A long time ago, I figured out that my life philosophy was a hell of a lot different than everybody else's. Rather than getting pretentious about this fact, like most people, I've historically chosen to just hide this simple fact from most people. But that's really kinda against my philosophy too - so every now and then I make runs to see if I can explain my philosophies to others, in terms they can understand.
Sadly, this is extremely tricky, though it does make it easier to check up on myself.
[ The Questions | Friendships | Relationships | Religion | Stability | Miscellaneous and Other ]The Questions
Babylon 5 presented four questions as the keystone to self-understanding. While I'm very aware that this was just a show, the questions themselves still have value, and I have found that they're a good way to explain myself and my philosophy to those that need to hear them. The questions:
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Who are you?
I am Tim Skirvin.
Yes, that's my answer. It's not supposed to be that simple, I know - but this was the question of the Vorlons, who always gave so short an answer but it was *never* simple. Similarly, "I am Tim Skirvin" is not a simple answer, though it may look it.
I am defined by my identity, and my identity is defined by me, and as trite as that sounds there really is no better answer. Of course, there are deeper levels to this, some of which I'm unwilling to reveal to anyone but my closest friends and lovers (and some things don't even get to them; I consider that a personal failing). A few of those levels:
- I am a leader of men (and women). While I often hate the idea that I may be in charge because I fear the responsibility, more often than is normal I do take charge of things - and when I do it, I'm really pretty reasonable and meeting my goals. Of course, my goals aren't often the same as everyone else's.
- I am an untrained politician. While I'm really not that good at playing all sides and creating consensus, I'm *very* good at stating an opinion and making something happen with it. I suspect that I will gather more of those first two requirements over the next few years.
- I am a systems administrator. While I find it distrubing to be defined, even in part, by my job, I'm good enough at it and the thought processes are enough part of my thinking that it's best to just accept and move on.
- I am an idealist and a pessimist. Things should be perfect, and in most cases they *can* be perfect if we just spend the effort to get them there. However, anything that can go wrong will, and there's always plenty that can go wrong. It's an interesting combination.
- I am Cassandra. I'm pretty good at predicting the future, but I am not believed, even by myself. Tied into this, once I state a "prophecy" out loud it's almost always proved false shortly thereafter. I have therefore begun to learn to just shut up and let the future fall as it may.
- I am unique. I am a completely unique person that has fought for and done as much as anybody else he knows, holds stranger beliefs than anyone else, hates and loves different things than anybody else in the Universe. I'm not convinced of the rest of the world's ability to think of themselves as unique, but I've managed it.
Over time, I expect to find many more answers to this question. It's what I spend a lot of my time thinking about, to be honest; I want to know more and more who I am. Because I've got a decent baseline, I expect that I can continue to contemplate this questions without too much pain for much of the rest of my life.
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What do you want?
I want to be able to do what I need to do, when I need to do it.
This was the question of the Shadows, and it's a dangerous question to answer. If someone knows what you want, you can be manipulated. Of course, to some extent one must maniuplate themselves to get through life, so it is important to know the answer to this question... or at least to contemplate it occasionally.
In my case, the trick is that I don't really know what I *need* to do. I generally know how to go about getting what I need when I do know; for that matter, my subconscious is good at it to, and it's got a better idea of what I need than I do. But still, it's a horribly difficult question to answer for me, because it hurts to figure out what I want.
Truth be told, there is one thing I want above all others: to know what I want. (Yay, recursion!). Some ideas I've had recently:
- I want to be happy. This is something I'm actually pretty good at; I know what will make me happy, and why, and I'm capable of pursuing it without too many difficulties. I won't take a path if it will hurt someone else, though, because that would make me *extremely* unhappy.
- I want to figure out where I'm going. See below.
I try not to spend too much time thinking about what I want. Usually, it just comes to me, or else somebody else tells me and I agree. This is generally a good way to go.
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Why are you here?
I am here to train myself to be better, to learn what I need to do, and to help set the world on a better path.
This was the question of Lorien, and it was accompanied by "Do you have anything worth living for?". It's the question of self-worth and contentment, which can be easily combined with the above questions to determine whether you should think about changing.
I am happy here. I have a life, I have friends, I have a job, I have people that love me and would do anything to help me. This is a "right place" for me - over my 25 years living here I have been fairly happy and certainly found this place to be a home.
But am I happy enough? I'm beginning to wonder. I like this place, but...well, my friends have begun to scatter, and I'm wondering if it isn't perhaps time for me to do so as well. I can find myself a life wherever I go (I believe this, at least), my skills should make finding a job possible (if difficult in the current job climate), and those that love me will continue to love me in another state.
The next year or so is going to have me spending a lot of time contemplating this question. I suspect that the answer is going to be "because I haven't found anything better yet", and that's a dangerous answer. Perhaps soon, I *won't* be here. And then I can answer the whole thing over again, this time much more tentatively.
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Where are you going?
I have no idea.
This was the real thematic question of the whole series; all of life is about moving, leaving behind friends and making new ones, and making a difference while you are where you are. It's also one of the trickiest ones to answer ahead of time - it's easy to know where you've been, and at some point you have to make decisions about where you're going next, but to look too far in the future is...challenging, to say the least.
It keeps me up nights, not knowing the answer to this question. For a while, I thought I had something - I would follow another, and let some of the broad strokes of my life fall with them and their greater sense of purpose. Then that fell apart, in large part because I had overestimated the one I was to follow. So now I'm again left with the awful truth: I must find my own path.
The danger is that complacency is always an option. As long as I'm employed and befriended, I'm going to be happy. But could I be happier somewhere else? Should I take a different path, even just one of the other paths that are always open to me but look dark and scary? Perhaps. I'm sure I'll decide soon, and I know I'll spend a lot of time worrying about this one.
Last modified: Sunday, 19-May-2002 09:03:05 PDT
Friendships
Friends are quite simply the most important thing in life. Everything in life should in some way relate back to friendship - work, relationships, hobbies, everything. My recommendations on strong friendships:
- Make sure they're resilient. This may involve some pretty hefty testing, but once you've got a few friendships that have been tested and survived you know you'll have at least a few friends for life.
- Spend effort on them. Nothing should override the need to help your friends; if something starts to get in the way, then perhaps it's worth reconsidering that something.
- Make sure that your friends will still be there if you're away for a while. Friends shouldn't be too high-maintenance; somebody you'll screw up and not have enough time for them, and they'll be gone when you have it again.
- Don't be too honest, at least at first. If you're too honest, you'll find out how resilient your friendships are... *grin* As time goes on, you can be more honest safely.
- Good friendships should never be broken, but they can be sometimes. Treat them like a full-fredged break-up if they ever do happen. You won't regret as much later if you do.
I'm actually a decent person to talk about this. I spent a lot of my life without any real friends to speak of, save my family and a few people who I just dealt with for historical reasons. In retrospect, these times sucked; my worst-case scenario for life is to go back to those times. (Mind you, I'm prepared for it).
Last modified: Sunday, 19-May-2002 10:19:46 PDT
Relationships
Having been in a whopping two (count 'em!) relationships, I now feel "uniquely qualified" to speak about them. Heh. Well, at least it's worth saying something about them, even if it's just going to join the chorus of others.
Finding a Short-Term Relationship
Blah. I've passed up several in the past, and I'm not particularly regretful of missing anything. Short-term relationships have their value, I'm sure, but it's not something I've found yet. Perhaps I'll be proven wrong some day, but for now I'll keep looking towards the long-term.
If you want 'em, though, they aren't that tough to find - just ask, and be willing to deal with rejection. You'll live.
Finding a Long-Term Relationship
Let's start with a question: what do you want out of a relationship? In my case:
- The drive and the ability to do something big and useful (grad school, etc).
- Someone with the will to stand up to me when they believe I'm wrong, even if they're wrong.
- Someone at least as intelligent as me, although probably in a different field.
- Steadfastness and loyalty, to make a friend that will eventually know more about me than I do, and vice versa.
Oddly, these are all difficult things to find; they're out there, but they aren't necessarily things you see at first inspection. Luckily, they're also things that others are not necessarily interested in looking for. So I've had some luck in the past, and I suspect I'll have it again.
Now, why say this on a philosophy page? Simple: the point is to find what you want out of a relationship *without* worrying about the more obvious things. You're going to work out the issues of personality and physical attraction on your own anyway; there's not much advice to offer there, you've got to play that stuff by ear. I believe that it's much more important to worry about what you're really looking for first. Otherwise, you're probably better off sticking with the short-term.
Ending a Relationship
Given that I'm still fairly bitter from my last breakup, I've got plenty of philosophy/angry retorts built up on this point:
- Get both parties to agree that the breakup is a good idea, at least at some level. It may not be easy, but it'll leave both of you in a better state.
- Staying friends is difficult as all hell. If you want to do it, it's probably for the best if you arrange for this to be true *before you start the relationship*; otherwise, one or both of you is going to be tempted to just skip it.
- Be extremely wary of asking friends to take sides. I personally work on the baseline that I will turn against anyone that would ask me to choose; once I've made a choice, though, I stick with it. It seems a fair way to go.
- There will be regrets with any breakup, but try to minimize them at all costs. Don't do anything you'll feel sorry for later.
I hope not to have too much more experience with this in the future.
Sex
I like sex. It's fun, and an acceptable drug in my book. However, it *is* still a drug, and therefore I'm wary; it can't be everything, and it's important to watch to make sure it doesn't become everything. Well, unless you're in a short-term relationship. Then anything goes, so to speak.
Last modified: Wednesday, 10-Jul-2002 07:02:42 PDT
Religion
I am a devout nothing. I have never seen a great reason to worship anything; most prominent Gods nowadays got that way through the use of force (holy wars, forced conversions/conversions of the young, etc) so I don't particularly like them, and those beings that I've personally imagined are more creatures to respect than towards which to postrate myself. I do have a belief in a power greater than me; however, I don't see any reason to treat it as anything other than an equal (why give it any more power over me?).
It's worth mentioning my relationship towards a few prominent religions:
- Christianity: most of the world's Christians are hypocritical bastards, and, while I don't hate them for it, I revel in pointing this out to them. The religion as a whole has had more than a few good ideas - the Golden Rule ("Do Unto Others...") the greatest of them, but modern Western Society ranks up there too. Its failings are minor by comparison.
- Wicca: I'm not much on most of the whole Earth Mother thing, but I have to give Wiccans credit for what they're trying to do. "An ye harm none, doeth as thou wilt" is a damned fine principle, and the Three-Fold Law, even if it doesn't work, is a wonderful attempt to bring sanity to the world. I also give them credit for usually having a sense of humor, something that most other religions lack.
- Satanism: Satanism deserves credit for being legitimate and hated. I just wish I could explain that to people without being attacked.
- Buddhism: I've never really thought as much about Buddhists as I probably should have, but I can't help but thank them for making the world believe in karma. It's a nice way of looking at the world, true or not, that most people can understand...
- Athena: if there is a Goddess to worship, this is it, not so much because of belief but because she at least stands for what I care about - technology and what it can do for this world. If you want more details, I'm sure I can point you at a few books re-interpreting what the Goddess of Crafts was really about, but Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson is a good start.
- Eris: this is the other Goddess I almost worshipped at one point; if I hadn't been distracted around the end of the Illuminatus! Trilogy, I probably would have been a good convert for a few years. Eris is the Goddess of discord
Last modified: Sunday, 19-May-2002 08:19:43 PDT
Stability
Stability is a complicated subject. I both over-rate it and discard it in my life; it's vital to good living, but totally irrelevant in the long run.
Here's a partially-formed analogy that I'm going to be embarrased of later on: I consider life to be somewhat river-like. We are all a section of riverbed, where life's events flow through us; we shape the events around us through our shape, while the events wear away at us over time to better let them through as well. We are also not alone, feeding into each other in strange patterns that are beyond our boundaries and therefore our comprehension.
We all have:
- Boundaries, to act as our riverbanks. We can chip and break away at them over time, but we *must* remain within them if we expect our lives to continue to flow in a reasonable manner.
- A well-defined baseline - ie, a riverbed. This will define how we interact with the actions that the world throws at us. Likely, this bed will cause some rapids; these are the world's way of seeing how we're interacting with it. But we will change over time anyway, due to the vast numbers of actions going throughout...
- The ability to deal with the input from others. We have extra actions coming from above (rain) and from others (upstream), and we have to work with them as quickly as they come. If we don't deal with them, then the events will overflow and start messing with our boundaries in ways that we don't necessarily understand and certainly can't control.
The trick is to actually try to define some of these things for yourself. We can change ourselves, but only by letting the events do it for us; by making a small change here or there, the future events will wear us down into new versions of ourselves over time. It takes time, but we can change.
The analogy breaks down to some extent when dealing with others; I haven't thought of a good way to fit in the fact that we all interact with everyone else all of the time. Perhaps if we were a small current in an ocean...but that doesn't get it right either. Perhaps I'll come up with a better analogy with time. There's a reason I'm not really a philosopher.
Last modified: Sunday, 19-May-2002 09:25:42 PDT
Miscellaneous and Other
These are the categories that are only a couple of paragraphs each, but are still important on their own.
The Daemons
Why do I let two computer programs run around and take care of my web pages, anyway? Simple: it's a good way to have a few different opinions on a series of documents that are ostensibly about me. It's not like I know the only possible side of things; my life is complex, and definitely worthy of at least some debate.
What's important is to make sure that they have their bounds. They are not allowed on this page, and they know it. This page is about my opinions alone.
Honor
Truth and the willingness to follow through on your actions are the two basic tenets for me; I have a hard time standing those that don't agree with me on that one. It's one of the most evangelical tenets I have; because life would be better for everyone if they were honor-bound, I'm willing to try to talk others into it.
The amount of force that's required for me to break my word is amazing; it's been done on very rare occasions, mind you, but it was painful for all involved.
Manipulation
Long ago, I figured out how to manipulate people. It's not like it's a tough job - people's goals are remarkably similar to one another's, and I've got enough of the same desires that I can at least approximate just about everyone else. One day I realized something, though - manipulation is force, and therefore wrong. I now refuse to practice it on general principle, much to my own detriment. My hope is that, in return, the rest of the world won't practice it on me.
Politics
I am a disgruntled Libertarian - Libs being a political group that can be roughly described as "socially liberal, economically conservative". I believe in the basic party tenets - force is wrong, government should be smaller, stay away from my rights and my pocketbook - but I'm rather sick of the party itself. They're just not practical or good at their jobs, and the party's members are for the most part right-wing nuts. *sigh* But still, they're the best-suited for my support of any of the major parties (or anything on the horizon; I don't think I could do better myself), so I'm stuck with them. Or at least I believe I am.
Revenge
Revenge is a fun thing, but should not be pursued casually, if at all. It's just too all-consuming; one can lose their person into it without trying very hard at all, and because it generally involves silent plotting you can't even talk with people about it. Generally a bad idea, it's still extremely satisfying when it pays off, though it may take years.
(I'm really not a vengeful person, mind you.)
Web design
You might have noticed by now that I have a strong belief in content being more important than graphics. Well, that's by design. I'm not much on making things look nice; it's just not in my nature, I'd rather say the right things than make those things look perfect. Also, I'm very much a fan of being cross-platform compatible (the only real currency that matters in this world)... so lynx it is.
Last modified: Sunday, 19-May-2002 10:07:55 PDT
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