Friday, June 24, 2016

Entry 338: Oops... I Forgot to Post Something Last Week

I'm back after an unintentional one-week hiatus.  Earlier this week -- Tuesday, maybe -- I thought to myself, "Hey, I forgot to write a blog entry last weekend."  The problem is that I often write on Saturday, and last Saturday I was busy from the time I woke up to the time I went to sleep.  We took the kids to an amusement park in Pennsylvania called Dutch Wonderland.  Then, when we got back, I hustled off to a friend's housewarming party.

Dutch Wonderland was pretty fun.  It's on the lower side of the amusement park scale (in every way except for the cost: $75 bucks a person -- oof!).  The rides are small and dingy and the attractions are kinda... meh.  But this is actually good when you have little kids, because it means they can do most the rides -- nothing does crazy loops or has huge drops or anything like that -- and it means the lines are manageable.  Plus little kids don't really care about shoddiness.  We went to an exhibit with big replicated dinosaurs, and Lil' S1 thought it was the greatest thing ever, even though the models looked kinda cheap.  Also they have a water park.  Lil' S1 went absolutely nuts in it.  I could barely keep up with him.

[I found this photo online.  Judging by the cars it must be at least 40 years old.]

The party was good also.  My friend A just bought a place in a neighborhood of D.C. called Eckington, which I had literally never heard of before Saturday.  She's a single, corporate attorney, with no kids, so you can imagine how different it was for me walking into her place from what I'm used to.  It was the first party I've been to that didn't have goody bags in, like... I don't even know how long.  In looking at how she lives, I thought to myself, "You know, I bet if I never had a family, I would still be pretty happy."  Don't get me wrong, nothing is more important to me than S and my boys, and I would be devastated if I lost them, but in an alternate reality, in which I decide not to go that route, I think I would still find my life rewarding and pleasurable -- just in a radically different way.

Is this a bad thing to think or to say out loud?  It feels taboo to write down such thoughts, but it's not a bad thing; it's a good thing.  I mean, look at the alternative.  What if, through bad luck, I just never met somebody I wanted to marry?  Or what if I did meet this person and she didn't want kids?  Or if I had defective sperm?  What if, for whatever reason, a family just never happened for me?  Should I just be miserable for my entire life?  That seems absolutely absurd.  So I'm standing by it: Going it alone would not (and was not) my first choice, but if it happened, I'd be just fine.  I'd be in better shape; I'd get more sleep; I'd go to the movies more; I'd play more Scrabble;and I'd travel more.  But, of course, I wouldn't have pictures like the ones below, so, you know...


[This is more the type of party I'm used to attending.  Lil' S1 is hanging back; he can't be too into it having previously declared that he hates princesses.]

And maybe it doesn't even matter anyway because the fate of everybody and everything in the universe was completely determined at the moment of the big bang.  Maybe we are all just bits of matter interacting in extremely complex ways.  But maybe it is a completely predictable system if there was someway to fully comprehend all the rules and all the input data.  Maybe I'm typing this right now, not because I'm making an active choice, but because all the particles in the universe have been interacting in a way that have led to this outcome and only this outcome.

It's something I've thinking about since I started reading A Brief History of Time. (I have since stopped reading it.  I can't hang with quantum theory.)  It might sound like "whoa, man, you're blowing my mind!" stoner blather, but I think there is actually something more profound there.  Think about it: If you, like me, believe that we are products of the physical universe, and not imbued with some sort of "otherworldliness" by a creator, then we should completely obey the laws of the physical universe.  This includes our minds.  So perhaps what we think of as free will is not actually free will, but particles in our brains interacting in a completely predetermine way to give us the illusion of free will (all our thoughts and actions would be completely predictable if we fully comprehended the totality of the universe).  I mean, if a "path" was started at the big bang -- why would humans have a special power that allows us to alter this path?  We don't think the sun can choose to alter its destiny.  A comet can't decide to streak in a different direction.  Why are humans different?  We certainly are self-aware in a way that a star or a comet (seemingly) is not, but that just means we understand the concept of free-will; it doesn't mean we have free will.  Human beings represent not even a speck in the known universe.  Isn't it the height of egoism to think that we have special agency in controlling the future that nothing else seems to have?

I don't know.  And it's difficult, because assuming we don't have free will has a whole raft of terrible implications.  For example, it means the holocaust was inevitable.  It also can be used to justify any terrible action by anybody.  If you think about it, a predetermined universe is the ultimate caste system: it means, in the most literal sense, that some people were born to be happy and some people were born to suffer, and there is nothing we can do about it.  This is highly unsatisfying, to say the least.

I guess this is one reason why people are religious.  Belief in a creator is a very convenient way to side-step this entire enigma: God created the universe and its laws; God created us; God gave us free will.  Bam!  Done.  But then if that's the case then who created God?  The Coast Guard?

[The famous "Pale Blue Dot" photograph of the Earth.]

Anyway...

In other news: Brexit!  That one really sneaked up on us, huh?  I listen to and read a lot of news, and I don't recall hearing much of anything about Brexit before this week.  Then it was like, "Oh, by the way, England is voting on Thursday about whether or not to leave the E.U., and it's, like, a huge fucking deal, so pay attention!"  I'm not going to pretend like I have any inkling about the ramifications this will have on us here in the U.S. (nobody really does), but I don't think it's a good thing.  It seems to have been driven largely by xenophobia and scapegoating "others," which is unfortunate.  A lot of people have made comparisons between the pro-Brexit movement and the rise of Donald Trump, and they seem apt to me.  In fact, Trump is in the U.K. right now, Tweeting about how great Brexit is.  Of course, he's in Scotland, which overwhelming voted to stay, but, hey, Trump has never been bother by major inconsistencies before -- why would he start now?

One thing I take solace in is that Trump is in a foreign country right now instead of running his presidential campaign here in the U.S.  As Jonathan Chait, has been continually pointing out, Trump's campaign has been a garbage fire thus far.  The bad news is that a garbage fire could still beat Hillary Clinton in a general election.  It is not likely, but it is not massively unlikely either.  The latest odds have Hillary at around 75%.  So if you take four pieces of paper and put them in a hat, one of them represents a Donald Trump presidency.  Scary thought, huh?

In other other news, my throat is still bothering me.  It doesn't even feel like it's getting better at all.  I went back to the ENT on Thursday, and he had another look inside, a longer look this time, and he just doesn't see anything out of the ordinary.  As I said before, this is both reassuring and troubling.  If it was a serious issue, presumably he would see signs of that, so in that way I'm glad everything looks good.  On the other hand something is wrong -- I'm experiencing the symptoms -- and it is very unsatisfying to be told, "sorry, I don't know what to do about it."  The newest "fix" is to take Prilosec for a month (acid reflux is a possible, though unlikely, cause) and hope it goes away.  That's it.  That's where I'm at: The Waiting Game.  And as everybody knows, The Waiting Game sucks.  It's much better to play Hungry, Hungry Hippos.

Until next time...

PS -- Can you find the two hidden The Simpsons references in this entry?  The answers can be found here and here.

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