Just finishing up an absolutely wonderful yoga session and am in a terrific mood. Turns out that yoga is a lot more enjoyable to do for me while listening to intense rock music. Yes, ironic because I know its supposed to be relaxing–but thats something strange about me…I’m most relaxed when I’m intense. Yeah, so after a year of struggling with yoga, today it felt like I actually was doing it right. I feel like I’m actually getting into the positions instead of reaching for the unobtainable (my toes!).

Hmph, but thats the least of the many amazing things going on right now. I’m absolutely loving my time here up with Curts family. They are all really cool and I never have a shortage of good conversation or company.  We watch a lot of the same shows and they love to talk about all sorts of things. Plus we got a great Rock Band going (the Fischer-price kind), which is really fun (me on guitar, Krisit on drums, Curt on bass, and Lee (their mom) on vocals).  The setup down here is pretty sweet and I have everything I need. Not to mention they eat really cool and healthy foods so I have no end to the supply of good eats, including the recent purchase of a VitaMix–the amazing blender that can do just bout anything.

Carrabas isn’t the greatest of greats but its not bad. The staff is pretty friendly even if they aren’t the kind I’d hang out with after work. But it gets the job done. I’ve already made enough to pay off the credit card and should be all out of debt by summer, which is my goal–with exclusion of the $20,000 or so Stafford Loan. I’ve got ages to pay that one off.  So yeah, Carrabas seems to be settling in at around $250-$300 a week which isn’t bad given that its only 3-6 hours a day, five to six days a week.

But wait, wait. That isn’t the half of it. Due to the amazing guidance and help of my stellar USC professors I’m really on the right track for my dream job.  I’ve got two schools so far highly interested in me. I’m visiting Northwestern this weekend for their Grad student weekend (they’re paying) and will get a good sense of their program and the kind of atmosphere of the school (I already know its cold!). In addition, the director of the program at Pittsburgh seems to really like me. We had a great hour-long conversation last night and hit-it-off (if that can be used in an academic sense). He’s already opening up project opportunities to me, opening up the possibility for me to do some work and trips to Tokyo and possibly being able to be integral in setting up some sort of STS group at Pittsburgh.  Man is that appealing. Oh, and Baruch Fischhoff is down the street at Carnegie Mellon, so I’d get to do a bit of work with him as well–he’s kind of a super-star scholar within risk management research.

Yeah, so for once I have people vying for me instead of me begging for them. And I haven’t heard from ASU yet, which I saw as my best chance of getting accepted to! So this could be a hard choice. The visits sure will be awesome. I look forward to this weekend and to a visit to Pitt in near future as well.

But its not only that, you see. My ideas have come together so beautifully. If you didn’t see it, I have a post with a few academic projects I plan on trying to pursue. They might not sound like much but they are coming together very well in my head and I’m getting better and better at talking through them and articulating what they mean. Some are very practical ones (like the risk management stuff) while others are more philosophical and abstract (like my technological existentialism). Either way I am excited about all the projects and feel that even the most abstract are something concrete I can pursue (people have somewhat ignored my phrase “technological existentialism” because it sounds vague and meaningless, but I have some really important stuff in mind for it).

Beside the fact that my ideas are coming together, so is my CV (the academic resume). In addition to the excellent schools, I have also been given the opportunity to present my paper on Risk Management of Nanotechnology at the SC Political Science association annual conference. Its only a little casual conference but its a good one to start with. However, on a much grander scale, Gehrke has given me the opportunity to co-author a paper with him and to present it at the National Communication Association’s annual conference this November in San Francisco.  Thats only one of the biggest Communication conferences in the country…

I’m not writing all this to brag, I’m writing this because I’m happy and I am eternally grateful for the benevolence of everyone who have helped me out, from Curt’s family to my family to my great professors.  Thanks everyone.

Suppose for a moment that, as a thinker, a wanna-be academic, and somewhat of a social isolate, I am out of touch. With what exactly? I suppose the normal answer is “reality”. What is this reality? What is this existence that, for some reason, I do not comprehend?

We toss this phrase around as if there is some reality that is separate from our own creation of it. Obama is out of touch with “real Americans”. How dare those Harvard educated bureaucrats make some decisions about our lives. There is this implicit objection somewhere within our cultural mentality that there is a “reality” that we face every day and that people with intellect just “don’t get it.”

Get what? Starvation, suffering, struggle? Do you, little American, really suffer that like the children of Zimbabwe? Yet you frown at efforts to help the world in favor of your own petty problems. But what am I saying, I live comfortably. I must be out of touch.

Get what? Everyday, down-to-earth motivations and desires?  I am an ideologue, a thinker. Damn the thinker, for he has already thought a hundred times about the purpose of your alarm clock before you’ve hit it in the morning. Damn me for taking apart everything in my life and piecing it back in the order I like because I am incomprehensible to you.  Have pleasure, you can laugh on the inside because it makes me forever lonely.

Get what? The day to day routine of a life that is dull and seemingly inconsequential?  Inconsequential is a word that we created alongside consequential. I cannot comprehend your insistence on a spirit of nothingness in the everyday.  You live with your eyes closed and your ears covered so that your day to day must be routine, learned slowly, and never altered.

Get what? The confusion and listlessness of a life that is incomprehensible? Where is our reality, dear techmen?  Look at where you live and see a world that we, collectively, have created.  We are animals in our own constructed habitats, confused by the brilliance of our own success.

You call me out of touch, the ideologue, the thinker, the critic? Am I some guy in an armchair by the fireplace with no comprehension of the everyday? I drive in cars just like you. I sit in office chairs just like you. I have a computer, as do you. I am in debt, as are you.  I shop in malls just like you.  What is the reality that my head has not comprehended?

Out of touch? You, humans who walk upright and keep nodding to the music, are out of touch. Do you see the world in front of you? Can you move much further past the headlines? Can you question yourself from the toothbrush to the shopping cart?    To truly touch this world you would have to turn off the television for a moment and look at that empty box and realize, in reality, what it is you were just gazing into.

We all struggle with this, even I–especially I, the thinker. What is this reality, this world, that we walk upon? What is this surface that we touch? I touch it, just like you. But do you comprehend the sensation?

I’ve been reading through Thus Spake Zarathustra again and something has been bothering me. Why is it that some smart, independently-minded people aren’t struck by his conception of the metamorphosis quite like I am? Why do some people who are generally critical, intelligent, and…unaccepting people (you know, the sort who don’t just accept everything society hands them, including social norms of expectation and life) never really truly become creators?

Why do they find it so unoffensive to live by the typical social structure? But see thats the thing: they don’t exactly. These sort of people, which I think are most people but especially intelligent ones, do not burden themselves with the norms of society. Rather they pick and choose what to take seriously. Any imperative, any virtue, that is a burden they simply ignore.

I do not mean this as an insult. But these people are lazy camels. In Nietzsche’s metamorphosis the camel is the person who shoulders the virtues of society like a burden. He is the person who takes it on himself to go against his own wishes for the sake of what he is told is good.  It is this burden that gives birth to the lion. But we do not burden ourselves. We are passive. We say “its ok, accept or not whatever you will” and so we remain as camels, adopting as a whole the conceptions handed to us, only leaving off the parts that challenge us. I think that this is what Nietzsche may have meant by the “last man” but I think it is also more than that. Because these people can be genuinely good people, smart people, not even lazy people–they are just lazy camels. In their intelligence they shrug off those parts of social virtues that don’t fit them but on a whole they keep the conceptions and the frames bestowed by their language. They never really become lions or creators, just intelligent camels who realize that one does not need to burden oneself with the arbitrary virtues of society.

To become a creator one must become a lion and then a child. This is why so many smart critical people never seem to break away from the virtues instilled upon them.

It has come together and I understand it. I like this. This is mine. To use Nietzsche’s terms, I have torn down the virtues handed to me and created my own. This has been in process for nearly three years now. This is a culminating moment.

The other night I wrote the first of these thoughts on love in which I identified the three motivations whereby people love. From these tonight in conversation I was forced to see the implications for these motivations on a conception of relationships.

First off. I can’t stand the current conception of relationships. You know what I mean. Its every love story we read, see, and hear. Its boyfriends and girlfriends, engagements, marriage. Its a conception of love that is vague and nonsensical, that chews us up and spits us out as something different. Either that or its just sex, attraction, infidelity. These are the black and whites in a world defined by a sense of relationships that I have come to loath. It entails an incredible power over another being, to suggest that one ought to have ultimate loyalty, complete fidelity, unyielding security in devotion.

The labels themselves are a security. We know what to expect of a girlfriend, a fiance, a wife. Even if the conception changes, the conception still is defined for us. That is why we highlight these defining moments, the ones where he “asks you out” or you kiss and you become boyfriend/girlfriend. Then the engagement. Then marriage. Its convenient. The rules are laid out. The expectations are clear.

Nonetheless, each of these labels are completely arbitrary. They speak nothing about the depth of one’s relationship. I am serious about this. When you look at them they are nothing more than socially defined points in an absurd relationship timeline. More distressing is the roles that they entail, the whole set of actions bestowed upon you by the title of “boyfriend”, “fiance”, “husband.” These expectations, this role, becomes a part of you as soon as the label is instilled. Even though you may create your own idea of these concepts, they still exist within a mental, linguistic, and social framework that cannot be avoided. The subtleties and intricacies of its effect is enormous and too much to discuss here.

But consider perhaps the worst two conclusions based on the current two conceptions that these ideas exist within. To do this we need to remember the three motivations for relationships–the first is the connection with another existence, the acknowledgement of their being, and a care for it. The second is the desire to be intertwined with that other existence, to be a part of their experience and to experience part of theirs. The third is the physical, which ranges from a simple handshake (as a physical acknowledgement of their physical reality) to sex.

Now, according to what is the more traditional and conservative view of relationships, friends can share the first two things but it precludes the third. That is, as friends you can recognize and care about another’s existence and you can become intertwined in their experience. You can do this on a shallow level or an extreme level and still remain friends. What makes you more than friends then? Sex. Its all about the level of physical intimacy. Sure there is an element of the second one that is inaccessible–your financial matters are difficult to intertwine without marriage…but it can be done and still be within the realm of decency according to these values (like when two guys go into business together). What makes a friendship more than friendship is the level of physical intimacy.  You don’t kiss friends. You don’t have sex with friends (at least according to this conception). Do you see what this does? It is an attempt to honor sex and make it sacred but instead it just singles it out, making it something scandalous and forbidden while also being the main mover of relationships. Essentially, the truly “deepest” of relationships are all about sex. Why get married? To have sex. Then you’re getting married just to have sex. How odd is that!  And if its not marriage, then its the fact that you are adopting whatever role you call it (girlfriend to wife) for sex. To put it badly, we are all whores bought with the price of adopting a social label.

Now take the opposite conception, the more liberal view that sex is more open. In the same framework it fails once again.  It honors the physical intimacy without the essential prerequisite, which is the first motivation–recognizing the other person as a person and not as a mere object of pleasure. By its own terms it fails to even create friendship–unless it is developed after the fact in a different sort of way–the sort of way that leads to something either like the more traditional view or is something new, but not just about open sex.

On the other hand, we have my conception.  I will keep only two terms for this conception, love and friendship, both of which I will redefine. Then I will add a third: allies, or accomplices if you would prefer that. Here’s how it goes:

Given the need to alleviate our loneliness in this existence as well as the essentially inescapably social nature of our existence we establish relationships with others.  There is a fundamental perquisite to a relationship and that lies in motivation number one:

• To begin a friendship we acknowledge the existence of another person. Normally we do this by exchanging names, a handshake or other physical gesture, and by getting to know each other

This is where it begins. On its shallowest level we call these people acquaintances. From here on out there are no rules. Every friendship is different, taking on a different character. There is nothing really beyond friends except allies, which is just what I call the strongest form of friends.  Instead, we all just have different levels of the three motivations working themselves out in different ways and varying strengths, creating the dynamics of closeness and understanding between us.

To clarify, I will venture to make a metaphor. The three motivations are like the three elementary colors. Every relationship is constantly changing colors depending on the strength and depth that their three desires are working themselves out in the relationship. As such, relationships are ever changing and every relationship is different.

Consider this a little more concretely. You are introduced to someone by a friend. In that first moment you lay the grounds for #1, the care for that person starting with simply acknowledging them. At the same moment you might find them incredibly fun and spent the rest of the night with them, thereby temporarily entangling your experiences. But you might not be attracted to them. Over the course of a few years you may develop a very close friendship in terms of the first two but maybe not in terms of the three. Or perhaps you care deeply for them and are attracted to them but do not feel your lives can be fully entangled. So your friendship might include sex but have no element of commitment.

There is nothing better or worse about each of these forms of friendships, they are simple different. The only bad scenario really comes when you have sex without the acknowledgment, which I wouldn’t call love at all.

To be clear, lets lay out the shallowest and most extreme forms (that I can think of ) of each motivation

1. Existence—–Shallow: Acknowledgement—Deep: Strong, unshakable value in that other person’s existence as a being
2. Experience—Shallow: Doing things together, having fun—Deep: Sharing most of one’s experience, intertwining plans and life goals
3. Physical——-Shallow: A touch or general attraction—Deep: Sex.

Now, what happens when one reaches the deeper forms of friendship in all three? Well then one can form a deep and residing friendship which I call “Allies in existence.” It is my concept that is most akin to marriage, but I don’t like the comparison and instead choose a diplomatic metaphor. It is someone you adore, who you share your experience with, who you intertwine your existence with. This is the only form of commitment in this formulation. And allies may be for life if they are good enough, or for as long as the alliance should last. Note that this alliance comes most strongly from #2, your experiences becoming intertwined. As such I guess it can function without the strongest form of physical closeness but I think that in its strongest form it should include all three.

The most important point here is that its all the same. There is no transition, only a matter of depth and form. There is no magic point where you become anything except at the point where you intertwine your existences so closely that you become allies. Even then you are still friends. Just really close friends. And no its not “just friends.” I’m just saying that its the same substance. Its still the same three motivations and means at work.  No magical change point. You’re just closer.

I really love this. I know its entirely mine. It entails an enormously different conception of relationships from what most people have. It will probably make it really difficult for me to sustain good relationships with the opposite sex, and this does make me a little sad. But I know it resonates from my deepest values, values which I have created after tearing down the conceptions of love and relationships handed down to me. Yes, I speak in Nietzschean terms because they are appropriate. I am incredibly satisfied and happy with these conclusions.  So it goes.

Back in May of 2009 I had a nice pleasant little dream. I was going to start a professional blog. After all, I had a looot of good things to say. I am smart. I have a constant stream of ideas. And I was so full of my own sense of importance that I thought I deserved to be heard (I may still be of this opinion, but that is beside the point). I glorified blogging as the next stage of journalism, one where people can get news in a concise fashion quickly, that has been cross-checked and confirmed by the masses in solid Web 2.0 fashion, hyperlinked for sources, and–so I thought–balanced by the general mass of information available. Riiight.

I started writing. I wrote some good stuff. My What Happened to Nuclear Power post shows up second in google if you type in that question and is a much more informed article than the first one that shows up.  It still gets maybe 10 views a day, with no promotion. But that was only one article and probably my best. It utilized an immense amount of information, assimilating a long course of study into a reasonably concise article. But most of the other stuff I put up there in my pretty much daily posting was all mostly a lot of bullshit. I mean, I’d just see something in the news or in something I was reading, have a thought, and write it up. Never mind whether I understood it or whether I really knew what was going on. Never mind depth. Never mind content. It just had to be interesting and well phrased. In less than a month I was getting about 100 views per day. I mean, not much. But I think I could’ve maybe made something of it. Maybe. I definitely made it out to be a big deal. I planned it forever, spent a week getting the format just write (even learning some XML and CSS), and talked everyone’s ear off about how important it was.

But then I realized something. I didn’t really know what I was talking about. If I did it was only a superficial knowledge briefly gained then I’d move on. This is my complaint against journalism in general–it is a superficial understanding that allows us a peak and then we move on.  Sure this may be necessary–there is too much info out there for us all to be experts–but I found out it is not something I want to be.

Then there is the rhetorical aspects of journalism, but most especially blogging.  1/3 of my interests are in rhetorical theory (and I will most likely get a Ph.D in Communications…) so this is kind of a big deal. The way that we say things, especially in our sources of news, does an immense amount to define our outlook on the world, ourselves, and our society.  Need I say it? Journalism has become a sensationalist business. Blogging? Eh…I’ll let Jon Stewart take it from here:

Oh Jon Stewart…your wisdom is so immense. Btw, that clip will only be available for some 30 days because thats how Hulu does it. If its gone, just know its about how bloggers use words like “eviscerate” and “destroyed” to speak about every day happenings, exaggerating and overdramatizing every day interactions to add to their sensational feel. Its like the whole news/blogosphere has become the National Inquirer, finding aliens where there was only a low flying helicopter.

Jon Stewart himself is a great comparison point. You know he does his research and he knows his stuff. He may be a comedian but you know where the bias is and its all in good humor. After watching O’Reily you get this impending sense of dread about the world. After watching Stewart…you just get a sense of the absurdity of our lives and (more than anything) the depiction of it in our news organizations. Yet for some reason people seem to be saying that its horrible to use Stewart as a news source and Stewart must also go along with that sentiment. According to O’Reilly, everyone who takes Stewart seriously are “extreme liberals” or..what was it…”twenty-something stoners” I believe it was. Hmph. I guess that must be me.

Now the Onion or even Colbert Report I can understand. They sustain personas that make it impossible to tell news from reality. Stewart? He does a great job of separating it out. And its not like I’d stop there on the news. Stewart is just a nice 30 min highlight of the news just like the 6:00 nightly news (which really only has 20 min worth of news somehow spread over an hour). If I’m interested in knowing more about whats going on, then I google search it. Maybe get a blog or two …I mean find a few articles or videos on a couple of the major news networks and get a better feel for whats going on. Otherwise, whats wrong with Stewart? Surely an explicit joke is far better than the implicit joke that is most of the rest of the media.

So look at that, three rants in one blog post.

Speaking of which…why then am I still blogging right now? Easy. This is for me. Yay, you read it. Cool. Comment if you want, that’s great. But I didn’t write it for you, although I do appreciate it when my friends take a look at my blog. Its just my thoughts. Yep.