Hard Wired

At the end of a long political argument, a young democrat said to me, “Wouldn’t you ever consider voting against your own self-interest?”  And I replied “Of course not. That would be absurd. The whole point of voting is picking a leader who I believe has my best interests at heart.”

On another occasion, I watched the character Denny Crane of Boston Legal commenting on being conservative. He said “We get it. We’re wrong. We don’t CARE!!!”  Somehow, his frustration really resonates with me.  For a long time now, democrats have been making me feel guilty for believing what I believe and for voting the way I vote.  I'm becomming more than just a little disgusted with the whole political system.

Just what makes us so different? What is it at the core that separates Republican from Democrat?  As I remember that argument with the young democrat, I think I probably am more selfish that I ought to be.  But that’s hard-wired into me from birth, right? Self preservation is the number one priority.  But if self preservation is number one, what is number two?

Developing a desire for group preservation was probably the most important factor in the evolution of society, early villages and language. If you look at averages, cities are usually the stronghold of the liberal / Democrats while the suburbs and rural communities are the center of conservative / Republican thinking. Group preservation may be hard wired into us genetically as strongly as self preservation.  On the other hand, if there weren’t a lot of folks who still preferred to live away from the village, the plagues might have ended us as a species. So maybe it is by design that about half of us see group preservation as the most important thing and the other half of us see self preservation as the most important thing. Maybe that diversity is why we succeeded as a species.  

Could it really be that simple? That placing a priority on group preservation over self preservation, or the other way around, is all that separates Democrat from Republican and even Communist from Capitalist?

The Blogger’s Creed:

For quite some time, I have considered writing a blog. But I’ve hesitated because of how the concept was first described to me. “A blog”, it was explained, “is a blah, blah, blah, blah log. You write about every tiny piece of minutia in your life.”  As I browse many of the blogs on Blogspot.com, that seems to be the case. 

In stark contrast to the main stream, I believe that just because something can be blogged about, doesn’t mean it should be blogged about.  For instance, I have no intention of revealing either the color or the girth of today’s stool.  And I hope you have no desire to read about such.  

This led me to an interesting idea:  The Blogger’s Creed.  Yes, rather than offering a simple commitment to warn you of BS in my blogs, I thought, why not publish a commitment, a creed, a battle cry for other bloggers to rally ‘round as well?

So here it is:

I promise to post nothing if nothing is all I have to say. I will treat my readers with the respect.  Just because something is mildly interesting to me does not mean that the entire internet needs to know about it. I will only publish interesting and thought provoking ideas.  I will omit minutia whenever possible. Although BS is sometimes necessary for comedic effect, I will clearly mark BS whenever it appears in my blog entries.

So there you have it; my first pass at “The Blogger’s Creed”.  Now if I can just get the rest of the internet to go along with it.

 By the way; it was beige. 

Why I Love - Hate South Park

You might be thinking South Park has just done an episode poking fun at my favorite pastime or my particular foible, but it's just not true. This Love/Hate relationship goes all the way back to the beginning: The very first episode that I saw. It was truly horrible. Jerky movement. Bad lip-sync. Nearly unintelligible voices. And yet, it was funny. It communicated.

I realized that if South Park was acceptable, that the bar was finally so low I could produce my own show. What was there to stop me? Apparently there is no actual minimum quality anymore. So I started looking into the practical side of it. I started looking at different editing and animation programs.  That was easy, being the crack PC & Mac user that I am. (Not a crack user... a crack PC user). In about a week, I was ready.

There I sat staring into my computer screen, but nothing happened. Nothing. I couldn't even pull a blank sheet of paper out, crumple it up, and toss it into the waste basket. I had nothing. And then I realized something truly significant. I was a talentless hack. No... Well, that's true but that's not what I learned on that day.

It's all about story. Without a story, you have nothing to say. With a good story, the medium is nearly irrelevant. So forgetting what any particular episode of South Park is about, the series in general is about laughing at all of us and reminding us that story is king. That there are no real limitations if you have creativity.
(Insert closing theme for the original Willy Wonka movie here)