The Candy Crush Part 1-3

PART 1--Sometime in the Future

Candy Crush holds a gun to my head and whispers in my ear, "Want to keep playing?"

I nod. "Of course I do. This game's difficulty makes it impossible to stop playing else I'll feel like a failure."

"That's what I thought," Candy Crush says with a grin. "And I'm happy for you to keep playing. All you have to do is ask your friends."

"What?"

Candy Crush smacks me with the gun. "You heard me! Send notifications to your friends!"

"What? No. That's ridiculous. There's no reason to have to do that."

"Doesn't matter! Do as I say!"

"No! Those things are annoying as hell and everyone will hate me."

Candy Crush pulls a towel from its pocket and dabs at the sweat beading on my brow. "No one will hate you... They'll love you for sharing the game with them."

"That's not even remotely true. Those notifications are the bane of facebook."

"So you refuse?"

"I... I..."

"All it takes is a single click. You'll never even know how they react and you can keep on playing. You know you want to."

"No... I cant!"

"Have it your way," Candy Crush says as he turns from the room.

As he leaves he flicks a switch on a box in the shadow--it's a television. On the screen, dozens of types of delicious candies bounce around a sparkly, rainbow environment. It's an endless commercial for Candy Crush. In that moment, I feel empty.



PART 2

The longer I sit in the dark room, chained to the chair, watching the candies bounce silently around the screen, the more attuned I become to what's going on outside of my cell. The voices creep faintly through the walls.

"No! I was so close!"

"Oh that's a shame..." says the familiar voice of Candy Crush. "Need some more moves?"

"Yeah! I could do it in just..."

"How about five more?"

"That would be perfect!"

"Great!" Candy Crush says. "All I need is another dollar."

There's a short pause. "I... don't... I'm all out of money..." the other voice says.

"Such a shame... Why don't you ask your friends?"

"I don't have any left! I sent them all notifications and no one sent anything back! They all defriended me!"

"What a shame..."

There are no more words. Only screaming. My gut twists as I try not to listen and focus only on the candies.

Only on the candies...



PART 3

The smells of spring float in on a cool breeze, rustling the tall grass around my waist. I briefly wonder why I had never stopped to smell the flowers before, but my thoughts go cloudy as I let the winds wash over me.

Suddenly, the white clouds turn dark and thunder booms in the distance. I look around for cover, but see nothing in all directions save for the rolling hills. They remind me of the Italian countryside, though somewhere in me I remember that I haven't been there in years.

Just as quickly as they turned, the clouds break and a wave of cold water falls over me, chilling me to the bone.

I'm thrown from my dream and back into the dark room, cold water dripping from my face.

Candy Crush stands there, an empty bucket in his hands and a grim smile on his face. "Rise and shine, sweetheart," he says. "I'm back."

He disappears behind me and my hands go free. A strong, sticky hand grabs my arm tightly and leads me from the room. We move in silence down long hallways. I try to remember how many turns we take, but after a time, I can't hold any more. When I struggle to remember the first turn, I realize that I probably haven't eaten, much less seen the sun in days. I've just been sitting in that room... thinking about Candy Crush...

Candy Crush finally leads me through a door. The chamber echoes with the sounds of candies being crushed by specials and combos.

"Sweet," a voice says next to me.

I look down and see a man sitting on the floor. In his eyes I see reflected rows of colorful candies, they disappear row by row until finally... a pop-up message... he's out of moves. The reflected image is blurred as tears well-up in his eyes and fall down over sunken cheeks. He flexes skinny, spider-like fingers at the end of stick-like arm and prepares to go again. He swallows any doubt. This time his eyes reveal desperation. Candy Crush sees it too.

"One more life!" Candy Crush says, bending down to pat the man on his balding head. "Good luck!"

Candy Crush leads me away from him and farther into the center of the cavernous chamber. All around me are men and women sitting on the floor in front of old monitors, clutching their computer mice. The women at our feet is wearing a tattered suit. Once likely a dark blue, it's now worn and grey, just like her hair. The man next to her, however, is in his pajamas. Instead of skinny like her, he's bloated and wet with perspiration. A few others like him scatter the room.

"Who are these people?" I ask. I'm not sure if I'm allowed so I tense, waiting for Candy Crush to hit me again. He doesn't, but I feel his eyes on me.

"Regular people," he says. "Just like you."

He pauses as he scans the players. He seems almost... pleased. "They come from all over. Some from their homes, some from their offices, others from the streets. Here, they can play as much as they want."

"As much as they want?" I ask. "You're holding them prisoner!"

"Prisoners?" Candy Crush balks, acting like he's hurt. "I see no prisoners."

"But these people... they look like their going to die," I say, scanning their faces. Not a one seems to notice our presence. There's only a vacancy in their dilated pupils. Vacancy and candy.

"If they choose not to leave, it's not my fault."

"But it's this game! They can't leave! Even if they want to!"

"Perhaps the thought never crosses their mind," Candy Crush says. I shiver. His eyes are on me again, studying me.

"But don't these people have lives?!" I shout it to the room as much as to Candy Crush. "Don't they have better things to be doing?"

"Of course!" he replies. A sugary-sweet smile appears on his face as he leads me to a new spot. "This one, for example, used to be an aspiring writer. One day during a mental block, she decided to start playing Candy Crush. That was many years ago and she hasn't written a word since."

He points to another, a few steps away. A man in a white jacket. "That's Doctor Mandapati. He was in the middle of a 20-year study on cancer. He was about to have a major breakthrough--life-changing stuff--when his daughter showed him the game she was playing on her iPod. That was 10 years ago."

"Oh my god... he could have cured cancer 10 years ago?!" My knees grow weak as I try to comprehend what the world what would have been like if Candy Crush had never existed. The room spins. When it stops, I find myself in front of a monitor.

"Good! You found it!" Candy Crush says behind me.

"I wont..."

"You won't what?"

"Maybe just... one level. To get my head straight."

"That's what I thought," he says, turning to leave.

The Ethics of Rules

WAIT! It's not as boring as it sounds, I promise.

Well... I don't promise it won't be completely boring. But it's fun. And that's what counts.

So this morning I had a girl come by the labs around 7:10am to try and print something out.

Knock, knock. Can I come in?

"The labs aren't open until 7:30am," my co-worker and I tell her rather unapologetically since there is a sign. First mistake perhaps. She pleads with us explaining that she has a class at 7:30am and just needs to print something really quickly. Holding steadfast to the lab policies, we explain again the hours of operation. She eventually leaves though not after making a comment about how our college sucks.

"Ridiculous," I say to my co-worker, releasing a sign of exasperation, knowing that today is likely going to be one of those days. He shakes his head in reply likely feeling the same way as I do. We exchange a few jests about the lab policies and how it's just how it is. "The labs were open until midnight last night," I say with a chuckle. "Perhaps she shouldn't have put off her assignment." We both laugh and go about our business. Me? I still need to wake up.

7:25am: My coworker has busied himself by turning on the lights and wakes the computers as the rest of campus should waking themselves. Unfortunately someone has waken up "a half hour early" for the sole purpose of printing out something important before class. Five minutes before the official time to open she knocks furiously on the door demanding to be allowed entry. I lower the can of Monster from my lips and shake my head, looking towards my coworker. She sees this as a sign of defiance and proceeds to make demands of us.

"I was going to open the labs early," my co-worker tells me calmly. "Now I'm waiting until 7:30 sharp." This, of course, only serves to increase this girl's rage level to OVER 9000!! Curses fly from her mouth that would embarrass the most eloquent of swearers. When we let her in at 7:30 she storms past the desk to sit down angrily at a computer and proceeding to say how much she hates white people and how our job is easy and we are terrible at customer service; that she is somehow better than us because she works customer service at Best Buy and she is always nice; that her being a working student who happens to be middle-eastern entitles her to some sort of special consideration or treatment; that she is always nice to people and doesn't deserve this kind of treatment; and finally that "karma will get me for this." I, of course, have learned to fear the spells and curses of those who practice witchcraft. The fear of some day paying for this trickles down my spine like a drop of cold water, chilling me from head to toe. I tremble as she storms out.

Thinking that perhaps the worst is over, my co-worker and I exchange a brief glance and a collective sigh of relief. Within moments of dropping our guard the screams and shouts of an angry woman resound through the halls of the Johnson Center, condemning the school, (white) people, and most fiercely, my co-worker and I. Ten minutes of ranting leaves us rather nervous and annoyed. In my head I imagine an angered customer standing outside of McDonald's making outrageous claims about catburgers and roaches in the nuggets. True or not, might drive some people away. Not that I'm all that concerned about driving people away from the labs but I don't want rumors spreading about the techs. I do kind of need this job. After 10 minutes of this (which brings us to approximately 7:45 which makes her much later for class than she would have been without causing the scene), I decide to call the police and have them escort her to class. The kind and understanding operator dispatches an officer to the labs while keeping me on the line, asking for details about the incident which I'm happy to provide. The officer shows up though it's too late to encounter the girl. We're instructed to contact them in case she re-appears and they leave. Sure enough, she does, but we suspect from her calmer demeanor that she utilized her class time to cool down. That or her friend told her I called the police.

Anyways, the cornerstone of her case and the main point of this post being, "What would it hurt to open the labs early?"

It's a fair question and of course one that needs thorough examination in true ethical and philosophical style (and naturally in keeping with my usual process).

In a moment of weakness and my usual generosity towards strangers (and of course my brief bouts of being a Kantian) I can actually understand and sympathize with the argument. The nice thing to do (as was explicitly pointed out to me though I feel is fairly intuitive) would be to simply open the labs early to let her in. The nicEST thing to do would be to have let her in at 7:10 but the still kind thing to do would be to allow entry five minutes earlier. As she pointed out, there would literally be no harm to me, my co-worker, or the labs themselves were they to open early. I do enjoy the 30 minutes of silence and lack of responsibility between my scheduled arrival and the official opening, but there is literally no physical detriment to any concession to the opening. Many ethicists would say that I had some sort of moral obligation to help out a human being, being one myself. It's an interesting argument and one that certainly has some weight to it I've never been much for duty-based ethics.

The argument that I made (with little success to our rage-induced patron) was one of principles. First of all, the "hours of operation" sign is a rule--one that must be followed. We have a strict rule about when we close because we don't want to be here all night. If we got flexible with that out of the kindness of our hearts, we might be here all night. I take our opening time just as seriously because it doesn't make sense that opening time should carry less weight than closing time. So not only is the time for opening the lab something I have to follow for my job, but it's also the principle of the matter. If I give this girl the most credit and benefit of the doubt that I possibly can, I can perhaps assume that she worked until the wee hours of the morning and simply did not have access to a printer before her class this morning. And perhaps for whatever reason she didn't have access to a computer and printer before work yesterday. Or the day before that. Or the day before that. If that's the case then I can understand needing the lab to open early so you can print off your assignment. On the other hand (and what I immediately assumed), is that she spent all night working on it or did it so last minute that she didn't have time to print from the lab yesterday or any day before and that this is the result of some serious procrastination. Which brings me to precarious principle number 2: Don't procrastinate and don't encourage people to procrastinate by enabling their bad habits. Now I understand this is pretty high-horse of me to make myself the savior of the procrastinators but in all honesty I'm not going to bend the rules for that kind of thing. I mean I'm not going to bend them period but especially not for something like that. Now you might say, "Dylan, perhaps her printer broke last night after the lab closed." That's fine, but that's no reason to curse us for not opening the lab for you. Accept that you will be late to class (which isn't going to kill you) and print your stuff when the lab opens. It's simple.

If I was standing outside some sort of service establishment I'm sure I would receive the same treatment from whoever works there. I'm starving and standing outside a McDonald's before it opens (I guess I'm also up really, really early). Pounding on the door and cursing the workers isn't going to make them any more likely to fire up the grills early. Say Kinko's is closed (this is one of the few non-24-hour ones) and I really need to send a package. Pounding on the door is not going to make the opening worker any more likely to open his doors. I understand that opening the labs only serves as a minor inconvenience to me and that most people would say, "Don't be a dick and just open the labs." Right, I get that. But what kind of precedence are we setting as far as hours of operation goes? Or a business's rules in general? If we open five minutes early today, we might have to open five minutes earlier than that the next day. People would get used to coming early and being let in because of whatever emergency that they have. All of a sudden there's a line at the doors before I even show up. We might as well just stay open. There's a reason for it. And I admit 5 minutes seems petty and it really is but the reason it became a big deal at the five minute mark is my final point: she was being incredibly rude. We were about to open the doors when she starts making demands and spouting off curses at us. Had she been calm and just waited outside the doors, everything would have been fine. She would have been peeved about being late to her class but frankly I don't care. But it was her rudeness that caused us to wait until the 7:30 mark and her rudeness afterward that made it such a big deal. And it's because of that that I don't feel bad about what happened. Again maybe I'm on too high of a horse thinking that I'm in any position to teach someone a lesson about courtesy but either way I was much less inclined to do the favor of opening early when she was rude to me.

Was I in the right on this? I'm not sure. Some might accuse me of being cold-hearted towards someone in need, saying that the slippery slope argument provided isn't catastrophic enough to hold water against the kindness I should have shown. Similarly one might say that the principles to which I felt I must hold to (such as not rewarding procrastination or rudeness or keeping with work policies) aren't important enough to justify not helping someone in need. Frankly, I think they might be right. I don't know if what I did was right but I also don't think the need was great enough that it warranted at the very least the favor of opening the lab early for her. Especially not after she started calling me a "sick psycho" or an "asshole." I don't respond well to that. No one does. But put yourself in my shoes--you let someone into the lab to print something at 7:10. Someone walking by the lab, maybe anticipating waiting outside of it for it to open sees someone in there and says to me, "Hey, why can't I come in?" Makes sense right? So she would have gotten her five minutes early had she not been so hasty. That's all I'm saying.

Finally I can extrapolate from the event today my overarching point, the one that makes this relevant beyond a story about someone who had a bad attitude. There are always rules no matter where we go. I'm a bit conservative in the sense that I am a big fan of rules. I'm especially a fan of rules I like, but hold a sort of reverence (or at the very least a respect) for the rules that I don't. Rules are designed (in the most Hobbesian sense) to keep us on track and organized--to prevent anarchy (a word I used in my argument with the girl that didn't seem to penetrate the anger). Without them we, as selfish beings, would probably act on the whimsical impulses of our ids and some bad stuff would go down. (Here also is where I think Kantianism in general can quietly sit down and stop yelling.) I would not make universal that people have the freedom to do whatever they want but I am also theoretically morally prohibited from restricting any freedom that does not harm me. Yet there are some freedoms that while not necessarily harmful to me would be harmful to society if allowed on a mass scale. Let that sink in.

To be succinct and to summarize, there are always rules and for every rule, there is someone who doesn't want to follow it and who will fight it. I'm not advocating blind and total submission to rules especially if everyone can agree that they aren't right (in the moral and just sense). But when you make an exception in a rule, you also put a crack in it. It doesn't sit well with me when (if we take rules to be the foundation of our functioning society) we put cracks in our rules. Things will slowly but surely fall apart.

Meta-blogging

It's blogging about blogging--the Inception of blogging.

What I don't get is Tumblr. I haven't seen a single one with a coherent thought. It just seems like a place to post .gifs like a glorified Facebook status. I don't think anyone uses blogspot, though. It seems to either be the hipster site (because it's vintage) or the MySpace of blogging. Who knows. Anyways.

I've been trying to figure out for the longest time what this thing exactly is. Is it a public diary where I share extended versions of random thoughts or is it the beginning of my collection of philosophical works? I don't know. Only a few of my philosophies have hit and sort of praise though most of my writing seems to at least entertain. I figure at the very least if I can manage to make it a habit to write in this thing daily (an endeavor which has failed miserably at this point) then perhaps that can be the launching point to writing something more substantial at the same time. And if for whatever reason these thoughts reach an audience then so much the better. Right? 

I need to find a better name for my blog. Something clever but something concisely descriptive of what it does. 

My I always wonder how people get famous for blogging. I read some of these and none of them are particularly enlightening or contributing anything of any substance to the great mar of the internet. I'm living proof that any idiot with a keyboard can write some words down. 

I think we're all just really bored and for whatever reason some clown gets more followers than others. Luck? Who knows. 

An update for the masses

No, I have no idea what I'm doing with my philosophy degree so please stop asking.

In other news...

I have indeed graduated from college. Woo. When I think about it though, I haven't really graduated since I'm here 5 out of 7 days of the week or roughly 20% of my life depending on how you want to look at it. Considering I should be spending about 33% of my life sleeping, that's a lot of work. Lately it's been farther from 33% than I'd like. Anyways.

Nearly four weeks from walking across the stage and I feel like I haven't had much time to do anything. Chalk that up to spending a week in technology limbo where I had no computer, internet, or Playstation. It's real hard to get writing done without a computer. I tried reading but for some reason I think I've developed ADD. More to come on that.

I want to finish my book but I've been filming this movie with some friends. It's a feature-length called the Blame Game and it's a dramedy- (drama + comedy) mystery-type thing that I think people are hopefully going to get a kick out of. Though what with having to pay the rent and all I still have to work so I'm up at 730 to drive 35+ minutes to shoot a movie for 6 hours and then drive 45+ minutes to work for 6 hours. Suffice it to say it's a long day and my paycheck will be disturbingly light this pay period but hey... at least I can say that I did it.

I'd also like to say that I've finished a book. Working on that. Right now my zombie horror is on the front line of what's to get done but my crime drama is next. Again, the ADD is killing me.

I'm quite satisfied with life though. I just wish I had more time to sleep (or maybe that's my current sleepiness talking).

More to come.

Tech stuff (because I'm cool)

So I realize I haven't done a post in forever--especially not a significant one. I thought that things would be different after graduation; that I would have all this time to do stuff like read and write. I guess I do have that time, I just haven't had the motivation or whatever. I think I'm still stuck on main problem about what to write. I still don't even know what this blog is. Anyways, I was on this website that gives a bunch of random blog post ideas and I thought I would try to write one. We'll see how this goes.

10 Gadgets I use on a daily basis

1) My computer

2.5gb of graphics RAM with an NVIDIA GeForce 570 chipset sitting next to an Intel 3rd generation i5 processor with overclock capacity and 16 gb of RAM means I've got a gaming machine for the gods. At least, the Gods on a budget. Every game I own runs beautifully and smoothly which is all I've ever honestly wanted. But most importantly it replaced my laptop which served me diligently for 4 years pumping out papers and LAN gaming and such like that. It was a faithful companion but alas, I now have upgraded to desktop computing. This machine will hopefully help me land a job and write my book, but if not, it will at least help me play games in stunning HD.

2) My phone--Gotta stay connected. For years I had dealt with terrible free phones from Verizon that barely passed the requirements of being phones. Sure, they made calls but other than that they were useless. At the dawn of smartphones my phones really weren't too bad but then all of a sudden the capabilities of everyone else's devices eclipsed mine and I was left in the technological dust. Now I have an iPhone and couldn't be happier.

3) My iPod--I'm separating my iPod from my iPhone though they are now the same device because for years I had an iPod that served faithfully as my companion and friend. It housed my music which is incredibly important to me and to this day (despite being reduced to a mere app on my phone) provides me with my favorite songs and lays down the soundtrack to my day.

4) My car? Is my car a gadget? I don't think so but without it I would be done for.

5) Who can honestly think of ten things they use on a daily basis that doesn't include their refrigerator and a lamp? This cookie-cutter blog crap is stupid and I'm not doing it again. I need to start writing and I think once being out of school really hits me I'll get myself in gear and actually do something worth while. Who knows. It'll be good. I think.

Eschatology: The Apocalypse and You

I'd like to take a quick break from the serious existential crap to talk very briefly about the end of the world.

So it's 2012 and the world is totally going to end.

Now one the one hand, that's totally awesome for me. I've recently decided (and managed to actually tell my parents) that I'm going to take some time off after graduation to "find myself." If the world ends at the end of this calendar year, I'll be smack dab in the middle of "finding myself" and will have only had to stand precariously on the edge of legitimate responsibility and adulthood. In fact, I'll be about seven months out of college, probably working a decent to crappy job, but be totally in a place where I have the time to go out with friends and read/write philosophy and do all the stuff I wish I had more time to do.

So really, the world ending in 2012 will be kind of awesome for me.

What's most terrifying though is that I think people are legitimately going to freak out this time. Not in a Harold Camping kind of way but I think it's been so hyped that we might legitimately see some terror on the streets. Anywhere from London riot style to people actually killing and stealing and martial law kind of stuff. It's just human nature, really. The world's going to end so why don't we just go to town?

"That awkward moment when you killed the 711 owner and stole all the Mountain Dew and Twinkies you could carry and then the world didn't end."

Say just for kicks that the world does end. We know that it's going to at some point so why not just suppose that it's going to be this December. What kind of apocalypse can we expect?

Zombie Apocalypse:

I love zombies. Not because they're fun to write about (yes, I am writing a zombie apocalypse novel) but because it would be easily the most interesting apocalypse to live through. Imagine being on the run from hundreds of assailants who want nothing more than to eat your flesh at any personal cost to them. It's a threat that can only be stopped by trauma to the brain and a threat that spread so quickly that you suddenly find yourself one among millions who are still capable to think. Now of course in the fictional literature there's always a hero who manages to stay afloat among a storm of the undead but I think in reality it would be less entertaining. Sure, you'd have the few psychopaths who would have no trouble pulling a trigger against an undead girlfriend or neighbor or whoever but then you'd have every other normal, level-headed person who would try to hold desperately onto the idea that their loved ones could be cured and probably get eaten in the process. They would hesitate at the crucial moment of self defense and die an ugly and violent death. These people are the reason that zombie literature is so interesting--why there's always the hero standing against the odds: because 9 times out of 10, someone hesitates and gets bitten. This results in massive hordes of flesh eating zombies and sudden halt to production and social structure. It not only destroys our social environment as we know it but makes for one of the most Hobbesian kind of environments we can imagine. What would you do? Head to the gun store? Look for loved ones? Kill yourself? You just can't know until you're there. I like to think that the human instinct for self-preservation always kicks in but you never know... with everyone around you dying I'm sure it's easy for the despair to take a toll for the worst.

And a zombie apocalypse is TOTALLY possible because of the way biowarfare is going and all of us zombie fiction writers have found a plausible way for this reality to exist.

Religious Rapture:

Ever picked up the New Testament? Ever read the book of Revelations? It's fascinating stuff. I mean really. It's easily the most interesting book in the Bible since it's really the only one that predicts what's to come when the world ends. Among other things it involves a select few being taken up into the loving arms of God and the rest of us being subjected to burning as four angry dudes ride across the sky giving us the old what-for. Assuming you/I/we chose the wrong religion or are just unlucky enough to not be one of the predestined (see: Calvinism), we're probably going to end up burning a horrible, firey death while collecting groceries and then spending the rest of eternity in hell. Sounds pretty awful doesn't it? I mean, think about it. Zombies you can kill if you've got a blunt object and the will power. The four horsement of the apocalypse? Hah! Angels wielding spears and crap? Hah! Demons? Hah! (Though they seem to the only ones allergic to holy water and crosses.) You're not only struggling internally with the existential realization that there is in fact a God who has been watching you sin for your entire life, but you're up against an immortal and unearthly being who is raining a merciless fire on your heretical behind. It's not a good feeling, I can imagine.

This of course means that there's a heaven and those of us who are chosen are going to be watching the chaos from whatever vantage point they are granted thinking either A) "Thank God (lol) I went to church every Sunday or B) "Oh no those poor people... but thank God I went to Church every Sunday. I mean seriously how bad are they going to feel? It's going to be a lot of "I told you so's" and a plague of smugness. Either way, it's going to confirm a lot of things people have staked their entire lives believing either right or wrong and honestly, make philosophy complete irrelevant because all moral and metaphysical questions will be answerable by the now very accessible creator.

Natural Disasters:

Here I'm thinking about disasters a la the movie "2012" or "The Day After Tomorrow." Think earthquakes and tsunamis and a second Ice Age. For whatever reason science cares to come up with, the Earth is going insane and things are just falling apart. Blame it on the core or the poles or some garbage like global warming, the earth is fighting back against all of our abuse and it's not taking any prisoners. Sure we can build arks and maybe find refuge in a now-hospitable African continent, but a whole lot of people are going to die. I'm talking billions of people. I'm thinking like 6 billion people are going to die because much like "2012," only the rich will be able to afford the technology that will keep them safe. On the one hand I find this understandable but on the other I don't like it because money doesn't guarantee genetic integrity and I don't think the rich are necessarily those we want repopulating the world.

Regardless, you're going to find yourself chilling one day doing whatever it is that you're doing, whether it's driving to work or sleeping or using the toilet and the earth is suddenly going to open up and swallow you. Seriously. That's it. No need for elaboration. You'll just be doing stuff and then the next moment you're dead. Sucks, right? Hopefully this is part of the previous scenario (religious rapture) and you'll be quickly taken up into the arms of a creator. At the very least you'll be hoping (rather loudly and erratically) that he exists and that being swallowed up by the earth or sea isn't too terribly painful. Hopefully if you're anything like John Cusack you'll be able to survive and see a new society built in the wake of whatever survivors exist after the clouds part.

Cosmic Explosion:

In a similar yet not unrelated vein we have something slightly more simplistic: the sun blowing up. Now astronomers are well aware that stars are just big balls of gas that are likely to give at some point and our star (the Sun) is no different. Apparently at some point our Sun, in similar fashion to other stars, is going to just... blow up. Basically, it's going to swallow everything up until Jupiter or whatever and that means we're all screwed. There's not a lot to it other than the fact that we're all done for. I can imagine people are going to flip and start killing each other or hugging their loved ones and praying to God but we are basically all screwed. And there won't be anything left because the explosion will vaporize Earth. Hopefully we will figure out how to travel to another galaxy or some crap like that before then because if not, we're all done for.

Nuclear Winter:

Anyone who reads the news (for the record, I don't) knows that we're constantly on the brink of global conflict. Anyone who plays Call of Duty knows we're just a terrorist away from nuclear winter which only YOU can stop. In reality though, I can see international politics getting out of hand to the point where those with nuclear weapons are going to have their sweaty hands trembling over blinking red buttons Skyping with each other yelling "I'll do it! I swear to God I'll do it!"

And then someone will. Some idiot is going to say screw it and push the button and then everyone will start launching their stuff because what else do we have to lose? Might as well take them to Hell with us. The aftermath is going to be a mostly scorched earth with minimal surivors yet not complete decimation. I'm thinking something like Fallout. There's going to be a lot of people left fighting for supplies and their lives while some semblance of government tries to take a hold, yet the one thing everyone is going to have to worry about is food and water which will all be completely irradiated. Speaking of irradiated, things are going to get nutty. I'm talking mutations people: the next level in evolution. People, animals, plants... things are going to start changing and adapting Darwin-style to the deadly environment in which we now have to live in. Look at Chernobyl--that place won't be inhabitable for another five hundred years at the very earliest. It probably won't be devoid of radiation for at least another thousand or more. Some people on the internet are talking about 50,000 years. Either way, those of us who are left after the idiot politicians start launching nukes are going to have to get used to the whole radiation thing. Those who don't die will start to change and those who don't change will die. Living in this world will be a lot like the zombie apocalypse--fighting for resources in a world where production has halted and little to no government to speak of--only now instead of the more killable zombies you have the unkillable radiation to deal with.

Social Meltdown:

Okay so say for whatever reason we're able to restrain ourselves and we don't launch a crap-ton of nuclear missiles into to each other. Awesome. That's for the best. But racism, xenophobia, and class tensions are only going to increase and worsen as time goes on. Discomfort and discontent with governemnts and people's opinions about how life should be lived are only going to make things worse. We're going to have a fanatic or some like that stir up his people into taking action against their government. This will cause copycat movements which will cause mass anarchy and the proliferation of whatever kind of ideals they're pushing. Or... one particular group will just take control like the Nazis and form a society like in 1984--a massive Big Brother society in which freedom is a forbidden word and we just do as we're told.

Either that or somehow we will just devolve into a Hobbesian existence once one of the aforementioned situations has occurred. Social meltdown will likely somehow be a facet of the end of the world no matter how you slice it.

Aliens:

Okay so say the Earth doesn't blow up or we don't blow ourselves up or whatever... there are billions of stars, many just like ours. So... there must be stars with planets around them who have had similar abilities to develop life. Let's not get religious or whatever and I know that statistically speaking the conditions for developing life happening on another planet are astronomically (lol) small but say it happens. Say for example this society evolves thirty times as rapidly as we do (because their conditions for evolution were better) and they develop long-distance space travel. Say they also hate foreigners. They're probably going to come over here and mess us up. If they don't just have an innate hatred for anything that thinks themselves as advanced as the alien race, they'll certainly see our corruption and sinful ways and think that we're better off dead anyway. Maybe they'll be gracious enough to enslave us or keep an elect few of us alive. Sounds a little like many people's conception of the Rapture. Anyway, aliens invading and killing us all is totally possible. Look at a crappy movie like "Skyline." They come, they conquer with little interference, and we are just plain screwed. You never know.

So now you know. Whatever happens at the end of this year, you'll hopefully be slightly more prepared or at the very least aware. Live this year the best that you can and enjoy it like it's your last.

"Kids these days" and Time

So I'm thinking that every decade I'm going to make a post like this to wax melancholy about how I'm getting old.

"But Dylan... you're not old."

Shut up.

I'm old enough to where everyone younger than me looks 13 but everyone older than me looks 29+. I'm old enough that I can actually say stuff like this but still young enough to have an endearing innocence about me (especially if I'm ever wrong). I'm old enough so that I can do cool stuff with the adults (since 21 grants you the last of the cool legal rights) but young enough that I'm still kinda hip and kinda cool and kinda in tune with these generational changes in culture.

Anyway, this post started off as one of those "oh things are different and stuff" kinds of posts but I imagine that's really not necessary for those who are in the very least bit aware of how things are. And this definitely isn't one of those 2012 posts (because believe me, that's coming) but it's one of those "things are just different" kind of posts.

I sit around and reflect on time (my own aporia of time, if you will) and think about how I've been around for just over two decades and things have changed a lot in the ways that the world works and in the way that I am. It's weird because I remember distinct events from my past and I think about the ways I've changed and it's amazing how I don't feel like an adult. In many ways I feel like the same kid I've always been and I wonder if that's how everyone feels--if everyone just imagines themselves as that same 8 year old swinging from tree branches and not knowing a thing about things and how anything is.

I suppose this post is going to be kind of short because I lost the point of it a long time ago but it will hopefully in it's vagueness spark some sort of independent thought about following posts considering memories and of course a 2011 wrap-up/2012 prediction post.

I just wonder how the future is going to be. Who is going to be in it, how my experiences will shape me... I just am totally uncertain about how things will be. To put it simply, it's an abyss--life, that is. Life after college is a great abyss that I don't feel that I'm ready to face. Things are so structured until now and I think now is the first time in my life that I can name certain people that I wish would be a part of it. (Am I coming back around to a point?)

Do we have an identity before our teenage years? Are we just cookie-cutter preteens that like the other things that the other preteens like until we decide that we don't care what anyone else likes? Maybe that's why we develop personal tastes and then look back on what subsequent and following generations of preteens like and think "God, I'm glad I don't like that cookie cutter stuff" even though we totally did.

If you haven't caught my drift yet, my main field of interest is the phenomenology of experience which I know seems kind of broad to those who have the vaguest idea of what that entails but I feel like it's the quintessential something that defines us as human beings and something that needs to be explored and understood. Time passes and it's the fundamental measurement by which we measure our lives. Believe me, I know. I wrote a 15 page paper about it. Our conceptions of past, present, and future are measured by memories, attention, and expectation respectively. Without these we wouldn't have any way by which to measure our lives and by my understanding our lives wouldn't carry any significant meaning (another existential issue). The point is, we look back on the past and compare it rather unfairly to the present and look at past events somewhat nostalgically thinking that things are somehow worse (here's where it will tie into the next few posts). Whether this is true or not is kind of irrelevant since things are how they are (though the continental philosophers would disagree) and there's not a lot anyone can do but desperately cling to memories.

Again, I'm not 100% sure what I'm rambling about since when I outline these posts at 2am as I'm trying to fall asleep it seems so much more potent and relevant but as always I apologize for whatever confusion might have arisen from your topical reading of this and praise whatever errant thoughts might have organically sprung from whatever words that you have read. Look forward to more concrete and hopefully more coherent and cogent thoughts in the near future.

EDIT 1 (1/3/12):

So I was re-reading this in a better state of mind and decided, surprisingly enough, that it wasn't as totally incoherent as I thought it was as I was reading, though it does lack the content I was hoping for. Hopefully this will fix that.

I used to be different. I used to be a quiet kid who didn't know what he wanted all the time but wasn't really all that concerned because time wasn't anything more than when I had to go to bed or get up for school and the future wasn't anything more than the teacher workday or the looming colossus itself: summer break. I used to think that people's opinion was based entirely on how fast you could run or whether or not you scored a run in kickball and we're all just going to kind of stay young and go to school together.

I thought girls were little more than cute things that that I wanted a girlfriend for some reason. The only music that existed was either the music in the movies or on the channels I watched or my parents music which was inherently not as good and never could have been (it was just noise and people screaming about stuff I didn't understand). Similarly movies were just things where people talked and it looked kind of real and they would often say stuff that I didn't get but my parents laughed so I laughed along like I got the joke.

Friends were people that lived close to you or went to the same school that thought you were cool too and you could share secrets about other students with and the group you were seen with defined you only as far as the gossip that was spread about any particular member--kind of like your group was only as the strong as the rumors about any one of you. Most importantly, my parents were just things that had jobs and money and things called bills and that's just how they've always been. They just annoy me when I'm trying to talk on the phone or play video games and they keep telling me to go to bed or do my homework but I need them to drive me places so I put up with their crap in exchange for being able to hang out with my friends--and that's how it will always be.

Not much has changed.

Nostalgia is a sticky mess that is easy to get trapped in and harder still to get out of and it's not something that I have to deal with anymore. Blame it on the meds or finding new, better things but I've been finding it easier and easier to throw old stuff away because it doesn't seem as important. Magical veils that surrounded memories have decayed and I now see them in different lights and most of them are therefore much less significant than I originally thought. That doesn't mean necessarily that they have objectively decreased in significance it's just that I guess I don't remember them in the same way anymore and what bothers me is I'm not really sure how I'm supposed to think about anything in my past.

I know that's kind of nutty to think about but if you consider that like newly opened wounds, memories are so much more potent and significant in direct proportion to their events of origin. That is, we cling to them with desperation relative to when they happened. For example, you never want to forget your first kiss between you and the person who just broke your heart because you feel like if you don't think about that memory constantly it will be like it never happened. Which I suppose is, in a way, true.

You look back on how silly you were to cling to things that in retrospect seem pretty insignificant and wonder how you could have been so naive to not anticipate much more significant events in your life. Again, we find ourselves at a Catch-22 since memories are always more significant than your predictions of what will happen in the future. Some might disagree but my evidence for this is in the idea that the future terrifies us so, as always, we cling to the known. What's more known to us than the past?

But what I find when I shake my head at high school kids in their skinny jeans and stupid hair and laughing obnoxiously loud about something that I probably wouldn't find funny is that I know that was me and I'm sure someone did that when they saw me and my idiot friends trolling about the mall. While everyone comes to that realization I think what is most surprising to me is that our perception of different generations changes as we learn more not only about our own lives, but the lives of others. By gradually filling the shoes of our parents we outgrow the shoes of our youth and wonder how they could have ever fit us. We shake our heads maybe not because we don't like their clothes or their music but more so that we don't understand what it's like to be them anymore. The memories we have of doing the things they're doing seem insignificant compared to our more recent experiences of more important things so we shake our heads saying, "they don't even know." That was a complicated sentence. Let me see if I can rephrase... Well, I can't.

Maybe it just has to do with not being able to remember how impressed we were with ourselves and doing things that in retrospect were kind of lame. Who knows. We seem as a culture kind of fixated on how things are always getting worse. In many ways, they are. Objectively speaking. But in many ways things are just changing which isn't inherently bad. Humans tend to be reactive and I think things will turn out okay as they always do.