Monday 28 February 2005

Pic of the day: "Right now, the most enjoyable thing for me is learning more about you." But for one it may be love, for another intellectual curiosity. (Screenshot from the anime Ah! My Goddess.)

Hearts and/or minds

Today I got another mail from OkCupid. That's the web site with the dating oriented quizzes and questions. Well, actually some of the questions and many of the quizzes have nothing to do with romance. I think quite a few people take the quizzes just for fun, I certainly did. The questions, however, probably don't have much entertainment value. But they can make you think -- or perhaps that's just me...

For instance I couldn't come up with a good answer to the question " Do you believe in monogamy?" I mean, sure I believe that monogamy exists, but that can hardly be what they ask me about. The probably mean "Do you believe that monogamy is a good thing?" And my answer is "Good for whom?" Most women probably would prefer to share a good man rather than having a lousy man for themselves. And most men would probably prefer to have several women to choose among. In fact, even if they were to choose the same one every time, they would probably still prefer to have several to choose from! But for society, it would be disastrous to have a few men monopolizing all the women. This would leave a large number of men with no women at all, and they would quickly turn to suicide bombings and such. For most men, a life without a woman is not much of a life at all.

Hey, don't look at me. That was a statistical aggregate, not a personal testimony.

Then again, given the nature of the web site, perhaps it did ask for my personal feeling about monogamy. But I can't say I have given it much thought. Obviously I prefer no-gamy at all, otherwise there would have been decades to try to change it. If you have been drinking for 30 years, it doesn't matter whether you say that you'd prefer to be sober. If you've been a couch potato for 30 years, it doesn't matter what you "wish" or "want" or "think" about being in shape. One morning you wake up and say to yourself: This is who I am. This is who I'll die as.

***

But even so, OkCupid. I looked up the page of one woman, the program said that she seemed similar to me. That turned out to be far from the case. In her favor, it should be mentioned that she lives in the Netherlands. I cannot think a truly evil person would stand living in a place where people have so much fun! Even so, it seems on closer study that we had little in common except for our age. Sadly, this seems to be typical for me: I have little in common with most people my age.

However, there was a comment by the benevolent computer program that runs OkCupid. It listed a few other people who it found similar to this one, among them one it thought to be "mostly the same". Given its track record so far, this was no sure thing. So I looked up this one as well, although she is much younger and lives in America. It's not a big deal since I would not want to meet up and make out anyway.

Bingo! After one sentence, I knew she was special. After three sentences, I knew she was a fellow writer, although she had not mentioned it and did not until another part of her self-description. Because you cannot write like that unless you love your language. And if you love your language, you cannot stay away from it. I sure can't.

Recognizing a mind so like my own, in such an unfamiliar place, really set me to thinking. I mean, even more than normally.

***

What I am thinking is: Even though our mind may be similar, that says nothing about our hearts. The database engine describes her as "WAY less pure" than me. That doesn't say much, I guess. Machines don't ask the right questions, as I've shown above, so they don't understand that while saints chase purity, there are some for whom it is a side effect of the choices they made, or even didn't make. Still, when someone less than half my age is WAY less pure, there is probably also a real difference of the heart.

And what about the motivations for writing? I guess I could write and ask her why she wants to write a novel. I guess I should. It could be greed, which I find detestable. It could be hunger for fame, which I find reckless. It could be a message she wants to get across, which I find admirable. It could be a wish to contribute something to the world, it could be that she wants to make people a little happier or give them new eyes to see the wonders of life. It could be the sheer joy of creation. She doesn't say. And I don't even know for sure how many of these apply to myself. I just know that since I was a child, I have needed to write. It is the way my mind is.

Computer people can have some geeky fun together, their minds being by nature similar in a number of ways. It is a kind of fellowship. But it is a very different kind of fellowship from that of fellow mystics, for instance. And the both of them are different from the fellowship of two from the same ethnic group who find themselves among foreigners. One is a fellowship of the mind, one of the heart, and one of the blood.

Perhaps I would like the illusions better than the truth. Then again, perhaps the other way around. They say that "a mind is a terrible thing to waste". But what about a heart?