John's Blog: May 2003

On Thinking

I've been told by many people over the years, mostly women, that I think too much. Even my wife says so, although, fortunately for me, she doesn't seem to mind, most of the time. (Sometimes she even participates. She's been known to take more than a healthy interest in prime numbers, for example.)

I've been going through old papers at my mother's house for the last few days, and came across some printouts of email correspondence from college. (Yes, I did at one time archive hardcopy of my email -- it was new then, and it seemed more special [and there was no spam]. Besides, it was on the college's server, and they purged it at the end of the semester. This was the mid-1980s, before we all had email on our PC's, for you younger generation out there.) Among the messages was a reply by me to the woman-of-the-month saying that it was interesting she should say that I think too much, as that is the same thing the woman I had dated the previous summer told me. "Is this a trend?" (My wife chuckled when she read this.)

But you know what? I don't think that I think too much. I think that I think just the right amount for me. If other people think that I think too much, maybe I just think too much for them. Or, to give them more credit, maybe they mean that I think more than is generally required to get by in the world, and maybe too much to get by comfortably. Which is probably true. Nonetheless, I'm right there with Socrates about the unexamined life.

For her birthday, I bought my wife a humor book called The Idiot-Girls Action Adventure Club, by an Arizona-based columnist. One of the stories features a friend of the author's who divides the world into "the Dumb Ones" and "the Smart Ones", noting that he and she are both in the "dumb" group. (Although when pressed, he claims to include her only because she is too cool to be in the "smart" group.) He does like to hang around with Smart Ones though, because then he can pick up interesting tidbits of information from them (like who the vice-president of the United States is) and repeat it to other Dumb Ones, who then think of him as Smart. So he gets the benefit of being thought Smart without all the accompanying angst.

As my sometimes tortured personal journal from late high school and college (most of which is now in the recycling) has lately reminded me, I had a lot of worries then. Although many of them were legitimate, I have thankfully become better over the years at prioritizing concerns (which back then also did not include providing for dependents) and not holding myself to impossible standards of "having it all together". I have also learned that a life continuously examined under an emotional microscope can tend towards paralysis. Which is maybe what my friends meant in the first place. But now I know it's true, because I've thought it through for myself!

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The Hunger Site

If you've never stumbled upon The Hunger Site and its affiliates, you should give it a look. It's a very interesting idea. You just click a button, and a certain amount of money is donated by the site's advertisers to non-profits that deal with that issue, such as hunger. It doesn't cost you anything, and there's no registration. It basically just sells space on the site to advertisers and passes the money on to the cause when you click. It even tells you that "your click contributed such-and-such cups of food".

When I first found this, I made it a point to click every day (it only counts once per day). I'm not quite as obsessive about it anymore, although I still try. (I have all the pages set up as "rotating home pages", using a script I developed to start up a different one each time I start a new browser.)

One reason I'm not as obsessive about it anymore is that I have developed a few misgivings about the whole concept. I'm still trying to figure out how valid these concerns really are, or how much it is just me. Maybe you can let me know what you think.

My misgivings run along two lines. First and foremost is the basis on advertising. True, it's advertising "turned to good", as it were, but it's still advertising. The older I get, the more the marketing profession overtakes the legal profession in my mind as the most reprehensible. At least the legal profession (criminal defense, anyway) is based on a valid humanitarian principle: Innocent until proven guilty, and everyone deserves a fair trial. (Okay, so maybe divorce lawyers are slimier.) I suppose the basic *marketing* principle could be stated most favorably as "everyone deserves to be aware of their consumer choices", although that sounds a little highfalutin' to me. More often, in my opinion, it's simply a matter of creating demand where no real need exists, especially in our American post-industrial capitalism. I have real problems with this, in terms of environmental sustainability and financial stewardship. So when I see, alongside the ads for useful things on The Hunger Site, ads for stuffed animals, nice clothing, and jewelry, the whole thing doesn't seem quite as pure as it once did. Is it a contradiction for a site dedicated to improving the world to also promote such materialism (especially the rainforest site)? Is it a morally valid business plan for such a site? I just being a starry-eyed idealist?

Apart from advertising: What does dropping a bomb on someone from 10,000 feet and using the Hunger Site have in common? Answer: In both cases, through the mere push a button, you are anonymously effecting someone you'll never meet, in ways you'll never know. In very different ways, of course, but the similarity in mechanics and anonymous nature of the act bothers me a little when I think about it too much. You are completely removed from the direct effects of your action, and unable to place it in a human context. It is yet another way in which online transactions are slowly replacing face-to-face human interaction, all with a push-button video game interface. If I click at the Hunger Site and all of its affiliates without fail every day, maybe that will make me feel less guilty that I'm not volunteering at the local soup kitchen, or that I ignored that guy who jangled a paper cup at me yesterday, or that I'm working late again tonight instead of spending time with my family and getting to know my neighbors.

And the power: By giving or withholding one simple free button click, am I really deciding whether someone eats tonight or not? Do I really have all that power? Do I WANT to? How would I even know whether I really do or not?

So, am I being an insightful cultural commentator, or a Luddite? You tell me.

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Bicycle Commuting Pet Peeves

My two biggest peeves when bicycle commuting:

• Roads without shoulders
• Weight-activated traffic lights

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