Happy Commercializing Love Day! Or Singles Awareness Day. Whatever you prefer. Not a fan of the holiday, but the "happy" wish is totally sincere, I assure you!
So I was looking through my draft posts and... I am one weird dude. I get all "philosophical" in some posts, and then get self-conscious about them and "save as draft". I happened upon one about purpose, and one about selfishness. Here's the Spark Notes for each:
What I think of purpose...
I think that everyone is born with potential for multiple purposes they can fulfill. In order not to encroach on free will, the universe was designed such that people can have many roles (and tend to have diverse talents usually). The people who are the least happy in the world tend to be those who deviate from their given set of "optimal" paths through life. That is not to say that one can't be happy straying from the beaten path; I'm saying that those who are unhappy with their careers or feel that their life lacks meaning are probably among those who did. I definitely did, and I'm kind of hoping that I don't end up as one of those unfortunate people I just described.
What I think of selfishness...
A while back I had a conversation about selfishness with a really sharp friend of mine, Inori. She's of the opinion that there are two different types of selfishness: malicious selfishness and necessary selfishness. I completely agree, and I'll try to lay out what we concluded. The malicious type is essentially selfishness for its own sake. You take from others and give nothing in return, even if you have the ability to help those in need. Malicious selfishness is truly awful, and I believe it's next to impossible for anyone with a conscience or a decent moral compass to be guilty of it. Necessary selfishness, on the other hand, is neither easy to define, nor morally reprehensible. An act of necessary selfishness might be done in the interest of self-preservation, or the preservation of those closest to a person. If there is a bus accident and your family is on the bus, you will help them before helping other passengers. Some might call this simple logic, but it is an act of bias, and a completely understandable and necessary one. If a man is starving and refuses to give some food he finds to another starving man who asks for it, that is necessary selfishness. He's doing what it takes to survive. I'm not saying Aladdin was wrong; giving his food to those kids was a really nice gesture, and admirable, but you won't last long actually living in the streets if you get into habits like that. Selflessness is for the privileged; it's for those who have so much that they can give part of what they have away and still live their lives happily. By the way, thanks to Ino for that interesting conversation. I'm sure I left a few of your key points out, and I apologize. Feel free to correct me.
Enough of that. What else do I want to talk about? I'm learning to play Terran in Starcraft II. So far all I know how to do is 3racks and do some rudimentary Hellion play. I'll eventually be learning builds from Brett (who's a Master League Terran as of this past friday), so I'm sure I'll hit diamond over the summer.
Still plugging away at guitar, I really want some lessons. Probably going to start those up over the summer as well.
Over spring break I'm going to be shopping for cars and places to live, so that'll be fun. Til then, pretty much just doing senior design, exploring some extracurricular stuff that I've been wanting to do, and "snapping nerd necks" on SC2 as my friend Bauer would say.
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