Laws of unattraction

Okay, so, I'm confused enough about what makes people attracted to one another. I already covered that in a previous post. I'm don't understand it, and I don't feel like spending any more time thinking about it. What I equally don't understand, though, it was makes someone in a long-term relationship decide they no longer want to be with their significant other.

Let's break it down a little bit, shall we? There are two types of long-term relationships. The good ones, and the "we just need to try harder to make it work" ones. (I've already complained about those, haven't I? I'm not saying that relationships should be perfect; they do require a little effort. But if there's an "er" involved at all, as "try harder," then I don't think it's a worthwhile relationship. Trying is one thing, but if you're already trying hard and it isn't working? Yeah, that's time to call it quits; not to try harder.)

So, let's go with the ones that aren't working out. I'm not surprised when the discord reaches a breaking point, but at exactly what point does that happen? After putting up with so much BS for year after year, when does one finally decide they've had enough? In my dealings with others in this situation, it rarely seems to be a single event. Most will cite the entire bad relationship as the reason. Did they all of a sudden open their eyes and realize that this wasn't working? Was it a surprise to them? I don't know.

The one that bothers me more, though, is the relationships that seem to be working. How can you date anyone for years, without much fighting or arguing at all, and then break things off? That boggles my mind, especially among those who have reached at least a mid-20s age. Teenagers and the sort I can easily understand them failing, and in truth, I expect them to. This isn't pure cynicism; it's simply acknowledging the fact that people change a great deal between the ages of, say, 15 and 23. So a person who's perfect for you when you're fifteen could be your polar opposite five years later. That doesn't surprise me. But when older people are together for so long, what changes? Or is it, again, an eye-opening that hadn't happened prior?

I don't know the answer to that either. It has been a long, long day. (I've finally fixed the time at the bottom of this posting-form-thing. Hopefully it'll stay fixed for me.) All I can say is that relationships, not unlike religion, can be both the best and the worst things in the world. And, as is my view on religion, the only way to view a relationship is seriously, but not the be-all-end-all of your life. If something occurs that the relationship, or the religion, that you'd believed in for so long suddenly comes into question, or is suddenly not right for you anymore (by your decision or by another's), the only thing to do is keep your chin up and move on. It will hurt, that's for certain. But there is too much life to be lived, too much to see and do, to dwell on the things that hurt us. I won't say that life is too short, for that, to me, along with being a cliche, comes across as ungrateful for the time we are given. But I will say that I want to enjoy my life as much as I can, and that means not lingering on those things that hurt me.

How's about some good ol' fashioned bitching?

I find it very irritating that in order to post to my blog, I have to leave my blog's screen and go to the main blogger.com screen to sign on, only to kind/sort of go back to my blog to write a new post. What's the point of that? I know, I know... this thing is free. I don't pay a lick for it, so why am I complaining? I'm not complaining, too much, really. I just think it'd be easier for all involved (the site owners as well as their ... customers? ...clients? Whatever; you know what I mean.) I think there'd be fewer different webpages for them to maintain. Just a thought.

I am not sure what it is that's had my mind on the homeless so much lately. The subject came up again when talking to a quasi-coworker of mine who recently transferred to a position in baltimore. She brought up the interesting point of how little human contact they have. I think, for the most part, I've lead a life of ignorance in regards to how hard it must be to be homeless. I've always had a sort of subconscious understanding of the fact that finding food on a daily basis and finding shelter as needed must be difficult. But I've only recently begun to delve deeper into what it must be like. Imagine having no human contact. I can't fathom that; I mean, it's not like I'm in some deeply-vested relationship or anything, but I get hugs from my parents and female friends. I shake hands with my guy friends. There's still touch involved in my life. Homeless people, I suspect, don't get any of that. Hell, most people don't even want to walk near them, let alone touch them. Anyway, this coworker was telling me how she'd given this one homeless guy a hug, and he said it'd made his year. I think that was better than any change she could have given him, you know?

What's worse, I think once you're homeless, unless a miracle happens, you pretty much stay homeless. You're homeless 'cause you can't pay your bills, right? Well, you can't pay any new bills (like rent or a mortgage) until you get a job. (I'm pretty sure most, if not all homeless people are unemployed. I think it goes with the nature of the thing.) Well, how are you going to get a job if you haven't been able to shower for a long time? People eventually start to smell if they go without bathing; there are no exceptions to that rule. What employer is going to hire someone who, because of the circumstances of their life, has no personal hygene? And even if a manager or something could look past that for a day or two, they'd need to work for at least a few weeks before they could get enough money to pay for a hotel room or an apartment, or even to just get paid. A customer's bound to complain before that point. I don't know; the more I think about this topic, the sadder I get. I used to be bitter that we had policemen and firefighters and teachers who were so drastically underpaid compared to the stupid athletes that get multi-million dollar contracts, but even that comparision seems to pale when homeless people are thrown into the mix. How many people could get off the streets if the average professional athlete only accepted a meager $50,000 a year and gave the rest to other people as a sort of annual salary? If a guy makes a million dollars, he could afford to give twenty people (including himself (or herself)) a salary of $50Gs a year. Now, I can't say for certain, 'cause I still live at home, but I'm fairly positive I could live pretty comfortably off of fifty thou a year.

I'm going to briefly go on another somewhat political rant for a second. For starters, let me say that I am happy to live here, in the United States of America. I feel it's a pretty good country, better than at least some of the alternatives, and I feel relatively safe here. HOWEVER. This country is not the fantastic, perfect, solution to the world's problems that a lot of people think it is. Here's an interesting factoid: We are, and have been since the very days of our inception, the world leader in crime. Nice, huh? We destroy and pollute the planet, giving little if any thought to the future consequences of our actions. We act like we're better than anyone else, and we seem to seize up at the idea that we could change something, anything, to be better. If anyone even begins to criticize the country, the almost-bottled response is "then go live somewhere else." (Usually Iraq or Afghanistan or someplace like that is substituted for the "somewhere else," as though that were the only other alternative rather than simply the polar opposite of here.) America was founded because we were told to go somewhere else. We were created with the concept that people rationally discussing varying points of view could come to a single, better point of view. That's not the case anymore. We don't discuss; we argue. Our fearless leaders (and their blindly loyal followers) spend more time assaulting each others' characters than they do debating any kind of issue. America needs to wake up, realize we are not the only culture in the world, realize that we have our own fair share of problems that we could improve, and realize that we are not always right.

That being said, I'm also bothered by those who act like we have no business elsewhere in the world. I don't know if we should be over in Iraq or not; I don't pretend to know. I don't pretend that I will ever have enough untainted, self-earned, self-experienced knowledge to make that decision. However, in light of this past election, I have had it thrown in my face that I've "never had anyone I know over there. I've never lost friends or family because of war." Well guess what. I do have friends in the military, a few of which are over in the middle east, and I'm sure that somewhere along the family line there are kin over there as well. That does not give me the right, though, to say that we don't belong there. My own personal feelings should hold no sway whatsoever about whether we should be in Iraq. I'm not happy that american soldiers are dying. Who would be? It's a sad, sad thing. But american soldiers died in WWI, WWII, and lord knows how many other wars throughout the ages. Does that mean we shouldn't have been involved in those wars? What if we pulled out of WWII because too many american soldiers were dying? How many more would have died if Hitler had succeeded in his conquest?

I think my biggest problem is that americans are a bad combination of spoiled and complacent. Spoiled because we only stand behind our country when it suits us. When we're talking about a topic we're proud of, then we're the most patriotic bunch of bastards that ever was. "YEAH! We're America! We're the best! USA! USA!" However, when there's something that's inconvenient to us, something that personally rubs us the wrong way, any idea of patriotism is thrown out the window, we pay no regard whatsoever to what might be best for the country, and we start bitching about our leaders and undermining their authority and decisions. I didn't vote this past election, and there's an entire blog posting as to why. (Incidentally, although I personally did not feel the need to vote, that doesn't mean I don't recoginize the importance of the freedom to do so. To paraphrase a famous quote, "I may not want to vote, but I will defend to the death your right to do so.") However, if I somehow felt like I had to vote, it would have been for Bush. Because it seems like nobody, american or otherwise, feels we should be over there. But he stuck by his guns. For whatever reason, whatever knowledge he may have the we as the public aren't privy to, he feels like we need to be there. And america should respect that. It's hard to distinguish between being supportive and being a sheep. I don't think we should blindly accept what he does just because he's the president. But I also don't think we should decry it because there's some personal risk for us and it's making us unpopular with the rest of the world. We don't know all the facts, and we never will. I've not met a single person who thinks that our government (or any of them) is completely honest with their public. I haven't met anyone who thinks that saddam wasn't a threat. But going over there and ousting him? "No, that's not our job. Save it for someone else. Let's wait 'til all the other countries are willing to risk their soldiers lives with ours." It'll be more convenient then, right?

I was accused today of (that sounds more inflamatory than it's meant to. Let's say that "someone said that I thought this way") thinking that my voice doesn't count, that my vote doesn't count, that nothing will ever change. That is not entirely the case. I believe change is possible, but I don't think anything I could vote for will bring it around. I have to start on the individual level. I have to convince people to think for themselves, to think logically, and to follow their intuition before anything will change. And they'll have to convince others. And those others will have to convince still more. Will their logic always arive at the same conclusion? Probably not. Will their inner natures always match up? Of course not. But no good will come until we are willing to think for ourselves instead of simply believing one news anchor over the other, or deciding that one political party has a handle on what's best and completely ignoring the other one. I think the notion that we have countries at all is absurd. That we draw arbitrary borders around ourselves and mark our territory like common animals is a pathetic testament to humankind. But it comes from being self-involved and self-important. It comes from "wanting the best for me, and if you get it too, good for you, but it's not my problem." And that is a sad, sad thing. Until Americans, until all people for that matter, can think for themselves, place the needs of others above their own, and be willing to accept that they are not always in the right, then I will continue to lose faith in our species. And it will only be a matter of time before my unfaith is justified by our self-inflicted-genocide.

Being-in-the-world

For a few days now, I've been meaning to make a post on this subject. Quite a few posts ago, when I was prattling on about friendship, I wrote about how my friend Jackson and I are searching for our place in the world Vs. just a place in the world. There is a fundamental error in that statement though, and I'm embarassed that I made it. First to correct the statement, and then to explain the error. Jackson and I are each trying our best to authentically become the future "me" that we each feel we should be. There are choices in our lives that we make, and the choices most often are choices between what do I do Vs. what do "they" do. I, as well as Jackson (and I continue to use him as an example simply because he was the original example) attempt to make my own choices, rather than the one's I'm supposed to make.

The error comes from the fact that it's almost redundant to find my place in the world (or along similarly cliched lines, find myself.) My place in the world is here. I am already in the world. To try to find a place for myself implies that I'm living somewhere outside the world. And, I felt the need to make this correction, because I think a lot of people do feel that way. They see the world as something external to them, and them to it. They believe they are somehow different from the world. We are not. We are born into the system that is this world, and if we are to survive in it, we have no choice but to live from within it. It is not something we know innately, but something we are taught. We are born into the system of traffic lights, of speaking a certain language, of moving and sitting certain ways. We have no choice but to behave in these ways, if we want to survive. How far will you get in life speaking a language you made up? How long will you live if you drive on the left side of the road (in the U.S.) and ignore red lights?

Unfortunately, it is things like this that make it impossible for us to be completely unique; completely original; completely individual. We have no choice about the world we are born into. The very nature of our existence is always, already, being-in-the-world. But from within this framework we can make our own choices. We can drive a gas-guzzling SUV, a high-powered sports car, or an economical compact. We can learn different languages. And we can follow the career paths and life choices that seem to suit us best. But what we can not do, is find our place in the world, or make a place for ourselves in the world. We're already there.

Philosophizing

I'm back on the philosophy trail! Yay! I'm picking up an older paper of mine: The Relativity of Being. It was a paper I did for phenomenology back in college, and even then I had the inclination that it might make a good dissertation paper. Now I'm trying to turn it into just that. Good times, good times. I'm off to bed at the moment. I'll write something more, something longer, later. Have a good night everyone.

More definitions

Someone seemed to want to correct my blog's title. They commented that "Rambling" meant "often or habitually roaming; wandering." However, that was only part of the definition. Here's the full definition.

ADJECTIVE:
1. Often or habitually roaming; wandering.
2. Extended over an irregular area; sprawling: a large rambling country estate.
3. Lengthy and digressive: a rambling speech.

It's the 3rd one that applies here. But thanks for looking out.

Volunteerism

I like volunteering. I don't know what it is. I volunteer teach some early highschool kids a world religions class once a week, and I've been helping out at a local (kind of) community center teaching older people how to use computers. And I feel (moreso in the latter than with the kids) that I'm really doing some good. I feel like I'm actually helping people out, maybe making their lives a little bit easier. And that's a good feeling. I'm not trying to make myself out like Mother Theresa or Ghandi or anything; I'm just saying that helping people yields a good feeling. Yay for helping people!

On a completely different subject, I still hate politics, I hate it when people get all fired-up about politics, and I hate it when people insult my friends. So there.

Laws of Attraction

What is it that makes us attracted to someone? Or, better phrased, why is there attraction at all? One could argue, I suppose, that it's for the survival of the species. But that answer seems to fall short. If attraction exists for the survial of the species, then why are gay people attracted to members of the same sex? Or (for you homophobes out there), why are we attracted to certain members of the opposite sex, rather than all of them? "For the survival of the species" seems to me to be a particularly weak answer when one considers the overprocreation that occurs. All other types of plant and animal life eventually reach an equilibrium with their environment. Humans don't.
A further question would be why aren't we all attracted to the same type of person? Why do some cultures value obesity vs a skinny waistline? Why do some guys prefer redheads to blondes, or some women prefer brown eyes to blue? Is it something in our genes? Again, I'd say probably not, because I think the notion of what makes someone attractive differs even between parents and their children.
Attraction is a nuisance to me. There is so much in this world that I want to see and do and learn, and I know it will take a putzload of time and money; so much so that I will not have enough of either to spend to try to catch the eye of that "special someone." And yet I do. Every time I think I can swear off women, another comes along to catch my eye. And it's not even that I wind up dating these girls, but it's the very fact that I even want to in the first place. Is it an addiction of some sort? Is it akin to smoking, where we know full well that we should stop, and we know we can't afford it, but nevertheless we are compelled to it simply upon seeing a cigarette?
It seems to me that with members of the opposite sex, perhaps moreso than anything else, we lose our free will, in a sense. Let use speeding as a counter-example. I drive fast. Too fast, probably, by even my own standards, but definitely over the legal limit. After my last speeding ticket, I tried to slow down. And I did, for a time, succeed in obeying the limit (much to the presumed irritation of the drivers behind me.) But as time passed, I've gradually sunk back into my old ways, and I have a daily struggle to not speed again. But with women, it seems, there is no "gradually." I can swear them off for the sake of a peaceful, less stressful, more affordable life (at least until I get myself better situated), and turn around not FIVE MINUTES LATER and think "Damn, who's that? She looks good!" It's an impulse! I'd say an instinct, but again, I don't think it is instinctual, or we'd be that way for all and not just for some. I don't know what it is, but it's irritating. I'd like to be able to just turn my attraction off for a few years. Get myself back in school, get my finances squared away and stuff paid off, and then go "Damn, she looks good!"

More on friends

True friendship is allowing your cracked-out crazy-ass polish friend to be alone in your place without any supervision and trust (foolishly) that I, er, he won't break anything, such as a vase. Well, at least it wasn't great gran' ma-ma's, right? Oh, it was? Um... he'll just be leaving now, with no evidence that he was ever here. Other than great gran' ma-ma's broken vase, of course.

Super 7!

Well, today was a landmark day for me. I finally got to drive the Caterham-produced Lotus 7 replica kit car. To be fair, Caterham really has far more ownership of the car than Lotus ever has, given that Caterham's been building and selling them for over 40 years now, whereas Lotus discontinued them after 12 or 13 years. In any event, this car has been my dream car for well over a year now, and I truly believe it will continue to be #1 on my list of must-have cars. (Check it out: www.rmsci.com/picarchive/jpe1.jpg) Anyway, the car weighs, roughly, 1100 lbs. To put things in perspective, that's about 1/3 of what my '03 Accord V6 weighs. It stands about 39" tall (3.5 feet, for those of you not good at math), which is about 15" shorter than the accord, and only 130" long, a solid 35ish" shorter. (Width-wise they're about the same, which is good, because a wide body helps with cornering.) The car I drove today (which I couldn't properly flog, partially because it was already sold and partially 'cause the sun was in my eyes) only had about 140 horses, and it was still at least as quick, if not quicker, than the accord (which gets 0-60 in about 6 seconds.) The top of the line 7 that I'm going to get will get 0-60 in about 3.2 seconds. That's faster than pretty much any production car anywhere on the planet. Now, I respect almost any fast car, be it a suped-up rice rocket or a massive V8-powered muscle car. But I can't wait to pull up next to either of the above, watch them probably sneer or laugh at me (as the 7 clearly isn't a very menacing car), and then just leave them in my dust. And, although not cheap at about $50,000 (for the kit, engine, and tranny), that's a hell of a lot cheaper than slower, bulkier, less exotic cars that are over half a million bucks. It will be mine, oh yes, it will be mine...