of information instantaneously, we would become the unrandom machine. but because we cannot observe all things, because we cannot process an infinite amount of information instantaneously, because event relationships can only be speculated, we will likely never attain the state of unrandom perception.
but how good would it be if i could become an unrandom machine. at the cost of my humanity and capacity for surprise and therefore delight in life, i could know all outcomes, and prove to those who believe in fate that their outcomes are always changing, that they are simply willing victims of the imperfect system known as probability.
if a butterfly flapping its wings in new york could cause a tsunami at cape town, i would be most interested to know the chain of events at all points in between. but as a human being with finite understanding, i can only perceive a finite number of events. yet from point one to point two there are an infinite number of points, and also events that play a nonzero part in the gestalt of things.
i am interested to know all these points, because then i could truly understand what is happening. many times we observe the events of the world only in digestible blocks: we acknowledge only the occurences that make the larger impacts, and we attribute consequences to those causes, arbitrarily rejecting the rest as not nearly as important. we create a system of understanding called determinism that draws arrows between two adjacent points on the fabric of spacetime. today i realise that determinism is not a system of truth but a truth simulator: subscribe to the theory of cause and effect, and most of the time your results will be satisfactory. then some other times, your results fail due to an innocent misattribution of a single arrow.
but like any simulator, the results are only as trustworthy as the algorithm. unfortunately there is no way to understand truth, only to approximate it.
suppose i found the most impressive computer that could fathom more event points than any other. suppose it was then given the most complex and encompassing deterministic algorithm ever written. this computer could likely predict the outcome of a lottery ball machine. it would observe the dimensions of the ball container, the air density, the mass of the balls, the coefficients of friction, the viscosity of the air, the humidity in it. a hundred thousand time-variant variables for a billion points in time linked by multiple partial differential equations sloshing around in the brain of this supercomputer. for all intents and purposes, any so-called random event becomes simply a series of steps that this computer could print out on a sheet of paper. this computer would outlaw the concept of probability.
if we could observe all things, and knowing the interrelations between these things, and if we could process that infinite amount of information instantaneously, we would become the unrandom machine. but because we cannot observe all things, because we cannot process an infinite amount of information instantaneously, because event relationships can only be speculated, we will likely never attain the state of unrandom perception.
but how good would it be if i could become an unrandom machine. at the cost of my humanity and capacity for surprise and therefore delight in life, i could know all outcomes, and prove to those who believe in fate that their outcomes are always changing, that they are simply willing victims of the imperfect system known as probability.
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