Questions to Ask When Assessing Your Life

Is this job really necessary? Am I doing anything that needs to be done? Even if people are willing to pay me for handling stupid, pointless tedious, empty little tasks, will I one day look back at my life and wonder what I did with it, what I have to show for my multiple decades of existence?

Is this person capable of having an actual grownup relationship? Is there any actual affection here? Are they worth the investment of your time and effort? Are they just dragging you down? Are you dragging them down? Is there any mutual need, any kind of positive symbiosis?

Will any important life-function be improved by purchasing this? Will owning it even make me feel better? Might this be just the empty disposing of disposable income? Is there anything important that I need to do, that I could do, with this money?

Do I really have a reason for reproducing? If I don’t have an actual reason (like a love for the other person that requires a human testimony, a stamp of authenticity) should I be doing it? Do I want to be tied to this person as "co-parent" for the rest of the kid’s life? Will this person produce good children? Will I produce good children? Do I want to do the massive giving-operation that raising a child requires?

How good a person am I, really? Am I good at anything? Am I somebody that anybody should want to have around? Do the people who hate me have a point?

Bloggers, Not Jonathan Alter, Killed Newsweek

Michael Wolff writing at Newser says that Jonathan Alter is the cause of Newsweek’s decline. Something about Alter’s “glowering presence”. Probably not. Blogs are the cause of Newsweek’s decline, just like they are the cause of Glenn Beck’s ascendance and and the likes of Sarah Palin rising to fame and power. As a matter of fact, you might as well just blame the Internet for everything bad in contemporary culture, as well as most of the good.

Blogs and the voice of the quarrelsome, uneducated, and completely unprofessional, have diminished the respect once held by journalists. People want to hear their own views validated, they do not want truth, Humans have never wanted truth. Were Glenn Beck to tell the truth, or to have any respect whatsoever for it, he would not be popular, he would not be rich, and nobody would care what he had to say. Instead of being a reasonable, fair, professional commentator, he is instead a character actor embodying the spirit of the common man, the average red state American. He is simply spewing forth the views of his audience, regurgitating that which they, and all the people like them already believe. Phrasing absurd, bigoted propaganda in more refined terms so as to make them feel smart for thinking the way they do.

To a certain kind of person, the educated professional is a boring elitist to whom they cannot relate. There is nothing there to cheer for, to enjoy vicariously. Jonathan Alter, with his reliance on learning and experience speaks from an ivory tower to which they cannot approach and have no desire to approach. The blogger, though, with hyperbole, and typo-riddled half-truths, misunderstandings, and speculation masked as fact, is entertaining, approachable, and offers a kind of clarity.

This is a blog, I am a blogger. I, too, write in the typo riddled, half-truths and speculative nonsense. I don’t think it is a bad thing. This is life, blogs are supposed to suspect, untidy, rough, organic. They are like families with several small children, barely functional, but still worthwhile, still possessing that which is of value. The idea is to make you think, to make you assess, and work it out. You are supposed to think critically, not simply accept as true. Be cynical, don’t trust.

When Stupidity Rears it’s Ugly, Stupid Head

Dealing with idiots is a skill that all intelligent people should learn. Anybody with the ability to rationally analyze an issue, and who thinks in terms of objectivity and who strives to think clearly, is outnumbered. They need to learn how to not draw too much attention to themselves, and to get around the fact that morons cannot be reasoned with.

The moment you encounter your first real idiot, or a set of them, you find that it is not funny at all. It's scary and frustrating and you can't keep that look of disbelief off your face. They off course can sense your scorn. Idiots are good at sensing when other people look down on them, mostly because it happens so often. They see your scorn and think that you believe yourself to be a superior person. Of course, you do, but they won't know why. If there is a difference in race they will ascribe it to that, if there is a difference in education or social class or religion or nationality they will ascribe it to that. Idiots never know that they are idiots and so they never realize that that's why you hate them.

The futility
It is futile to try to to convince or seriously converse with somebody who is wholly emotionally invested in the wrong idea. Relationships with them should be kept on light topics, sports, food, alcohol, weather, the little things that are of no consequence and can fill up conversational dead air around a dinner table or at a bar. They will want to discuss weighty matter with you, because things like religion and politics are how they discern their clan, the people they like. You have to be on the same dumbass page with them or you are the enemy. Your job is to avoid it. Leave if you have to, or find a way to change the subject.

The truth about them
Your average moron is twice as moronic as they let on. Lets say you hear somebody talking about “health-care death panels” at work, know that they are showing you the stuff that they thought about and are fully certain of. They know this to be true and believe their logic to be insurmountable. They are not voicing the million other idiot beliefs that they have with minor doubts, this is the shit that you, Mr educated-and-rational-thinking-smarty-pants, cannot possibly counter.

Fathers are not all that necessary

Yes kids “need” both parents at home. And, supposedly, they need to be of different genders too. The truth is that many kids grow up without a dad and turn out perfectly fine, meaning that a dad is not altogether necessary, though, I am sure, it is convenient to have one handy. One important lesson to learn in life is that after a certain point, neither parent is as necessary as they like to think, except, of course, for providing things like food and shelter.

Not being a daddy’s boy
Yes, that peculiarly obnoxious male sub-set. Guys who live to please their fathers. If you never had a dad it looks slightly gross, the fawning and submission and desperation for approval. The desire to imitate and to be servile. It’s a sign of all kinds of insecurities and and self-doubt, as well as an asshole father who plays emotional games with his children. Daddy’s boys are usually made that way by their fathers. It can be done with the right kind of manipulation.

None of the daddy issues that come from having a guy that looked like you in the house
The constant battles for control, the war between the young bull and the old one, the battle for attention from the mother. In the case of teenagers, there is the fact of being essentially a man and still being dependent for most of the essentials. The need to surpass and outdo your father in order to feel like a man, to compete and win, to be a better father, more successful etc.. All of these things plague guys with a live-in dad and at various turning points later in life.

No bad example
Every parent makes mistakes, is deeply flawed in ways that they can’t help but pass on to their children. This goes for everybody, no exceptions. One less parent is one less set of mistakes.

None of that paternal certainty that older men get
People like examples, younger men especially, although many men never grow out of it. It’s part of why sports are popular even among middle-aged men, they are all looking for people to admire. Role models. The role model, or template, makes you more certain that certain behaviors that you share are right. You get reinforcement. If you reflect the opinions and habits of your father you are more sure of them, even when they are wrong.There is less of the continual work-in-progress self-doubt that single-parent children have. They get set in their ways and never change because daddy was that way too.

5 Different Ways of Escaping Real Life

Everybody tries to escape life, remember the Cormac McCarthy quote. People have different ways of doing it, and to some extent the means of escape is a sign of personality assets and defects. What does your escape mechanism say about you?

Romance fiction
This is an escape for those frustrated, for whom real life relationships are never satisfactory because the person they are with does not make them happy. These are the women who go into relationships expecting that some guy is going to, or should, make everything in their lives perfect and protect them from ever feeling unhappy about anything ever again.

Insulting commercials
Why the fuck do you have an animated lizard advertising insurance? Are toddler’s insuring their pacifiers now? Nobody questions it, either so the whole world must think this kind of thing appropriate. The reason they do it is because a fantasy animated creature automatically shuts down the grown-up part of the brain and switches on the infantile picture-book entertainment part so that you watch and accept instead of thinking about, real-life adult matters like money and property. The idea is to make you into a kid again so they can take advantage.

Mexican Immigrants
Yes, those undocumented workers, so loathed and despised by the right wing in American politics, they serve as an escape for many Americans. They are here because of Americans who  think they are too good to pick lettuce, and clean their own homes. Everybody sees themselves as belonging to the upper middleclass, or are longing for it so badly that the idea of doing menial work is unpalatable to them.

Science Fiction, for the most part
The genre, like most genres of everything, is mostly shit, built on stories that have nothing to do with science, written for people who know nothing about science, and with no themes that apply to real life. It serves only as an escape for people who are too ignorant to know what bad writing is. Speculative fiction is written usually by people who know very little about the real world and who can relate only to their own daydreams. It’s the attempt to circumvent your ignorance of the world around by making up your own worlds.

Marriage, how you see it
Your fairy-tale happily ever after lie. Of course, nobody is going to admit to being naive to the point where they actually believe that everything will turn out perfectly now, but they do. Deep down they think that marriage will change their lives for the better, which it doesn’t because can’t, and when they find this out they switch their expectations to having kids. After 3 or 4 kids they still aren’t happy so then it’s onto the divorce and the second marriage and so on and so forth on in perpetuity.

Sometimes paranoia is the right feeling

Paranoia has a stigma to it. If you feel that people are working against you there is something wrong with you. There are conspiracies, sometimes they are grand and consist of many conspirators. To believe that you are the object of widespread hatred is not always narcissistic. Learning to recognize camouflaged hatred is an important life-skill.

Somebody hates you (1)
That's without knowing you, too. They hate you for being one of a gender or a race or a religion, or a sexual preference, or the lack of a religion. They might hate you for not being easily identified or for not overtly siding up with them. It doesn't matter who you are or what you do somebody, will hate you.

Somebody hates you (2)
They hate you, specifically. You. I don't care how lonely you are, how reclusive you are, somebody somewhere has noticed you and hates your guts. Everybody has enemies is not some cynical myth it's true. They hate you because of the way you wear your pants, the fact that you get Chinese delivered one night more a week than they do, the fact that your car is newer, or that you had an Obama yard sign a year ago. Odds are they know your name and that they search through your garbage weekly for some reason to make an anonymous call to the police.

The hatred is profound
It is an expression of any one of a number of issues they have. You are an excuse, a scapegoat, an outlet for all the emotions they have pent up and held inside them. You are the high school teacher who humiliated them in front of the class, the girl who pointed at the tiny penis and laughed, the father who subtly undermined their confidence in their teen years. You are a substitute for all the people they want to hurt and you never know why.

They will likely be sneaky about it
When people hate you for no reason they know that to just come out and tell you or to be overtly hostile would not be well received. They would look like an asshole (possibly racist, sexist, or xenophobic) to everybody and possibly crazy as well. No, they will keep it hidden behind a smile. They will then spend a lot of time looking at you, trying to find a reason they can use to legitimately hate you and to get other people to hate you as well.

You can't read minds
The fact is that there is always a fair chance that any given stranger will be hostile. It's far from a certainty, but the odds are pretty good that they don't like you or your kind. You can gamble that they are not, or you can bet that they are and act accordingly. If you are wrong in the first instance then you might get hurt. Wrong in the second and only they get hurt. Which sounds better to you? Bad people exist. Nobody disputes that. You know that there is always a possibility of evil people working to cause you harm. They exist. If they exist then that guy over there might be one of them. It's possible, if it's possible then you

People are interested
All of them. That's why TV is popular, that's why porn is addictive, it's the joy of getting to see into the private places in other people's lives. It doesn't matter how boring or unattractive you are, if there is a hole in your wall somebody will spend a lot of time on the other side of it just to be able to see you without being seen.

The Life Skill of Maturity

The word "immaturity" can, in certain contexts, conjure up a picture of childlike innocence. Toilet humor, for instance, is "immature", but it brings back memories of youthful innocence and the time when bodily functions were still novel. It can make you laugh because it's juvenile and nostalgic.

There is another kind of immaturity that is not at all pleasant. It is that of people who have not learned how to handle life. This is the teenage, pubescent kind.

These are people who in their thirties and forties still have tantrums, still have issues dealing reasonably with others, and controlling their emotions.

Immature people are a burden to themselves and to the people who get involved in relationships with them. Never learning how to escape your adolescence and get into adulthood is a kind of retardation, a kind of defect.
If you are one of these people, you probably won’t know what I am talking about. You probably would not read this far down the page either.