Religious Tolerance

What if you’d only ever seen Alec Guinness from one angle? And what if he was the only human you had ever seen or heard of? All you would know of him is exactly what you saw in front of you. Standing behind him, you would quite reasonably assert that he had two distinct ears. Meanwhile your friend standing just a few feet away to the left of Sir Guinness is insisting that there is only one ear. One ear? That’s preposterous! There’s clearly two ears right there. Is your friend even looking at the same Alec Guinness? And whatever a mouth is supposed to be, it’s obviously pure fantasy. You’re looking at Alec Guinness from head to toe right now, and there’s nothing that matches that description. What on earth is a nose? And eyes?! These jokers can’t even agree on how many of these “eyes” Alec Guinness is supposed to have. Your friend says it’s one, and that girl over there is claiming he has two of ‘em. If they’re going to try and pull a fast one over on you, they should at least get their story straight.

Update: This post was originally titled “Organized Religion”, but upon reflection I realized that tolerance is what I was actually thinking about when I wrote this.

Inspirational/Creepy Poetry

I was once you.
You were once me.
We’ll soon be each other again. Wait and see.

Cultural Creative

I took a quiz entitled What is Your World View? and here are the results.

You scored as Cultural Creative. Cultural Creatives are probably the newest group to enter this realm. You are a modern thinker who tends to shy away from organized religion but still feels as if there is something greater than ourselves. You are very spiritual, even if you are not religious. Life has a meaning outside of the rational.

Cultural Creative		100%
Idealist		81%
Postmodernist		75%
Existentialist		63%
Modernist		44%
Materialist		31%
Romanticist		25%
Fundamentalist		13%

So then I wondered what in the world a cultural creative is supposed to be. I did a search on google. I went to the first result and took that site’s quiz to determine if I am a cultural creative. Apparently if you respond in the affirmative to at least 10 of the 18 questions, you might be a redneck cultural creative. (I got 4.)

100% just doesn’t mean what it used to.

…With Responsibility and Justice For All

I discovered what I think is a very neat idea today. It’s a vision of a sister monument to the Statue of Liberty that would exist on the west coast. Take a look at the Statue of Responsibility.

I have to admit that I was a little shocked by the price tag for this project ($300 million). I don’t know the exact figures, but it seems like that might be more than the price tag of all our existing national monuments combined. One difference, I suppose, is it will be entirely dependent on private funding. (The site includes and an address for donations.) The $300 million figure also include all the marketing and publicity costs they plan at start up, as opposed to just construction.

The more I think about it, the more I think the budget is unreasonable. That’s a shame because I think the concept of dedicating a monument to responsibility as a complement to our monument to liberty is a very cool idea.

Single Sentence Movie Review: An Inconvenient Truth

Unless you have the necessary expertise to evaluate the data yourself, you are trusting someone else’s interpretation of the information on global warming no matter which side you take; though after seeing this movie I’m slightly more inclined to trust Al Gore’s interpretation.

Grupsters: The New Adulthood

Because of the low barrier to entry to being a writer on the Internet, I guess I had just gotten used to amateur writing (including my own).  What a wake up call it was to read an article that benefits from an obviously well-trained and practiced author.  Here’s more on the pathology of the new yuppies.

There’s that tricky word again: passion. What’s with the Grups and passion? It’s all anyone wants to talk about. Passionate parents, passionate workers, passionate listeners to the new album by Wolf Parade… Under the skin of the iPods and the $400 ripped jeans, this is the spine of the Grup ethos: passion, and the fear of losing it.

If You Dedicate Yourself To an Idea, There’s Nothing You Can’t Achieve

Case in point.

Waxing Philosophical with World of Warcraft

I've realized something important about myself and how I relate to the rest of the world in my journeys through Azeroth. The biggest revelations have centered around "grouping". Grouping involves loosely confederating with the other rugged individualists who play the game to acheive objectives that are too overwhelming for one person to handle alone. "Soloing" is when you disdain the shackles of this organization and seek glory as a party of one.

With a few notable exceptions, I prefer to solo.  In addition to identifying the phenomenon, the World of Warcraft As Life^TM metaphor hints at some possible explanations.  In most of the groups of which I have been a part, there is one or two players who simply do not understand how to work well in a group.  Perhaps they attract the attention of monsters that are better left alone.  Maybe they derive misguided pleasure in laying claim to magical weapons and armor that would be far more useful for another member of the party.  Some don't commit any serious flubs, but make inconsiderate comments.  These actions bring the whole experience down and make me anxious to dive back into the wilderness with only my trusty axe between me and a legion of fantastic beasts and penny-pinching goblins.

It's not that different from how I feel in my day-to-day life.  Working with others brings together a mix of people with different competencies that may or may not complement each other.  It's frustrating enough to endure a teammate that doesn't offer anything useful to the collective, and even more draining to be that person.  Working in groups can feel like an incredible burden.

For years I've concluded that this means I am an introverted person who prefers not to deal with other people.  (Ah, the dangers of self-diagnosis.)  I'm beginning to suspect that this only comes close to explaining the situation.  Imagine someone who concluded that a fear of drowning should be addressed by refusing to bathe.  The solution does address the issue, but it's messy.

I do actually crave and enjoy social interaction with other people.  To my great relief, I have come to believe that I can even thrive working with other people towards a common goal.  (That's good or the next 60 years or so were going to be very taxing.)

What I require is some part of the whole for which I am responsible.  I need complete sovereignty over my objective and clear metrics for evaluating the degree of my success.  I don't want to share my task with anyone else.  It's mine.  Mine, I say!  (Well, I'll share with Katy, but she's earned that right.  You haven't.)

I have no problem brainstorming and planning with other people.  I can handle the challenge of integrating my work with other pieces to assemble a Voltron that can vanquish the larger problem.  Under the umbrella of that great success, though, I need to nurture a discrete personal victory.

In the real world that is possible, although it seldom happens by accident.  That distinction might be where the World of Warcraft As Life^TM metaphor falls apart.