Keeping Up the Fight

Hopefully this won't be me soon

I’m starting to get genuinely scared about my short term future, and potentially my long term future, as well. I almost didn’t cover my rent for the month, as my family couldn’t manage to send me the full amount that is due. Unfortunately, my apartment complex won’t allow a partial payment, even one which is only $20 or $30 short of the total. That means that if things don’t turn around soon, I could conceivably miss my rent for the next month, and that would mean I would be on the street with nowhere to go by my birthday, which is in the middle of May. I spent most of last weekend in a deep depression as I struggled with that realization. I wish I could say that the thought of suicide didn’t appeal to me at some point. However, since I have lived with depression for the majority of my life, I suspect that suicide will never fully leave the list of possibilities that I consider whenever I am faced with adversity. At least, I can report that, since graduating college, I haven’t been fully overwhelmed with emotional anguish. The feelings of depression didn’t completely overcome me, and a walk around the lake on Sunday afternoon helped me to break free of the painful, obsessive thoughts about homelessness or suicide which had grounded me on the previous two days.

On the other hand, I suspect that my gas will get cut off soon. That means I won’t be able to cook food on the stove, and I will have to endure cold showers. Luckily, the temperatures have now warmed up, so I don’t have to worry about being too cold during the day or night. As an odd consequence of my tendency to ignore some things, such as money, I had built up a credit over the last year with the electric company, as I set up my bank account to just send a regular monthly payment which was apparently slightly more than what was owed each month. That means that my electricity is still up and running, and current, for now. It will probably be another couple of months before my electricity will be turned off, assuming I haven’t been kicked out my apartment before then. I do plan to talk to my property manager at the apartment complex, when she returns to her office this Tuesday, to see if there is any way that I can negotiate my apartment rent downward for a few months while I continue to look for work. I am hoping that since I have been living here steadily for nine years that they will be willing to give me a little slack. Living in Raleigh, the lowest rent these days, which isn’t in a slum, is $600, and those are student apartments not far from where I am currently living. My rent, right now, is $700.  If I could get a couple hundred knocked off the price for a few months, it might make a world of difference for me, not to mention my family. Though, to be fair, that is probably more wishful thinking than anything based in fact. But, I don’t have much other choice than to try.

Limping Toward the Finish

Honesty is so refreshing these days

This was the last week of the semester, and I gave oral to women on three different occasions this week, which made things seem incredibly hectic. Now that I have your attention, settle down. My life isn't that interesting!

On Monday I had my final French oral exam. It went well, at least in the beginning, as my female partner and I were reasonably prepared for our skit and art conversation. Things started going downhill once we were required to ask each other questions from a predetermined list of questions in various tenses. The professor started dropping our generally high scores on the grade sheet. At least, we got through it with at least a C.

On Thursday, I had to rent a campus Zipcar for a trip to Wake Tech's Health Education facility for an oral exam that I had promised to do for an old acquaintance from high school that friended me on Facebook. It was okay, although I got there early and ended up sitting in the wrong building for half an hour before anyone came out and asked me why I was there. I was told that I needed to walk to the opposite side of a parking deck from where I was to get to the dental facility. I had some x-rays of my horribly crooked teeth made, but otherwise my teeth were apparently in too good a condition for actual cleaning work to be done. Since it is a teaching facility for dental hygienists, they wanted someone whose teeth were worse off than mine, I guess. At any rate, it was nice to see an old classmate who somehow managed to have a daughter in the intervening years and somehow didn't gain much weight, as so many of my other high school comrades and I have.

The Home Stretch

The Wolf Ears in Spring

With only a month left in the semester I feel like things are starting to come together, slowly but surely. Of course, I don't really have anything to base that on, considering that I am still waiting to find out what I made on my most recent tests in Biology, Psych Research Methods, and Ergonomics, and I am behind in my work in Accelerated French (bien sur!). And the fact that I am hoping to skirt by on the generous province of my professors' grade curves probably shouldn't be seen as positive evidence of personal progress! Nonetheless, I have made a few small steps in the forward direction. I was finally able to register for classes for Fall 2011, and I made first contact with one of the psych professors regarding PSY 499 work. I still have to fill out an application, so there is no guarantee that I will get accepted to the professor's lab, but my optimism (unfounded though it may be) is giving me a little bit of an emotional boost for the time being. At least getting a response back from a professor is better than the last month of silence I've had to endure!

The one letdown of the week, however, was learning that I will not be able to work in the tutorial center for the university. Apparently, they don't hire tutors for humanities, though nowhere on their website do they mention that fact! As a result, I went to a 30-minute information session only to learn that if I want to tutor I have to be proficient in math, physics, or chemistry! Maybe it is for the best, since they apparently do not give their tutors very many hours each week, and you have to actually pay to take the training course for tutoring. In other words, by the time you actually tutor you would probably only break even financially! The woman who ran the information session even indirectly admitted that fact when pressed about whether one has to pay for the training course. That is fucking brilliant! A part-time job that only manages to pay for itself! Wait until the Conservatives and Corporate Tycoons hear about this one! Fuck you Capitalism! Fuck you right in the face!

A Socialist Storm is Coming

Over the last few weeks I've been reading articles and watching video clips which have me convinced that the US is slowly and inevitably edging closer to socialism. And I, for one, will welcome its arrival with zeal.

First, there was an article from The New York Times which discussed Norway's continued economic prosperity in the face of the global monetary downturn. Thanks to the idea that government should exist to benefit its citizenry, Norway saved/invested hundreds of billions of dollars as a sort of rainy day fund. As a result, the nation was able to continue serving the needs of the people without any major disruptions. In fact, their economy has actually grown slightly during the downturn. I seem to recall that the US had a similar budget surplus at the end of the Clinton administration. Of course that was before the "wisdom" of George W. Bush took care of that when he chose to give the money "back to the people" to spend as they saw fit.

Then, there were the plethora of articles I read over at World Changing which show that, again and again, it is Europe which is leading the way in the movement to combat global climate change. As before, the European ethic of working together toward the societal greater good pushes them to innovate in the fields of energy production, conservation, and sustainable land use management.

But what do these topics have to do with the US? Well, I think that, thanks to the Internet, more Americans are becoming aware of the fact that the so-called socialist nations of Europe have already come up with effective solutions to the problems which plague our society, but with few, if any, of the negative consequences which US conservatives have attempted to use to vilify those solutions.

Take, for instance, this article from Wired about the socialist nature of the open-source movement. Literally millions of people take advantage of, and participate in, the open-source movement in one form or another. All are encouraged to share their information and resources freely with the rest of the world. People voluntarily pool their talents to create free software solutions (such as Gimp and Open Office) which rival the best, most expensive, software on the market. There are even open-source architectural solutions being devised to solve global housing deficiencies. All of this contributes to the greater good of the larger society. Add to that the benefits of flexibility and diversity of resources inherent in an open-source mindset, explained in some detail in this talk from TED, and you can see that the lumbering corporate mindset endemic to capitalistic business organizations could, one day soon, be a thing of the past.

Of course, in a way, capitalism is already forcing us to live as socialists. The consolidation of companies, thanks to deregulation, has forced most people to now do the work of two or three people and to work 60 or more hours a week even though their salary only compensates them for 40 hours! It isn't much different than being an open-sourcer, when you think about it. You're voluntarily doing more work for no extra compensation because you think its for the greater good. Although, capitalism convinces you that the "greater good" is you keeping your job rather than your job actually being beneficial to those around you. There are some companies which have made efforts to take care of their employees first, such as Malden Mills (makers of Polartec fleece) which continued to pay its staff while their factory was being rebuilt after an explosion. Unfortunately, those stories are too few and too far between to be considered a trend just yet.

I'm looking forward to the changes which our society will undergo over the next decade or two. Eventually we may learn that doing what is right for our fellow man can ultimately become the most American thing we can do.

Have fun and keep living life... and start working for the greater good.

Meet TED

For the last week or two I've been obsessed with watching the lectures presented by TED, the Technology, Entertainment, and Design Conference. TED has been hosting lectures by some of the western world's finest minds for the last 25 years. Past speakers have included the likes of such luminaries as Bill Gates, Jill Tartar, Craig Venter, and Al Gore. TED even has an iPhone App that I've been using to view lectures during downtimes at school, where I have access to WiFi.

The thing I really love about TED is that it reflects a convergence of intellect which, if these people are given the chance, could alter the course of humanity's future for the better. For instance, during a lecture from Venter, the founder of The Institute for Genomic Research, revealed that his newest endeavor, Synthetic Genomics, was working on developing artificial microorganisms which have the potential to convert carbon pollutants into biofuel for cars. Imagine the potential benefit to society if Venter's group could be successful. His bioengineered lifeforms could clean our air and solve our energy problems at the same time!

And while Ray Kurzweil, who has invented a host of systems for information input, probably won't be single-handedly responsible for altering mankind, I nonetheless found his lecture on the coming convergence of man and machine incredibly fascinating. For years I have dreamed of a day when I will be able to extend my life by an extra century by downloading into a cybernetic body. (Yes, I'm completely serious! Stop laughing! Why do people always do that?) I don't want to live forever, but an extra century would be nice. I have a slight fear that something really cool is going to happen a couple of years after I die and that I'm going to miss it. So, I'm all for anything that has the potential to extend my life span.

TED has helped bring to light the work of so many brilliant people, such as Nicholas Negroponte whose One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program is helping third world children leap frog into the modern world by giving them a window beyond their impoverished existence. Well over a million low cost laptops have now been distributed to places as far away as Iraq and as nearby as Birmingham, Alabama (I won't editorialize about the level of impoverishment endemic to Alabama!).

I like TED because it helps confirm my optimism about humanity. While some of these visionaries are certainly working for fame and fortune, most are working for the intrinsic good that comes from the search for answers and the quest for solutions to the problems of the world. If that doesn't describe the communist ideal I don't know what does.

Have fun and keep living life... and don't stop thinking about tomorrow!

Call Me the Prime Optimist

I've been called a pretty negative person, at times. I admit it. In the past, when something bad would happen, I would often expect the sky to fall on me at every turn. And the thing is that if you go looking for trouble you tend to find it.

The strange thing is that I actually think of myself as uncharacteristically optimistic when it comes to my view of individual humans. As a group, humans can go to hell as far as I'm concerned since groups inevitably fall to the sin of group think. Let's face it, a bad idea is still a bad idea no matter how many people subscribe to it at the same time. But, individually, humans can be reasoned with, most of the time. And individuals tend to want to do what is right even at their own inconvenience.

The reason I bring this up at all is because I had lunch today with Maryanne, an old friend who is the mother of the first girl I ever fell in love with. Maryanne doesn't seem to trust government at all, regardless of who is at the helm. For my part, I'm pretty fond of government so long as it is run by people I like and agree with; otherwise I see government as obnoxious at best and oppressive at worst.

Maryanne and I got into a discussion about capitalism, socialism, and communism. Since I grew up in a trailer park, once lived out of my car for a month or two, and have grown to hate the hypocrisy of wealthy, religious, conservatives, I've become rather fond of the romantic notion of pure communism. (Before you freak out, with the exception of a few experimental villages or a couple of primitive tribes, there has never been a purely communist society on the planet. Nor has there been a purely capitalist one. Both are extremes along a continuum.) But since communism is so hard for capitalists to wrap their heads around (capitalism almost seems like a religion to some people) I'm happy to compromise with socialism.

What does this have to do with optimism? Well, in order to believe that pure communism could work you have to believe that people are intrinsically good. I do, because I see it all the time. When Raleigh was devastated by Hurricane Fran in the Fall of 1996 the city was without power and phone service for a week. The area could have descended into chaos, but it didn't. People came together and helped each other to cope with the situation until our technology was restored. And that is how most people respond to a disaster.

But the good in human nature goes deeper into psyche. Think about our entertainment (books, movies, TV shows). We don't normally root for killers, or rapists, or greedy businessmen. Our heroes, the ones we really like and root for, save the little guy, protect the distressed damsel, and fight the oppressive system for the betterment of society. We like watching characters do the good thing because intrinsically WE want to do the good thing. And we want to do the good thing not because some antiquated religious text tells us to; we want to do the good thing because we are good to begin with, and need to be, in order for the species to survive.

Granted, we don't always succeed at doing the good thing, but that doesn't stop us from trying.

Have fun and keep living life... and be good to one another!