Tag: personal

Scott posted this today, as an excuse to ask his readership about when they first became “conscious”.

I think my answer is that I disagree with the premise.

My first intense memory is of shame. I was the pampered and adored first born of my extended family, all of three years old, and my parents had recently bought me a pretty extravagant toy: a child-sized, functional electronic keyboard. Through their words and actions, they made it clear to me that this was an object of high value, and I liked that they loved me enough to buy me something precious. They were lightly admonished by the extended family for spoiling me with it, and that only made the gift sweeter. I think I liked playing with it too, but I’m not so sure.

One day I was throwing a tantrum about something or another. In my rage, I took the keyboard and I smashed it on the ground with all my strength in an attempt to break it, because I knew this would hurt them. My parents went pale and anguished looking at me, but instead of feeling the ugly triumph I was expecting, new sensations flooded my body. Uncertainty about the correctness of my actions. Guilt. And confusion – my parents did not have emotions that last forever, nor did I want to hurt them for an eternity. Yet when precious objects broke, they broke forever and cannot be fixed, and had to be thrown away. Obviously this tradeoff was not worth it, so why did I even do what I just did?

This isn’t consciousness, I was not conscious at three years old.

In second grade, while walking down the stairs of my elementary school for library time I had a sudden thought: I read a lot of books, but all the books I’ve read had happy endings. I resolved to write the very first story with a sad ending when I grew up, and it would blow everyone’s minds.

By the time the class got down to the foot of the stairs, I’ve realized that the world is too large and too strange for there to be no sad books in existence. It’s much more likely that they just don’t give that kind of story to seven-year-olds, because unfortunately the grown ups think that we’re babies. When I learned the word “tragedy” a few months or years later, I felt a pulse of satisfaction, like sliding the last piece of a puzzle in place.

This isn’t consciousness, I was not conscious at seven years old.

I had a lot of existential angst in my pre-teen years. I hated living in the suburbs, I hated all my so-called friends and their petty girl-drama, I hated all the hypocrisy and cowardice that I saw in the world.

When I read my diaries from the time, all I see is a seething ball of anger. But I also remember writing down the words that I did, and how self-consciously I wrote them to mask all the despair and confusion in said anger, because I was afraid of the depth of my sadness.

Does one require consciousness to feel existential angst, and to hate the hypocrisy and cowardice that they see in the world and in themselves? To consciously(?) attempt self-deception?

I started writing outside my diary a bit in my teens, you can see some pieces here: me at sixteen, seventeen, eighteen. They’re dreamy and reflective and often quite melodramatic. When I think about my teen selves, they still don’t seem quite conscious. Does one require consciousness to reflect and to think about the shape of the future?

I also discovered the rationality community around that time, and started having a bit more “you can just do things” energy – using Luminosity!Bella‘s three favourite questions (What do I want?, What do I have?, and How can I best use the latter to get the former?) in decision making, reflecting how to fall into soldier mindset less during discussions, and starting to concretely prepare for the future (doing research on universities, actively starting to try hard at school, creating a budget and saving up money from summer jobs and stuff to make sure that I can afford my creature comforts when I moved out). But the amount of “you can just do things” energy I had then so much less than I have available to me today, so it feels weird to call that conscious.

I think my late teens to mid twenties was a bit of an interregnum; I was so busy with school that I didn’t have time to grow. Maybe as a side effect, I started getting a little into the Catholic Worker Movement. To this day, Peter Maurin’s general principle has often come to my mind: “[It is not enough to be good], we must make the kind of society where it is easier for people to be good.”

(Dorothy Day, reflecting: “But to make the kind of society in which it is easier to be good! One needs to be happy in order to be good, and one needs to be good in order to be happy. One needs Christians in order to make a Christian social order, and one needs a Christian social order in order to raise Christians. So it goes. “A vicious circle” is the term one usually hears, but this cannot be called vicious.” I of course reject the need for specifically a “Christian social order”, but the circularity here is an interesting koan.)

But school’s been done for a while, and I feel myself changing again. Here’s a few things about being alive that I really only started to internalize in the past few years:

• You can actually just do things. (But I think this is also confounded by the fact that it’s literally true that my range of motion has expanded, due to increases in my resources etc). Change careers, write cold emails, exchange money for goods and services that make you happy.
• Actively practicing at things will make you better at them. Actively practicing, with deliberate reflection on what you should attempt to improve upon and what you should be aware of in your practice, will make you better, faster.
• (this one is kind of embarrassing lol) You can actively choose to switch from gross to fine motor control mode of all your appendages when you need to, e.g. when you are practicing a new sport, and this will help you actually learn how to move your body in new ways. You do not need to flail your limbs around clumsily and hope for the best when trying a new thing. It is not actually the case that you only have fine motor control of your fingers! Oh my god Jenn did it seriously take you freaking twenty seven years on this bitch of a planet to figure this one out.

So where am I today? More than half the time, I still feel like I’m sleepwalking – it’s just that the options that are available to me when I’m sleepwalking increase over time.

On a good day, I feel a bit of the spark, and I can nudge myself and my environment so that the path I take by default is a more virtuous or pleasant one. Very rarely, I have a day or a moment when I have no grayed out options whatsoever, and all I can really do is lie on the couch and try not to get too overwhelmed or do anything monumentally stupid.

Is it the case that I’m feeling the spark on an increasing number of days? I don’t know, maybe? But to me this almost feels like the wrong question to ask, especially when I think about my likely decline in middle age and older. (Hope for immortal transhumanism springs eternal, but I’m not betting on it.) It seems unwise to chase those sparkling days, when instead you can work on making the path that you take when sleepwalking the best one it could be.

I don’t have the spark today, by the way. But recently I picked up the ability to blog without it.

I’m in a hotel in Whitehorse and my entire body is sore from a 4 day dogsledding expedition. It was an amazing time with breathtaking views and great company and so many good dogs. In that time I also generated a bunch of text posts.

all timestamps are approximate because my phone needed to be in an inner pocket so it doesnt die from extreme cold and that makes it hard to get to so most of the time i had no idea what time it was.

Feb 1
9 am
the van to base camp is toasty warm but the windows are frosted over w ice on the inside, thick enough that you need to keep ur fingers on for several seconds to melt them, and then frost immediately begins to creep over the melted part again. even with the heat at full blast, the windshield at the front has been progressively frosting over as we drive, the clear part is very noticeably shrinking over time.

11 am
all of the workers are French. not Quebecois but actually France French. what are the French doing up here

each of us get a baggie of trail mix. they tell us to keep it close to our bodies bc if the nuts freeze and we don’t notice it can break our teeth

12 pm
a guide tells us that we can have alcohol but not too much at night when we’re camping. J says “oh don’t worry we won’t, we’re all nerds here”. guide laughs and says “well, I wasn’t going to say it.”

1 pm
we meet the dogs. there are like forty of them and the guide knows them all by name and can rattle off personality facts. half of them have VERY french names (like Phibut or Lourelle). Other ones are named, like, José. One female dog is named Sexy. I chalk this up to French culture and attempt a posture of cultural tolerance

2-4pm

no posts too busy learning how to dogsled

5 pm
we return from the dogsledding and are told to “give the dogs praise.” Sexy the dog was in my team. I say the phrase “great job, Sexy” multiple times and feel vaguely hazed

6pm
one of the guys tell me to switch positions from the third sled out of five to the first. I am unsure what this means but it feels like a promotion. thanks boss

9pm
in the big tent having dinner and there are 2 dogs that just hang out. I ask what the deal is because there’s forty dogs here, why do these two get special treatment. like are they dealing w injuries or something. owner is like “oh nah these are just my guys.” they’re the og dogs!!! Their names are Yukon and Saskatchewan and they are a wizened 14 years of age. The ex took Quebec in the divorce

“I named that dog Sexy,” the owner says. “people told me I can’t name a dog Sexy, but I did anyways. and you know what? when she sits, she sits like this.” he folds one hand over the other so the wrists are crossed demurely. “and I think that is sexy.”

Feb 2

9am
I’ve grown more powerful. went from being so scared of the outhouse bathroom that I prefold my tp before any action happens to thinking like, you know what, it’s not even bad to expose certain areas of bare skin to very subzero temperatures for some amount of time. it’s relaxing actually.

10am
last minute swapped from first sled to second. demoted…

11am
we pack the sleds. everything is gonna freeze so everything that can’t withstand being frozen is supposed to go into a bag that they’ll keep at above zero for us at base camp. i hatch a nefarious plan to wear a tiny backpack between my two layers of parkas, so I can bring fifteen clementines with me without them freezing. (i brought 4 lbs of clementines with me up north because i heard there isn’t much in terms of fresh produce up here.)

12pm
one of my new leaders, Cleo, is the best girl in the entire world. she’s tiny and likes to raise herself up on her paws to look at the world contemplatively from a higher angle. she did this to my arm. she did this to my shoulder. on the road when we’re stopped, she does it frequently to Olli, the other lead dog

1-5pm

6pm
at the campsite and dawning on me that what was sold to me as “4 days of dogsledding” is actually winter camping in -20 weather for 3 days (meaning hours of daily mandatory chores that if you don’t do you die of cold and wet) plus hours of dog care/prep on top plus a little bit of sled time. i thought we’d get a cozy cabin out here like we did the first day, at base camp. instead i am handed a shovel and told to clear a patch of ground because if there’s snow there when we set up the camp it will turn into mud. we don’t get a ground tarp.

boiling hot water in my yeti thermos turns lukecold in an hour

7pm
out in the bush we don’t even get outhouses. we just have a bucket and we aren’t even allowed to use it unless we’re pooping. scared + prefolding some tp again

8pm
t: “there are some dogs that just have the dog in them. and other dogs that are just dogs.” her team is entirely dogs that have the dog in them, plus the new girl dog they are trying to impress, who also has the dog in her. they are behind a team of just dogs.

9pm
conversation about to what extent dogs are like house elves and what the ethical implications are

11pm
gritting my teeth and chanting “this is type 2 fun I’m having fun” thru tears. I paid a four figure sum to experience a lifestyle where being able to stick your hands into dirty dishwater is a treat bc you never get to experience that amount of hot water at once otherwise. a guide tells me that sometimes ppl fight over doing the washing up for this purpose

Feb 3

10am
clementine gambit paid off soooo good. shot of vitamin c right to the system for me and the homies and the guides.

while refilling my thermos i happen to peer inside and see a little pile of sediment at the bottom of it. i choose to pretend that i did not have this experience

11am
after a few times I’m no longer scared. but having prefolded tp on hand is actually just goated for its own sake

2pm
5th clementine of the day. give it up for clementine number 5

3pm
unbearable longing for the dune stillsuits where you stick little tubes in your nose and it captures all the moisture. the moisture from your breath catches on your scarf and coat and hair and makes patches of frost there there, such that if you move your face you are accosted with ice. people with beards accumulate icicles.

4pm
drop my phone dogsledding across a pristine frozen lake in the last hour before sunset. t picked it up for me like the bestest guardian angel in existence. 30 minutes later i realize it is gone and start panicking

6pm
the dogs really don’t respect me. this makes it hard for me to harness them up for the sledding and put their little jackets on them for the night time. Olli in particular doesnt respect me AT ALL when I get to him he gets up and does a half turn to literally turn his nose away from me and then curls up again before I can get the stuff on. I walk to face him again and he does this again. emotionally shattered

7pm
I think the problem is that I respect the dogs too much. I want them to be comfy and have autonomy and I don’t like being firm with them. In the pack hierarchy this makes me bottom bitch and they progressively lose respect for me. but this is a small price to pay for being a supreme dog respecter

8pm
One of the guides asks us about our jobs. upon learning that t works in AI, he asks what she thinks about “that new chinese model”.

unbelievable, t says afterwards. i fly thousands of miles north and dogsled away from civilization into the fucking pristine yukon wilderness where theres no signal and i still can’t escape.

9pm
i ate my dinner too slowly (ie taking longer than 5 minutes) so by the time i finished the food was actively cold and took heat away with each new bite. yum

10pm
I think we really confused the guides by saying that we don’t really drink but bringing along a bottle of whiskey that we share between the five of us. but look, those Europeans that kept dying on the arctic expeditions a few centuries ago? they weren’t drinking beer up here. it was whiskey that made them wander into the snow where they then die of frostbite and get eaten by polar bears. it’s ON THEME

11pm
maple whiskey. potion of warms your extremities that tastes just like maple syrup. our society is so powerful

Feb 4
11am
redacted calls me problematic for saying that it’s not surprising that some straight men would date transmascs and then immediately proceeds to defend conversion therapy camps. i retaliate by infodumping about my new weapons magnate blorbo, palmer luckey. j escapes out onto a frozen lake to get away from this rancid conversation. fair enough

2pm
dawns on me that dogs don’t understand language which means that they don’t understand accents! I was told to yell at a dog when it chewed on the line but he didn’t really respond to his name, Titan. Turns out I needed to say it with a French accent bc all the workers are French (tee-TAHN). Corollary: when I said “good job, Sexy” a lot the other day i did so for no fucking benefit since I didn’t say “Sexy” in a French accent

3pm
these little creatures in front of me are the product of thousands of years of human engineering. they’re engines that run on hunks of raw beef and chicken. they have personalities and inner lives and social ploys. they love rolling around in the snow whenever they have an opportunity to.

I wonder if these sled dogs are good sled dogs or kinda bad ones, like, across all sled dogs over time! on one hand, we’re wealthy enough to breed a lot of puppies and train them up and then the ones that dont make the cut get to be housepets. on the other the total demand for sled dogs is probably a lot less these days and it’s not like a life or death situation if you’re stuck with a slightly distractable dog that throws you off the sled so the pressure to get a real top notch team is probably lessened

4pm
the little bastions of thounsands of years of human engineering threw me off the sled and into a bush. again

6pm
on the ride back to town, the guide confirmed that we are by far the nerdiest group that they’ve seen. she didn’t even have to think about it. then again t spent like 30 minutes giving j a crash course on transformer architecture or something yesterday by the fire.

9pm
dinner in town. learn that the sled order is actually not a promotion, they line us up based on who is most likely to fall and hurt themselves the most. in light of this i choose to think that moving up only 1 slot is a w.

t has been last in line this entire time even though she literally has a fractured thumb. it’s not just her dogs that has the dog in them ig

11pm
arrive back at the hotel and pass out immediately. in the tent someone needed to get up every 2 hours to shove more fire in the wood stove, so we don’t all freeze to death. (i was in charge of the alarms, t did all of the shoving, q, r, and j are truly lucky fuckers who managed to sleep through this both nights.) i will never take indoor heating for granted ever ever again

Tell your dad that you and your little sibling won’t be able to understand the movie if we can’t find a version with subs. Tell him again more insistently after he doesn’t believe you the first time. Feel curious that he would think that you would be able to, considering the utter state of your spoken Chinese, but you’re not fluent enough to voice the thought. Maybe it’s denial on his part. Maybe it’s grief.

Listen to your mom and dad try to one-up each other on how many of the revolutionary songs they know, when they play in the film diegetically. Over a scene where the teenaged characters are learning how to shoot guns, they playfully compare notes on how good their aim was in their own basic training. They only really get along when they’re reminiscing about the past together.

You didn’t know that your mother went to basic training. Your dad has mentioned something like it before, but in the context of doing things like stacking up school desks to practice making barricades. He made it sound childish and silly, the self-conscious way he talked about it. You didn’t know that there were real guns, and that your mom was a much better shot than your dad. (Your dad didn’t know that, either, but he took it with surprising grace.)

You think of your mother the way she looks in the really old photos, the sepia ones where she still has a bit of baby fat, and you imagine her with a rifle strapped to her back. The image does not come easily.

Come up to the part of the movie where the kids encounter a smuggled cassette player and hear Theresa Teng for the first time. Be reminded of when your dad told you his own experience with her. Want to ask him to recount it again, just for the pleasure of rehearing it, but you’re not fluent enough in Chinese to voice the ask. You let it drift away, instead.

Watch your parents utterly fail to engage with the themes of the movie (I would have bullied that girl too, your mom just about says) and fixate on entirely the wrong things (which actors have really let themselves go since the movie came out, which actors look funny when they cry). God, their takes are awful, and you want to disagree with them vociferously, but you’re also horribly aware of your relative standing. Besides, your Chinese is too bad. You console yourself by exchaning a Significant Look with your sibling on the sidelines instead, like, look how much more sophisticated we are with our interest in the Political Underdones Of The Work and our Letterboxd accounts.

The movie ends with a non-twist: after the seventies, the youth who survived, which are most of them, continue to exist. They exist through the eighties and nineties and the 00s and the 2010s and, presumably, onwards. They change with the times, trading in olive military garb for cheongsams and blue jeans and sneakers. They go to university and find jobs and move abroad and gain weight and have children. They reminisce with each other at their children’s weddings, which take place in the 2010s. It occurs to you that your parents are not special; the parents of all of your ethnically Chinese friends would have similar stories.

The movie ends. Your mother says, that reminds me. She proceeds to invite you to go to the wedding of one of her university friend’s sons, in New York City. The son works a finance job there, you learn. You have never met the son, nor the university friend. Is this normal? you ask. Being ok with having your parents use your wedding as some sort of reunion?

Yep, she says. In China, that’s the primary function of weddings; they’re entirely for the parents. These friend weddings you speak of would be utterly scandalous there, it would indicate that the parents didn’t approve of the match at all. Like they’re too ashamed to invite their friends.

I hope you’re not looking to invite several dozen of your university friends and their families to my eventual wedding, you half-joke. Don’t worry, she says. We realized in your early teens that you’ve gone full native, and we’re not going to get to do a lot of the things we expected to with you. We’ve made our peace with it long ago. (They have not. But it’s sweet that they try.)

Dad puts on an interview with the director. She talks about how she based the movie on her own life experiences, or so he tells you. She looks only a little older than your parents, and you can’t really follow what she’s saying. Oh, wow, you really can’t understand it if it doesn’t have subtitles, huh? You dad says, after some stalled attempts to make conversation. Well, you can’t watch this movie now in China. The director was on a live-streamed panel, and at some point some white panelist made a critical remark about China’s Covid response and she made a noise of agreement. Since then, all of her works have been scrubbed. Anyways, I didn’t realize that this interview was going to be this boring, you don’t need to watch this. Does anyone want any last things to eat before I do the washing up?