Bravery

This is my favorite definition of bravery: self-control when the temptation is fear.

When we have self-control, it is of course the control not to give into a temptation. When the temptation is laziness, the self-control is diligence. When the temptation is panic, the self-control is composure. And, when it is fear, the self-control is bravery.

I suppose this is less romantic than some definitions. The above is the most accurate, succinct, and lucid definition I know. To make up for its less than romantic flavor, I shall give you a gift. No, it is not a lavender and romance flavored milkshake; it is the most romantic definition I know:

Bravery consists not of being unafraid but of being afraid and going forth despite your fear.

Hmm…that could use some more figurative ribbons…anybody who wants to dress it up is welcome. As for myself, I’m afraid I’m out of such ribbons because I’m using everything I can to tie up figurative loose ends. 🙂

Feeling: Introverted and Extroverted

Introverted Feeling=Fi; Extroverted Feeling=Fe. The terrible and cryptic abbreviations have arrived!

Fi is the third function on the INTJ’s hierarchy and distinct from its counterpart Fe in a variety of ways. (I wrote that sentence using the formula for essay sentence writing that I learned in school. EVERYBODY, BE PROUD OF ME! I’m such a good learner.)  In a nutshell, it’s responsible for giving people a sense of identity, feeling at peace with themselves, and creating values. Fe, on the other hand, compels people to seek harmony, Feel what others involved in a situation Feel, and observe social standards.

Hmm…I’m not too fond of nutshells. I’m often told that I am such stuff as comes from inside a nutshell. Allow me to do away with the matter of nuts and their shells by elaborating:

Fe causes happiness because of others’ happiness. When Mr. Fe walks into a room full of happy people, he doesn’t care why they’re happy. He’s happy too! He gets lost in the moment and bubbles with courteous, expressive emotion. (Augh! Somebody tell me how to do this!) When Mr. Fe complains, and then hears the room echo his complaints, he gets even angrier.

In subtle contrast, Fi causes happiness about others’ happiness. (Of course, any emotion can be subbed in for happiness, but I’ve decided to attempt the reckless feat of positive thinking. After all, pessimism wasn’t leading anywhere anyway.) When Mr. Fi walks into a room full of happy people, he will likely not be touched. Let’s say he’s a staunch cupcake collector, because that’s an extremely reasonable hypothetical hobby. If Mr. Fi walks into a room of people talking about various ways to rid their showrooms of flies and fungi, he will rejoice! Not only is he thrilled to talk shop, as could be expected, but he is happy to hear that other people enjoy the hobby with which he identifies. However, if he walks into a room full of happy people discussing something absurd and unrelatable (like the virtues of boy bands, say) he’ll Feel nothing at all. If he starts complaining, and everyone agrees with him, he’ll find himself happy that others share his opinions.

It’s often said that INTJ’s are heartless. This generalization, as is characteristic of generalizations, has very little truth to it. Only INTJ’s with underdeveloped Introverted Feeling are heartless. The reason they often come across as so is threefold:

1. It’s kind of obnoxious to hemorrhage the notorious feels all over random people, or so INTJ’s tend to believe.

2. Fi does not compel its user to outwardly express emotion. Therefore, INTJ’s have little incentive to allow anyone outside themselves a view of their rich internal landscape.

3. Fi empathy is very different from Fe empathy.

And that’s where I’m going to end it! Ha! Ha! Bwahahahahahahahah! I shall leave thee on the edge of thy seat, poised in agony, starving for the knowledge that I shall impart next time and not an instant before. You are at my mercy!

In all seriousness, sorry folks, technical difficulties. Please comment if anything needs clarification.

I Return!

Hello everyone. I haven’t posted in an eternity and a day, but I’d like you all to know, I haven’t given up on this blog thing. 🙂 I’ve been faced with a number of difficulties. Firstly, my computer decided to dedicate itself temporarily to metaphysical research. It began conducting research on itself entirely without my permission and for days returned only when convenient. Since it was conducting research on the afterlife (which is to say it died) this made it immensely difficult to make any headway in the blogosphere. Also, I had to socialize with human beings, which was far more taxing than my usual AI correspondence. However, worry not! I have returned to once again fill the internet with more superfluous information and random musings. (If anybody has any idea about something better that I could fill it with, I’d be happy to fill it with that.) Hello again! I shall once more be updating daily.

Death by Centrifuge

Sublime Curiosity

WARNING! Although it won’t contain any gory pictures, this post is going to contain some pretty gory details of what might happen to the human body under high acceleration. Children and people who don’t like reading about such things should probably skip this one. You have been warned.

In my last post, I talked a bit about gee forces. Gee forces are a handy way to measure acceleration. Right now, you and I and (almost) every other human are experiencing somewhere around 1 gee of head-to-foot acceleration due to the Earth’s gravity. Anyone who happens to be at the top of Mt. Everest is experiencing 0.999 gees. The overgrown amoebas at the bottom of the Challenger deep are experiencing 1.005 gees.

But human beings are exposed to greater gee forces than this all the time. For instance, the astronauts aboard Apollo 11 experienced up to 4 gees during launch…

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The Good in Life

Things were never good, but there have always been good things.

Suffering Receipt

“You’ll pay for that!” is so often the cry of the offended.

Wow, I wish that that were literally true. I wish that we literally paid for our offenses, and indeed all mistakes, with some sort of tangible currency. Then we could be given a receipt stating exactly how much we had suffered. Then, when we (or somebody nosy) doubted our internal strength, we could pull the receipts out and say “Here, I suffered this much; I’m at least this strong.”

Oh, the conveniences of living in a fantasy world!

Theory of Sad Comedians

“The funniest people are so sad!”

A friend told me that a long time ago. I don’t remember the circumstance, but I’ll never forget the words. Immediately Douglas Adams, a favorite comedian who drank himself to death, came to mind–definitely not archetypal happy person behavior. We may also think of the recently passed away Robin Williams, an actor who played in many a comedy.

Why is this so? It seems so paradoxical. If the comedian’s not laughing, you’d have to be a bit of a sadist to laugh at his jokes, it seems. Yet the comedians always are laughing. Funny people don’t make you sad! But on further reflection, one can see that Mr. Adams, Mr. Williams, and company are a rather sad lot. Why is that?

Allow me to answer the question with a question: what makes funny things funny? It’s unanswered, but let me direct your attention to the many theories of humor that attempt to explain the matter. (These are recognized theories, not like my unofficial and far more spectacular, but admittedly less popularly accepted, theories.) Many of these theories of humor are absurdity-centric. That is to say, it’s believed that absurdity is a crucial part of humor.

So comedians must understand absurdity, at least to an extent. That does seem consistent with observation…the class clown is rarely a super-conformist Sensing Judger. Let’s see what the negative repercussions of dealing with absurdity on a regular basis might be.

To illustrate, I’m going to introduce you to my friend, Bob the comedian. He lives in a culture that indoctrinates all its members to believe that the purpose of life is to count to 42. Bob has a great sense of humor and is good at cracking jokes. We’ll examine what happens to him after he’s cracked jokes for a while.

1. He starts questioning the norm.

Blind love of normality has its upsides. Bob knows that, but who doesn’t do a little musing now and then? Jokes bubble up from the subconscious, so it might not be entirely correct to say that he knows about the role of absurdity in humor. However, dealing with so much of it even on a subconscious level keeps the idea of absurdity fresh in his mind. With so many mad thoughts zipping around in his head, it’s hard not to notice how badly they match the norm. He therefore meditates on that. This leads Bob to step two.

2. Bob notices that the norm isn’t fundamentally different from his mad ideas.

This part is the crux of the theory: The norm is no different from absurdity–it is absurdity. Now, whether this be true or not (I believe it largely is), it’s a conclusion that many comedians come to. Not all of them do so, and not all of them say it, but spend enough time in the humor community and you will see the quotes that boil down to the whole world’s crazy. For example, was it a perfectly ordinary book where the Cheshire Cat declared that “We’re all mad here”?

3. After realizing the absurdity of the norm, a void appears that needs filling.

Acceptance of the normal value system is quite convenient. It’s normal in Bob’s culture to believe that you’re supposed to count to forty-two. Nobody in that culture has to worry about the purpose of life! Nice! Unfortunately, Bob now has to worry, because he sees that that’s absurdity just like a lot of other things, not necessarily a unique right answer like everybody else thinks.

4. Not all comedians are able to fill the void.

Bob doesn’t know his purpose in life anymore. He thought he knew; he thought he was supposed to count to forty-two and would then have fulfilled his purpose. But now he sees that that’s not it. What is? He can’t tell. He spends years trying to tell, but he can’t. It’s naturally depressing not to know one’s purpose in life. Bob becomes depressed, of course.

Comedians are sad because they must deal in the absurd. Dealing with the absurd causes them to realize how absurd the norm is, even though the norm answers questions that not every comedian can answer for himself. It’s only natural feel distress in the face of unanswered questions.

Please comment if you have anything to share, agree or disagree. If you’d like to hear any other theories, please let me know. 🙂 I’d be happy to oblige!

Pluto and Charon: Holy @#$%! we’re almost THERE!

Wow! Getting closer and closer to omniscience, humanity is. Sure, this is a small step, but a picture of Pluto (like everything) falls under the umbrella of ‘everything’ so I think it counts as a step toward that ultimate goal. (What? That’s not what everybody else is planning on doing with their lives?)

Sublime Curiosity

You forget how fast the New Horizons Pluto probe is actually moving (13 times faster than a rifle bullet, relative to Pluto; 15 times, relative to the Sun) until you realize how much our pictures of Pluto and its moons have improved just in the last few days. In a way, it’s awesome for impatient people like me. In another way, it’s kind of a shame. New Horizons isn’t going to get the chance to go into a nice orbit and map that weird spot that looks like a pimple, or the big whale-shaped patch, or those things that look maddeningly like dark rivers. But hey, it’s better than no pictures of Pluto at all, and I take off every hat I’ve ever worn to the New Horizons team in celebration.

Unluckily for me, I’ll be at work during the actual flyby (although I may sneak in a couple extra…

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Favorite Expressions of Melancholy

Hey all. Here are some more quotes that I’ve quite enjoyed. I thought I’d share them as well as my take on them.

1) I never smile in spite of sadness. I smile because of sadness, since it’s kind of beautiful, isn’t it? Anyway, what am I supposed to do, cry? I only cry when things are good–crying for joy. If I cried for sadness, I would cry, well, all the time.

This one comes from a mismash of INTJ forum posts. I’ve organized them, but they all come from the same site. As to its content, there are of course sorts of sadness that are extremely un-beautiful. (Most of these stem from guilt, I surmise.) However, if we assume that the sadness of which they speak is the melancholy to which INTJ’s are prone, I believe it’s quite accurate. Indeed I think it describes a very INTJ way of handling sadness for which we get little acclaim.

2) “I love you; I love you! I’ll always love you,” I said as if I’d live that long.

This one’s not terribly original; indeed, I’ve heard this in so many places I’m not sure to which one to attribute it. Regardless, I like the way it illustrates both the impermanence of our stay on this lovely planet called Earth, and our desire to ignore said impermanence. Indeed, I’ve noticed that people tend to treat interpersonal love in general as if it were immune to the utter transience of existence.

3)We’re interchangeable. Every human could substitute for every other, and who would notice? Only us.

This is an expansion of a Chinese song’s title. Actually, it’s how I misread the translation. Echoing the above, it pokes a little hole in the interpersonal-relationships-transcend-our-impermanence line of thought. It does it in a slightly different way; it points out that it’s only us here on Earth, not all of us affirming each other, as if the human race is imbued with a self-affirming that is more worthy than the individual just reaffirming himself. (I’ve always found this an odd line of thought. Perhaps it comes from Feeling?) I suppose it’s a rather existential quote, and while I wouldn’t call myself an existentialist, I find it one of the less absurd philosophies in an absurd world.

4) Anybody can make you smile. Anybody with a sharp enough stick can make you cry. But it takes somebody special to make you smile with tears in your eyes.

A slightly juiced up rendition of an anonymous internet meme, I’m quite fond of the simple, true, almost-fresh observation. (You know, almost-fresh like cookies whose warmth you can still feel, but whose edges have begun to harden already.) I’m not sure if the ways in which some people make you smile are good ways, but I don’t doubt that these ways exist for everyone none the less. And I have smiled with tears in my eyes. It was…quite the experience.

Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed this. Quotes of your own? Feel free to contribute; I shall gladly muse on them for you if you so wish.

Texting Abbreviations

I know texting abbreviations are supposed to be common knowledge, but I really missed the haywagon or something. I’ve never understood them and likely never will. Whenever someone uses a texting abbreviation with me in conversation, I reply with YCJSLTACIA. (You Can’t Just Stick Letters Together And Call It Abbreviation)