From: anderson@macc.wisc.edu (Jess Anderson)
Subject: Re: Introduction
Organization: Madison Academic Computing Center, UW-Madison
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 92 12:04:31 GMT


In article <1992Aug18.041053.26226@wam.umd.edu>
lovegod@wam.umd.edu (Donald Agarrat) writes:

I take it this is a followup to Arne's rather acid reply to
your "let's introduce ourselves" posting.

>Life is fragile and precious.

Since I agree and since I suppose most people do, it seems
to me the point is people often behave as though life was
humdrum, mundane, boring, or even a threat.  I don't thnk
there's much to do except point out that such miseries are
self-made, most of the time, and hope people will wake
themselves up into something a little better.

>Take the time and really look at the people around you.
>Assholes and saints alike.  Do you see some of yourself in
>both?

Anyone who answers "no" to that is blind to the obvious,
I think.

>Haven't you ever had a good friend who wasn't at the start?

Many.  You know, some of what you're talking about here
points, I think, to two main drifts associated with getting
older.  One is, the more you see and know about first-hand,
the less you're surprised by it all, so there's the prospect
of becoming rather jaded and cynical.  The other is,
accumulated experience shows you more and more about how
different and intriguing people are, which is a never-ending
source of enrichment.

These things tend to coexist and maybe even to inhere in one
and the same person.  As (if the census is giving us the
straight poop) I seem to be the outlyer on the age axis, it
seems to me we *ourselves* embody this principle, or at
least I do.  If today I met the person I was at 21, I very
much doubt I'd like him.  Today's young people don't even
know what attitude is, by comparison.  We were all just
*too* grand.  I was coming on 40 before I got over myself in
that regard, I expect.

But it has softened me, made me far more tolerant than I was
(maybe not enough, but that's a different story) to live on
a while longer, to get a stronger contrast between what I am
and what I was.  Generalizing is always risky, but I suppose
this does generalize, to some degree.

>Have you ever felt like you have nowhere else to go?

I think this is a key point, one that is often overlooked.
Some people overlook it most of the time.

>I thought soc.motss was in one of its facets a gathering
>place of ideas and people who share something in common.

True enough, Donald, but I would worry that anyone who took
it to be only that, or even mostly that, would be signing up
for quite a lot of buffeting around.

The world is always more varied than we think.  For some
people, this is a playground for private peacock displays of
all manner of things.  For some it's a confessional.  For
some it's a therapy.  For some it's a meeting place for
extending their understandings of self and others.  And so
forth.

So it's no *one* thing, it's many many things.  And I
wouldn't necessarily say that some buffeting around is all
that bad, either, except that if it hits the wrong person at
the wrong time it can be awfully destructive.  But life is
full of risks too, and bumping into things is usually
instructive in one way or another.

>Life is such an adventure.  There are all sorts of people to
>meet, know, and love.

If you can preserve that rather sweet, possibly naive, but
always useful notion into your old age, my friend, you can
gain much from it.  I think it beats the alternatives by a
mile.

>Those twenty-five years old friendships don't just pop up
>indiscriminately ...  they are the culmination of first
>getting to know a person and then years of bullshit, hurt,
>fun, anxiety, trust, and love.  They don't just happen.

Ah, but that's a long-term view, of course.  You're very
young to know this truth so well, so hats off to you!  The
ones that last get more and more important, I've discovered.

>The only way the problems of the world will cease to exist
>is if we all try to be a little more friendly, share a
>little more love, and have a little bit more understanding
>of one another.

I think the focus should rest more on the process there than
on the goal, because the more I learn about the problems of
the world, the more impossible they seem.  In youth, we
think it's much easier than it is, typically starting out
"if only ...." But as time goes on, the really amazing
complexity of everything eventually overwhelms all the
obvious solutions, and in the end, there's 100 questions for
every one answer.  All in all, I think what we *try* ends up
being the main thing.  It may amount to moving a mountain
with teaspoons, but at least we all *have* teaspoons.  And
some have shovels.

>Think of the reasons you omit people from your personal,
>private circle.  You never know who may need something you
>have to give.  Will you give it freely or grudgingly?

I think there's a kind of natural progression.  As infants,
we're *all* need, we just take and give nothing.  Later, we
expand, forever if we're lucky.  At some point, assuming our
needs are sufficiently met to afford the luxury of this
idea, we realize that what we are is an inexhaustible
resource, and that no matter how much good stuff we hand
over, there will always be enough for us ourselves.  For one
thing, other people *very* richly return what you give them
(the percentage of exceptions to this is astonishingly
small).  Maybe even more importantly, the more you give,
the more you *have* to give.

The economy of the heart is anything but capitalistic, but
it is an economy nonetheless, a flux of credits and debits,
its most amazing feature being that you can give it all away
without any risk of bankruptcy.  Beats cash all to hell (as
long as you have *some* cash!  :-).

<> Evil doesn't exist outside of people's desires to do bad
<> things.  It's simply a label for a person's characteristics.
<> -- Rob Bernardo (rob@mtdiablo.Concord.CA.US)

-- 
Jess Anderson <> Madison Academic Computing Center <> University of Wisconsin
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