Mortality Blog

Everyone has heard “kids these days” and “when I was your age” - and chances are you’ve heard the concern over the differences between growing up in the 60s, the 70s, the 80s, et cetera. Sex is an easy subject to bring up - now, instead of sneaking peaks at someone else’s playboy centerfold, you can just pull up a brower and type ‘porn.com’ - boom, blowjobs and anal. That worries some people, obviously, and maybe another phrase “when you’ve got a kid you’ll understand” would serve to satisfy my question, but here it is nonetheless: are kids really worse off for all this media exposure?

Here’s the thing - biologically speaking, things don’t change much between a generation. The kids are the same humans that their parents were several decades prior, as far as mental capability and physical capacity go. So indignant adults might point out that they used to whisper when talking about kissing and girlfriends while in school, while their kids talk explicitly about oral sex over AIM and on MySpace. The implication there is that the latter is somehow worse, or more challenging then the former. But I don’t think that it’s the right way to think about things - previous generations didn’t grow up with readily accessible pornography, so they can’t accept the possibility that current generations can handle it. In fact, it implies that they don’t think that their younger selves could’ve handled it - when I would argue that they totally could’ve, and they shouldn’t sell themselves short.

What do you think? Are children that are used to graphic sexuality and violence somehow worse, or just different from their parents? Is it something to be concerned about, or is it just the generation gap?

My aversion to murder (in the general “humans killing other humans regardless of context” sense of the word) is pretty familiar to most people who know me - and the other night I decided to try to think through the implications it posed for abortion, embryos, and stem-cell research.

I’m going to have to depart from the average liberal and say I can’t condone abortion or the destruction of embryos, whether research-related or otherwise.

We all know where babies come from - when a man and a women love each other very much, the man wants to be as close to the woman as possible, and the closest he can get is by laying on top of her, and putting his penis inside of her vagina. This feels very good, and eventually his penis releases sperm into the woman’s vagina (this feels really good for both of them) and later, the sperm swim up the woman’s fallopian tubes, in search of an egg to fertilize.

Up until the point that the two gametes merge, there’s no human life present. There are human cells, but they belong to the woman and man, and will eventually die off on their own, to be replaced by more. However, as soon as a sperm squeezes its way into the egg and the two halves of their DNA zip together, it’s a human, totally unique, with a future ahead of it. It doesn’t really look human, and it hasn’t even started to grow yet, but I can’t see it as anything but a person. A very small person. Not even a fetus yet. The longer we’re alive, the more our spectrum of available future paths narrows to a single point - that point is our death, the single event in our future that we cannot avoid. But at the moment of fertilization, that human’s entire life is undetermined. It could die before it even attaches to the wall of the uterus, it could be miscarried, it could die from complications during childbirth, afterwards, in a second, a day, a year, or even a century. It literally has its entire life ahead of it.

And there’s no way I would ever feel comfortable with taking that life away. It’s murder. You’re taking a life that’s just begun, and ensuring that it has no chance of continuing. That’s reprehensible.

Of course, accepting this involves accepting situations which make people incredible uncomfortable: rape is an often-quoted excuse to justify abortion. It’s hard for me to stick to my guns on this one, but I can’t help thinking of it this way: the child growing inside the victim doesn’t know anything about the circumstances of its conception. This tiny human doesn’t deserve death for the sins of its parent(s). Children whose parents are unable or unwilling to fulfill their responsibility as a parent (one of the few responsibilities I really think people inherent posses) should be taken care of by the state (in the “general governmental” sense of the word, not in the “geo-political boundary” sense) and given a fair chance at the American dream: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It’s hard to do all that when you’re dead.

All that said, I’m not sure I have the balls to recommend that my conclusions be made law. I think it’d be reasonable to implement them in a nation that had first developed adequate infrastructure to stand in for biological parents in child-rearing, in a nation where rape and incest were a rare occurance. I think we can do it - but I don’t think we’re there yet, so I’m not really ready to commit to any actual legal stuff about it yet. However, if anyone were ever to ask me about it, I know exactly what I think about it, and why.

Last night I was adrift in a flood of vivid dreams. I didn’t know that they were dreams, but I had complete control over myself - they were a lot like real life. In one, I was sitting at a computer in the public library, along with some friends from CMD - in the ‘conference room’ adjacent, there was a speaker giving a lecture.

We heard him say, “Sometimes little jack and jill have to be told that there just isn’t any money for college, and they’re just going to have to deal with it!”

Thorin, my boss when I was at the agency, objected - “So basicly you’re saying that my upwardly-mobile daughter has no opportunity for vertical growth?”

After their argument somehow got carried out of the conference room and into the main section of the library, everyone was paying attention. After several rounds of accusations and defense, the man said indignantly, “I suppose you want everything to be however you want it, don’t you?”

Before Thorin could answer I jumped up and declared, “We want a life full of comfortabilitity [sic], or none at all!”

Not quite sure what to make of the statement, everyone looked on bemusedly.

Later that day, we went to a party at a huge house - somehow, I found my way back into an unused room, which turned out to be where you had to fight the boss (not Thorin, this was a boss in the video game sense). I don’t remember how I beat him, but I managed it, and then somehow won the right to use that room as my bed room. I moved all my stuff in, set up my bed, then lay down to sleep - but I couldn’t fall asleep. I knew that if I rolled over and looked at the outlet next to my bed, I would see something scary.

Unable to take the suspense, I looked - and there was the boss’ face, instead of the outlet, with cords stuffed in his mouth. As I stared, its eyes suddenly flipped open and stared back at me. Suddenly I was caught by a sort of air-current, like there was a strong win blowing me closer and closer to the face, which was shifting to resemble my own! My vision blurred, there was a roar in my ears, and just before I got too close, I woke up (in my dream), thrashing around in a tangle of sheets. It had only been a dream… within a dream.

So - faces of people I defeated which suck me in, and ‘an uncomfortable life is not worth living’. Weird. The experience with the face felt similar to when I tried Salvia, especially the weird air current / invisible force pushing against me, which was nearly identical. It also felt a little like that Call of Cthulu computer game, the way my vision distorted and sort of pulsated as my attention was fixated on the face.

The computers in the library are probably a childhood throw back of some kind, as I definitly spent time on the library computers when I was a kid, waiting for mom to get off work, or there with my classmates on a school trip. Thorin has a daughter - I guess he would be defensive of her given the opportunity, but I can’t think of anything in particular this relates to. My mispoken sentiment (’comfortabilitity’ is not a word) isn’t even a true one - I would rather live any life then no life at all, rather be uncomfortable for the rest of my life then lose it. So not sure what that’s about.

Dreams are so much fun.

If you seriously believe in something (specifically facts, not necessarily ideals), you’ve got to consider what it’d take to change your mind. Religion is a good one: Whether you’re an atheist or believer in the divine, what would it take to convince you that you’re wrong?

The question is sort of like a litmus-test for open-mindedness, in some respects - because if you say, “nothing could make me lose my faith in what I believe,” then you’re literally crazy.

As for myself, it’d be pretty easy to convince me that there is a god - if he were to pay me a visit. And I don’t mean in the “death by visitation of god” sense of the word - I mean just me and God, maybe me and Jesus, hanging out and talking over lunch. That might sound corny, but I’d love for that to happen. Facing mortality with no prospect of an afterlife is a pretty sucky situation… but I’d rather be bummed about having to die then delusional. And all it’d take to change that would be a visit.

What would it take for you? Do any of my religious-type-friends read this blog? What would it take to convince you that god doesn’t exist?

So I was reading one of my favorite blogs, Coding Horror:

I suppose it’s also an issue of personal style. To me, writing without a strong voice, writing filled with second guessing and disclaimers, is tedious and difficult to slog through. I go out of my way to write in a strong voice because it’s more effective. But whenever I post in a strong voice, it is also an implied invitation to a discussion, a discussion where I often change my opinion and invariably learn a great deal about the topic at hand. I believe in the principle of strong opinions, weakly held.

A couple years ago, I was talking the Institute’s Bob Johansen about wisdom, and he explained that — to deal with an uncertain future and still move forward – they advise people to have “strong opinions, which are weakly held.” They’ve been giving this advice for years, and I understand that it was first developed by Institute Director Paul Saffo. Bob explained that weak opinions are problematic because people aren’t inspired to develop the best arguments possible for them, or to put forth the energy required to test them. Bob explained that it was just as important, however, to not be too attached to what you believe because, otherwise, it undermines your ability to “see” and “hear” evidence that clashes with your opinions. This is what psychologists sometimes call the problem of “confirmation bias.”

Wow, nested quotes. Anyway, That made perfect sense to me. I try to assume I’m right about everything - if I didn’t, I don’t think I would have the confidence to make tough decisions. Of course, that sort of thinking could lead to some really bad decisions, so I always make sure that I reach an opinion through serious consideration - awareness of the facts, and not only my own conclusions about it, but people I respect as well. And even once I’ve formed an opinion, it’s not imutable - in fact, I love it when people can convince me that I’m wrong, because it makes me that much better off in the long run.

Yeah. Strong opinions, weakly held. Dig it.

So, I was kind of thinking about writing a quick letter to my state rep, Earl Blumenauer. From what I’ve read, he’s a pretty cool guy. But I’m not sure I really want to write him a letter. Maybe I will. I’ll try it out as a blog post first, anyway.

Salvia divinorum is a plant that contains a chemical called ‘Salvinorin A‘, which is a hallucinogen. It’s normally available in concentrations (5x, 10x, 20x, etc), and most often smoked (preferably at a higher temperature then normal lighters). It’s also legal in the state of Oregon. Sounds kind of weird, huh? Kind of inconsistent? Or even hypocritical? The thing is, if we choose, Oregon could keep it legal. And who gets to decide stuff like that? Our buddy Earl.

On a related note, consider this Latin proverb - abusus non tollit usum, or “abuse is not an argument against use.” What do you think?

edit: on a related note: legal status of Salvia in Oregon [wikipedia]
‘nother edit: “firearms to fireworks” is a pretty good phrase, if I do say so myself. Gotta love those alliterations.