Why Tom Cruise Is an Idiot

I think I can get away with criticizing Tom Cruise, since he's a big celebrity and I certainly wouldn't be the first to make fun of him. I've been wary of all the $cientologist crowd, but I have certainly been more forgiving towards Beck, Isaac Hayes, and even Travolta. There's something about Tom Cruise that I find especially irritating, and I'm sure I'm not alone. He has a very smug air about him. It took me a long while to watch Minority Report (which I did eventually see, and which I thought was decent) solely due to my dislike for Tom Cruise. I may even see War of the Worlds on DVD, but it will be in spite of his star power, not because of it. He has negative star power, to me. A repellent force.

But on to the bigger reasons why I don't like Tom Cruise. He, along with other $cientologists, think that humans were brought to this planet as slaves by the evil alien Xenu. I mean, the legend of Jesus is one thing--what happened 2000 years ago is anyone's guess--but $cientology was founded by L. Ron Hubbard, who was a mediocre / poor science fiction author of the 20th century. Why would anyone with a brain believe this? Hubbard had to be pretty fucking influential to get anybody to buy that shit. Well, there's always Barnum's Law to consider--don't attribute to charisma what can be attributed to people being a bunch of suckers. Actually, that's just a corollary of the law, which itself states that a sucker is born every minute.

So Tom Cruise is a sucker. And annoying. That still doesn't account for why I dislike him so much. It doesn't explain why I am taking the time to write about him, when there are other topics perhaps more worthy of thought cycles (such as that eminent domain Supreme Court case I mentioned). I am writing today because of Tom Cruise's comments about anti-depressants and psychiatry. He said that there is no such thing as a chemical imbalance, and that diet and exercise can cure all ailments. I'm paraphrasing, but there are plenty of places where you can read the transcript of his loony conversations. He also claimed to have read the papers and understood the theories that form the basis of psychiatry, as a justification for badmouthing the profession.

Now, I don't see a psychiatrist, and I also do believe that anti-depressants are way overprescribed. I also agree that many ailments can probably be cured with better diet and exercise. But I also know that the one constant in nature is variation. Variation is the basis for natural selection. Biological systems are too complex to predict even in very specific cases (such as clones), let alone general cases. Take, for example, the latest prescription drugs that are only effective in for black people. In reality, they are effective for a (mostly black) subset of the general population with certain genes. There are so many enzymes and metabolic pathways and receptors that you never know what a chemical is going to do when it enters the bloodstream, with any real certainty. And with variation come defects. Everyone has them. Everyone has some sort of disease or disorder--or is at least at risk for something. So given that variation is the rule, and with variation come defects, why would anyone come to the conclusion that there is "no such thing" as a chemical imbalance? I mean, state your opinion if you like, but realize that no one has ever seen a molecule. No one ever knows anything outside of his / her own consciousness. We can only infer the truth from what we experience, and our experiences can be deceptive. So although it is possible that Tom Cruise is correct in some of his assertions about mental health blah blah, it is not only possible but certain that he is fallible just like everyone else.

Unless he's God. In which case we all have much bigger problems than his romance with Katie Holmes, or comments about Brooke Shields and anti-depressants. If you are indeed infallible, Lord Cruise, please smite me not.

I can understand why people doubt the science of psychiatry. It's a very complex subject. How can you study your own mind? How can you create an unbiased experiment to test the mind, when a mind is creating the experiment? That's kind of like checking the facts of an Associated Press story in the LA Times by reading the same AP story in the NY Times. Certain aspects of psychiatry seem very arbitrary. Where is the intersection between freedom and "appropriate" behavior? If I decide to wear a yellow raincoat every day, am I exercising my freedom, or am I mentally ill? How many eccentricities, deviations from societal norms, am I allowed before I am considered crazy? And how much emotional disturbance is acceptable before I should seek help? Can anyone really answer these questions for another person? Can I honestly tell anyone else they should suck it up and deal with their emotional problems? Or that they should seek psychiatric help?

Psychiatry is like philosophy. There are many schools of thought, and they are not one-size-fits-all. But psychiatrists are not the ones who develop anti-depressants. Drugs are chemicals, and whether doled out by shrinks, witch-doctors, or your neighborhood dope dealer Raul, they'll have the same effect on your brain. A different effect for each brain, of course, but independent on who supplies the drug. So sorry, Tom, even if you're right about psychiatry, I think you know jack shit about molecular biology. Prozac and Paxil may fuck your neurons permanently. We will soon find out. But whatever damage they do can't be any worse for brain cells than the decomposition that follows suicide.

Unless taking anti-depressants steals your soul, in which case taking them would be worse than suicide.

I need to get ahold of myself. With all this crazy talk, I'm starting to sound like a $cientologist. Uh oh, maybe I shouldn't have said that. They might sue me now. Or I could get kidnapped by Xenu.

I'm not sure what to write about next. The problem is rarely that I don't have anything to say, but that when I think of something really good to say, I rarely remember it when I get behind the keyboard. I thought about writing about my microwave, which is an Amana Radar Range almost as old as I am. I have to perform voodoo rituals to get it to work, sometimes. That microwave has character. Another idea was to write aboutJorge Luis Borges, randomness, and flipping coins. I actively try to introduce a bit of randomness into my life, and all because of a Borges short story. Or I may finally write about the Supreme Court, and how our rights are steadily being eroded blah blah. Or not. We'll see.

Enganando Trouxas

That means "Fooling Suckers" in Portuguese, and I just learned the word for "suckers" this weekend. I have been reading a book of crônicas by Luis Fernando Veríssimo, called "As Mentiras Que Os Homens Contem," or "The Lies Men Tell." Very funny. I've written about crônicas before, on November 5th, but I'm not going to write a book review right now--it's just that "fooling suckers" is a topic that has near universal relevance. I wrote about suckers in the last entry (July 6th), in the context of Barnum's Law and Tom Cruise being a sucker.

Besides reading crônicas this weekend, I also read from Nietzsche's "The Geneology of Morality," which I hadn't touched since my sophomore philosophy class. At least one of you out there knows which class I mean. I really liked Nietzsche because he was a funny bastard. Kant, Augustine, and Kierkegaard were so boring to read that it was painful. And some of them even had some pretty interesting ideas, in spite of their boring style. Not St. Augustine, who was completely full of shit, in my opinion, but that's a story for another day. Nietzsche wrote polemics, intending to piss off his audience. And he did a really good job--he pissed off much of my philosophy class.

But before I get into some of Nietzsche's ideas, I'd like to note that he was not a Nazi, and in fact died in 1900. Just because some idiot Nazis took some of his ideas too literally does not invalidate them. People take the Bible too literally all the time, and start holy wars while conveniently ignoring the commandment to not kill. If the Irish had taken Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal seriously, and had eaten Irish babies to combat famine and overpopulation, then Swift would have a pretty nasty reputation, too.

Back to the topic of suckers. There's one born every minute, you know. I'm sure everyone has his or her own definition of a sucker, but I'd say a sucker is someone who is naive to a fault. Someone who accepts what they are told without question. Sometimes this blind acceptance is due to fear, but whether caused by fear or naivete, unquestioning acceptance makes you a sucker. And what is unquestioning acceptance? Faith.

So, having said that, I'm sure that I pissed off a couple people. At least a little bit. It is one thing to be highly introspective, to consider different philosophies and then decide which one you like best; it is quite different to extensively study any single philosophy or religion and then place your faith in it, without considering other options. I mentioned that St. Augustine was full of shit, and one reason is that he came to contradictory conclusions about the nature of free will, and decided that a good Christian must accept these contradictions as part of their faith. Augustine said that on one hand, human's have no free will because God is all powerful, and calls all the shots. On the other hand, human's must have free will, or else they can't choose to be good, they can't make decisions about right or wrong. And Catholics have to accept both as true. Now tell me, would anyone but a sucker believe such nonsense? One or the other, I can see, but accepting two contrary ideas as both true, well, that just seems retarded. Dogma.

I like Nietzsche so much because he questions the most basic fundamentals of morality--how did good become good, and evil become evil? Who made that decision? How universal is morality? Is there really such a thing as innate or intrinsic morality, or are good and evil completely subjective? He makes a very convincing case that people invent a morality to suit their lots in life. A powerful king will define morality in terms of the values that he embodies--power, nobility, strength--while a serf will define morality in terms of meekness, humility, and weakness. Defining weakness as moral makes the serfs content in their serfdom--after all, theirs is the kingdom of heaven, right?

The problem is that the serfs have won. All of the major world religions preach humility, bowing to authority, and self-denial, to some degree. It is almost bad to be successful and powerful, while failure and impotence are Christian virtues. That takes away the incentive to succeed, excel, and win. Jesus said it is easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven. Who wants to be rich on earth only to spend an eternity in hell? But you have to ask yourself: who benefits if I submit to authority, if I turn the other cheek? If you don't fight back, you're being a good slave. That only benefits the slave's master, as I see it.

It's obvious that a person could take this philosophy too far, or too literally, as the Nazis did. Nietzsche refers to a "blonde beast" which epitomizes untamed man, man uncorrupted with these self-denying Juedeo-Christian. But really, you could substitute "Viking" or "Visigoth" or "Vandal" for "blonde beast" and it would mean the same thing. The Nazis took the "blonde" part far too literally. Hair color is irrelevant--it just happens that the primitive Germanic people tended to be blonde.

There are concrete consequences to glorification of weakness, and we see them everyday. I'm not the first to note that, in many ways, our society is devolving, that evolution has started to work backwards, so that the weakest survive and outbreed the fittest. Who has more babies--the rich, or the poor? The educated, or the ignorant? Tell me it isn't true. Tell me that society is progressing rather than regressing. I only wish that were the case. I'm not heartless, and I don't believe everyone who is poor or ignorant is in that condition due to their lack of merit. Obviously, circumstance plays a large role in determining success. But giving assistance to someone to help them improve their lives is far different from subsidizing laziness and ignorance. Hell, I wouldn't even have a problem paying for food and housing for the poor and ignorant, as long as it were not comfortable but merely adequate. Give people free food, so they won't starve--but make it tasteless gruel with nutritional value only. Give people free housing so they won't freeze to death--but no television, no creature comforts, just a roof to keep the rain out. I see no reason to give people reasons to make the least of their lives.

I could go on for awhile talking about Nietzsche, because he had some really interesting ideas, but I'm starting to feel like the character Otto in "A Fish Called Wanda", and he was a total idiot. Maybe some other day, after I've read a bit more, I can again discuss Nietzsche without feeling like a tool. But first, there was one more idea I wanted to share, about cruelty and punishment. What is the purpose of punishment? What good comes of it? If someone steals your goat, what good does it do to chop off the hands of the thief? You certainly don't get the goat back. And that's a fairly concrete example, where it is actually possible to compensate the victim by getting them a new goat. What about more abstract offenses? If someone kills your brother, and you kill him in retribution, what compensation does that bring? Revenge can feel satisfying, but how is it compensation? Nietzsche argues that cruelty is part of the most primitive bartering system: if you do me wrong, I get to physically hurt you, and your pain is my payment for your theft. Sounds pretty sadistic, but that was the basis of the first legal systems on the planet. At celebrations, such as royal weddings, the monarchs provided spectacles of torture and executions to entertain the peasantry. Yuck. But that does illustrate the base nature of humanity; people are animals, after all, so why is it so strange when they behave like animals? The more we deny our animal nature, the more we torture ourselves. Those animal impulses have to have an outlet somewhere.

All right, I hope this has been fairly coherent. The lesson is to not get fooled like a sucker. Question your beliefs, rather than simply accepting what is most palatable. The truth can sometimes be an acquired taste, and sometimes it's just plain bitter.

Next time I hope to write about Borges and randomness. Unless I get sidetracked again.

Babylon, Borges, and Flipping Coins

I have only read one collection of short stories by Jorge Luis Borges, but I must say that single collection, entitled Ficciones,, has had quite an influence on my life. Ficciones is, itself, a collection of two collections. Part One, The Garden of Forking Paths,, was originally published in Argentina in 1941, but the stories age very gracefully. The story I want to discuss today is called "The Babylon Lottery," and it's only seven pages in my Knopf edition. And I was able to find the complete text online, which I have conveniently formatted and you can read here

A little background, first. Borges was a librarian for much of his life, and many of his stories are about books. The most famous is probably "The Library of Babel," about a near-infinite library of books, each "made up of four hundred and ten pages; each page, of forty lines; each line, of some eighty black letters." But there are only 22 types of letters, not 26. This not too surprising, because there are 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet. Or, should I say, "aleph-beth." Jewish mysticism is a common theme in his stories. The library of Babel contained every possible permutation of those 22 letters (plus some punctuation), meaning that there would exist a book that contained your whole life story, even your future and your death, just because that combination of letters is one possible permutation. Of course, there would be many more books that contained your life story but with typos, or different details. You would never know which book contained the truth. Borges also wrote reviews of books that don't exist--or rather, that he invented.

But back to the Babylon Lottery. Here is the beginning of the story:

(Notice the mention of Aleph, Beth, and Ghimel.) This fictional Babylon is completely ruled by chance, by randomness, by chaos. I'm not going to summarize the seven pages, because it would only take a minute for you to read, but the backstory is that in ancient Babylon, people weren't satisfied with a regular lottery, where you're "in it to win it." They spiced up their lottery with a few penalties to go along with the rewards, just to make the game more interesting. And then there were lotteries to determine the mode of penalty, and how to carry it out, et cetera ad infinitum.

I don't long for a life devoid of certainty, but neither do I want a life that's too routine. Both routes lead to despair, according to Kierkegaard. There is the despair of infinitude, where you have too many options and are paralyzed, unable to make a decision, to choose a path. Then there is despair of finitude, which basically means you are stuck in a rut and can't see any options in front of you. Both types of despair suck about equally, but I think being stuck in a rut is more common (except perhaps to high school or college graduates who are trying to figure out what to do with their lives).

Enter the coin toss. It's a way to introduce a little chaos to life, to avoid getting stuck in a rut and having despair. It's so easy to get the same flavor of ice cream every time, or travel the same route to work every day. But that gets boring. And boredom is just a step away from despair, for me. So sometimes I flip a coin to make decisions. Usually small decisions, but who knows. Maybe some of those tiny decisions will turn out to have enormous consequences.

I think I'm a pretty decisive person. I am not usually paralyzed by tough decisions. But sometimes it is hard to make a choice when all options seem about equal. Usually this is the case with desserts: do I want the flan, or the tiramisu? Flip a coin. Do I want to stay home today, or go to the movies? Flip a coin. Which of two movies do I actually want to see? Flip a coin.

Although I can't think of any major decisions I've made with a coin toss, I now have that option. I have a tool to help me make decisions when there is no real logical basis for the choice. I have a way to inject a little bit of chaos into my world, and just knowing I have that ability helps keep despair of finitude at bay. The nicest part is that I remove any subconscious variables that might influence these decisions; my choice is based on chance, not on some subliminal impulse of which I am not consciously aware.

A friend of mine sometimes uses a coin toss to make decisions, but her method is completely different from mine. She flips a coin to see what she really thinks: Say that heads means hopscotch and tails means jumping rope. The coin lands on heads, but at that point she realizes that she really wanted to jump rope, not play hopscotch. So the outcome of the coin toss is really irrelevant for her, because it's just a tool to force her hand, to force a decision that would not be otherwise forthcoming. In contrast to me, she tries to bring to the surface subliminal impulses in order to make decisions.

Flipping a coin is, to me, a controlled way to surrender a bit of control. I'm trying to teach myself an important lesson: how to let go. I have another anecdote about surrendering control, involving my old car. My first car was a 1975 Mercedes 300D, and it had inumerable problems. At one point, the paint was so oxidized and ugly that I tried to strip it off and painted the car blue and yellow (with spray paint). It was hideous. Later that year, I loaned the car to my roommate for the summer, and he had it painted Viper Blue by Earl Scheib. I hadn't known they did decent paint jobs in addition to the "I'll paint any car for $99.95" deal, but it came out looking pretty nice. I had wanted the car to be cobalt blue, to match my KitchenAid mixer and food processor, but Earl Scheib didn't have that color. Viper Blue is like a HotWheels car--all sparkly.

By the time I sold that car, the electrical system had gone apeshit and I had installed hand cranks for some of the windows (which had formerly been automatic). The odometer and speedometer both ceased to function. The brakes were a bit sketchy, too, even though I had the master cylinder replaced at one time. Many people would have been scared to ride in such a contraption, but I drove it anyway. And I learned how to give up some control, specifically control over how fast I was driving. At first I was paranoid, driving without a speedometer, but eventually I stopped worrying. It was far easier to concentrate on actually driving when I didn't have to keep glancing down to see how fast I was going. I went with the flow of traffic, drove as fast as seemed appropriate, and never received a speeding ticket for the couple of years I drove like that. There was a Zen-like peace to releasing control and trusting my instincts, and I'm grateful for the experience.

By the way, did you know that Islam means "surrender?" Having control is such a burden that people love to surrender that control to some other entity. Muslims surrender to Allah, but I prefer to surrender to chaos. Something to think about.

At some point I would like to tell the story of the dead nutria I saw this week, but that story doesn't really fit with Borges and such.

Weird Shit I See on the Bike Trail

Yesterday (Wednesday, really), I was riding home and thinking about what about to write this week when I saw, coming from another direction, a girl wearing nothing on top but two barbells through her nipples, and then it all became clear: there is plenty to write about on the six mile stretch between home and work.

Part One: The Dead Nutria

So at the beginning of last week, I think it was, I was riding to work and trying not to get any bugs in my mouth. It's routine that I will have some bugs on my face; it's just a question of how many. The record is well over a dozen bugs, but I lost track at that point. I'd rather wipe the bugs off my face than sit around counting them. But now I'm talking about nutria, not bugs.

I crossed over a street and suddenly, on the sidewalk, there appeared these red dots on the bike path. "What the hell is this," methinks. At first I thought someone was demarcating a distance with a wheel on a stick, like the kind that click once a revolution. There are always park employees on the path, doing maintenance of some sort, and often destroying the trail with their trucks. But no, these red dots were actually the result of someone hitting a nutria on their bike, and then painting the sidewalk with the gore that remained stuck to the wheel. Yuck. I have almost hit a nutria before, when one scampered across the trail in front of me, so the fact that someone hit one was not so surprising, really. But I was startled at how long the blood trail went. I've passed by the blood stains for over a week, now, and it must be a quarter of a mile long. Let's say, 300 meters, to be metric. The stains tell a story--there's a kind of chaotic pattern around the scene of the accident, then a swervy pattern for awhile, then it straightened out leading to the road, where the cyclist turned right and continued in a different direction.

Last Thursday there was a big thunderstorm in the afternoon, but not enough to wash all the blood away. I'm wondering how long it'll stay there. I'll be keeping track, just like I roughly keep track of how long it's been that the container of mango salsa has remained in the communal fridge at work, or how long the same piss splatter has remained on the men's bathroom floor at work (damn lazy janitors).

Part Two: Cat Against Dog

One of the nice parts about these stories is that they are often multi-part. When I'm not too lazy to ride my bike, and the weather remains nice, I see the same people all week. The same ducks. The same nutria. Of course, it depends what time I leave the house. I can figure out other people's schedules based on where I see them from one day to the next. There's one lady with these small, round glasses and long, salt-and-pepper hair who I have seen for about two years, now. I remember when she started wearing a helmet (something I notice since I've had a major accident and split open my head pretty bad). Last week, I saw where she gets on the bike path. Anyway, this story was two-part, and unfortunately, it became less interesting once I figured out what was going on.

I see these events in very small pieces, due to the speed I travel. But even the small piece I saw was enough to tell a really good story: a guy was walking his dog, when from behind a mad cat jumped up and attacked the dog's ear. Unprovoked. I hadn't ever seen anything like that. It was a tiny cat, and a big black dog, so this was not a battle that the cat could have potentially won. But as it turned out, the next day I saw the same guy, the same dog, and the same cat. Actually, although the fact that these three were together makes the cat look less insane, it does beg another question: how does this guy walk his cat without a leash? I didn't think that was possible. It's like herding cats, right? The dog was on a leash, even though dogs are actually obedient creatures, compared with cats. Hell, a goldfish is pretty obedient in comparison with a cat. Maybe this guy had catnip in his back pocket. Or maybe he can talk to animals, like Dr. Doolittle.

Part Three: Funky Bicycles

Eugene is a bicycle town, which is one reason I moved here. I do drive a car, but I like having the option of not doing so. Some other time I will write a bike advocacy entry, but it'll be another week. Anyway, being a bicycle town, Eugene has more miles of bike trails than highway (so I've heard) and has several bike manufacturers and stores. A few places make tandem bikes, and other places make even weirder contraptions, like the giant tricycle. The guy who rides that usually wears black, and has longish, graying black hair, and a little jaunty black cap--the kind that you button together at the front. I have no idea what you call that kind of hat.

By now I am accustomed to seeing people riding all sorts of bikes. Bike Friday is locating on the bike path, so I see a lot of people testing out their folding bicycles. Most are recumbents, these days. Very recently, Paul's Bicycle Way of Life opened a branch of its store on the bike path, right next to where the nutria was run over. But they just sell bikes, rather than make them.

One of the more interesting vehicles was a bike car, i.e., a four-wheeled, two-seater, covered, um, quatracycle? Quadricycle. Yeah, that's it. There was a guy riding in one with his kid. I wonder if it's better to have three wheels or four in such a vehicle . . . Hmm. It would definitely be nice to have some overhead protection from the sun and rain (and bird shit). I'd like a bike where you could sit inside a shell and not be affected by cold or adverse weather conditioned while you pedal.

Part Four: Derelicts

Sadly, one of the most common sites in Eugene in general, but especially on the bike trails, is a passed-out wino. There are several regular spots where I see them--on a few bike underpaths, and in a clearing by one part of the path. I have a feeling they would creep me out if I were a woman. I'm glad that I don't have to worry about being attacked. My sister saw some guy looking at her and jerking off when she was running on the bike trail. She got some other runner to stay with her for the rest of her trip, but that's really gross. She said the guy had been riding ahead of her, very slowly, and kept looking back at her over his shoulder. Then, later, she saw him at the side of the trail with pants down.

Not long ago, perhaps last year, there was a 14-year-old kid who was groping women and running away. Apparently, some jogger ran him down and caught him. What a little punk. I hope someone manages to reform him before he gets older, bigger, and more aggressive. Blech.

I know that bums have to live somewhere, too, but I wish they would be more respectful. I don't want to puncture a tire on the broken glass from a bottle of Old English malt liquor. I don't want to hit someone whose sleeping bag is laid across the entire trail, on an underpass where I can't see them in time to stop. And last, I don't want to smell their cigarettes. Anyone who has the money to support a smoking habit can afford a motel and shower now and then. But hey, cigarettes are more addictive than heroin, so I can't really expect them to quit. At least they're smoking outside.

I remember seeing a pregnant homeless woman, and instantly feeling sorry for that fetus. Jesus, imagine if your mother were homeless. I mean, it would be bad enough to become homeless after growing up a few years, but to actually be homeless from day zero? Damn. Even whores live in motels or brothels. I prefer not to imagine the homeless having sex. I know it happens, but so does leprosy. Doesn't mean I want to see it.

And now allow my heart to bleed just a tiny bit. A very high percentage of the homeless are mentally ill. I think maybe a third of them are schizophrenics, for whom the state does not adequately care. And an abnormally high percentage of the homeless are gay, often because they were kicked out of home before they were able to care for themselves, and never got out of that predicament.

Conclusion

Honestly, I wanted to take a break from writing anything too serious or philosophical or pop cultural. But next week, I am tempted to write about a reality TV show: Big Brother 6. This week there was a big power struggle, a coup. But if I do write about that, it'll be next week, not this one. Whatever I end up writing, I'll most likely be thinking about it as I ride to and from work on the bike trail. Nice segue. End scene.