Living with People

Living with people is hard. People can be very needy creatures and hard to satisfy. It can be a scary thought. So many people don't even want to deal with it; they don't even want to try; it's just not worth it. Your stuff can get broken and stolen, you can be kept up all night or woken up early in the morning, you can grow to hate each other and begin slashing each others tires and stalking the other's family members and send death-threats and commit suicide.
Hopefully your not crazy enough to go too far down that list.

I do know a lot of people who do start down that list, in fact most people start down it, nearly everyone starts down it; but most stop at about 'broken stuff' and move out never to see or speak to the other person again. Many begin to get that "Once bitten Twice scarred" mentality and trust less and less and less though their life; they become more and more and more cynical. And then they say that they have 'lived' they have a lot of 'expiriance' and that is why they are cynical and full of hate. But really, they have chosen to make their life difficult in a lot of ways. They could have made it easier on themselves, though perhaps not great simply because they had rotten fortune. And this is another topic but why do we only consider evil expireances to be true experiances? Someone who hasn't been in countless despicable situations is considerd "sheltered" and "unexperianced".... Hm.

Anyway, here is a scenario:

A person has a home, but needs a new roommate to be able to pay the bills. So she advertises for a roommate and even specifies some personal characteristics she would like to see in this said individual. She eventually finds a roommate and everything is going just peachy. Or, as peachy as they allow it to get.

One day Roommate "A" (the original renter) decides to go on a vacation for a week so she packs up her stuff and leaves. While she is gone, Roommate "B" (the new person) decides she wants to use the internet. She discovers that the network they have set up for the home is based on "A"s computer, it has to be on and logged in for the internet to work, her's is the network administering computer. So "B" calls "A" And asks for her password so that she can use the internet. "A" refuses to give her the password to her computer. She has financial information and important work on her computer, so this is perfectly understandable, but "B" is still understandably pissed off. She should have the right to the internet, right? But "A" has a right to her privacy.

When "A" returns from her vacation, things are no longer peachy. There is a great amount of tension. But instead of working on it, finding a solution so that this doesn't happen in the future and attempting to become 'peachy' again, they each fume. Things get worse, cops are involved, things break, things are stolen, people move away and the world is filled with more hate than it once had.

All because they would not compromise. I don't think that Roommate "A" ever stated that her new roommate had to be a doormat and a second-class tenant of the house, but she probably didn't say that Roommate "B" would be given more governing power.

Equality is something that people seem to have an uncommon difficulty with. Maybe that's why we are so bad at math. Really, living with people doesn't have to be quite as hard as you imagine or make it out to be if you don't insist on being the monarch of the house. Social living is where democracy and communism really shine. I have had my fair share of roommate troubles, I had one who totalled an antique, old-fashioned, square box, 1985 NES; and he broke the neck on my guitar (I was able to fix this); and busted down my door. This does not prevent me from trusting future roommates, just him. I still buy community food where ever I live. Anything I buy, the other tenants are allowed to eat.

And I have not had as much difficulty as most. Perhaps there is a larger correlation.

Compromise, essentially, is a very important skill. Living with People gives you a lot of practice. And besides, whats really the worst that's going to happen if you are rational? You'll lose a few things. But that's just part of life's journey. Learn a little and try not to be too cynical. There aren't a lot of people who wake up in the morning and say: "I think I'm going to be mean and evil. Yep. That sounds like fun." No one is intentionally evil, though they are often selfish and commit concious acts of meanness and crime.

Anyway, all in all, it's probably worth it.

Motivation

I made some headway on this topic since my "Procrastination Piece 1" piece... Talking with my cousin gives good philosophy sometimes, though most of this was through my own conflicting motivations.

That's the theory, "Conflicting Motivations". Perhaps one of the reasons we don't end up doing a lot, procrastinating on things we like is we have conflicting motivations. Each motivation has something it wants to do and something it doesn't want to do and a few things it'll tolerate. But if you have 5 or 6 of these, you won't get anything done. Instead of the negative things cancelling out, the postives do. Each motivation says "Do this!"; but the others says "No". A second suggests "We'll do This!"; the first says "No we wont! I want to do this"; a third says "Lets do That." the other two say "Over my dead body!". And so on. They just don't agree. And then, though they all agree you should do something, you don't end up doing anything. And life sucks.

I wonder if this can be applied to any other facet of human life........

My other thought on 'motivation' (which is actually a pretty standard theory of mine as it really applies to Everything in reality) is that lack of motivation, which leads to procrastination, is probably derived differently every time. Nothing is completely like another thing ever, really. So each time you lack motivation, there are probably a slightly different variety of factors that lead to it than last time. A few days ago, my primary problem was conflicting motivations. I wanted to write a bit on my epic, but I didn't want to turn on a computer. And I didn't want to work on 'The Rest of the Crap' (which is all on notebook paper) because I wanted to work in Semfen.
Just not on a Fucking computer. I need to get a Mac.

Reality?

I like to get a good splattering of deep (or deep seeming, which is a
common thing to do in order to be percevied as intellegent and wise without
actually having to be so) 'thoughts' (advertized as 'Buddist Thought of the
Day') in my little 'Reader Box' so that I can Procrastinate better (see previous
post) and a little while ago I got the following series of Thoughts:

"We imagine that waking-life is real and that dream-life is unreal, but there does not seem to be any evidence for this belief. Chuang Tzu, in the third century B.C., put it in an amusing way; having dreamed that he was a butterfly flitting from flower to flower, he stated that he was now wondering whether he was then a man dreaming he was a butterfly or whether he was now a butterfly dreaming he was a man." - Wei Wu Wei Fingers Pointing Toward the Moon
"Keep it simple; as simple as posible, but no simpler." - Albert Einstein
"It is necessary to understand that I Am, In order that I may know that I Am Not, So that, at last, I may realize that, I Am Not, therefore I Am." - Ask the Awakened by Wei Wu Wei

I found these to be very similar and related. Though, perhaps, the order
ought to be changed (this is chonological) with Einstein at the bottom. As always, he sticks out a little. He is possibly one of the only truly wise people this planet has ever seen. The little Fucker....

Thinking about the possibilities of reality is a lot of fun. It can be fun to contimplate whether reality exists or not, if we exist or not, "I think therefor I am"... Whatever. It is an old philosophical musing that will never lose its flavor; for like God, it can neither be proven or disproven (unless he comes down and points it out to us him(her)self). But if he did, there would still be this question. Does reality exist? Does it not? Am I really a butterfly mearly dreaming I am a man playing on a god-forsaken computer? (I hope I'm the butterfly having a nightmare... How I hope hope hope hope....)

Whatever the fuck that last one means, Einstein said it right when he said "Keep it simple". For though it can be fun to muse with this, the actuallity of the problem is that it doesn't really matter. If we don't exist, I don't really care. It doesn't matter a whit. For whether we do or not should not influence our behaviour. We should probably still behave as though things are real. For in all honisty, it probably is. Ackams Razor: "The simpilist solution is the best". Go with it.