What to save...

There is a dark thought that enters into the mind occasionally. The truth of the matter is that although we are all equal, we are not all equally useful. In various thought experiments, we all have our own notions of what and who needs to be preserved. I recall a group of 30 young men whom would readily cut all funding to the National Endowment for the Arts. Various debates have gone on recently regarding where are priorities lie.

As with anything, nothing is cut and dry. There is simply no boon or drain on society. There is a strange ecosystem. The man or woman on the street will effect many lives during their time here. The birth and development of Einstein, Gandhi, Dr. King, the Kennedy empire, etc. were all a sequence of events involving billions of people. We could not plan it. If we removed things from the equation, the end result may not be the same. The "good" and the "bad" all combine to create what we know.

Our planet is not a dead rock. Although it can have awful consequences, geological activity is necessary. If were able to stop it, the result would be catastrophic. If we tried to remove all the things we considered unnecessary we would cease to grow. Imagine humans that were uninspired by art. Imagine a world where we shut off the lights. Imagine a world without recorded information. Imagine a world where progress in all its forms is halted.

There was such a world. We did leave it. It was a world where any random individual with a weapon could take over at any time. It was a world where meeting another group of people most often meant bloodshed. It was a world where only the strong survived. It was a world where we removed anything we didn't agree with.

It was a rocky path and perhaps there were other ways to get here, but we are here and we got here by deciding that we all have the right to be here. That all things have an importance.

So, at the moment when the dark thought crosses your mind. At the moment when you imagine fighting for resources. At the moment you look on a fellow human as negatively effecting your life, imagine the pinpoint connections in the web. If we look past some odd conception of fairness, we can see that we are changed by those negative effects. These changes can be positive. They can inspire confrontation. They can inspire their opposite. Even if you find no redeeming value in an individual, you must imagine how their life might have effected others.

And so, we have to save it all. We can't predict how it turns out. The resources are not nearly as limited as we pretend. We can save it all. Perhaps, that's the problem. We don't want to save it all. We see an opportunity to negatively impact our "enemies" or "competitors".

We are still so young. We have no enemies. We have no competitors. Our gain and loss is our own. We are simply humans interacting with one another. Shows of strength to gain status is all that is left to us. We have become masterful at making these shows of strength as bloody as possible, but that is all they are.

And so, flex if you wish. Grunt and throw things. But know that we have already won. That you are my brother or my sister. I might not see you as my equal, but I respect you. We all have our role. Forgive me my dark thoughts. Feel free to have your own.

4 going on 5...

I've said dozens of times that life begins at 30. It's fun being 4 years old.

But, the memories of a distorted youth are mine. Some of those memories can only be viewed through broken glass. A young man full of self-loathing, full of fear. He finds the world without joy and does not see a place for him in it. That young man cannot imagine living into his 30's. That young man cannot comprehend my existence. That young man wasn't completely wrong.

You see, the quintessential elements of that individual are gone. People that knew him may feel differently, but a single quality does not define a person. He was, in a word, deconstructed.

But he gave me a gift. With his memoirs complete, his story told, we can learn from his lack of foresight.

In my estimation, humans change... a lot. Our desire for stability is in part due to our inability to achieve it. The universe we live in changes constantly. The planet we abide is an orchestration of movement. We ourselves change ourselves and our environment at break-neck speed. We cannot stop moving. We cannot stop changing. Movement is part of existence in our reality.

So, I have to wonder... How many versions of this individual will there be? How old will he be when he stops moving? Which one will get to spend the most time moving? Does each one have a mid-life crisis? Does each one grow and learn or will some backslide?

Don't ask me... I'm only 4.

What I'm not...

I had an opportunity recently to visit the other side of IT. For those of you unfamiliar, there are 2 phrases I'd like to share: cable monkey and code monkey.

Like all labels, they do not fit nicely in all situations, but I am a code monkey. I have very little interest in hardware. The case actually stays on my computer and I generally assume that any error is software related.

What I am definitely not is Tech Support.

I tip my hat to those in Tech Support. They work with unstable systems. I have sometimes referenced the "Ghost in the Machine". In truth, an operating system has so many lines of code, so much error checking, etc. that identifying a problem is often impossible for an end user. The restart phonemonon is a result of this. If you clear session data and go back to ordinary operating parameters, everything should work fine. The jumped out error causing code somewhere in some sub-module just needs a fresh call.

The unfortunate result is that good tech support people are magicians. Diagnosis is nearly impossible. Indirect causality is usually as close as one gets. I've heard of machines that needed to be flipped upside-down to run. The strange set of experiences that lead to discovering this cannot be taught. It's simply illogical.

Whereas I would spend hours looking for the switch, soldered connection, capacitor, chip, etc. that was loose, a tech support guru simply flips it over, starts it up, and returns it to the user while my synapses are still running down a list of possible causes.

And so, I am thankful that my little baliwick is limited to 0's and 1's. I thank those that are in the trenches, fighting systems too large to be debugged effectively.

I apologize to all those who require support and are faced with the likes of me. You should probably just restart. It will probably fix the problem. I can't tell you why it will fix the problem, but it will. I will then sit back and be infuriated that my lovely world of 0's and 1's has been invaded my goblins, ghosts, and wizards.