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Preemptive taxidermy

My cat is an asshole. I expect this is true of all cats, but I don’t wish to cast aspersions on every feline. Perhaps, somewhere, whether presently or in some distant time in the past or future, there exists a cat who is not an asshole. Don’t laugh, it could be the case. Although, it is not the case with my cat.

I have said in the past that cats are the best argument against the theory of intelligent design. This usually causes some deluded cat lover to suggest that feline intelligence is far more advanced than that of humans. I don’t doubt this for a second. After all, Zoe (my cat) lounges around while Adele and I go to work to get money to feed her. When, as happens more or less daily, Zoe wanders around the apartment vomiting, Adele or I follow her around like servants, ready to clean up after her. But then again, in 17 years, she has yet to work out the mechanics of door handles. So, who can say?

I will say, though, that it is not the creature’s intelligence that I am putting at issue here, but that of its supposed creator. But then, perhaps God is a cat. It would explain a lot.

But leaving metaphysics aside, I maintain that, her potential divinity notwithstanding, my cat is an asshole.

In addition to daily, random barfing, Zoe has the annoying habit of thinking it’s perfectly okay to wake me and Adele up several times a night. In some cases, she merely wants attention. How rude it is of us to sleep at such moments! At other times, she will drag a loaf of bread from the counter, through the living room, and into our bedroom, and then attempt to eviscerate it with her back legs whilst meowing at the top of her lungs. Every night it is something different. In fact, it is two or three different things dragging us out of our bed, again and again, in the dark. Is there any better word than asshole to describe such behaviour?

All I know is, she is lucky she’s so cute. As I tell her repeatedly, stuffed cats don’t do these things.

Posted on by markusoreallyus · 2 Comments

Up to zero 

Today is my own private New Year’s Day. Another year behind me. That’s 49 of them, now. And what is there to show for it? Have I made anything, learned anything, done anything that hasn’t been done a hundred thousand times or more by others? Does that even matter? Does anything?

How do we measure a life? Clearly it isn’t by the number of years lived. John Keats, Mozart, so many others who died young but achieved something extraordinary, something beyond themselves, proves longevity isn’t the best measure. But is that sort of achievement a useful measure? It is far too rare, and often comes with such great sacrifice. It’s too harsh to say that only a handful from every million lives is worthwhile.

I mentioned Nietzsche the other day, and I think maybe he provides a useful clue. Not that his life is one to emulate. The creeping madness that eventually consumed him isn’t something anyone would wish on themselves. And many of his ideas – such as the will to power, the übermensch, ‘God is dead’ – aren’t really applicable here, either. The idea I’m thinking of is his theory of eternal recurrence of the same.

In The Gay Science, Nietzsche asks us to imagine a devil or ‘evil genius’ appears to tell us that our lives will repeat eternally, exactly the same in every detail, including this moment in which we are told of it, and that it has already done so an infinite number of times. Would we pull our hair, gnash our teeth and cry out in horror at the thought of having to live through each moment again, without any ability to change any of it? Or would we, he later asks in Zarathustra, clap our hands and shout, ‘Again!’

Some philosophers have dismissed eternal recurrence as metaphysical nonsense, but I don’t think he meant for anyone to actually believe that the universe was on a continuous loop. Nietzsche often described himself as a psychologist, and I believe he intended eternal recurrence to be a sort of psychological test. How happy are you? If you were told that you had to repeat your life again and again without change, how would you react?

That’s a pretty difficult test for most of us. Life, as Nietzsche well knew (but rarely admitted), is filled with painful experiences, especially loss. No one wants to repeat those feelings, those moments. But there are also moments of joy, experiences we would not give up for anything. Such experiences almost invariably lead to loss, and yet, even with that knowledge, who among us would want to live without them? If the sum total of joy outweighs the pain of loss, perhaps having our lives repeat endlessly is worth it.

For me, that is the case, right now, at 49, working my way up to the next zero. I hope it will continue to be so.

Posted on by markusoreallyus · 1 Comment

New Year’s Day 

It’s quiet this morning. There is sunlight and blue sky, which is strange for winter in Vancouver. We are more accustomed to grey. Then again, we are also more accustomed to warmer days. There is new snow on ground, and on tree branches, and ice where the old snow had melted. It feels peculiarly Canadian.

I got a head start on resolutions this year, the main one being this blog, or rather, the discipline of writing every day, which the blog fascilitates. Writing is a strange discipline. In one sense, it’s the easiest thing in the world. Just talk to yourself and transcribe the conversation. In another sense, it’s incredibly difficult. It’s not just myself I’m talking to, after all, and no one wants to bore their audience. It’s also not really a conversation, which has multiple voices pushing in different directions, and which flows organically, like a river meandering through valleys, branching off into streams, and being fed by others. Writing is more like a canal system, being at once less natural and more purposeful than a river. If it branches off, that is by design.

In thinking about my own resolutions, I begin to wonder what, if anything, others have resolved. Many of us like to say we don’t make resolutions. When asked I used to answer that I was sticking to an old resolution not to make any – just as I like to say I gave up religion for lent. But most of us do make them, whether or not they are formally constructed as such. The start of a new year seems to lend itself to thinking of what or how we can do better this time around.

There are resolutions I’d like to make for some people that they might not make for themselves. For example:

I’d like Dave Grohl, Josh Homme and John Paul Jones to collectively resolve to get back in the recording studio together. It’s been seven years, guys. It’s time.

I’d like to resolve on behalf of politicians (of every ideological stripe) that they begin to put the wellbeing of the people they represent ahead of corporate or other organizational interests. All of the people. Especially those who are struggling.

I’d like to resolve on behalf of businesses that they concentrate on making something more than profit.

I’d like to resolve on behalf of Lucasfilm that all future Star Wars movies be at least as good as Rogue One. (Which, by the way, was the best Star Wars film yet.)

Beyond that, I’d like to know what, if anything, you have resolved. Leave me a comment. Send me an email. You don’t have to get too personal (unless you’ve resolved to do so, of course).

Posted on by markusoreallyus

Why I gave up on Facebook 

Those of you who know me will know that I have recently, as a pre-New Year’s resolution, deactivated my Facebook account. I’m not sure how long this will last. There are things I will miss about Facebook, some of which I miss already. Keeping up with the lives of friends who live in other cities, provinces, countries. Keeping up with family, who I don’t see often enough. But there are things I will not miss, and which made staying seem like a losing proposition.

The things I will not miss can be divided largely into two classes: platform ‘features’ that have annoyed me, and more serious, societal issues not limited to the platform, but facilitated by it.

Annoying as they were, the platform features would not on their own have made me give up on Facebook. These include

  • Filtering out of some friends from my news feed, without asking me whether I wanted them filtered out or not;
  • Defaulting to “Top Stories” rather than “Most Recent,” as if Facebook knows better than me what I’ll be interested in (they don’t);
  • Repeatedly suggesting pages they think I’ll be interested in, and people they want me to be friends with (seriously, I was never going to “friend” my boss);
  • Constantly asking me to “like” Mark Zuckerberg (don’t you have enough friends?)

As I said, on their own these things would not have been enough to make me abandon the platform altogether. They were annoying, but nothing more.

More insidious is the memefication of thought, the denigration of fact, and the substitution of innuendo instead of argument. This isn’t unique to Facebook. It is arguably worse in some other spheres, like Twitter. But I see it as being more pernicious on Facebook, perhaps because I care more about what my friends think than the 140 character nonsense from strangers.

This problem has been going on for some time on Facebook. I think David Wolfe, Britain First and others, who use empty platitudes and cheap emotional appeals to build their brands and influence were among the first signs I saw. Everything could be reduced to a meme, lacking in substance, but ostensibly supporting preconceptions, such as “natural is good” or “our veterans should be honoured.”

The problem became more pronounced, with highly spun “news” stories began to be shared and liked faster than they could be read. Many of them, upon close examination, were nonsense. And yet, they would be vigorously defended, largely on the grounds that they came from an alternative media organization whose perspective aligned with that of their defender. The “mainstream media,” after all, cannot be trusted. They are inherently biased, generally toward whatever you oppose. If you are conservative, the MSM are liberal; if you are a progressive, they are right wing; and so on. Whereas alternative media, so long as it aligns with my prejudices, must be true. Facts are suspect, if they do not support my ideology. We saw the effect of this during the recent U.S. election.

It has become impossible for me to see much of this and not comment. Those comments always bring rebuttal, not based on fact, but on perceived orthodoxy. One must believe the right things. Arguing against orthodoxy is almost always a losing battle. And recently, I began to think of Nietzsche’s aphorisms about the “flies of the marketplace,” from Zarathustra. Specifically, I thought of the line: “It is not your destiny to be a fly swat.” Yes, I thought, that is true.

And so I’m saying goodbye to Facebook after nearly 10 years. I have better (or at least more enjoyable) things to do with my time.