silly superstition, fear, and lego people

My Guy has observed that for one who has been trained as a scientist I seem to make a lot of assumptions. They lead me to jump prematurely to a lot of conclusions. (my own observation) I would add to this that it is odd and quite unfortunate that one trained as a scientist is as superstitious as I am.

There, I have outted myself in these aspects. I am aware of this and I do what I can to compensate for these failings as I take in the world.

Sometimes when I am really tired and feeling out of whack I check in on my horoscope or I take in an online tarot card reading. I am just craving some sense that everything will work out okay. It is a sensation that I so envy you who are optimists.

Last night after recovery from the many little agonies of Thanksgiving, after several sleepless nights (I did not sleep between Thursday and Friday, too much caffeine.) I surfed over to try to figure out my life through runes, the i ching, and a little program that gives you answers to yes/no questions. This particular evening I was told nothing that I want to hear and nothing in any way comforting.

It is inevitable that if I only ask questions to which I want to hear "yes" as the response I have to brace myself for a lot of disappointment with a yes/no answer program, flipping a coin, with a magic 8 ball, and more than that in real life I am likely to hear the word "no" countless times.

When you flip a coin sometimes there is a "Two out of three. Four out of five" impulse. You toss a coin because you think you don't really care what choice is made. The two scenarious are even and you accept either one. But if the result leads to that "two out of three" impluse. You have garnered an important piece of information. The beauty of a coin toss is its ability to help clarify for a person what they really want.

So I got some sleep. I watched a little of "Bowling for Columbine" off and on. I have been struggling to watch this movie for a while. Not because it's a bad movie. I think more because sometimes it is difficult for me to sit down and face hard things. I turn it on too late and I fall asleep. I wake up and watch from the last point I remember. I gotta say we're really lucky to have Michael Moore. He is not afraid to confront people. He is not afraid to ask questions. He is not afraid to be angry. He is not afraid to express outrage. He is not above pulling a stunt to make a point. He is also not above expressing compassion.

His discussion of how fearful Americans are as a people is very interesting. Fear is such a powerful tool with which to manipulate people. More compelling than greed, more compelling than lust, more compelling than even hate. If you are going to herd a crowd especially a crowd of people who are haves, the best tool is fear. Because fear of loss is so gripping. Fear of harm is agonizing.

A little fear is good. It is useful. It will keep you from harm. But at some point, too much fear makes the world more dangerous. Because you get fearful people who interact with each other in the most extreme and least humane ways and the results are really ugly.

I don't have a nice ending or conclusion for any of this. It's stuff that is kicking around my head. All I have is a virtual lego self portrait that I did of myself on the mini-mizer at Chris Doyle's reasonablyclever.com. Doing it cheered me up considerably. (this site was ganked from a livejournal post from azurelunatic)