The Demiurge is a Jerkface

By the time this posts, I'll be about to be set apart as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

I suppose the most immediate implication for you all is that I won't be loading tumblr again for at least 2 years, save a time or two in the next few hours. That makes posting a little bit impossible (not like I'd have time to post even if I were to load it). I've rather enjoyed my time here, and will probably return to this blog in 2 years (I don't have the reasons to delete it that my brother did).

This probably isn't too important for most of you, it's not like my blog has ever been a stand out in quality or anything, and whether you continue to follow or not has no effect on your dashboard. What I do want to leave you with is my hope that you all live good lives these next two years.

I've chosen to go on a mission because I believe that the best, straightest path to living a good life and coming to know love and truth, is through my Church. I ask you to do your best to achieve this in your own lives. Earnestly study your own happiness, and capture it. Be good people, kind, and make something grand of yourself. Seek out the best books and thoughts on the matter, like Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning or Confucius' Analects. If you haven't read the Bible, do so, especially the New Testament. The Book of Mormon too is essential. My cool things page has some worthy things you might like to consult.

I don't want to speak trivially on this matter. If you suffer from dislike of self, refuse the part of you who does not believe you are worthwhile. If it is anger, do not allow yourself to be offended. Whatever it is that undoes you, practice telling it that it's wrong. It probably won't fix things, but over time, even if you don't believe yourself when you say it, keep telling yourself that you are good and can do better. Eventually, it'll become at least a little bit more true.

This is more than I really intended to write, but this is really important. Answer the hard questions, and do what you need to to make your life a good thing. I fear that this appears cliched and weak, but I really want you to be happy, however you can do it. I don't want you to do what you think will make you happy, I want you to be happy.

Take what you will from this. Farewell, have a good time, and I'm rooting for you. I'm going to serve what will surely be the most unusual and probably two of the most important years of my life. Do the best with yours. May you have just enough luck that you won't need it for long.

It's not exactly an easy thing to love something just because someone else does. The thing is to find why they love it and appreciate that fact. Once that happens, it takes care of itself. But even then, it's not as if I can practice biology, astronomy, metalwork, journalism, or horticulture effectively in one lifetime. So it becomes an issue of making a lot out of very little information. Each additional subject requires more research, and it is difficult to be effective in self-guided study.

But the thing is, the effect can only be named sublime. I certainly can't hold my own in a conversation with a sports fanatic, but I can appreciate where he's coming from. I see value in practices I didn't understand. When I meet people, I can more readily see who they are. With many more sorts of people, I can find common interest and enjoyable conversation.

In short, learning to love what my fellow humans love allows me to better and more quickly be their friend. Through a common wonder, I can come to see others with a similar lens.

It's a given that I'm not entering an artistic field professionally. Law or science is many times more probable, not simply because they are economically superior, but because I consider both to be good and important work (I don't think it insignificant that of the branches of US government, the judicial can be said to have encroached the least authority from its original position). As such, I'm not going to have a noteworthy amount of time to develop my ideas in a published form. Maybe I'll end up jobless or I'll have occasion once retired, but I'd rather not rely on my ability to produce worthy art in either scenario. The natural conclusion is that the max on published art that I can ever expect to create is one work. This has worked for such folk as Harper Lee of To Kill a Mockingbird, and is an acceptable case, so long as that one work is what I want to say. A book is by far the most likely, as writing is the medium I prefer to both convey and receive thought (in permanent form. Inasmuch as I've learned Socratic dialogue, that's way better). I'll probably continue other arts as hobbies, but it will probably be in the same sense that Jean Jacques Rousseau also composed but it was dreadfully mediocre and his social contract is much more important.

This leads to the next thought. I have a lot of things to say, and I'd rather not lose the big ones on account of incompatibility. I don't want to just cover different philosophical ideas, I want different stories, characters, and the like. Now, a short story compendium would also be insufficient; I wouldn't mind to include essays and some stories I have need more coverage than a short story can provide.

This leads to why 1001 Nights is brilliant. Look at the framing mechanism; you have an intellectual lady describing fascinating ideas, a mix of literature, science, and philosophy, to a king. Especially for a pre-modern audience, a king would be one of the few figures sufficiently educated to understand and be interested in such a breadth of subjects. What's more, due to the structure of the tales, already existing stories can be used, and characters can be used in multiple tales while not existing in others. Thus, thanks to its frame, 1001 Nights can do long and short stories, borrow popular or historic stories, include extended narratives, and even house philosophical or historical dialogue, all under the presumption that the stories are so interesting that they keep the king's interest so that he spares Scheherazade's life (While on the topic but more of an aside, Scheherazade is the single most aesthetically beautiful name I've ever heard and I find it a tragedy that such names are impermissible under the current naming mechanisms in US culture. The fact that Scheherazade is clever and interesting helps too. Oh, and quick disclaimer: I haven't had occasion to actually read 1001 Nights, but I've read about its metastructure quite a bit).

Obviously, I can't recycle 1001 Night's frame (and the king's murderous tendencies I probably wouldn't want to preserve anyway). However, if I can capture a similar effect through my own frame, that'd be ideal. It's difficult to find one so perfectly effective, but if I think about it long enough, I'll find at least a halfway decent solution. One pre-concept I've got is some sort of discussion of stories people wish were true, before the entrance to the afterlife or something. It probably wouldn't work or end up being heavy-handed, but we'll see on that. It's the consequence of ~2 days of thinking, so I scarcely expect it to work out as it is.