Cascade of Choices

How far do you go chasing truth? One thing leads to another, as the old rock song says.
The title of my blog indicates I want to do what’s right for myself, and I write to give others a chance to consider what it might mean for themselves. Sometimes I can be downright practical, but most of the time it’s not even exactly theoretical, but calling you to reach above your own intellect.
In the land of Linux and Open Source software, one of my primary complaints is too few developers understand users. Part of that disconnect leads to problems when someone feels a need to upgrade one item, which is probably broken, only to discover doing that requires upgrading almost everything else, or adding lots of new stuff which demands more upgrades, on and on into infinite loops of destructive replacement. This happens when the developers so narrowly interpret what is required for this or that package, according to their own whims and damn everyone else with the differing Linux setups. And God forbid they should ever go back and simply fix the previous version. But it seems generic coding is a lost art, an art based on consciously trying to address human need.
If you don’t write code yourself, you are stuck, and they just can’t be made to care about that. The vast majority of people can’t write code because the learning curve is huge, and precious few are willing to teach. The barriers are massive. The saints are those who take a moment to share a bit of code to fix particular mismatches, or who actually rewrite something to be more accommodating to the wide differences in various Linux systems. I rather hope I’m not throwing out spiritual code too difficult to reach from where you are. Writing the code to your daily life is something I honestly believe is already hard-wired into your soul, even as I consciously consider the vast array of human individuality.
When I suggest Western Civilization as a whole is a failure, I’m presuming you are smart enough to realize you can’t just pretend you will walk out of it today. What I’m hoping you’ll do is think about it enough to find ways to get a little closer to something better than the West, even as you are stuck in it. Part of that “something better” should include living a message which confronts the West, at least in some small ways. The underlying issue with truth is not keeping it all to yourself, but a commitment to removing obfuscations. Sometimes I can offer some examples of how that plays out.
For example, I was recently confronted with some really aging and ragged discussions of race relations and sexism. Most of such discussions are handed to us in obfuscated code, set afloat in the world on a giant raft of false assumptions. You aren’t permitted to enter their conversation without climbing on that raft. All I can say is, don’t do it. Your little rowboat of truth is far safer. Don’t engage them until you can draw attention to the junk raft itself. You can go a lot farther toward solutions when you choose a boat designed according to the waters you intend to sail.
Sexism? Yes, by definition I’m a sexist. That is, I assert you cannot sanely create uniform outcomes under any useful measure. The system is already broken, and pushing through something with badly damaged assumptions about what it should look like coming out the other end only breaks more things. So I use Game, clinical observations about human behavior in relation to sexual identity, and the resulting theoretical explanations, to prove sexism is frankly necessary to understand humans and get along in this world. I reject equal outcomes because I reject the whole stinking system in the first place. Use Game and you’ll find far more peace, and ignore the screamers (which tactic is part of Game anyway).
Racism? When someone offers a consistent definition of “race” on which everyone else agrees, we can talk. Is it about certain physical differences? Sure, I can ignore that. I do it all the time. Is it about complex cultural baggage correlated with those physical differences? It is almost with violence I reject the notion I can’t pass judgment on cultural expressions, because I do it with my own native culture. You have a problem with that? Argue with God; I’m using His standards and His chosen culture as the baseline. I refuse to debate whether it’s right. My rejection is not based on pure matters of taste, which is yet another thing I won’t surrender, but for an entirely different reason. That’s not to say I’m going out of my way to make everyone conform to my tastes nor my cultural judgments, but it’s damned (literally) nonsense to suggest I have to swallow and “enjoy” something I find unbearable. So while I won’t destroy your car if your stereo plays rap music loud enough to rattle the windows on my Jeep, I will probably laugh when someone else does, or when random events do it. Meanwhile, I’ll keep my radio tuned to Classical music, thank you.
It’s the same reason I don’t take my own life, though I am longing to leave this world. Not everything we wish for is properly addressed by active pursuit. I assert there is a God in Heaven who steers certain events He claims for Himself as His prerogatives. I didn’t make all these messes, and all I can do with them is what I understand He requires of me.
This world is not what it was designed to be. It’s broken, and from that follows a certain amount of breakage in every human life. Some of our human discomforts are simply par for the course, the random results of bigger things no one here can control. That would be issues such as which sex you are and other physical characteristics. DNA is like that; it doesn’t ask your permission. So is an awful lot of what we experience as human choices. Malice is too easily imputed where it doesn’t exist. Worse, it’s often imputed to individuals who were handed a lot assumptions about life by the same people who gave them their DNA. I believe one of the worst forms of malice is assuming someone close to you in time and space should be blamed for not having chosen some other DNA and heritage. That sort of thinking is itself a matter of heritage, and becomes a sorry excuse for attacking someone in easy reach.
You want justice? I rather think you can’t afford to pay the price for real justice. Too many people have chosen one narrowly defined bit of justice over all others, and that is injustice in itself. Given what we are all up against, perhaps the only hope we have is first discovering what justice means, then work out what it looks like, and try to make it happen in what little you actually can choose. No justice will come from leveraging the current system, because it is inherently unjust from the very roots.
I reject the whole system in the first place, and I’ll do everything I can to escape it’s clutches.