Why are we a people so obsessed with comparisons? Above are just a few of the magazine covers I found searching for “comparison magazine covers” in Bing. What is it about them that attracts us? The intrigue, the thrill of finding out who’s the winner? Comparisons and superlatives (best, fastest, biggest, costliest, coolest): what is it about them that draws us in time after time? I don’t have an answer, just thoughts.

Here’s what I’ve noticed:

• In many – perhaps most – cases, we don’t pay much attention to who’s doing the comparison, to how qualified or experienced they are to declare a “winner” in whatever class of subjects they’re comparing
• Speaking personally, I know that many times I don’t even read the article. I just want to know who won, and if it’s what I expected, I feel admiration or pride toward the subject, and if it’s not, surprise and/or disappointment set in.

Why is that? Is my pride intertwined with objects? At least for the moment of that comparison, I would say yes. I don’t linger on it afterward but for that moment, I am worth what that {fill in the item’s type here} is worth; I’m as good as it is. If I bought it and it’s the best (according to some stranger), then I feel proud. If not, I either discount the article or console myself with other thoughts: I got a good deal, I’ll judge my experience for myself and not go by what a magazine says is best or even just better, etc.

One idea I had is that respect for authority is so deeply ingrained in us that we need some authority figure, however credible or qualified, to tell us what to feel and think. Authority and obedience are intrinsic to all the institutions that touch and shape our lives, and even our most important relationships: parent and child, teacher and child, professor and student, coach and athlete, supervisor and employee, and even government and civil subject.

So since I don’t have the resources to test every option for myself, what do I do? I trust some authority. But that’s not the same as reveling in comparisons, in needing them, to feel good about something (or even yourself). Is it not bad enough that I’m defined by what I do, that now who I am is also partly defined by what I like and own?

I think about these things.

Even though the odds are stacked against me (according to it), I really enjoyed this book. According to this book:

• I’ll never be a professional hockey player, or play any other sport professionally, the leagues of which have cut-off dates of January 1st, since my birthday is in December.
• I missed my chance to be a software tycoon, a la Bill Gates, because I wasn’t born in 1955; nor will I be a successful Jewish lawyer in New York City born in 1930-31
• I’m not culturally advantaged toward arithmetic because I’m not Asian, and I wasn’t raised with the Asian counting system which is simpler and more intuitive than its English equivalent
• Most importantly, I better get cracking at whatever it is I want to be great at, because it takes about 10,000 hours of practice in any one skill to become a master at it!

The book has a wonderful message that no man is an island – especially no successful man. Anyone has the same potential to achieve success and greatness if life, through all its situations and circumstances, is in their favor.

I don’t mean just in the big sense – having this wonderful life to live, living in the United States, etc., etc. – but rather the small, everyday stuff. Like Yahoo! Mail. Like Dropbox and Live Mesh. These services are offered to us for “free”, while someone “back there” has to take care of them, maintain them, make sure they work as directed and are available to serve us when we need them to. And we don’t give the services or the people behind them a second thought.

Then the cynic/realist in me remembers: There’s no such thing as a free lunch. Nothing is free, and these companies wouldn’t be offering anything for free, if, in the end, they didn’t expect it to make them money – however circuitious that path from “free new service” to some entitled overweight schmuck at Goldman Sachs having a greed orgasm over the company’s latest earnings report.

So it all comes back to what Krishna said: All is as it should be.

I haven’t verified these statistics, nor do I plan to, but it is nice to know I’m not losing much by not using Facebook and Google – as in losing privacy and personal information.

iPad owners are selfish douchebags

Maybe douchebags is a bit harsh, and reflects my own personal prejudice against Apple fanboys. A study, however, says that iPad owners are perceived as “selfish elitists.” According to this article:

According to a new study the psychological profile of iPad owners can be summed up as “selfish elites” while have-not critics are “independent geeks.”

iPad owners tend to be:

six times more likely to be “wealthy, well-educated, power-hungry, over-achieving, sophisticated, unkind and non-altruistic 30-50 year olds

and:

MyType speculates that one factor could be the device’s high price tag, and because screen-bound workaholics are likely to want another screen with which to stay engaged. The urge to include another screen in one’s life correlates strongly to seeing value in connecting to information in a new way, which is basically a nice way of saying what a lot of people were saying when the iPad was released: What do you need one for, really?

Knowledge – the personal, non-bookish kind – should, in my opinion, be acquired strictly on a need-to-know basis. You can’t unring a bell, as the saying goes. I personally have examples where I know something about someone, and they don’t know that I know, and like it or not, it affectsthe dynamic of our interaction. Of course I’m the only one between us who knows this, and the knowledge is something neither good nor bad; it’s not something worth bringing up and discussing. So while I sit and ponder and write about this, they’re blissful in their ignorance of the matter.

An edited version of a proposal for study I wrote up for a Ph.D. program I applied to (and didn’t get in to):

To keep track or not…that is the question

There’s a part of me that wants to record things, like the books I’ve read and when (which I do record), the movies I’ve seen and when (also record), and, most of all, the people I’ve met and know.

I’ve met people in various circumstances and gotten to know them to varying degrees. From one acquiantance to deep friendships of several years, this part of me wants to record it all, maybe to look back and reminisce later, or maybe for others to see after I’m gone.

Then another part of me simply asks “What’s the point?” It’s all going to get left behind anyway, right? Is there something all this is accumulating to? There isn’t. They’re just experiences, and I should enjoy them as individual ones, instead of searching for any patterns or meanings in them.

Which part do I listen to?

Just picked up this book off my Dad’s bookshelf, and came across this passage:

Happiness doesn’t mean gratification of all the senses, or constant and frenzied pursuit of excitement. We overvalue leisure time, and some people even try to figure out ways to rest during work hours. They keep complaining about their work and lack of sufficient time for relaxation. Yet if they allow themselves even greater leisure time, they experience deeper unhappiness. This is because the problem is not with the insufficiency of leisure time but with the concept of leisure itself. The fact is that leisure is enjoyable only if it follows work. A person who is genuinely engaged in his work is not preoccupied with whether he is happy or not.

-T. Byram Karasu’s The Art of Serenity, pg. 42

Shaayad by Jagjit Singh

मुन्तज़िर जिंके हम रहे उन को
मिल गए और हमसफर शायद

If it looks like a police state…(AZ,CO) (Boulder)
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Date: 2010-05-13, 4:56AM MDT
Reply to: billpaints50@hotmail.com [Errors when replying to ads?]
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THE POSEUR politicians in Boulder, where every other “liberal” is a closet Republican, grabbed some more headlines for themselves with a proposed “travel ban” to ARIZONA over the law requiring Latinos to carry papers at all times… WTF?

EXCUSE ME< but isn’t there, in Boulder, a MUNICIPAL ORDINANCE that states that “Any person contacted by the Boulder Police Department MUST BE ABLE TO SHOW A VALID Identification at time of contact or be subject to arrest, at the discretion of the officer”…?
(and this is for EVERYONE, white, plaid, paisley, day-glo, whatever)…

If it looks like a police state, and smells like a police state, and acts like a police state…

Tell me, someone, that you see where this is headed…a police state in the name of equal rights, a police state in the name of freedom, in the name of democracy…let’s make sure Latinos are not singled out, let’s do it the BOULDER WAY _ A POLICE STATE FOR ALL!

WHERE is the AMERICA I learned about in Social Studies/Civics classes, forty. fifty years ago?

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