Link to Season 9

between dreams and reality

So close yet so far...

Well, it's the end of November. That's generally when I close the season. So...I think I'm gonna go ahead and close this one. 

I'd wanted to write more entries. Kind of regret that I didn't. But couldn't find the time, and it was a hassle to actually post them since I don't have internet in my place. And what seemed profound when I thought of it, suddenly seemed unimportant when I sat down to write it...er, type it.

Been here two years now. Don't have enough saved up for a down payment, as all the cheap places are gone now. If I liquidated all my stocks and added it to the money I'll have at the end of my contract, I could have a down payment...but nothing left for mortgage payments.

So...gonna stay here another year. Hopefully, be better off then. Kind of excited about staying, though. It'll be the first time staying in a foreign country for longer than two consecutive years. And things are getting easier at my school and I'm enjoying it more. But I also hope it'll have been worth it as far as what I'm trying to accomplish here. That is to say, a future.

When the next season is ready, I'll post a link.

Stuck with you

Press PLAY button below.

Swimming back to the tiger

This was probably my favorite scene from Life of Pi. In the picture above, Pi has just jumped out out of the life boat because a tiger climbed in (like he and the other two animals) to escape the sinking ship they were just on. Back in the water, Pi sees the ship beneath him and there are sharks swimming around him. He has no place to go but back in the boat with the tiger.

Just read...

by Robert Anton Wilson

A Subway by the subway

So, yeah. As the title suggests, a Subway sandwich shop just opened up near the subway station...both of which are near my building. It sounds like a small thing, but in a foreign country, something like that can be really big.

Ugh...haven't blogged in quite a while. Just been busy and have had a lot on my mind. This season only has one more month. I think I had an idea of what to call the next season, but I forget now.

As for my plans...uh..I've had to change them a bit. Housing costs have gone up quite a bit back home so have been investing my money instead of saving it. So far so good, but I'm getting fatigued being out here away from home....like being on the algal island in Life of Pi.

I'm trying so hard to stay in one place, but it keeps becoming this arduous uphill battle and I feel compelled to move. I can't tell if it's my situation or just me that's causing this. ...or both.

Anyway, I'll try to keep this updated. I'd write more now but my iPad is wigging out with the text.

The Lion’s Share

I’ve heard this term get used a lot...I’d like to say recently, but it was probably a few years ago. It was being used on financial shows... “Lion’s share of the market”. Well, if you’ve watched any nature programs on lions, you can get the general idea of the expression.

But I thought about it in a slightly different way. Since I’ve spent (and continue to spend) a lot of time thinking about how and why I’ve ended up where I have...and how/why others have ended up where they do...analogies like “the lion’s share” and ecological niches in general have been helpful in answering those questions.

Now it’s true that I’ve seen Life of Pi recently, so that might be a slightly inspirational contribution to my writing this post, but I actually had the idea turning in my head before I saw that movie (...before I’d even heard of it), and I’ve written a couple posts recently comparing human culture to animals here and here.

Ok, so, the lion’s share. The lion kills the zebra. It gets first bite of the biggest and the best portion of the kill. When it (or they...could be more than one lion) has had its fill, it leaves. But there is still plenty of zebra left. So the hyenas come in next, get a fairly decent share, then the vultures, and so on...until we get to the very tiny critters that clean off the rest.

Why does the lion get “the lion’s share”? Because it’s a lion. It killed the zebra. So no other animal got to it first. With the entirety of the zebra in front of it, it would naturally eat the best part.

Why does the hyena get second pick? Because it’s a hyena. It didn’t kill the zebra. Probably couldn’t if it wanted to. And it can’t push the lion out of the way.

Vultures, same idea. They didn’t kill the lion, and they can’t push the bigger animals aside.

And so forth down the line. All these animals depend on the lion in order to get their meal.

Now I’ve said before that ecological niches are generally not preferred by the animal in that niche. But because of its characteristics and adaptations and competition, that’s where it ends up. Based on this lack of preference, we could personify these animals.

The lion is happy because it gets the biggest and best portion of the zebra. Though, it does get a little irritated that it has to be the one to do all the work to kill the zebra, while the others don’t have to do anything but sit around and wait.

The hyena and vultures may be envious of the lion and its share. maybe they want what the lion has and think that they should be allowed to have the best portion...even though they really lack the characteristics of the lion to do what it does.

Anyway, I think you get the idea. And you can draw parallels as you see fit. Maybe the lion is business, the hyena the government, the vultures...well, I don’t know, whoever else might be awaiting what the lion has made available.

Though...there are problems with using analogies like these. For starters, animals don’t actually have those human feelings of envy and irritation. The lion doesn’t care what happens to the remains of the zebra. Nor is the hyena envious of or thankful for the lion.  All of these animals have to eat, and they do so in the way they are best suited. That’s it.

Personifying the animals as was done above can be helpful in understanding ourselves, our lot in life, and the attitudes we take, but it can also give people a certain vindication for their behavior.

If we were to have these animals act out what people actually do, we’d have a very different picture. If the lion, indeed, got tired of freeloading hyenas and vultures, then you would see it expending energy to chase off the hyenas and vultures, in attempt to keep the whole zebra for itself. “I killed it. I deserve all of it.” It would get into a hoarding mentality...even though it couldn’t possibly eat all the zebra before it went bad.

If the other animals, having been chased off and left with nothing, felt pushed into desperation, they might try...and with enough in numbers, succeed in chasing off the lion and enjoy (for the moment) what they’d taken from it. But they’d find themselves in a bad way the next time they were hungry for zebra.   (…though, perhaps they’d find a new way to acquire food.)

So what’s the take-home here? Well, initially, I was thinking it would be to understand yourself and your place in the world and not complain about it...as the animals don’t complain in spite of not understanding themselves.

But also to not misapply analogies to justify behavior (I guess that one was pretty clear).

Um, and with the animalification of people (opposite of the personification of animals) in the last illustration, we might take home that while nature is red in tooth and claw, animals are not as weird as people. 

Gasland

Click here to watch.

You can't repeat the past...

If you can't repeat the past, then why does it keep repeating itself?

Layers

I watched Gatsby. Didn’t think I’d get anything new out of it, but, although the movie wasn’t that great, something hit me hard in this film that didn’t when I read the book (again) about a year ago, nor when I watched the ’74 version about 5 years ago.

I just watched it but I’m banging my brains trying to remember exactly what it was that hit me. Some frightening similarity in Gatsby that I didn’t realize I had. A deeper truth that I stumbled on as I left the theater but which I quickly left behind me with each step I took towards my home. 

I’d seen similarities between Gatsby and myself before, but not to this degree. And I though could learn (thought I had learned) from his mistakes, and so altered my expectations, but see now that I’m actually trying to beat him at his own game...at least with his grand sense of hope...not the money part.

I think part of the reason this truth vanished from me so fast is that I realized I need to leave this...leave the past...leave 2046. I thought I had. But somehow seeing this film made me realize I hadn’t. (No...I must have left it. The movie merely reminded me of it.)

I’ve been living in the present for a few years now, but it’s not getting me very far into the future. Like trying to shoot a basket flat footed. The future is projected from the past. So I can’t leave the past. The vision I have now of the future is a result of the past. And this vision I have, this grand sense of hope...it may be fiction, but I can’t seem to let go of it. 

This isn’t even the truth I realized I was walking home. Or not quite. The idea is evolving too quickly. I can’t keep up with it by typing. No, no. Something really hit me today. I’m going to go digging for it again. Find where I stumbled on it. Not try to brush myself off and move on. It may be another carpet I’ll have to pull from underneath me, but I’ll benefit from it. I’ll find a deeper truth about myself. 

Laughing at ourselves

If we can laugh at ourselves, without it being a coping mechanism and without cynicism...that's something to aspire to.

Truth is temporary

Once we try to hold on to it, it becomes merely principal. It’s no longer real.

Though...maybe I should limit this statement to truth about ourselves. I can’t see how this would apply to gravity. 

Blind Faith

If ever we had blind faith in something, it’s math. This has to be the worst invention man has ever come up with. (Initially, I would have said the A-bomb or falsetto, but, no...I’m going with math.) Little else has given us such a warped sense of reality. 

The system is fine...

The problem is it's run by people.


...actually, no. The system is messed up, because it was made at all. Ugh. No that's not right, either. I'm gonna leave this one alone.

Quote of the day...

Actually, I never really have quotes of the day, but I watched Kung Fu Panda the other day and liked this one:

One often meets his destiny on the road he takes to avoid it.

Life and plans

Life is what happens between your plans and the plans of those with more power.

Hoarding

Finally watched The Hobbit last weekend. Came out on DVD here. I had lost interest in these Tolkien movies, with the oversimplification of good and evil. But I recently started having an appreciation of the simplified view of power. And in this film in particular, the concept of hoarding.

I won’t go into any details of the plot, but the take-home for me was the more you try to hoard something, the more you’re likely to lose it.

Compost

I don’t think I’ve mentioned it, but I’ve started to pick up an interest in farming. Maybe I did mention it when I said I was reading Walden, and Thoreau was saying all we really need is food and shelter. ...Or maybe I just said that verbally to someone but never actually wrote it down.

Anyway, lot’s of interesting things about farming, but for this post I’ll just mention something about composting...or rather the bacteria that rise to power in hot composting and how it relates to human cultures as well.

The basic setup is like this; given the right conditions in the compost, bacteria will move in and raise the temperature of the the pile to make it inhospitable for other organisms, thus insuring their own survival. This new condition, in turn, gives rise to other bacteria that raise the temperature more, eliminating the first batch of bacteria. Then this new environment gives rise to another type of bacteria that turns the heat up more, eliminating the second batch. And so forth.

The interesting thing is that the third batch of bacteria could not have come into power were it not for the second batch, nor could the second batch have come into power without the first batch. And the first batch could not have come into power were it not for the right conditions in the compost.

I’ve been reading a lot about the French Revolution lately out of some concern for the similar conditions to the US right now. But that’s were the idea came from. The first batch; King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, the second batch; Maximilien Robespierre, and the third batch; Napoleon. 

If guns don't kill people...

...then they don't protect people.

Conflicted

This was the title of a post I was going to write...ugh...a few weeks ago. Didn't mean to wait this long to post again. I can’t keep up with my thoughts...as in, I can’t type all the ideas that I think of before I've thought of something else, and the time it takes to type it all when I can keep up...well, it just takes forever. (What I've written so far has already taken a stupid amount of time, and I haven’t even said anything.) There’s also the problem that when I do get around to typing something, the idea no longer seems that profound to me.

But I’ll try now anyway...

Ok, conflicted...

Failed again. Now it’s been months since I sat down to write this post. And I have more to be conflicted about. Ugh! So, originally, what I was conflicted about was what I might have to do to establish myself back home in the US. I alluded to it in the first post.

Basically, my idea was...(I usually don’t like to tell my plans until they happen, but since one of the new things I’m conflicted about is that my plan might not work out anyway, I’ll just go ahead and tell)...to work a couple years to save up for a downpayment on a rental property. Buy a  place, rent it out, collect rent, while I work another couple years to save for another place, rinse and repeat until I have passive income and don’t have to work (or at the very least don’t have to rely on work nearly as much).

What didn’t sit well with me is that to accomplish this plan, I’d not only have to buy a house/apartment from someone who got kicked out of theirs, but I’d have to be a rental property owner and collect rent from someone who might like to have their own home.

Hmm...as I write this, it doesn’t sound that bad...the latter, I mean. People are pretty used to renting. I’ve rented plenty and have been fine with it.

Maybe it’s not being a rental property owner in and of itself that bothers me, but the fact that it isn’t a dream of mine. I’m just looking at it because I can’t see any other way I’ll be able to retire.

Again, this sounds funny as I write it because I know there are probably plenty of people who also see no way to retire and don’t see my plan as a viable option for them.

But see, this is what bothers me, too (I said “bothers” this time because I keep saying “conflicted”). I mean, I shouldn’t worry or concern myself about what other people are doing or what their problems are. I gotta get what’s mine, right? It’s just...I’m less bothered about getting what’s mine if I think other people are getting theirs...or at least are able to. Like when I teach English overseas...there are a crap load of these jobs, so when I get hired, I really don’t feel like I’m taking someone else’s job.

Maybe this just a personal problem and why I never feel like I get anything. Somehow, I feel like I’ve written before about learning to be more selfish. <--- Ok, I have...way back in Season 3.

It may be moot anyway, because my new conflict is that the inexpensive foreclosures are all but gone and it’ll take more of a downpayment for rental income to offset mortgage and other expenses. The other problem is now that I’m close to having a downpayment, I really don’t want to put it into a place I won’t be living in. And the rinse and repeat I mentioned above would be in two year increments. About a six year plan to get three places, two to rent out and one to live in. Making a long term plan when I was younger was fine. But now each year that I plan for the future, at the expense of the present, is excruciating. I just keep thinking, fine, I’ll plan for the future, but what am I doing for the time being?

When I first came to Korea, my plans had blown up in my face. So I stopped planning and enjoyed the present. And a lot of good came out of it. But somehow I couldn’t stay there. I wanted to, but I couldn’t.

Maybe that’s a good place to stop for now.