Greatness: An Anachronism?

Technology. It's an amazing thing. No doubt about that. The fact that I can write this now, push a little 'post this' button, and then have this fed to you in little over a few seconds is a pretty amazing thing.

The fact that people across the world can tell what their polar neighbor is up to, via satellite image, is pretty cool.

And having all the information of the world [or at least 99.99% of it] at my fingertips, that's pretty nice.

But let me get a little Ludditic on you. I know, step back. Dave's going to say something NEGATIVE about technology? How could this be possible! Say it ain't so!?!?!?!

I've just been thinking: does all this greatness of the connection mean that greatness in individuals isn't in the vogue anymore? Is individual greatness, quite literally, an anachronism?

When I say this, I mean this mainly in regards to myself. In regards to the life I'm living right now. I consume information like, well, a fat kid eats candy. A good two hours of my day must be spend, on average, reading some sort of RSS feed of people like me [well, they tend to be a heck of a lot better than me....] ranting about life, living, science, Buddhism, religion, philosophy, technology, penises, etc. I get that nice full feeling. But then I realize that at the end of day, I haven't learned anything. Okay, well, I've learned plenty of things. But I don't know anything new.

And the rest of the day I spend looking at e-mail, wondering if maybe, just maybe, someone's left a new comment on my blog, or a new Facebook wall post, or any other vicarious form of communication which I'm sad to admit I look forward to maybe a little too much. E-mail has all the elements necessary for addiction (intermittent reward, daily necessity [because in honesty, sometimes you really DO need to check your e-mail], social tolerance, etc.)

The moments in between I might write a decent blog post, like [hopefully] this one. I might read a really good book. I might listen to some music. And I might go out for a nice walk / run / other outing.

All and all, a fulfilling life. But I think that might be the problem. It's a fulFILLing life. Not a FULL life. Not something worth talking about. But does life have to be something mentionable? Isn't that just for movie stars and pro athletes?

It makes me think of the show House. Gregory House is an amazing Doctor. And yet he spends a good part of his day watching Soap Operas or other miscellaneous shows. But he's earned that 'crap' time because he spends the rest of hist time making brilliant life / death decisions.

Maybe that's my problem. I haven't earned the crap time yet. I assume that crap time comes with the territory [with being an adult, white, middle-class male in a capitalist, well-off country]. When on the contrary I should get those things as a reward.

I shouldn't award myself for mediocrity. That just doesn't make sense.

But yet I think I'll just fall back into mediocrity again. I don't know how many times I will fall for this trap. Probably until I wake up one morning and realize that 'tomorrow' never came, but old age did.

Damn. Memento mori.

But how, in our digitized, antiseptic, antitruth society?

A Sunday Experiment, A Modal Rollercoaster

Well, I haven't written anything in a while. You know, busy-ness and all that jazz.

And I'm feeling in the mood to write something of some sort of philosophical value. Maybe. I don't really know yet. We'll have to see where this goes.

But first, let me talk briefly about a little experiment I did this weekend. Well, I didn't really plan out the experiment. It just kind of happened. I don't know if counts as an experiment then, but I'll just say that it does! Yeah, that's right, I'm a science major!

Anyway, to the experiment. I had a busy week last week. A lot of tests and such [which I'm glad to say ended up with me outrunning those that couldn't outrun the bear]. A lot of studying. More or less non-stop studying. I know, just imagine. Who does that at SCHOOL?!?!? But I went all Old School "only reading [my] AP textbook" on those tests.

When I got to Friday, I decided I wouldn't do ANYTHING productive that weekend. I mean NOTHING. No homework, no exercise, no writing, no thinking. A little reading, but that was mostly leisure stuff [you know, like the history of chemistry], not really counting towards progress.

Let me tell you, when I got to Sunday night, I felt like CRAP. With a capital K. Throughout the afternoon on Sunday, I went through mini-bouts of depression [by depression here, I mean I just felt like complete crap, didn't feel like doing anything, just wanted to sleep, didn't really see the point in anything, that sort of stuff]. Eventually, when I got to about 11 that night, I got sick and tired of being sick and tired. I went out for a nice little run [oh yeah, I also forgot to mention that as part of this experiment, I didn't eat anything of any health-redeeming value other than two oranges]. I felt like crap during the run, with lots of little mini , um, burps? But I got through the run, and towards the end I felt great. If I can run with nothing in my stomach but simple sugars and chocolate, then damn can I run when I'm fueled by fruits and veggies!

By the time I got back to my dorm that night, I was back to my normal productive [productive in the sense of doing school work and reading for entertainment / infotainment]. The crappy mood lifted. I felt like a million bucks.

And here I am, Monday evening, wondering what that little experiment tells me? What have I really learned? What do the data points [the depression, the mood swings, the feeling of physical sickness, the headaches, the lethargy, etc.] say?

Well, first off, they tell me to have a new respect for people that choose to live that way. Whether or not they actually 'choice' to live that way being another question entirely. But I can't imagine waking up every single day and living a life like that. I suppose that the person eventually becomes numb to the emptiness since they don't realize that there's something "other" that they could be feeling. But I mean, God, that would be horrible.

I mean, I don't believe in some ultimate purpose to life. Something out there that determines what our lives should be like. But I do know that living a life like that, without any sort of meaning, is not the way to go. If we have to make our own meaning, I would highly advise NOT choosing the path of lazy nihilism. Not a fun choice.

And I guess ultimately it shows me that I still have this "doer" attitude. This belief that if I'm not doing something [useful], my life is being wasted. Okay, yeah, normal people call that sort of person anal retentive. Or OCD. Or a Type A personality. But it works for me.

And when you think about it, everyone is trying to do something all the time to fill the hole in their soul [ho, hum, he... what a great alliteration...]. To get somewhere. Even the ultimate non-doers, mystics, go out of their way to get to the point that they will actually and literally get out of their own way.

Most people just take the path towards optimal pleasure. I learned this Sunday that pleasure doesn't cut it.

Nothing really new here. But it never hurts to remind myself.