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Think twice.
A lot of punitive policy in the theory of law is meant as deterrence. That is, it’s meant to make would-be criminals “think twice” about their actions. Some things, such as the “tough on crime” stance most North American politicians seem to have adopted, fall into this category. The assumption is that a rational human being will see that the negative consequence of the policy far outweighs whatever selfish positive consequence may come out of it, and therefore they will stay away from committing said action.
But when you really think about it, humans are notoriously bad at making rational decisions. Sure, we can create rational, logical theories, and formulate armchair hypotheses about what would happen if such and such a situation were to occur. But when it really boils down to what happens in real life, you can count on humans to make all the wrong choices.
It takes time to make a rational decision. To think things through and choose a single best course of action, based on reasoning and logic and all that jazz. And even then the decision can be fraught with stress and worry.
Now, imagine that everything you did was decided rationally. Imagine that every word you spoke, even a simple “hello”, was backed with careful thought and deliberate consideration. You can’t do it, right? Such a world cannot possibly exist, not in the real-time, here-and-now world that we live in today. Even criminal acts, acts that normal people would consider to be premeditated, cold-blooded attacks, can be done irrationally.
So why is it that the law expects us to be completely rational in our decisions? Why not instead create a system of justice that does not focus on deterrence, but on prevention. Prevention ensures that nobody would ever want to commit a crime in the first place, let alone having to undergo the rational decision-weighing that supposedly goes on when committing a crime.
Or maybe we should be thinking twice about that.
So many people
Have you ever felt like you were being part of the problem instead of being part of the solution?
Or have you perhaps felt like you were being part of the solution, but instead were part of the problem instead?
It’s a habit with people to easily get frustrated with somebody who claims that they have a problem, to just tell them that they have to “man the hell up” and leave it at that. Maybe throw in a “you’re not the center of the world” comment here and there. Sure, you have your own problems, but trying to dismiss them like that is, again, the completely wrong way to go about it if you actually care about the person. Sure, it’s a fact that nobody is really the center of anybody’s world but their own, but when giving this kind of treatment to somebody, you are implying that somebody would have to be the center of the world in order for you to give any attention to them.
But instead, people will say these things in the pretense of caring about the person enough to actually talk to them. “Appreciate the little attention I’m giving you because I could have just not said anything and let you wallow in your misery, which would have been worse.” Yes, appreciate the callous and insensitive babble that I’m giving to you because I want you to feel even worse than you already are because that’s somehow going to make you better. Relish the fact that I’m giving you all this “good for you” BS that won’t really help you but makes me feel good about myself because I’ve somehow given somebody their just deserts for being such a whiny bitch about their problems. Thank me for knocking you when you’re down so that it’s even harder to get up and you’ll whine even more making yourself an easier target for people like me.
In the end, trying to tell people to stop being so selfish is an act of selfishness on your own part. Why do you feel the need to tell people to stop being so selfish? When did your problems become objectively more important than anybody else’s?
This isn’t to say that you must necessarily go out of your way to help somebody at all costs (although doing so is a sign of friendship of the utmost strength, especially when it is mutual). I mean, everybody does have their limits, and while the plaintiff can never be the center of everybody’s world, they certainly don’t have to be the center of yours. But when you really just can’t help somebody, or even just don’t want to, don’t try to pin the blame on the person with a problem because they haven’t fixed it by the time you’ve run out of help for them. It’s not your fault, but it’s not theirs either. If they do try to blame it on you, only then do you have something to admonish them about.
And if you genuinely believe that the problem is something you shouldn’t be caring about, don’t say that out loud. Have some basic respect for a fellow human being and tell them you can’t help, sorry. It’s both true and unoffensive, and gets you out of helping that person. Or, if they’re not talking to you specifically, say nothing at all. You don’t care about their problem; why not show it by not saying that you don’t care?
So many people that I’ve seen have this problem. But so few people have discussed this higher-order problem. Most people are content with just comparing right versus wrong on the initial problem, without thought for the people who are talking about the problem. If that’s the way they like it, I’ll leave them to it.
Dealing with criticism
For some reason, criticism is a really touchy subject for me. It may just be that I haven’t really gotten much of it, and whatever I have gotten is mostly in the form of polite suggestions (In other words, I’ve been relatively lucky on those ends). Unless I’m in an Internet debate, I haven’t really had much real vitriol thrown at me unless it’s somebody who’s being a complete jerk and insulting me as a person. So obviously, my view of said topic is quite tainted with innocence.
But in this case, I’m engaged in meta-criticism – reading other people’s articles about why and how you should accept criticism and evaluating the contents therein. They always tell you that, whenever you see a harsh, nasty review, to pick out the parts that can help you and throw out the rest.
And in this case, most people just stop there. They say, “You have to pick out the parts that will help you.” They never really explain how, as if it’s some sort of shared secret among successful people. “It’s hard, but you’ve got to do it.” It’s hard because nobody explains how to make it easier! Does the responsibility not also fall on the critic to show how work can be improved?
They also almost never say anything about whether it’s right or not for that person to be so bitter and harsh, or whether that person really has the right to be doing so. Oh sure, maybe because “it’s the Internet; people are douche bags”, and “it doesn’t matter whether it’s right or not, you’ve got to take it for what it is”. I’ll just go ahead and say it now – it is wrong. It is wrong for people to verbally attack you or be rude when giving criticisms. There’s a difference between pointing out problems and shoving problems into people’s faces. It happens, but that doesn’t make it any less wrong.
And then, of course, there’s the other side of the coin – how to throw the gunk out, and not let it affect you. May I just say right now that anybody who posts an article that disparages people for not discarding negativity is doing it completely wrong. By telling somebody with seething negativity that they are weak for discarding negativity is almost tautologically only going to make the problem worse. Instead, tell people all the good things that discarding negativity does bring, including better feelings. Don’t mind what those old hags are shouting about your work; they’re a bunch of dorks who have nothing better to do. Simply stop caring about those people on the Internet and they will go away.
But how does one do this without losing all consideration for opposing opinions? How can one take any criticism when all of it is drenched in hateful negativity?
It’s quite a hard question, one that I still don’t have the answer to, because most people have been kind to me in their criticisms. I suppose when I do get some hateful bashing of any of my works, we’ll see how it goes down from there.
Writing utensils
Somehow, I’ve become much more particular to the kind of writing utensils I use.
While most people are comfortable with just any cheap old Bic, I’m not that person anymore. Ever since I started buying slightly more expensive pens (such as a ten-pack of uni·ball 0.5′s), I’ve never been able to go back to the cheap old ballpoints. They’re simply too hard to write with, and I can’t get any precision out of them. They also constantly run dry, meaning that I have to scribble a few times before I can get the ink flowing again. I’m also insistent on using black ink. Blue just doesn’t work for me.
While searching around for a good pen, I came across a wide variety of options. I didn’t realize that people took their writing and drawing so seriously until I decided to do so myself. I knew about ballpoints (but not much, as I found out later) and gel pens and fine liners, but nothing about pen nib thickness and acid-free ink and things like that.
At the current moment, I have four pens that I use for writing – all of them gel, and four different thicknesses: 0.3, 0.4, 0.5, and 0.7 mm. They cost me a total of over $13, but I’m very satisfied with the purchase. I use these pens in case I ever need to draw diagrams that require different sizes of writing; then I can use pens of a different thickness to make side notes. Also, they sometimes help in drawing finer details of some of my inked sketches. Now not all my strokes have to be the same width, even on paper.
I’m also considering getting, say, a set of felt tip pens that I can use for writing, because those come in a much wider range of sizes. There are even some that are as thin as 0.03 mm! However, they’re also bloody expensive – a single pen from the set that I’m looking at (the Copic Multiliner SP line) costs about $7.50, and there are ten of them!
I’ve also looked at fountain pens, but the way I write, I keep getting ink on my fingers when I use one of those. I guess it’ll come with practice. That being said, many people consider fountain pens to be archaic and upper-class. I know a friend at university who uses one, and claims that it’s much easier to write with, and cheaper in the long run simply because ink refills don’t actually cost much. It’s definitely easy to write with, although maybe not as easy as my uni·ball Signo. Also, the ink bleeds on certain types of paper, which I don’t like. Writing with fountain pens supposedly trains you to write with a lighter touch, which is something that I already do anyway. My hands are not exactly the strongest, so I can’t stand writing with a cheap ballpoint for very long. Too tiring on the hands. Especially if it’s something like a three-hour exam. You try writing for three hours using a cheap ballpoint. Not going to happen.
I suppose eventually I’ll move to fountain pens, but only after I find a type of paper that fountain pens don’t bleed on.
Now, I move on to pencils. So far, I’ve still only been using cheap 0.5′s. While pencil lead (or at least HB lead and harder) is easily erasable and thus their quality isn’t quite as important, I’m still looking into buying a high-quality drafting pencil that I can use for sketching. However, when I look at the online stores, all the good-quality pencils are 9 or 10 dollars at least – some of them can go for as much as $60.
Because I still do pencil sketches (and probably will continue doing so in the foreseeable future), these are also relatively important to me because I want to be able to draw lines of varying thicknesses.
When it comes to pencils, there are two things I can look at, which is even more complicated than pens – both the thickness of the lead and the hardness. I’ll probably still be using HB (or 2B) for pretty much everything (pressing more lightly or firmly depending on how I need it), so hardness isn’t too much of a concern.
However, pen tip thickness (i.e. lead thickness) is, just as with ink pens. Even pencil sketches should have some variation in their width, although perhaps not the basic posture sketch.
Most people only know about 0.5 and 0.7 lead, and perhaps 0.9 if they’ve been in a Staples® Business Depot and seen it being sold in packs of 144. It turns out that just like pens, pencils come in 0.3 and 0.9 varieties. However, most of them are 0.5 and 0.7 simply because those are the varieties that most people use.
Because pencils use lead, there are also other concerns that need to be dealt with, such as lead security (how easily will the lead snap? How wobbly is the tip?) and how much of the lead will be used. I’ve used dollar-store mechanical pencils before, and they are terrible at this stuff. A lead can be broken in maybe 4 or 5 places at once, and when it comes out of the pencil, it cannot be used at all. High-quality pencils do not have this problem, and if they do, it’s a testimony to the bad quality of said pencil. There are some technologies out there that will automatically rotate the lead every time you lift it, causing the tip of the lead to stay sharp at all times. I find this quite a good feature, and might seek it out in certain pencils.
I may also experiment with buying 2H and 2B lead, to see whether it makes any difference when pencil shading.
Enough ranting, though. If anybody has tips or suggestions, feel free to give them to me.
[Repost from my DeviantArt blog.]
Conflict of Interest
Have you ever been in a situation where two people are telling you opposing things, and actively telling you to reject the opinion of whoever else is giving you the other opinion? Have you ever wanted to bring them together in a debate and talk it out so that you can see what happens, but both parties refuse because one, they both think the other person is crazy and stupid and will not listen to reason, and two, they both believe you shouldn’t even be talking to the other person anyway?
Have you ever been stuck in the above situation, not knowing whom to listen to and which side to take?
I sure have.
Am I an artist or a scientist?
Lately, I’ve been pondering this question.
I’ve been doing a lot more drawing lately. And a lot of math homework, but that’s beside the point.
I’ve also been relatively repulsed by the sciences as of late, at least within the context of university. For example, I swore to myself that I would not take any science courses during my first year at university (and I actually haven’t done so). And this despite the fact that I still like reading about the latest advances in science, if only for the consequences that they have on the real world.
The only problem is that this disenfranchisement with science itself completely clashes with any inclinations I’ve had in the past. Before this, I loved the sciences – learning about the way chemicals interacted with each other, the way that light and sound worked, the way that the human body dealt with certain things. By the end of high school, though, I was sick of it in the way that most people are sick of mathematics.
I’ve also started listening to music again, wanting to compose a bit, and bending pitches of the songs at will in order to listen to them in a different way. (To anyone who’s wondering why I’d do it, I recommend you do it yourself. It can sometimes sound like you’re listening to a completely remixed version of the song, and other times it will help with your sense of melody and harmony.)
This apparent shift toward artistry may just be a trick of my mind, but I’ve always wanted to be able to create my own stuff. It may just be that I’m getting more competent at it now.
Gun regulation
I’ve been reading up a bit on the debate on gun laws, and how people want to scrap gun restrictions, claiming that guns do not kill people; people kill people.
I’ve also heard stories of places like Texas in which pretty much nobody leaves home without a gun and everybody is trained in using one for self-defence. I’d be concerned, though, about the kind of culture that unrestricted gun ownership could produce.
You may think you have self-control, but with a gun, more people feel enabled to assert themselves because they can be dangerous if they want to. After all, if you tick me off, I can just shoot you. Certainly there are people who would not abuse this confidence (and pray to God that they never have to use the gun they carry around), but there are definitely people who would, and relatively meek people like me would feel completely mortified in a culture where people carried guns around everywhere, or if they had to carry one themselves as insurance. What kind of culture is it where you need to carry a gun with you to feel safe because everybody else has one? Certainly not one I’d like to live in.
A firearm is a powerful thing, and should be treated and used with respect. There should be very harsh punishments for firearm misuse, beyond the penalties that would apply for the same offence without a firearm. Shooting a young man because he touched your daughter in a way you thought was inappropriate is not a proper way to use firearms, and should not be legal. Pointing a gun at somebody because they said something that offended you to your core is not appropriate either. Now, you may argue that these things only happen in movies and fiction and not in real life; let’s make it stay that way if it is. You may say guns should be used for self-defence as well as sport; let’s make sure they’re not used for anything else.
Aaaaaaand…
I just realized that I completely missed out on making a blog post for the new year. Silly me.
In Xanadu did Kublai Khan…
I’ve never been one for lucid dreaming (at least not before), but the memory of this dream between when my alarm rang at 8:30 and I woke up again at about 9:45 was so vivid and storylike (and ontologically consistent) that I just felt compelled to write it down.
The first I remember of it, I was in a grocery shop, heading towards the back where there was a medical clinic, because I needed to get a shot. A doctor welcomed me in through the door, and I walked in to find myself in a movie theatre. Here there were a bunch more people, although for some reason I didn’t feel uneasy about getting a shot in a movie theatre; probably because it was a dream.
A man came up, and gave me a shot. I turned away because I’m still uneasy about injections; I didn’t feel a prick going in, but the region that got the injection started to feel a bit sore. I worried if they’d actually given me the right shot.
Then, he asked me if I wanted to put cotton over the injection site. I said okay, and so he took a cotton swab, as well as a suspicious yellow rubbery object, and placed it over the injection site. He then pressed it down, which only smarted a bit.
Suddenly, I saw a flash of light, and all my hearing went crazy for a split second. The person giving me the injection said something like, “Give it some time to adjust to your ears,” and then placed some cotton over my ears as well.
Then, a voice started running through my ears, although it was still a bit distorted and muffled, but louder than I’d have expected due to the cotton. I don’t remember what it said anymore, but it was announcing whatever device had started affecting my senses. As the voice spoke, I saw a few holographic control panels shimmer in and out of view.
Then, the movie screen showed up, showing usages of the technology. The only one I remember now was using it to recognize somebody’s face and somehow searching the Internet to attach a name to it, using the holographic displays that had shimmered in and out of view to do so. But they all had to do with making your life more convenient.
Meanwhile, as the demos kept running, I heard the person beside me say, “No thanks; I’d rather not be part of the hive.” At this point, my mind was clouded by virtue of being in the dream state, so I never really asked him. Meanwhile, the convenience applications were getting more absurd, and the person beside me said, “Detach myself. The hive knows nothing; I know nothing.”
It was then that I realized what he was talking about. I didn’t know anything else about the device besides what they were telling me; for all I knew, they had put a backdoor in in which they could control my senses and therefore my mind. I raised my hand to ask a question, and it was the hand that I had been injected with. But nobody responded.
It was then that I woke up.
I realize now that we were involuntary, unwitting beta testers of the said technology, and am now drawing the parallel to technologies like this that could actually be on the market in 20 or 30 years. It also gave me some ideas for a new sort of technology I could use in my fiction, as well as some idea of the initial effects of the treatment.
