Two nights ago, Claudia and I decided to end our relationship in 8 days. We were originally going to break up that night, but decided to wait until she left for the summer. True to statistics, our relationship was exactly 2.5 years long.

Off and on, this has been a long time coming (although this was more an off time (things were going well)), but nothing specific precipitated it. Claudia is going to spend the summer in Florida with her prior-secondary, working out a grant she got with another friend. We had a long talk about what was going to happen over the summer and beyond. There’s always been some stress in our relationship stemming from each other’s behavior, and Claudia said that she wanted a family some day, but not with me because of the stresses and our different paths; I said that I didn’t want to continue the relationship with that kind of known ceiling. We spoke truthfully, and shed tears, and did the breakup-thing as best we each knew how. Still, there’s something stupid in the sense we’re following, when we both still love each other so much.

Some interesting points

I’m free! Free as hippopotami in a seltzer lake.

My classes finished last Friday (MIT continues for another week, but I had the final meeting of my joint MIT-Olin class then). I still have grading to do, finals to give, and Olin Expo to help with, but nothing required of me but my time.

And this is the last month on Olin’s umbilical cord before I need to make my own babies. Anyone have projects for a good, fast independent contract programmer?

Here are my scheduled plans for the next season:

• Independent Contracting (29 hr/wk)
• Develop Gumption Center (7 hr/wk)
• Greater Cambridge Community Events Calendar (7 hr/wk)
• System Signals Predictor (7 hr/wk)
• Public Service/Activism (6 hr/wk)
• Inner Work and Religosity (6 hr/wk)
• Serious Blogging (6 hr/wk)
• SCA and Peasants Activities (4 hr/wk)
• A Summer Seminar in ESG (4 hr/wk)
• Finish Things for Olin (4 hr/wk)

I’ll say more if my plans actually fruitate.

My book for this week is The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, and I’m totally freaking over it.

Last night it revealed to me a chunk of the mysteries of the life, concerning the radical oneness of the universe. I wrote it up for all to see: PDF. Then I looked at the time and realized that I’d been zoning for six hours and should go to sleep. My big thought now is, “If I can get this much of a trip off reading about LSD, I wonder how far I can go from actually taking it!”

All One Disclaimers

I had two bad weeks, but last week was good and this week looks good. I’m mostly caught up from the bad weeks, so Spring Break (MIT’s and Olin’s are the same week) will be a chance to go deeper than the surface of my todo lists. Especially so, since C. will be in Florida (*sigh*).

The low point was Sunday night, two weeks ago. My arm was still pretty broken, my niece had brain tumors, my computer crashed with all my data, it was cold, and I was poor. C. was naked next to me, trying to get my attention and falling asleep. I mostly ignored her for Olin work, and I went to sleep a hour after she did and woke up and left 2.5 hours before her.

It made me angry at all my responsibilities and myself. I think it’s wonderful now-days that most of my responsibilities are self-imposed, but between those and the not-so-self-imposed ones, I was more than beat. I’ve decide to keep track of my time the way I keep track of my money (q.v. Your Money or Your Life, My timesheet)

Last week was a great week for ideas. I’ve been working on a tutorial for my written language and I realized that, within my language “You are the line.” On Thursday, I got into a great discussion on the philosophy of love, and come up with the disputed relation dI/dt = ergo * agape-hat. And I’ve been working on determining the nature of the gestalt of signals and systems. Here’s my first attempt at a diagram of that whole.

Philosophy> I spent most of Sunday reading Lady Chatterley’s Lover for a Philosophy of Love class I’m helping teach, and I finished it on the train to work Monday. At that point, I thought it was beautiful, powerful, endlessly intriguing, etc. Then, on the way back from work, I read the “a propos” written by D.H. Lawrence at the end of my copy of the book on what he intended by it, and why he wrote it. It blew me away. It’s not often that one comes away from a book convinced of the nobility of the heros, only to find that oneself is the villain.

I think that by the book, I’m not a real man. I’m mostly just a more timid form of Clifford, the ego-centric, all-mental husband. In the a propos, Lawrence describes his concept of a real man not just as one who has “courage in tenderness” or a strong connection between his body and his mind, but as one who experiences life fully, and breaks out of the emotional shallowness both the modern Puritan and the modern rebel. I think, by its standards, I haven’t felt a real, raw emotion in years– ever, in my memory. I do feel emotion, but in Lawrence’s words, my body supplies me with emotion like a trained animal.

Moreover, it seems like any halting steps that I might take to expand my emotional world go badly (and are opposed by others). Its clear that this particular fire in me has gone dead, but I seem to have perserved the hearth, and perhaps to more harm than good.

Politics> I also finished Don’t Think of an Elephant. There are some good pointers in the last section, but otherwise it’s pretty repetitive, if you grok the first chapter. I’ve scanned in the first chapter, Framing 101, for any who want it.

Life> Not much sleep this week, but Body’s been treating me well. After being on edge Monday and Tuesday from lack of sleep, he was totally refueled on 7.5 hours. Then, last night, I left my keys at Olin and had to sleep in a lounge at MIT, but Body kicked me off my couch after 5 hours and told me to catch my train.

Politics> In Don’t Think of an Elephant, Lakoff has a discussion of conservative and liberal frames for thinking about same-sex marriage and notes the divide between pragmatic progressives, who see civil unions as a sufficient option for homosexuals, and idealistic progressives, who feel full marriage must be an option for everyone. But I’m confused. My opinion is neither (or both?) and I don’t see how the others are justified in light of it from a liberal outlook. So I want to realize my blindness. Below is my thought on this. Does anyone know a good article for why this view isn’t more widely taken?

1. The ultimate solution to this problem is for all references to “marriage” to be removed from the law, and for the benefits currently conferred by it to be made available through a much more general system, which would have no reference to gender. Churches could have whatever internal definition of marriage they want, though.
2. However, as long as the government is officially sanctioning marriage for heterosexuals, civil unions for others are grossly inadequate, socially.

As to whether same-sex civil unions in the meantime are “good policy”, because they’ll pave the way to the ultimate solution, or “bad policy”, because they’ll take pressure away from getting the ultimate solution, then, is just a matter of predictive sociology, assuming we can get to the end goal within our lifetimes.

Life> Walking around with your arm in a sling tends to make passers-by uncomfortable, but walking around with a *metal dowel* and your arm in a sling makes them positively nervous. I think I checked the step of everyone who saw me for about 1/3 seconds, as they tried to figure out what was going on.

Politics> Today, George Lakoff is my hero. The first speech in Don’t Think of an Elephant is called Framing 101, and applies powerfully and succinctly a host of ideas I’m interested in (SD, paradigms, cognitive effects of word usage) to exactly the area I wanted them applied to (the next step for the left).

Everyone should read it. The rest of the book might not add much though (still reading).

One of Lakoff’s goals is to find the common basis for right-wing thought and for left-wing thought, and he does it through our conceptions of the family (strict father vs. nurturing parent). He does this to try to draw together the left, illuminate our fundamental paradigm, and provide a framework for predicting the right.

Which brings me to my creed. I think Lakoff settles too early, and I think a stronger claim can be made (to dig deeper and generalize beyond the current right-left line to which Lakoff seems wed). My attempt may not be better, but I’ve been trying to get comments on it, to refine my own thinking if not to make it usable by others. Note that my goal is to describe a subset of the left, but hopefully a broad one (intellectual-ish, world-change-hopefuls).

Statement of Motivational Principles

The following is a statement to motivate the formation of a vast left-wing conspiracy; a description of the field that, I believe, supports the intellectual left’s many tents, and a rallying point for world change.

The foundation of our liberalism is a striving for liberating ways of thinking and acting: our goal is to weaken the bonds of ignorance and of injustice, which we believe to have common roots. We believe in celebrating differences, and that understanding begets respect. We share a conviction of the power of open-mindedness, liberation and progress as a path to well-being, and egalitarianism and civil rights as the bedrock of a better future world.

We believe our fight for people, truth, justice, and a better world is righteous. But built atop our foundational ethic is a network of deep consequentialism, concerned not only with our outcome, but with the implications of our methods, and deference to the incredible complexity of our world. We recognize the awful blindness of wedding ourselves to a single perspective.

Furthermore, we believe that our effort can move the world, and to that end, that insight and inspiration are as important as sweat and tears. The modern world overflows with opportunity, and through cultivating better understanding, better approaches, better ideas, and better organizations for ourselves and the world, our dream can come true.

Every book I’ve read in the past three months has gotten me more charged to do some serious world changing! I want to rant somewhat on my recent reads (What’s the Matter with Kansas, Good to Great, Don’t Think of an Elephant), but I need to do it over a few days.

Thomas Frank’s Kansas is a froth-mouthed, frustrating creature, waiting for its moment to rip out the last of “liberal hold on America”. I think his pessimism is misplaced. Let me paint a different picture of Kansas.

The leaders of the conservative backlash live in simple homes, and have hard lives and day jobs, many in factories. Their efforts are hugely grassroots, going from door-to-door, and involving large sectors of their communities. Simultaneously, they’re investing in their future, building infrastructure, and financing new ideas. These people are politically sophisticated, and they’re working class people.

We’re in the middle of the largest working class revolution in American history, and the poor are going about it right!

Sure, they aren’t supporting what we were hoping for. But their current view of the world is warped. It’s kept stable by their ideology and a lot of effort, but it can’t be stabilized with respect to every perturbation, and sooner or later, it will fall apart. I think it’s so unstable that when it goes, it will explode, and then there will be hell to pay.

But it won’t easily fall apart on its own, but that’s where the other two books come in.

Wedesday evening, I slipped on some ice coming around a corner and broke my upper left arm, near my shoulder. I got to ride in an ambulance and now my arm is in a sling.

I feel like an invalid. My left arm is practically useless (I’m typing this one-handed), I can comfortably walk only about 1/4 speed, and everything is a balancing act to keep stresses off my shoulder. Aside from wanting me to stay in bed all day, Claudia’s been indispensable (I’ve been trying to do everything for myself, but I was in tears from not being able to get the medicine bottle open until she could help me).

This morning I’m not doing so well. I took vicoden, but the pain is still mind-numbing. Like being punched hard in one spot all the time. But at my better stretches, I get to explore some fascinating aspects. It’s like a window into the delicate interconnectivity of my skeleton– I can raise my right arm and feel all the strains occurring on my left. And, though I’m suspicious of this, it feels like I can move my shoulder “just on the inside”. I’ll feel a strain in my shoulder and realize that while my arm is hanging by my stomach, my shoulder is positioned at an angle away from it, and I have to bring it back. Zany stuff!

ESG is putting together a “steering committee” that will probably replace CICDO as its main community (staff and student) governing body. We’re putting together our rules of operation now– if anyone wants a good challenge, try defining the rules of a government.

I believe strongly in consensus decision-making; I think it’s the only way to fully value dissent and minority opinion. Other methods sacrifice this for efficiency. So I wanted to come up with a solution that got both without being game-able. I think I got something that mostly values dissent and is only somewhat game-able. Take a look at my suggested steering committee operating procedure— I’m interested in any other ideas that are out there.