Thursday, December 17, 2015

You're Too Good For Me

There are lots of good things you can say to someone you're in a relationship with. I like you. I love you. You're amazing. I'm glad we met. Et cetera. But there's one thing you always want to avoid saying. I don't deserve you, or another variation, You're too good for me. Never say this.

Now if it slips out a time or two, you're probably still in the clear. But if you say it with any regularity, you're setting yourself up for failure. Because say it enough, and they'll believe it too. One day they're going to say, "Hey, you're right." And they'll leave, and your tears will flow like Niagara.

You should only convey this sentiment if you legitimately believe they should get with someone else. Because when you say you're too good for me, you're also saying you deserve someone better. You're saying, "I believe you would be better off with someone else." Is that what you actually mean? Because that's what you're saying. Tell them enough and they'll believe it.

Friday, November 6, 2015

A New Plague: Germ (chapter from new story)

I got a random idea and wrote this last Friday. It's the prologue to a novelette (hopefully around 15,000 words) I'm calling A New Plague. It will consist of four sections titled Germ, Body, Plague, and Death. I'd like to create some shorter work that will get people interested in reading my longer efforts. I present to you now section one: Germ.




Belit’s eyes danced through the crowd before him. So many people. Browsing. Buying. Bustling.

Breathing.

How could there be so many?

He cleared his throat. “You know what this city needs?”

His companion, Derf, sent him an askance glance. “Enlighten me.”

“A new plague.”

“Belit, no.”

“Belit, yes!” His eyes danced to the pudgy man.

Derf sighed. “It's hardly been a year since the third hellthresh threshed its last.”

“Exactly. Just look how happy they all are.” Repulsive. They had no right.

“Maybe that's because they're not systematically crapping out their intestines in black globs.”

“Precisely. Morale is too high! Who let them get this cheery?”

The plump fellow scrunched his right cheek in an unenthusiastic smirk, then let it fall. “A spunge or
two might have had a hand in that.”

Belit scoffed. Expungers. Their bones could erode. “We need to do something about them eventually
as well.”

Derf pursed his lips. “Something like throw them a banquet? You know your hobby would be cut
woefully short if they weren’t there to stanch the plagues every time.”

“But their hobby would disappear if I did. They need me.” A woman walking by brushed his arm.
Belit shuddered and wiped at the arm. Disgusting.

“Expunging isn’t so much a hobby as it is an occupation,” Derf murmured, rubbing his brow with soft fingers. “Do you really need to pitch in? We recently had the eleventh yellowing that lasted a month, killed forty-eight. The eighth frenzy went nearly six weeks and left opportunity for eighty-nine new graves to be dug.

“Kudda is more a plague to the epidemes than he is to the general populace.” Belit watched two little girls playing with a doll. Nauseating. “You yourself just said he released his eleventh yellowing and it was expunged in a month. How long did my first hellthresh last?”

Derf made his best show of looking uninterested. Probably because he was. “Forty-one months.”

“And the second?”

“Forty-two.”

“And what about our most recent hellthresh?”

“Forty-three.”

“Do you have any idea what it would mean if my fourth hellthresh lasted forty-four months?” He kept his voice low enough to be shielded by the mumble of the multitude, but his eyes threatened to jump out of his skull.

“No.”

Belit glared at him. How he hated the man’s eyes. The way they protruded made him look sickly even when perfectly sound.

“Neither do I.” He turned toward a door in the wall, a sloping thing that started elaborate on the high end and ended decrepit on the short. “All of Dodane, Derf. My plagues reached all of Dodane—even spilling a little into Jubea and Yap. There hasn’t been another pandemic on that scale for over a century. How many died? What was the number?”

Derf wiped his hand on his trousers before grabbing the knob and pulling the door open for Belit. “Five million six hundred thousand twelve. Belit, why are we at this place?”

“And how many are left?” He entered the threshold and was greeted by warm, damp air. Perfect.

“Across Dodane? More than six million. It’s estimated there are several hundred million in the entire earth though.”

“How dare they!” Belit ignored the exquisite right side of the room and trod into the sickly, ramshackle side. He loved the way the walls always looked like they had just been coughed on. “These expungers really need to learn to let nature run its course.”

“And yourself?” Derf asked.

Belit waved a hand. “I already learned that lesson. Now I’m on to bigger and better.”

The pudgy man grabbed his sleeve. “Belit. Why are we here? I assume you didn’t come all the way just for a sip of ale.”

“A sip? I’ll need a mug at the least.” Silly, silly, Derf. Didn’t he know anything about the workings of the world?

“Belit.”

The plague maker stopped.

Though no light came to blind him, Derf squinted. “What are we doing here?”

Belit supposed he’d have to tell the chap at some point. Irritating. “I need to get a germ. I’m going to bond with a new plague.”

Derf’s squinty, stupid eyes widened, making him look more like a fish than ever. “But...that’s… You can’t.”

“No, Derfolte,” said Belit. “You can’t. Kudda can’t. Bialt can’t. But they can’t do much more than make transient diseases, not even worthy of the plague title. Remember Dwastane? The last supreme epideme?”

Derf swallowed uncomfortably. “Belit...no. Don’t you remember how much damage…”

The epideme widened his own eyes and smiled.

“Belit, yes.”

Sunday, August 23, 2015

The Unicorn of Unconditional Love

Unicorns are majestic beasts. Their appearance inspires awe. Magic runs through their very veins. Their horns, alicorns, are imbued with sorceries untold. They are never unnecessarily aggressive. We have every reason to revere them.

But they're not real, are they? So while it's fun to consider the possibility, it doesn't pay much to invest in the idea. Now comes my proposition: unconditional romantic love is a unicorn. Those three words are a paradox when juxtaposed. "Unconditional romantic love."

Let's take a look at what unconditional love is. Someone is ugly. You consider their needs at least as important as yours, if not more so. Someone is beautiful. You don't consider their needs any more important than the ugly person. Someone hurts you. Someone helps you. Someone wallows in their own laziness. Someone works as hard as they can. Someone hates you. Someone loves you. Regardless, you love them all equally. It doesn't matter what they can provide for you. It just matters that they exist. That's the only condition of unconditional love.

Now let's take a look at what romantic love is. Someone is ugly. You don't consider them a potential mate. Someone is beautiful. You put them in your sights. Someone hurts you. You distance yourself from them. Someone helps you. You grow more comfortable and grateful. Someone wallows in their own laziness. You disregard them. Someone earns their own. They gain clout in your eyes. Someone hates you. You couldn't imagine living with them. Someone loves you. You love them.

Romantic love only exists when a series of conditions are met. Only when you find someone capable of filling your needs. That may be money, attention, sex, badinage, emotional support, a nice thing to look at—numerous possibilities. A romantic interest only becomes interesting when they can fill a certain percentage of your needs. If that weren't the case, there would be no obsession with finding someone to love. You'd just walk up to somebody, ask them if they wanted to get with you, and they'd say yes. That's what romance would be like if romantic love was unconditional.


But now come the real questions: is all this bad? Are all men pigs? Are all women whores?

No.

Having standards is a good thing. It's okay to care about your own well-being and the well-being of your children (not to mention your partner). That's the entire premise of natural selection. Just keep in mind that you aren't going to find the perfect partner, and neither will your partner.

This post was inspired by the negative connotation for the word 'objectify'. We assess other people on various criteria by objectifying them. Everyone does it. Of course there's a level where you reach too much objectification, but if none existed then no one would ever mate and the species would die.

Wednesday, August 5, 2015

Monday, August 3, 2015

Chronic Pain Pondering


Once again, I'm going to reproduce a comment that I made in a forum. This time it was somebody lamenting about their chronic pain. If you've never dealt with pain slowly erasing all memories of what life used to be like and all hopes of what life could be, consider yourself extremely blessed. That being said, here are my thoughts that apply to a range of personal challenges.

"Hey, I know how you feel. I've dealt with my pain for 8 years (I'm 22). I'm just a piece in the medical machine that always gets pushed to the next specialist.

But check this out.

Humans can't fly. Sure, we were smart enough to build machines that will fly for us, but we can never fly. I think one needs to view chronic pain like the lack of flight. Is is sad? Yeah. We all wish we could fly. But is it the end of the world and all things joyous? No. The trick is to accept that you can't fly and instead focus on the things you can do.

You mentioned learning languages and instruments. That's awesome. I speak Danish and play over 5 instruments. Success breeds success. When you make small, achievable goals and accomplish them, it makes you realize you can accomplish more. So you do.

For example, I also write books. I can't work out or do sports or even just go on a simple hike. But I can read and write. I'm on my third book right now (at 76,000 words). I have a daily word count goal that feels great to accomplish, and it drives me to write more. When someone's getting to know you through prose you've created, they have no idea you can't fly. They don't know that you're black, that you're blind, that you're allergic to pineapple, that you never wear shoes. They know you because of your mind. It's a wonderful wall that I like to use. That's also why I like to produce my own music (not that I'm spectacularly good at it). But they know nothing about me except for my musical ability. It's beautiful.

So that's my advice. Don't focus on the fact that you can't fly. Focus on the fact that you can run. Never stop running just because the birds above you can fly."

It really takes an adjustment of worldview. I'd love to work out and be physically active like normal people. But in order to be happy, you have to calibrate yourself to your limitations. If you're judging yourself on unachievable criteria, you'll never be happy.

Thursday, July 30, 2015

A Shortage of Princes

A discussion in a writing forum came up about what makes 50 Shades and Twilight popular. I thought it might be worth it to catalog my thoughts here.

"It's about power. The only reason Fiddy Shades is successful is because the dude was rich, which is hot (money on a man is like makeup on a woman). Imagine if instead of a billionaire it had been a homeless guy.

The attraction comes in feeling special. It's the Disney narrative ("someday my prince will come"). It's the idea that there's a guy who could have any amount of women, but he chose me. A homeless guy couldn't have any amount of women, and therefore wouldn't make the protag feel special; rather she'd feel like an object of desperation.

In Twilight, here's a guy with superhuman strength, youth, etc. and he wants me. He wants to drink my blood really bad, but since I'm so special to him he won't.

As you pointed out, the series are popular because they're designed to let you vicariously live the experience of being special to men far beyond what you'll ever achieve. But deep down, you know that some day your prince will not come. It will be a fairly normal guy with a fairly normal job who fancies you. Reading these types of books is just suppressing that reality."

I'm not trying to say that there's anything wrong in wanting a good man. It only becomes unhealthy when a woman lets the fantasy (of the unachievable) delude her of reality. The inverse can be overlaid on men. Men, however, typically just want a/many hot girl/s (indicator of a healthy potential mate) and partially fulfill this desire through porn.

In short, there is a shortage of princes (and billionaires) in this world. Deceiving yourself into believing that you deserve one of them by the simple fact that you were born is untenable. It can be traced (somewhat) back to an increasingly entitled society. A society that has warped letting someone live with the negative consequences of their actions into a form of abuse. A society that would rather wallow in self-absorbed gluttony than affect positive change. Our society.

Us.

Give me my desires, for such is my right.

Absolve me of past mistakes, for the past is poor grounds for identifying patterns.

Accept me as I am, for I have already rejected who I could be.

Friday, July 24, 2015

Worldview Building

I'm not a psychologist, just an average people watcher. But I'd like to talk about the things that create a person's worldview. This is mostly for authors to craft more realistic characters. I'll give some real world examples and allow you to think how your characters would be affected in their particular worlds.



The First Impression
Perhaps the most important, and certainly the most fundamental, determinant in defining worldview is the first impression. I've found that the first impression is the hardest to erase, even when presented with contradicting evidence. That's not to say it can't be done. In fact, we have some very good instruments in our toolbox.

Betrayal
Perhaps one of the most effective tools in erasing the first impression is betrayal. It may take ten times, it may only take once. Even when the betrayal turns out to be an unfounded rumor, the new impression remains stamped over the first impression. Sometimes the distortion of worldview occurs in interpersonal relationships, and sometimes it happens on a larger plane, for example with religion. E.g. "I didn't know that [historical religious figure] did [action]. Why didn't anybody tell me?"

Superciliousness
Also known as haughty disdain or arrogance. Betrayal is often, but not always, the overture to disdain. It's the feeling that "I have secret knowledge and am therefore better," or "anyone who doesn't realize what I do is mentally inferior." It can also be derived from advantage of physical/monetary circumstance, but I've found for the average person it's knowledge-based. These feelings are often gleaned from reading/hearing language laced with the following fallacies: argument by emotive languageappeal to spitealleged certaintycherry pickingdefinist fallacyhistorian's fallacyis-should fallacy (naturalistic)political correctness fallacyoverwhelming exceptionproving non-existence (burden of proof), and many others.

Repetition
I think we all know it's a logical fallacy, but that doesn't stop us from falling for it. Argument by repetition, or argumentum ad nauseum, is the act of repeating a premise over and over to bolster its veracity. A fantastic example is, "Fat is attractive." We're hearing this argument more and more (and more and more ad nauseum) until we reach the point that we start to think, "Wow, I don't think fat people are attractive. Maybe there's something wrong with me." Taking a step back and assessing the situation, it's easy to see that ignoring millions of years of evolution to validate aversion to self improvement is unsound and not those who aren't romantically attracted to obesity.

Shaming/Humiliation
Often accompanying argument by repetition is argumentum ad verecundiam, appeal to shame, closely overlapping strawman fallacy, appeal to emotion, and argumentum ad hominem. Let's take our fat attraction example. Society wants to thresh us with shame if we don't experience romantic attraction to obesity, thereby trying to short-circuit our brains and remove us from a logical, biological context and thrust us into an emotional, irrational context. This is often accomplished by setting up the defending party's views as a strawman (a grotesque misrepresentation) and then trouncing it. They shame you by telling you that you're shaming them.

Conclusion
In conclusion, there are many other things that influence worldview, but I think these are some of the strongest points. For example, aphorisms and proverbs can change worldviews, but how often do you think the people reposting maxims on Facebook actually apply them to their lives? To craft more realistic, flawed characters, I encourage you to study logical fallacies and program some of them into your characters' worldviews. Challenging a character's worldview is easy and compelling conflict. I'll close with one that I really like, the sunk-cost fallacy. It's the erroneous assumption that since you've already invested so much in a project/idea you have to see it through to the end.

Edit: I might add more as I think of them, but another important one I thought of is Indignation, or more specifically indignation affirmation. This isn't so much a change in worldview as it is a deepening of one's current view. It occurs when someone takes offense at an opposing worldview and then invests more emotion into their own. This reeks of the sunk-cost fallacy and self-imposed appeal to emotion, but we all do it.

Bonus fallacy: Argumentum ad Homonym - when you try and use there instead of their.