Sifting Thoughts

            I recently had a discussion about honesty which resulted in the conclusion that saying the first thing that comes into your mind isn’t honest. This flies in the face of many common ideas, because what is honesty if saying the first thing to come to your mind isn’t the most honest thing to say?

            I periodically see a post show up on my social media claiming that a study found that people who swear more are more likely to be honest. The logical connection being made is clearly that people who swear are more likely to be spouting whatever is on their mind, and that’s honest. Isn’t it? Well, let’s take a closer look at that.

            When you stub your toe on something, what’s the first thing that comes to your mind? Unless you’re a remarkably logical person, most likely the first thing on your mind in that moment is to be mad at the inanimate object you just stubbed your toe on, and be very angry at it for being there. If you were to shout out your anger at the object (as I’m sure you might), scathing it with the fury of the first thing that came to your mind, are you expressing your real and honest opinion on that object?

            Technically, the answer is yes; in that very specific and precise moment, those horrible things you shout at that poor innocent inanimate object are precisely what you are thinking about it. But, that opinion is fleeting and won’t last. It fades with the pain, leaving you feeling a little silly for shouting abuse at something that doesn’t even have ears – and which you probably put there in the first place. Unless you’re a remarkably stubborn person, you’ll most likely even admit to yourself that an inanimate object can hold no responsibility for the pain you just experienced. And, just like that, your totally honest response to stubbing your toes crumbles into meaningless lies that you spewed out in a moment of emotion. Your actual, honest opinion on that inanimate object and the part it played in causing you pain is the one that comes after letting the pain die down and taking the time to think about it.

            Now, naturally, there isn’t that much trouble with shouting at inanimate objects – unless, of course, it’s fitted with some very sophisticated Artificial Intelligence – but consider if it had been an impressionable child you’d tripped on when you fell and hurt yourself. Why you left a child lying on the floor is beyond me, but that initial, ‘honest’ response of yours could do everlasting harm.

            Let’s take a look at prejudices. These are ideas that we’ve been trained into believing, sometimes since childhood (possibly by having them shouted at us after having been tripped over). We look at someone, and we instantly make certain decisions about them based on how they look, how they’re dressed, how they move – anything. As an enlightened person, you are aware of at least some of your prejudices and know them to be untrue (and, frankly, in some cases, ridiculous. I mean, seriously, just because it’s a spider, it doesn’t mean it’s out to murder you). Yet, there’s that trained piece of your brain that throws the prejudice to the forefront of your thoughts. If you voice that prejudice, because it’s what’s right on your mind, you won’t be being honest – because your honest opinion comes after all that hard work you’ve put in to quashing that horrible prejudice (spiders are people too, you know).

            So, speaking what is on your mind clearly isn’t inherently honest. I would call it impulsive, and only honest out of happenstance or if the person you’re conversing with asked about the first thing that came to your mind. Honesty is what you get after you’ve taken the time to form well-reasoned thoughts.

            That, in itself, is something of a revelation, isn’t it? True honesty doesn’t come from impulsively speaking what you happen to be thinking; in fact what you say can become more honest by sifting it through mental filters before speaking.

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If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Ageing Time

            Woah, is it August already? How did that happen? I could’ve sworn it was barely July. I guess it’s true when they say time goes faster the older you get. It seems a bit too fast for someone my age, though.

            It makes me think back to my days in school, when each day dragged on and on. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I disliked school, but I always found it tedious. I enjoyed learning, but the information I was taught was spread out over too much time. I always felt that everything covered over the course of a school year could’ve been taught to me in a month or two.

            Then, there’s all the time that was spent reviewing what was taught in previous years. True, it was necessary to a point, but I always felt I was being re-taught what I already knew when all I needed were a few key points.

            I look back at all those years now and think, what a waste. I know that I learned a lot of valuable things – my love of reading and writing was greatly nurtured by school – but, at the same time... I feel like I learned far too little for the time spent. Especially with how much longer the days felt.

            The absolute worst part, though, is the skill I became most proficient in. The skill of how to do nothing.

            Either because I finished my in-class work early or because my brain wasn’t feeling up to it at the time so I was leaving it for homework (this was quite common in the heat of summer, during the two allergy seasons that hit me or if I had a cold in the winter), there were times in school when there was simply nothing to do. Everyone was supposed to be working, so we weren’t allowed to talk (not that I was much of a talker). So, I learned the art of doing nothing.

            If my brain was feeling functional, I could spend the time thinking – the favourite pass-time of an introspective child. If not, well... it was simply a trick of looking like I was working while waiting for the class to end.

            I almost feel like this is something intentionally taught in school. The other side of looking at it is “how to pass the time when there is no work to do” which is, sadly, directly applicable to the workplace. It’s almost as if we are intentionally taught how to waste time.

            Then we get older and time goes faster. We’re proficient at wasting time, but there no longer seems to be time to waste. We base all our perceptions of time off how long those days in the school room were and we wonder how much we could get done if we had that much time and energy again.

            Whereas a day used to be a long time, soon it becomes short. Then a week becomes our definition of a short amount of time. Not long after that, months go flying by as if they were only one week long.

            Before long, a year is thought of as a short span of time.

            I watch all this time zipping past and wonder how fast time will pass for me in another decade. More than that, though, I look back to my years in school and wonder why I was forced to waste so much of my most valuable time.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Supply and Demand

            Today’s blog starts, as many of them do, with me thinking about things. In this case, supply and demand; how it’s supposed to work compared to how it has come to work.

            First, how it’s supposed to work. It’s all in the name: supply and demand. Supply is how much of something is available and demand is how many people want said something. Say, for example, a farmer in a market has ten apples to sell. If there are only five people who want apples, the farmer lowers the price to make the apples more desirable to purchase. On the other hand, if there are fifteen people who want apples, the farmer raises the price – this way, the people who don’t want the apples very much are dissuaded, the people who still want apples get them, and thee farmer makes more money for his work.

            It is a good system and makes a lot of sense. Sure, the farmer loses out a bit when lowering the price on the apples, but none of the apples go to waste and he’ll probably make a little more money by selling all the apples at a lower price than he would selling a few at a higher one. And while the people who found the higher price on the apples disappointing, it will still have been their choice not to buy one, whereas if the farmer had run out they would be likely to be more upset.

            Since the industrial age, though, this had been skewed. Just about anything can be mass-produced these days, and for a fraction of the cost. Theoretically, that means everything should be cheaper, yet the opposite is true.

            If something looks to be popular, it gets mass-produced. Far more of the item gets manufactured than could possibly be needed, just to make sure more than enough is available wherever it could be wanted. Then all the items are priced to cover the additional cost, along with a healthy profit margin, because if people want something enough, they will pay for it.

            The result is that there are many being sold for several times what they are really worth and there are still a lot left behind as waste.

            So, instead of market prices being controlled by supply and demand, they are now controlled by people seeing how much they can get and generating tons of waste.

            It seems to me that by doing better market research (and with less greed), a lot more could be provided to more people for lower costs, for everything from food to entertainment systems to vehicles.

            We have all the resources and skills to make the whole world run smoothly. Why haven’t we done it?

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Teaching D&D

            I always enjoy watching people learning to play Dungeons & Dragons for the first time – which is what I was doing tonight. A friend of mine works in a store that is going to start running the official Wizards of the Coast gaming sessions and tonight, in preparation, he was running a game for new players. He asked me (as an experienced player) to come along to help advise the new players.

            The important thing to know about D&D is that it’s a storytelling game, specifically designed to give the players as much freedom as possible. As such, it can be a little complicated to learn – but the hardest thing to learn, I feel, is that you’re allowed to think outside the box and bend the rules to suite your needs.

            The best story I have to describe this involves a game I was playing that was run by the same friend. I had encountered a door that, to get through it, my character had to will himself through – becoming part of the door before passing through. So, I asked that, if my character could will himself to become part of the door, couldn't he also will the door to be part of him? After looking shocked for a moment, my friend agreed. My character absorbed the door and walked around, able to manifest a door at will.

            That’s the sort of game D&D is – anything goes and, in a society built around such solid rules, that’s a hard thing to learn. This group of players did a splendid job, however. At first, they stuck to the mechanics of the game, but while they were in a room with what sounded like an army coming after them, they became more and more creative in finding ways to secure the area. They started with trying to wedge a knife under the door to keep it shut and eventually tried using an ice spell to freeze the doors together.

            The best part is I hardly had to suggest anything. All the players picked up the game quickly and flowed right into it. A lot of credit needs to be given to me friend running the game – he taught the basics and prepared brilliantly for working with new players (if I ever teach a new group again, I’ll take a leaf out of his book). The end result was everyone had fun and there are now a bunch of new people hooked on D&D.

            I bet we could get a lot more outside-the-box thinkers in the world if more people played D&D. Maybe we should teach it in schools. Ah, if only I were the ruler of the world...

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

The Hidden Message

            I have been asked many times before why it is that I love fantasy so much. To be honest, I don’t know all the reason – it is simply the only subject that completely captivates my interest. However, there’s one reason that I do know: I love the hidden meanings in the stories.

            To be fair, that extends to a lot of fiction, but fantasy in particular tends to have carte blanche to say whatever it wants. The writers can explore into the depths of morality, use allegorical political and religious situations and even express the odd scientific supposition.

            And no one questions any of it.

            Why? Because it isn't real. No one will ever tell you to watch a fantasy movie or read a fantasy book and tell you it really happened (at least, I hope they wouldn't. If they do, you may want to run away). Anything that is said can easily be brushed off.

            But hidden deep within those stories is an element of truth. The story may be an adventure, but underneath is a brilliant examination or commentary on human nature. What’s more, they usually don’t preach – more often than not, an idea is simply presented as if asking, “Hey, have you ever thought about that this way before?” I think that the inherent creativity in fantasy also encourages the reader and writer alike to think outside the box – something immensely important to our society as a whole.

            Recently I've been reading Colleen a lot of the books I read when I was younger. I'm amazed at how often I've come across phrases or ideas that stuck with me for years when I had no idea where they came from. These books shaped who I am today – not because they told me how to think, but because they presented me with ideas that resonated with me so much that I could never forget them.

            I think that future generations should probably take a cue from this fact, particularly when it comes to teaching. So often, these days, our education teaches what to think, rather than how to think. If we took the fantasy approach, by presenting a story and letting the student decide what is right, people would end up a lot truer to themselves.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Stream of Consciousness

            There’s a writing exercise called “Stream of Consciousness”. What you do is write down your thoughts as they come into your head. I was thinking it would make for an interesting blog post when I remembered how terrible I am at it.

            My first problem with writing a stream of consciousness is my typing speed. I can’t keep up with my brain. Being a writer, you’d think that I could write pretty fast – not so. I can only type twenty-five words per minute. Granted, that’s one handed and I can maintain that speed with either my left or right hand. Mathematically, that means I should be able to type fifty words per minute with both hands together, but no – two hands somehow drops my speed to twenty words per minute. As a frame of reference, office jobs usually require a minimum of fifty words per minute.

            The next problem for me is that I don’t actually think in words. At one point, in school, I was taught that there were two ways that people thought – either in pictures, or words. I immediately baulked at the idea because I didn't think in pictures and I knew that my thoughts needed to be translated into words before I could express them. Eventually I realised that there must be a third way of thinking (unless I was an anomaly) and, after giving it a large amount of consideration, I decided that I think in emotions. On top of that, I have several layers of thought constantly running through my head and only the one that seems most important at the time gets translated into words.

            Which brings me to my third and final problem with writing a stream of consciousness. Whenever I try to do one, my efforts to focus on what I'm thinking about inevitably focus on what I'm doing and becomes all about the exercise I'm trying to attempt. Here’s an example:

            Okay so I'm supposed to be doing a stream of consciousness thingy. I hate these things... so... what am I thinking about? Well, duh, I'm thinking about writing a stream of consciousness. As an example to the people who read my blog. Yeah I'm doing a really great job, I know, ‘cause all I can think about is what I'm supposed to be writing and, as a result, I'm writing nonsense about how I'm not writing what I should be writing because my brain refuses to switch topics.

            See what I mean? It just doesn't work for me. Nevertheless, it’s an interesting and fun exercise to try out. You should try it at some point, unless your brain is wired like mine (in which case, you have my pity) and you just keep getting caught up on what you’re doing. In that case, you should focus on writing things that don’t put your shy brain in the spotlight.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.