When you consider the notion that humans are still evolving to this day, you can only naturally be expected to wonder what we will evolve into in the future. We’ll almost certainly be prettier, maybe we won’t be as strong, one hopes we will be smarter, etc.

But the thing is, that’s not how evolution works. Species do not turn into something new. If they did, there wouldn’t still be monkeys in the same geographical areas as humans, as creationists are so wont to point out.

The rise of a new species is marked by the point at which a one subset of a species can no longer interbreed with another. It is a split, not a switch. Parallel, not serial. In our case, such an event results in two separate species of human. This has happened several times in the past, and historically, one species has eventually died out in favor of the other (neanderthals are a fairly recent example, having survived alongside our own species until about 25,000 years ago).

Do you see the scary bit here? The same thing is going to happen to us someday. We will not evolve. Instead, a smarter, more attractive version of us will become reproductively incompatible with us, and we will either die out or become geologically sequestered from the new homo supersapiens like our prehensile-tailed ancestors.

Trippy, eh?

Ever get the feeling that this is already happening?

Philosophizing Add Comment »

I’m motivated this week. My choice of the word week should be telling.

Over the last few years, I’ve noticed that I go through an oscillating pattern between big motivation and crippling, procrastinatory depression, with a short and elusive middle-ground usually indicating that I’m slipping into the depression phase.  This happens somewhere between three and four times per year. Let’s say sqrt(12) times, that way the interval between the meltdowns in months and the number of meltdowns per year have the same scalar component.

I don’t think I’m bipolar, the frequency of the cycle is too low. I think the issue is more that I have a nasty procrastination habit that is only defeated by unreasonable optimism. Sort of how alcoholism is the only disease that people are allowed to get mad at you for, procrastination is the only psychological disorder I can think of that brings out the most non-constructive help in myself and those around me. “Stop procrastinating! Don’t be lazy, just fucking do it,” and so on. Words like that were driven so deeply into my head as a kid that I don’t even need anyone to say them in order to hear them anymore.

And that’s what causes the the meltdowns: I slack off for at least two days in a row (I’m surprisingly capable of recovering from only a single day of procrastinating as long as I focus on not letting it go any farther), which leads me to beat myself down about my procrastination issues, which provokes my depression issues, which leads to more procrastination, et bloody cetera, until the meltdown. After a week or so of being capable of little more than staring, something will inspire me and I’ll whip back into shape, rearrange my environment with a fresh set of motivational hacks, and go hyper-productive for several weeks until the first time I miss two days of productivity in a row again.

This wasn’t that big of a problem years ago, but ever since the goddesses of cohabitation blessed my home with someone to drag down with me, it’s become an issue. My fiancee deserves better, is what I’m saying, so, somehow, I need to fix this cycle. More precisely, I want to. But how do I keep myself riding on the momentum of my post-crash motivation once it starts? Or is that even the answer? Is the problem more that I still punish myself for procrastinating?

I’m not really looking for advice here, mostly because no one seems to be able to do any better than, “Why don’t you just not procrastinate?” I blame puritan America, “the only advanced economy that does not guarantee its workers any paid vacation or holidays,” and its idea of a “work ethic” for that. It’s just so remarkable that this society has trained itself to believe that doing work is the ethical thing to do. If you’re not working, you’re bad! If you’re not making your disproportionate contribution of blood and sweat in exchange for the gracious handouts from the upper class, you’re lazy! And because of that line of thinking, any time someone gets into the habit of not diving head first into unpleasant tasks — even if they’re otherwise productive! — they get labeled a procrastinator and shunned.

I’m not sure what I hoped to accomplish by writing this. All I know is that I’m productive right now, and I have no idea how to ensure I’ll stay that way. Does anybody have any advice that favors the carrot over the stick for once?

First person to say, “Well, if you’re already thinking you’re going to fail, then of course you’re going to,” gets a tetherball pole up the nose.

Opinion, Philosophizing, Self Help 1 Comment »

I got started on a bit of a Personal Finance kick in August of 2007 when I realized for the first time that I was living beyond my means. Like most people who experience a shock to their systems, I overcompensated and went on an all-out purge of unnecessary spending, studied up on investing as if I had a final on it the next day, and spouted off about my epiphany on my blog. Without even noticing, I became one of my Most Hated Things: an evangelist.

I’ve mellowed out since then and have found a satisfying balance between spending and not spending, so I can once again proudly call myself a staunch Moderate, but I do still read two or three personal finance blogs just for the occassional moments of insight.

Thing is, though, personal finance bloggers are really starting to annoy me. Let me show you why.

Around this time last year, a certain blogger made a purchase that he found himself regretting terribly. Consumed by guilt, he chastised himself for his frivolity and thought about what he could have done with the money that he no longer could. He could have paid down debt! He could have invested it! He could have put it towards his next car purchase! But instead, he squandered it on a material possession. Fortunately, he shared this experience with the world, so that his readers could learn from his mistake.

The mistake? He spent $50 on a copy of Mario Kart Wii.

Are you. Fucking. Kidding me?

Simple Dollar Trent is a pretty smart guy who has a lot of insights to offer when it comes to frugality and investing. Okay, so pretty much everything he says is lifted directly from whatever book he’s read that week anyway, but that doesn’t make his blog any less useful.

But turning on the Guilt Switch for a small indulgence like a Wii game?

There’s another group of people who beat themselves half to death whenever they make the slightest deviation from their heavily polarized lifestyles: Clergy. The more I read blogs like Trent’s, the more they sound like the endless rants about how one should behave that come from the world’s religious epicenters. Adept though he is at relaying helpful financial advice, it’s hard to ignore the fact that he is, ultimately, just another midwestern psycho-conservative.

It’s fine to concentrate on living within your means and saving for the future. Better than fine. It’s crucial. But to take it to such an extreme that you forget how to enjoy the occasional splurge will only turn you into a preacher.

Finance, Opinion, Philosophizing 1 Comment »

Does parody even work anymore?

This has been on my mind ever since I wrote a post last year about the dangers of breast feeding. In it, I began by describing, for those unfamiliar, the recent trend in which mothers of infants and toddlers put their breasts in their children’s mouths, as if to substitute the sexually deviant act for nourishment. Through interviews, scientific studies, and even a graphically detailed description of the practice as personally witnessed, I provided evidence, proof positive, that breastfeeding is a real threat that everyone must be aware of and vigilant against. It was incontrovertible, airtight, and a great service to good conservative Christian morals.

And no one got the joke.

I wrote it in an exaggerated investigative style. I used AP standards to mangle invented quotes to serve an asinine thesis. I cited clergy as scientific sources. I used the word intercourse to refer to breastfeeding, for Magic Space Wizard’s sake, and somehow, it just wasn’t ever absurd enough. Hardly anyone realized that it was a parody of investigative journalism and conservative morality. People thought I was being serious.

I was baffled for weeks before my short attention span came back and I found something else to be outraged by, but the whole thing stuck to the back of my mind like an atomic Band-Aid. How could something that I thought was so obviously satire be construed as genuine?

The same problem can be seen in reactions to The Onion’s editorial cartoons and the Onion-affiliated parody conservative Christian blog ChristWire.org. In the former case, many people think that The Onion is creating genuine conservative satire, and in the latter case, people think the blog author honestly is “extremely terrified of the Chinese” and believes that prom night is “Satan’s plan to get your daughter pregnant“. Both spout endless absurdities that no sound-minded person could ever honestly believe in, and no one gets the joke.

Many months ago, I discovered Conservapedia, a wiki-based encyclopedia founded by conservative Andy Schlafly, who felt that Wikipedia contained “liberal, anti-Christian, and anti-American” bias. Fair enough, was my first thought. I’ll give anyone my attention for a minute or two if they don’t sound crazy, so I clicked around the site for a bit, figuring there can’t be much harm with hearing an opposing argument.

What I found though, was in many instances bizarre. Bible verses cited in arguments against homosexuality; criticisms against feminists for going against tradition; McCarthic links between Atheism and Communism; a note that President Obama uses mind control in his speeches.

That was when I realized… this is why the parodies don’t work. These people really do sound like this.

Conservative far-rightists should find this terrifying. Their rhetoric has become so ridiculous that, when we as satirists try to make fun of them, people think we are them. When one cannot make it through a conservative treatise without thinking it might be a joke, that it’s just too out there to be real, while at the same time interpreting a piece satirizing those same conservatives as sincere, something must be wrong.

There was a time when conservatives just wanted minimal government and fair laws. But then, at some point, they found morality, and now, they themselves have become a parody.

Entertainment, Humor, Opinion, Philosophizing, Politics 9 Comments »

I just figured out exactly what the government needs to do to fix the economy: Say that the economy is fixed.

Recessions are perfectly capable of beginning organically on their own, but once it starts, once the people get it into their heads that there is a recession, the recession gets even worse. It’s what caused the Great Depression, and it’s what’s digging the world’s economy deeper than it already is. All the government accomplishes by proposing more bailout and self-stimulation packages is to convince people that there really is a big problem that somehow only the government can fix.

So we get the whole government to just lie, WHICH SHOULDN’T BE TOO HARD, and tell everybody that everything is fine. Most people will think it’s horseshit, but if enough people are reckless enough to believe it, the increase in spending will notch sales figures up just enough to make the second most reckless people go shopping again, and it’ll just cascade all the way up to the people who think it’s horseshit, at which point it won’t matter anymore, because those people have zero effect on bubbles and recessions anyway.

Bam. Economy fixed.

Or, you know, they could just stop trying to artificially regulate the thing…

Opinion, Philosophizing, Politics 3 Comments »