Coded green.

Tuesday 26 February 2002

Screenshot DAoC

Pic of the day: They might have been giants, the people who built Stonehenge -- but probably not. (Actually, they were probably programmers, since this is another screenshot from Dark Age of Camelot ...)

Larger/smaller than life

No, the irony of the previous two entries is not lost on me. First, I lament the human tendency to think too much of themselves and becomes extraordinary and godlike in their own eyes. The next day, I declare that my thoughts and emotions in their uncencored form simply is too much for mortals to bear, and must be reserved for God.

I guess it is time to qualify my statements a little.

Strong emotions is hardly a divine trait in my book, though evidently most mythologies disagree. I'll make an exception for love, but even there there are different types. There is a love that needs to give, like a parent's love for a child; and there's a love that just needs, like a child's love for a parent. And more balanced ones, that give and take. In this part of life, I mostly have the need to give. When it comes to material possessions, and especially work, there are certain limits that limit this tendency. But when it comes to attention, I am not so sure.

***

C.G. Jung wrote that intellectual personality types tended to be not without emotion, but without nuance and control in their emotion. Their emotions would grow too strong as easily as too weak. They were therefore a bit afraid of their emotion, and rightly so. I guess I belong pretty squarely in this group of people. In later years, I have worked more closely with my emotions; but they are still not very nuanced. And, I'm afraid, not very reliable.

It's not like emotions always work out so well either. To take the most extreme cases, there are people who kill themselves or others out of hate, fear, and even love. Now that sounds like a very strange love to me, mind you, and I don't think that could happen to me without a lot of change (which would take its time). The way my soul is today, it is a very foreign thought. But even if you don't feel destructive urges in your love, you could still destroy much. By being clingy, by being obsessed, by overwhelming another and more middle-of-the road soul. Perhaps some would not mind drowning in my love, but frankly, drowning is not a prospect most of us cherish.

So I handle with care. I keep myself reined in. I consider, I hesitate before I act. Sometimes only slightly, sometimes strongly. I drive my body like a car ... indirectly, not instinctively. In a way distanced, even though I am inside it. In the same way with me and my emotions: Like driving a car rather than running, I rely on experience instead of instinct. I don't have the immediate feedback of the ground against my feet, the wind in my face, the blood pounding in my ears and the air in my lungs telling me where my limits are. I need to gauge and restrain, always restrain. Is that larger than life or smaller than life? Smaller, I think; but it is a price I have to pay for being what I am. You can't win the first prize in all sports.

***

When it comes to thinking, things are different. The subtlety I lack in feeling, I have in thinking. I can keep track of minor nuances, I can follow twists and eddies, I can keep highly complex structures of logic in my mind, build them and revise them. I did that when I programmed. I did not use flowcharts and stuff like that when I worked alone. I built abstract models, and mentally zoomed in and out as needed. It was almost scary at times; I did things I had never imagined I could.

I don't do that anymore. There is no need for men such as me now. And I burned out anyway. It lost its meaning to me. As I grow older, my spirit turns to other questions. But again I find, ironically, that I need to restrain myself. Many things that are obvious to me, are utterly foreign to my friends. Such as the fact that nations don't really exist; they are just conventions we agree on, like the rules of a game. (Actually, I'm not sure people even consider that rules of a game are mutual agreements, rather than divine revelations, either. Sometimes I have to wonder.) And when I start to talk about the mind being a composite, people are seriously creeped out. So I don't, usually, or I space it out with lots and lots of fluff.

Of course, I am also just a human ... on average. As much as I rise above in one area, I sink below in others. I can barely spell "carburator", and I don't know for sure what sport the "superbowl" belongs to. Obviously one of the American favorites, like oblong football or baseball (a sport I remember mostly because of the weapon involved, which ought to have leathery wings but doesn't).

I am unusually intelligent, but also lazy, so it evens out quite a bit. So, like most of us, I am larger than life in some ways, smaller in others. As the saying goes, we are all unique.


Yesterday <-- This month --> Tomorrow?
One year ago: It's an e life: Groups
Two years ago: Books vs the Net
Three years ago: Daggerfall firemen etc

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