Socratic Pride

The path to maturity in life begins with questions. Some are specific, some abstract.
Should I go back to school?
What do I want out of life?
Should I stay in this city?
What should I want out of life?
Should I be a writer?
What should anyone want out of life?
Why don't I understand a damned thing?
Is everyone just as confused as I am?
If everyone's as confused, why do they act like they aren't?
Is everyone just confused differently?
Do I even know the things I think I know?
Am I asking the right questions?
As one lives, the questions change. Rarely are they answered in any meaningful way; nonetheless, there they are, colouring our perceptions as much as they were invited by them. The only treatments are disengagement and the collection of truths; the latter is scary because when you become sure of things, you risk being wrong, and even humiliating yourself and hurting others with your wrongness. Self-conscious people prefer to avoid that, but certainties are like barnacles - whether you want them or not, they will attach themselves to your hull as you sail. If you really don't want them, you're going to have to stop sometimes and scrape them off.
Routines. Generalizations. Trodden-down trails of thought. These are all things your mind forms on its own, no matter how hard you try to avoid it. Your subconscious prefers to make things as easy as possible for itself. If you've done or thought something one hundred times before, on the one-hundred-and-first time, you're going to skip the drudgery of going through every step. Your mind does it automatically. Unfortunately for those who want to live without dogma, this means that you can believe something without knowing you believe it.
The philosopher Socrates said "All I know is that I know nothing." (Well, that, but in Greek.) He took this aphorism very seriously, making the case that he knew his un-knowledge better than all the thinkers of Athens and was thus the wisest of all. He defended his case quite well, too, confounding the dogma of his contemporaries until he stood trial and was executed for it. (It's interesting to note that there was once a time that philosophizing in an aggravating way was enough to get you killed. I'm not sure, in this aspect, that our current state of affairs is an improvement.) But even Socrates was not flawless in his ignorance. He believed that women were unfit to philosophize. He believed in the intrinsic value of some men over others, that disobeying an order in war was a fundamental sin. He, too, was subject to the social mores of his age. He, too, clung to false truths.
Taoism, to draw from my limited understanding, emphasizes a way of life that avoids introspective questioning. The only way to inner enlightenment is to live in harmony with the Tao. "The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao." One ought not to ask of one's nature; one ought only to be one's nature, and thus live with fulfillment. It is enough to be and do, and let this be one's philosophy.
I find this philosophy quite pleasing. But it still leaves plenty of room for barnacles. A Taoist, too, can grow complacent, arrogant, disdainful of those who seek Answers because, after all, the There-Is-No-Answer Answer has already been found. Why do they still search? Why do they still ask the questions a wise man oughtn't ask?
In other words, certainty of uncertainty is still certainty. It is still a barnacle. Complacency of perspective is the real cancer. There is no escape from looking at the world around you and making guesses, weeding out the contradictions when you find them, and coming to conclusions that make enough sense to trust.
I think that the most important thing to do is be humble. Our ideas are built out of what we perceive. Others perceive differently. Others have seen different things. No thought is universal; the only universal thing is the universe itself. When someone presents an idea you believe is wrong, there is no need to attack the person or the idea. Only ask how the idea came to be, and do so without judgement. Be willing to be proven wrong. You have no monopoly on insight.
But being humble does not mean avoiding belief. Belief is important and necessary, because it allows us to take action, to take responsibility, to engage with this uncertain world. Still, a belief is not the same as a truth. A belief is an uncertain thing one chooses to treat as certain. There is no belief that can't be proven wrong.
The only way to maturity is to accumulate knowledge, skills, and experience; to draw conclusions about life's big and little questions; and to act on them in order to see if they hold. Everyone's right inside their own head, but the real test of beliefs is how they handle reality. It's okay to feel clueless. It's even okay to feel like you have things figured out. There is no wrong path, no wrong way to think. But if you seek truth, be prepared to do a lot of scraping.

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A Few of My Stories

I was born in Swift Current, Saskatchewan on October 28, 1992.
I lived in a stone house with my older and younger brother.
At the age of six I moved with my family to Teslin, Yukon.
My younger sister was born not long after.
I was homeschooled, mostly self-educated.
I read books about algebra and calculus.
At the age of fourteen I moved to a friend's home in Whitehorse, Yukon.
I studied at Vanier Catholic Secondary School.
After I completed grade 10 I went to the Gadzoosdaa dormitory for the next two years of study.
I went home to Teslin for the summers in between.
After my graduation in 2009, I decided to take a year off before going to university.
I spent four months in Germany, with a two-week trip to Egypt in the middle.
I enroled at UBC, Vancouver, British Columbia, and moved into a residence there.
I began my bachelor's degree of computer science in September 2010.
My parents divorced and for the summer, I moved to my mother's new house in Whitehorse.
I went back to UBC. I enroled in the co-op program for the coming year. I came back again.
I worked at UBC for six-and-a-half months. I left the co-op program.
I returned to Whitehorse.
Here I am.

I was born on October 28, 1992, and grew up a quiet child.
My older brother was a leader, my younger an attention-seeker, but I just watched.
Not where I was going. I was a clumsy and quiet child.
I lived inside my head. I loved to walk, to think, to imagine things.
When I wasn't imagining things, I would escape into the world of games.
My older brother and I would often imagine together.
I was a peaceful child, but when I imagined, sometimes it was gory.
I was quiet about that, too.
The village I grew up in offered little in the way of friendship to someone like me.
I was lonely. I got lonelier when my parents fought.
I was always scared of talking to people. Strangers scared me.
Kids my own age scared me most of all.
Girls petrified me.
In high school, I made a few friends. I was depressed, but I was figuring things out.
Over time, I learned to open up, to get friendlier, louder.
I'm not always sure it was a good idea.
Nonetheless, here I am, loudly.

I was born on October 28, 1992. I was a lonely child.
So lonely.
Games were my escape from loneliness, from isolation, from a family that never functioned.
I look back at my childhood and can scarcely believe it went on for eighteen years.
What did I do?
I hid. I escaped from my entire life, to worlds that weren't very much, but shaped me more than my own.
I slew monsters, I fought wars, I watched things explode. I sat and sat and sat.
I never long to return home, but sometimes, I think of those worlds and want to be back there.
I did well in school, but I didn't care. I sometimes enjoyed doing homework.
I sometimes didn't. Why would I want to achieve? I was smart enough to coast.
No-one seemed to care anyway.
I wanted people to like me, but I didn't want to change the way I acted.
The awkward thrift-store clothing I rarely changed and never threw away.
I certainly didn't want to pretend I wasn't smarter than them.
University taught me friendship through heavy drinking.
It was probably the most valuable lesson I learned there.
I made friends, began very slowly not to resent myself.
Eventually, I found I didn't need liquor to start conversations anymore.
People started to see me as funny, interesting, not uncomfortable to talk to.
Here I am, but deep down inside, I accuse myself of only pretending.

I was born on October 28, 1992, and have been loved ever since.
For all of the chaos and pain in my family, we did love each other.
Still, I turned away from them because of all the ways it hurt.
Because I felt misunderstood. Just like every other teenager.
But I didn't see it that way at the time.
I wanted to find my people.
I spent years hoping that somewhere I'd meet someone whose story was like mine.
I didn't want lots of friends. I wanted allies. Comrades. Companions.
People who wanted to make the world better, to go on adventures.
To philosophize with each other. To pontificate. To laugh and dance and sing without need for skill.
Mostly, people who needed someone as badly as I did.
I stopped looking for friends that counted once I realized that every friend counts.
That what I wanted had to be built, not found.
That reality will never measure up to imagination.
But reality is unpredictable. It is chaotic. It aches. It intoxicates. It fulfills.
Still, I had to be hurt out of thinking that way. I had to be hurt so badly I was forced to reach out for help.
Reach out to someone, anyone. The pain was too much. I was scared of being alone forever.
It was a woman, of course. Only someone you long for can hurt you like that.
I failed to forget her. But I built myself up, chased after many others, never catching them - until.
One day, I met someone I hadn't been searching for. Someone better. Someone more.
I learned that love can be difficult. But it is worth everything else in the world.
Here I am, in love.

When I was born, I was a believer.
I believed in heaven and hell.
I was comforted. There was a Right Thing to Do. There was a God who Had a Plan for me.
I believed in miracles through prayer. But I could never muster the faith.
I could never share the Good News, even though I knew I was supposed to.
I couldn't defend it. Not against a skeptic.
When my faith was mocked, it made me angry. I felt like I had to defend my family.
Everything in this world that was good.
But I grew older. I met people who doubted. Who had never believed. Who had never even wanted to.
I met people who found no consolation in the idle comfort of a perfect promise on the other side of death.
I came, slowly, to see that my good book was only motley documents, folktales, legends.
Assembled, edited, reassembled. No-one really knew.
Least of all the monks. The prophets. The Kings.
The truth was out there, still waiting for me to find, for everyone to find for themselves.
How terrifying.
How exhilarating.
Somewhere along the road, I realized I'd become someone I wasn't raised to be.
Here I am anyway.

There are so many ways to tell my story.
I still haven't found the right one, because I can't.
But aren't some better than others?
I don't know how long I'd have to speak to satisfy myself that I'd told the whole truth.
By the time I was done, though, of course I'd be someone else.
No matter.
So much of me is undocumented. Of my past, all that remains are memories.
Shapes, arrangements of cells, signals in my brain.
Distorted by the present moment.
Once remembered, misfiled, misinterpreted.
There are no ways to tell my story precisely.
I can only pour out the evidence. Memories made into remembrances made into words.
Perhaps some of it makes sense to you.
It never quite makes sense to me.
I would tell it differently if I were in a different mood.
I would be a different man.

I was born on October 28, 1992.
I'm not sure what happened next.

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The Case for Giving a Sh*t

The world seems like a hideous place sometimes. We see evidence of the problems all around us - war, prejudice, ignorance, economic inequality, terrorism, environmental destruction, global warming, animal cruelty. Activists vie for our hearts; the media vies for our eyes, for the rare opportunity, in this all-too-horrifying world, to show us something that shocks us. It is getting ever harder to put on blinders that block out every horrible thing, though we continue to do our best. When we can't ignore it, we dismiss it, trivialize it. We are training ourselves not to care.

You can't talk about overfishing at parties. Then you have to talk about corporate lobbyists, about economic exploitation, about sweat shops, about pollution, about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Pretty soon everyone's just staring at their shoes, trying not to think about the overworked, underpaid third-world kid who probably made them.

It seems these days that your only options are caring about nothing, or caring about everything. Some people content themselves with monthly donations to a few feel-good charities in order to armor their conscience, but then they forget all about it. They don't even care how their donations are being spent - all they want is that sweet, cloying reassurance that they are Doing Their Part. They avoid learning any more than they have to about the world's problems because with knowledge comes the responsibility of action.

We need to buck this trend. We need to start Giving a Shit. Because in spite of what you may think, it makes a huge difference to care. I want to address that first, that sad half-apologetic justification: "I just don't see how one person can make a difference." You make a difference every time you buy your lunch. Everything you buy affects the economy, creates demand for more of that thing to be produced - more trees cut down, more waste dumped into the ocean, more wage workers stuck working for a corporate monopoly. In other words, if you stay quiet about things, if you support the status quo while quietly condemning it, you're still exactly the sort of person who allows it to continue.

You may want to insist that it's not you who's creating the world's problems, it's world leaders - you know, the Bilderberg Group, and so forth. They're the ones who really change things. Well, here's the thing: those people are human too. And they have exactly the same problem: they like things the way they are, with themselves in positions of wealth and power and comfort, and want them to stay that way forever, blind to the consequences their actions have on others. Oil companies aren't evil because they're carrying out a vendetta against Gaia; they're evil because they Do Not Give a Shit.

Even if you don't have time or money to give, you can still help just by caring. If you care, your friends will have one less excuse not to care. Politicians will have one less reason to ignore the issues that really matter. The economy will have one less blind customer to pander to. You will be able to see how your actions affect the rest of the world, and you will be more inclined to take the socially conscious option: to walk or carpool or take the bus when you can, for example, or to keep clothes longer, fix things instead of tossing them, stay away from unethical meat. (And to learn what words like "Organic" and "Free range" actually mean, instead of just smiling when you see them.)

We tend to deify our great historic do-gooders like MLK and Mother Teresa and Gandhi, forgetting that they would be marginal without all of the millions of people who joined their causes. I'm sure they would agree with me on that: it's not the so-called "great" humans who make the world what it is, but every single person who inhabits it. There's no magic formula for change. Every individual changes the world through their actions. They change things, too, with their complacency, with their inaction. They change things just by existing.

The question is not whether you can make a difference. The question is, what difference are you making? And once you understand this, what difference will you make?

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