Getting Old

So for the past couple of days, I've been completely incapacitated because of what is generally considered to be one of the tougher ordeals a young man or woman can go through - and I'm not talking about teen pregnancy or concentration camps. That's right folks - I've had my wisdom teeth out (gasps of shock and horror.)

So, to be honest, it's got me thinking about a topic that has been on my mind for a while - age. I recently talked with somebody who knows a thing or two about getting old, and he said that the way I described being sedated was a lot like what it is to be old. You don't want to get up. You don't want to do things. You don't feel like being nice. And you want EVERYTHING to be the way you want it to.

But here's something I've been thinking about lately. I'm sure you're familiar with the idea of "embracing our inner child" or some nonsense like that. The idea that if we just act like ourself, and let childhood stay with us, we can be really happy. If you ask me, that's kind of a load of bull. Consider the following. Children, especially "terrible twos" are, as a rule, loud, grumpy, lazy, and want everything their way. They complain when they don't get what they want. They're generally angry that they can't control everything. I don't know about you, but those traits sound awfully familiar. People start out as little boxes of aspirant godhood - they want to be worshiped and adored, and they want their every whim catered to.

Maybe what we need to do is actually embrace our inner geezer. When people get older, and they get over the idea that "everything needs to go my way," they seem to be generally a lot happier. They realize that they're pretty small in a world that's really big, and really young in a world that is really, really old. Realizing that our tiny part of the story of history is just that - a thread in a bigger tapestry - can really make us a lot happier. Our lives aren't always going to be dramatic, or exciting, or even all that fun, and let's be honest - they're aren't going to even be that most of the time. But that's okay. It's better to know that God in heaven is looking down, and saying "your part in that story is more important than you think, even if you can't see it right now, or even control it."

So this is the Social Heretic, signing off for now. Embrace your inner geezer!

What Does That Mean?

So, today I'm going to talk about words, phrases, and more importantly, what we actually mean when we say or write them.

First thing's first, here's an important word for you to know: hermeneutics. Hermeneutics is the study of what words and phrases mean. Whenever you're reading through a book, what you're actually doing, believe it or not, is hermeneutics. Basically, you're reading the words, and trying to figure out just what the author means by them. Pretty straightforward so far, right? The problem is that sometimes, there's a big difference between what a person's saying and what they actually mean. This difference is called "Denotation" (The "officially sanctioned" information in their dialogue) vs. "Connotation" (what they're actually using the sentence to mean.)

One of the best examples of this is in irony. Irony is when what is meant in the context is incongruous with what should actually be meant, or when something happens that is incongruous with what should happen. To use a borrowed example, Getting married to a meteorologist on a rainy day is a little ironic. As a side note, when hipsters say they're doing something ironically, they're actually just being arrogant pricks, but that's beside the point. Actually, come to think of it, no it isn't! I'm writing a blog, and thus might be expected to be a hipster, but instead I'm railing against hipsters. THAT right there is a perfect example of irony, and if I were unaware of it it would be dramatic irony.

Another good example can be found in words that have multiple meanings. My favorite example is the word "love." Love has so many meanings. You can say "I love my spouse," or "I love my parents," or "I love my siblings," or "I love that movie," or "I love this sandwich," or "I love Yeshua bar Yosef of Nazareth." Of course, none of those words "love" in the past sentence actually meant the same thing.

Here's the thing. When people use a powerful word, like love, to mean something else, that can kinda cheapen the word. Take the word "awesome." Way back when, when men were men and so were the women, people used the word awesome solely to describe God. Because, to them, the word actually meant "Inspiring awe." I don't know about you, but most of the things that immediately spring to mind when I think of people saying "awesome!" are surfer dudes and J.J. Abrams movies, not a jaw-dropping display of might and wisdom. The word epic has gone the same way, from meaning "A long story filled with many different adventures, all of which are obstacles in the way of the protagonist's ultimate goal, or an event relating to that story." Avatar: the Last Airbender, Order of the Stick and the Odyssey are epic. Throwing a basketball into the net from three-quarters of the way across the court and that spin-off of 40k with the Baneblades and the Leviathans? Not so epic.

Maybe that's just what we do. People I mean. We start out with stuff that's high quality, and we sort of degrade it over time. People invented the University as a place to train clergy and do science, a place where only the really prodigious went. Today, not only can any old schumck get into a University, 33% of people are expected to go to a university, and of course, the liberal arts degrees which they offer are not really science. People invented the computer to give us a better, faster way to store information, like the next level up from a book. Now, we use them to waste time playing shooter games. And people invented the internet as a better way to share information. Now we (the human race) use the internet to watch fat guys going nuts with lightsabers, and to look at porn. Somebody nice, or good, or at least with good intentions makes something really great, and then everybody else says "hey, let's go do something stupid with it." (Don't get me wrong. Video games, liberal arts degrees, and fat guys with lightsabers are all fine things.)

Maybe, if we start using words to mean what they mean, instead of cheapening them, like a "hamburger" that actually uses a spam patty, it'll be the first step in not cheapening other things. Starting small is always a good place, and talking seems to be the most basic part of human nature. Ciao! (<---Irony?)

The Nature of Things

Science tells us that there are certain laws of nature. The idea is basically that there are certain rules that all of reality follows, that (hopefully) don't change, and help us to understand the way our pretty blue planet and its general neighborhood works. But is laws really the best name for these governing rules?

I don't know about what your thoughts on the subject are, but the way I have it figured, laws, as a rule, are made to be broken. When people make a law, the law is generally either of the form "Do such and such a thing" or of the form "Do not do such and such a thing," and if you fail to comply with that law, there is a punishment of some sort. Now, this is not the case with "physical laws," as we like to call them. Physical laws are of the form "Do this," or "Do not do this," and the things to which these rules apply must comply with the law. They are literally incapable of doing something the law tells them not to, and equally incapable of not doing that which the law tells them to do.

I have heard it said, in a discussion of science in fact, that the thing which separates human beings from mere atoms is that we have "Free Will." It is this will which gives us the ability to either follow or not follow a law. That is to say, atoms must follow laws because they have no free will, and people may choose not to follow them because we have free will. I don't quite agree with this. I would actually go so far as to say that there are fundamental rules which govern human behavior, much like our friends the "physical laws," govern the behavior of particles. What I'm trying to get at here is the idea that people have a sort of "programming." If you do something, it was within the rules that define you as a person. Now, don't take this as me being a fatalist. I'm not saying here, "If I eat your sandwich, I had to eat your sandwich; it was in my nature." But what I am saying is that if I eat your sandwich, I made that decision because that decision was consistent with my sandwich-stealing character. I couldn't have made another decision, but I still have to take the responsibility for making that decision.

Now back to laws. I think we need a different word for them. There are laws, (Do this or be punished) and there are Laws (things which sovereignly govern the behavior of a thing). I think we ought to call Big L laws "Natures," personally. Now, before you squint, or raise your eyebrows, think about the way we use the word Nature. We typically mean it to use "plants and animals and stuff like that." What nature actually means is "a characteristic of something." In other words, if we go back to my sandwich example, I have the characteristic of stealing sandwiches. But is that thing really a part of my Nature? I don't think so. I have the ability to not steal, after all. It was in the rules that defined me as a person for the moment, but I can change those rules. So, (and I apologize for using the word nature in the paragraph before this one) it's not really part of my Nature to be a sandwich thief. However, it is within my Nature to be capable of sandwich-thievery. I think the most important part of Human Nature is that it governs the way we change, and I think the same can be said for most Natures. After all, you can say that an electron is here or there (actually you can't - that's quantum physics, and I'm not going to get into that here) and its Nature governs when it changes from being here to being there.

I'm probably going to talk about Natures a lot if you decide to come back for more. I think that they're probably the most important thing in the world, because if you can understand the Nature of a thing - why it changes, how it changes - then you understand the thing itself. I don't know about you, but I find that if I have a problem, the best way to solve it is to understand what's causing it. Here's hoping you enjoyed this enough to stick around.