WoW

[Another post-hike observation - no advice to give you]

Hiked in the opposite direction today. Walked north on my road until I arrived at a cut in the woods where the regional electrical power distribution company, TVA, had hired subcontractors to tear down the trees and move boulders around so they could plant artificial trees with metal vines strung across them. ATV and motocross bike riders use the area under the galvanized steel poles to test their offroad skills in suburbia.

While I picked my way up the hill, noticing tire, deer, and dog prints in the mud, I pondered the past few days.

In the first vestiges of serious thought patterns in my childhood, I knew that I was not going to fit well into my society because I neither wanted nor needed to find my place in the social hierarchy. By the same token, I don't like dealing with those who insist I fit into their pigeon pecking order.

Were my formative years influenced by the counterculture leaders of the 1960s, including Timothy Leary who said, "Turn on, tune in, drop out"? Perhaps. But does it matter? Only if I want to rewire myself, I suppose.

If I note a discrepancy in a situation, should I concern myself about to whom I make an observation pointing out the discrepancy? Only if I want to be seen as someone who plays by the rules of those around me who have a vested interest in that situation.

I don't have children. I can die or leave a situation at any time with no consequences for my genetic future. If, as the antiestablishment folks are wont to say, our human cultures are merging into a homogeneous multinational corporate oligarchy, to which I feel no need to belong even though I understand the need for some sort of an established culture, do I have a place in it?

A reader pointed out to me that there are no more untamed wild places so what difference does it make if we pave over the whole world because it's going to happen anyway. The reader is right in one sense - our air, water, and light pollution have affected just about all walks, flights, and swims of life. However, we haven't yet found a way to domesticate all living things, although we're certainly trying.

When looking up information about Timothy Leary to see how much influence he might have had on my pre-conscious living (the time when my brain was still working on organizing basic body functions while figuring out what independence was), I found a term I don't remember seeing - cyberdelic. From that word, I learned of a person named R. U. Sirius who embodied the term cyberdelic and followed Leary's late life delusional confusion about independence when he coined the phrase, "turn on, boot up, jack in," in reference to the PC being the signpost directing people to the cyberdelic movement.

The idea that drugs or technology can help one find a useful counterculture is false to me. Counterculture, by its definition, gives recognition to the culture it denies. All cultures have countercultures. Part of the cycle of human existence.

So if my pre-conscious self was partially programmed to seek countercultures, then I'll always be disappointed. In either case, we're still talking about social, hierarchical beings which organize into groups using ancient techniques for ensuring tribal and individual survival, with the elderly, infirm and young being susceptible to tribal views of survival.

Some people I've met in my life have found the post-cyberdelic lifestyle they enjoy, wrapping themselves with the protective cloak of anonymity in virtual gaming systems like World of Warcraft (a/k/a WoW). I tried playing similar alternative personality games many years ago (fall of 1980 being the first time I remember) when I was invited to join some college students to play Dungeons and Dragons. I was quickly bored. What's the point of a counterculture if all you're doing is substituting one form of human existence for another?

I've experienced the same thing over and over my whole life. When people have felt they like me, and thus believe I hold the same interests they do, they invite me to join their subculture, whether or not it's counter to the prevailing culture. I quickly get bored. It's not that I don't like the people, it's just that what they're doing - creating their own hierarchical sub-subculture - is not something I'm interested in.

If I feel this way, then being the human I am, there are thousands, if not millions or billions, of people just like me. That's one of those things about feeling like an individual while swimming in a world-sized Petri dish with billions of identical creatures. From a distance, general trends emerge. The individual is truly unique but shares all traits with others of its kind.

Some of those like me who feel unique race through others' cultures with strong goals of their own, accepting the inevitable run-in with others' desire for the racers to join their game, but putting that run-in to their personal use and not, like me, worrying about pleasing those around them.

I want people to feel the games they play should be important to them, with or without me. If they feel I am important to their existence, I worry that I'll disrupt their feeling of importance if I don't join or stay in their game(s). But why should I? I'm not going to have children. My thoughts die with me.

And finally, I get to the specific issue at hand. I want the students/customers in my ITT Tech class to believe that no matter where they are in life or the games they play, they are important. I, however, am tired of playing ITT Tech's games, including their hierarchical squabbles/needs (I'm already gritting my teeth as it is, knowing I'm training the customers to be good participants in the prevailing culture I have no interest in). I have no vested interest that forces me to keep playing ITT Tech's games. With no children to raise, future family to protect, or any other vested interest, I can quit ITT Tech at any time. The only thing keeping me there is my desire to make my wife happy, which includes fixing my car and repairing some rundown parts on our house using disposable income and not our retirement funds. I am an amateur philosopher who ponders this question: after all the sacrifices she's made for me, what price am I willing to pay to keep my wife relatively happy?

[And that'll lead into another blog entry soon, I'm sure (e.g., "what is marriage" or "what defines a relationship between two people" or "what causes two people to bond for life").]