A látszat csal

Intuition is the art by which we leap to an answer without actually examining it. Often time we employ intuition simply to get started in the right direction, and then the rest of our analytic process is just book-keeping. Unfortunately, humanity is generally moronic, particularly in the realm of understanding the physical world around us. Heavier things would, intuitively, fall faster than small ones. We know that it takes more work to hold up an orange than a grape, ergo, it must fall faster as well, and we can safely be assured of our understanding and leave the fruit in the bowl. Intuition!

Luckily for mankind, a bizarre and thoroughly inhuman subspecies, known as the pure scientist, or the "nerd" in modern vernacular, has evolved completely devoid of any common sense or intuition, and occasionally overcomes such hurtles with his pernicious curiosity. Luckily, these men and women are rarely heeded and mankind may persist in that luxurious state of being correct. Amazingly, Galileo, the nerd first responsible for proving the humanity of his day "wrong" and then passing on his belief to subsequent generations concerning the rate of falling objects of various sizes, turns out to be wrong. Later we find that the orange does indeed plummet toward the Earth infinitesimally faster than the grape, due to its larger mass. Practical factors, i.e. the fact that the Earth is so large that the relative sizes of the orange and grape are inconsequential, obscured this fact. We don't often hear of any of the old Aristotelian philosophers writing "I-told-you-so" sort of articles, even though they were right, because they weren't, not really. They were wrong because their thinking did not let us learn more and did not let us use our knowledge. Intuition deceives most effectively sometimes by pointing us in the right direction.

So it is with people. Sometimes. Intuitively. We have in our mind the image of what a good person may be, or, more generally, we construct an archetype for an agglomerate of a number of desirable traits we are currently pursuing, and then strive to emulate said halcyon ideal. Yet, in the practical world, solutions are not so intuitive.

I think often of one of my favorite imperfect families, one that breaks all the rules. People that don't know them would hardly think of them as an ideal Christian family because they break all of those intuitive rules. Houses should be clean, dads shouldn't cuss, children shouldn't be allowed to run around naked and nice people shouldn't be cynical. They are perfect, they are whole. They are bound by a love that cannot be shaken by man or Hell, and they share that imperfect perfect love with those around them. From the threshold it becomes apparent to the sensitive observer, that this is a home where the smiles are real and the arguments are not. Happiness, it seems, must be a practical science, one that is horrifically non-intuitive.

In finding my own way, I try to combine intuition and experimentation, to apply my ideals to the examples around me, adding, rejecting and modifying as I need to. This paragraph sure needs a conclusion, I've decided.

The hidden world around me

As I sat down to the computer today something odd prompted me to blog: an elaterid beetle. I know, my boss would be proud that a beetle inspired me to do anything, but that's not the point. More commonly known as click beetles, elaterids in America are usually about 3/4 inches long and pretty skinny with a hard, brown exoskeleton. So, not a huge bug, but three times the size of a lady bug. They get their name because when you flip them over on their back they will dramatically arch their backs with an audible "click" and flip over, so naturally a favorite toy for kids. When I first found out about them I thought to myself, "Interesting bug, it's a shame they only have them here in Utah!" But yet, I picked one off of my keyboard a few minutes ago to watch it flip here in Schnecksville, PA. They not only live here, but apparently come inside houses sometimes. Why had I never seen them before? Because I wasn't looking. I'm sure I did see them, maybe noted their odd shape, and then forgot them. When I went back to Hungary last summer, back when I started this blog, I had a load of similar experiences. I was always wondering why so many fascinating bugs popped up even though I never went out of my way to find them. How much of the world is hiding right in front of my eyes? What do I see in people but fail to note? What crosses my path that I fail to look for? The more I learn about the world, them more the world lets me learn from it, the more I will see and know. I learned a little bit about insects and suddenly I see them everywhere. I learn a little about Hungarian morphology and suddenly I see it everywhere. What else will I stumble across in my lifetime?

When so much is left undone

I am the king of buyer's regret. I'll debate long and hard about a decision, make it, and then forever second guess myself. It's a rare treat when I make a hard decision and it just feels right, like when I went to Hungary last summer. After I bought the ticket (and not a moment before), I knew it was the right thing to do. Even when tons came up and I was tempted to recant, I stuck with it, sacrificing quite a bit and changing my life based on that good feeling. Sometimes I feel pretty good a about decision, but the question "What might have been?" is always there in my thoughts. I recently stood at a very significant crossroads and made a difficult decision. I stick by it, but I can't help but keep thinking about what might have been down the other path, and whether or not I could still go back and change my mind...

Az igazi

In the past year and a half or so I contracted what I call the "Provo virus." It spreads viciously, being contagious and effecting behavior before any recognizable symptoms. It's major effect on the mind is a constant and abiding obsession with marriage. Ignorance and misinformation abound concerning this disease, some even denying that it exists, and scientific knowledge on its cure or even prevention are woefully inadequate. An unsuspecting victim can contract it in ignorance and suffer the consequences the rest of his life. The flash point for this pandemic was, of course, Provo, but it spread rapidly throughout the international Mormon community, albeit on a smaller scale due to less than ideal incubation conditions. I have this virus. After a casual conversation with a member of the opposite sex my mind can stray to our potential marital compatibility, and I realized that the majority of those around me were doing the same. I toyed with various ideas for wedding colors while not even dating anyone. My ideal for an eternal companion became skinnier, blonder and more the daughter of a dentist. Slowly it sapped the meaning from my friendships, indeed, even of the meaning of the word friend to me. Luckily I spotted the symptoms in time to prevent it from spiraling out of control, and I managed to salvage a few friendships and precious little of my vestigial sanity, locking the virus into lurking remission.
Still, as any good Mormon, marriage is still the ultimate goal of my dating, but I haven't lost sight of the significance of having fun in the mean time or the importance of marrying the right person, as opposed to just a person. This of course begs the question: who is the right person? I generally find that my taste in girls bounces around like a squirrel in a bird cage. My current girlfriend and my previous one could not be more different individuals if I had planned it (and it wasn't the sort of break-up where I would have :P). All my crushes in between also seemed to represent cartoonish opposites. Part of my problem, I think, is that I love people. People in general fascinate me, all their flaws and idiosyncrasies combined with all their strengths and individuality. And people, like metals, cars, and races in an RTS game all come with their own pluses and minuses, their intrinsic value obscured by the sheer variety of attributes. Indeed, intrinsic value becomes somewhat moot when compatibility becomes the main concern.
This post was a vain attempt to force my mind to some kind of a conclusion, an epiphany about myself and world that would force me to a descision. Unfortunately (or, more aptly, the greatest fortune ever bestowed to sentient life) it remains just that, a descision, a matter of taste and preference as oppsed to simple optimization. So, if I want to get married some day, I might as well make up my freaking mind about something.

Stress and Strain

I generally consider myself a lazy person, but lately I've been doubting myself. When I am extremely tired or just tired of work, I am a lot less effective at doing my homework, especially writing and complex math. I'm pretty sure it takes twice the time on a Saturday to do a math assignment for me. Rather than waste my time, I'd rather relax, sleep, read, play video games, or talk with friends, releasing that residual strain in me so I can be more effective when I start to do homework. My motivation seems to be more frustration than lazinessGranted, this philosophy has gotten me into trouble, like when due dates are coming and I have to force my pampered self to work when I don't want to and am very inefficient. Right now is one of those frustrating times, when my work is obviously not up to par and I should leave it for tomorrow, but I have to finish it. I guess it's just a sign that the end of the semester is here and I need a vacation...

Smash

Camaraderie is often associated with a common interest, something that binds two friends together that isn't necessarily essential to there friendship, but often the primer. Surprisingly, something as mundane as video games can be that common interest. In high school, I hung out with a wide variety of people, we had intellectual conversations, did interesting things together, etc. When I came to BYU I socially regressed drastically. All I did was hang out with a bunch of dudes and play video games, I rarely left campus:not exactly a recipe for social fulfillment. But, we got tired of video games (eventually), started to talk, got to be friends, and we can't get rid of each other to this very day. I live with some of these friends now, and needless to say our relationship has deepened considerably since our Halo matches, but when we gather in numbers the venue is rarely in question. It way the same way last winter semester with my roommates, Keith and Adam. Adam loves sports with a passion, I don't; common ground didn't exactly just sprout up. Keith is a masters student in English literature and rather reserved; we tried talking philosophy, music, literature and politics, but succeeded only in having good conversations. When I discovered Keith owned a Gamecube and a Wii, suddenly things changed. Suddenly we four (Mike, a roommate at the time, my MTC companion formerly, and a good friend currently, was the fourth) had a common interest, Super Smash Brothers (first Melee, then Brawl), a way to pit our egos against each other and oh, what chaos ensued! Friendly competition and a love of the game proved effective catalysts in our friendship, speeding up a process that might not have happened before we all moved out. To this day I still talk about books with Keith, life in general with Adam and we're still friends (though we don't see each other too often), but last Saturday we got together and Smashed, and it was awesome. So here's to you video game makers of the world, may we never grow to old to play!

Psst...there's a whole in your ethics, your character is showing!

I feel my true self is exposed whenever powerful influences in my life become misaligned and turned against each other. Often times the pressures (which I believe are all inherently internal; even if they are direct reactions to external factors, the nature of the pressure always depends on our internal character) that influence our decisions are themselves neutral, capable of both good and bad, just as fire can sustain or destroy life. C.S. Lewis uses the examples of maternal love, patriotism, and sexual desire to illustrate his point. Patriotism and maternal love are often times lumped in the "good" category of instincts (well, patriotism used to be, now it has fallen somewhat out of favor), but should either lead to unfair discrimination they could accomplish much evil. How many jingoist attempted genocides has the world seen in only the last few decades? How often do we see maternal love unduly protect a child from the consequences of his actions or unfairly side with its own, even when in the wrong? Sexual desire is similarly dichotomous in nature, it is the driving pressure behind both rape and of the family. The more I consider all of these moral considerations, the more I think of it all as a kind of vector analysis, each of these "pressures" representing very different force fields. Thus our true natures are complicated indeed. Let's say the ideal is for our decisions, represented by a particle being bounced around by all these conflicting forces, to remain within certain bounds, higher moral norms we establish for ourselves. We have no direct control over the particle, only over the fields that govern it, and only gradually. Sometimes we set unrealistic and contradictory bounds, and we find it impossible to remain within them, simply because such a combination of fields does not exist. Sometimes we find our particle does more damage and less good by staying within what we think is acceptable. In these cases our moral boundaries need to change, which can occur suddenly (like conversion to a new faith) or slowly (like desensitization). More often the not, however, the problem lies simply with the fact that our nature, or rather something less intrinsic, like let's say our disposition, contradicts our morals in some cases. I recently experienced this, my particle flew out of its cozy little circle. I discovered that my tendency to stick with my friends, support them and allow myself to be influenced by them can sometimes crush some of my morals I thought we absolute. Well, crush is the wrong word, again I'll resort to higher math to try to explain myself: they set me going so fast that my decisions escape the restoring force that would have kept me in the safe zone. Pulling back to the safe zone will be hard enough, but more importantly I need to change so it doesn't happen again. However, this safety will influence my decisions in non-divergent systems as well. A part of me tells me these changes must be pure good and a part of me tells me it is a sacrifice for the greater good. My relationships with others, with friends and family, will be the source of my greatest happiness, but if I allow them to be the hear-all-end-all of my life, I will find myself careening off to infinity, ultimately losing them because I valued the means too much and my friends too little.