“The Letter X”

I was browsing randomly though wordpress and found this really cool site. It’s called “The Fish Made Me Do It,” and the most recent post is a really cool one. Hope you enjoy!

The Struggle For Independence

Life is rough sometimes. I thought that instead of yelling and cursing at people around me, I’d write a bit about it on here.

As you might be aware, I have some differences from most of the world that set me apart. Well, my dad does not know about these differences, and I’d prefer it stay that way. Lately, though, my mother has been rather weird, and I’m starting to get the sense that I’m not welcome in my own home, at least from my mother. I believe that my father is still blissfully unaware, but it is possible that he is not. Either way, now I’m looking at moving out this summer.

This is not something that I’m entirely looking forward to. While my independence is something I treasure, especially the freedom to be in a relationship with whomever I please, I love my family. I’m conflicted and torn. I want to individuate, become my own person, be my own man, but at the same time, I want to be with a family, people I love and trust, supportive people who will kick me in the ass if I don’t study and love on me when I’m hurt. As it is now, though, that is not what home is anymore to me. I feel alienated and left alone in my own private hell. It’s no fun.

A few offers of places to live have come in, and one sticks out in my mind. Good rent, good neighborhood, etc. It’s something I could afford, even at part time rates. Wish me luck, everyone, in my struggle for independence. It’s a pain, but I’ll deal. I always have, and I always will.

Going It Alone

Regardless of what you may happen to feel, your local car dealership will now tell you: it’s better to go it alone. An article appearing in the New York Times today lists in detail all of the brands and automobiles who are, thanks to their large-company benefactors, truly going it alone.

This makes me wonder about business strategy. I know that in a capitalist society (which is what most of us happen to live in), individuation of businesses are a good thing for the economy and for the well-being and prosperity of the individual. However, for what feels like forever, we’ve been told that mergers and big-company automakers was the way to go. If you bought a Mazda, you could just get Ford parts for it to repair it cheaply. Want a Cadillac Northstar engine in your Chevrolet? That’ll be just fine, it’ll fit with a few modifications. Now, though, the Big Three (and the other autogroups) are now finding that this strategy is not working for them.

GM is selling its car companies and divisions that are not working. We saw a preview of this when Oldsmobile bit the dust a few years ago. They sold their shares of Isuzu and Suzuki, as well as the Italian automaker, Fiat. Ford is selling Aston Martin. DaimlerChrysler is spinning off Chrysler (yes, even after the big-ticket merger) and ridding itself of a moneypit of problems of merger.

I’m writing about this because it feels kind of ironic that while we all know and studied the benefits of a free-market economy, where competition rules the day, and yet we still band together to go against what we know. Our philosophy of life (band together or fall apart) has made its way into business, where it doesn’t work, and we’re finding that the new philosophy doesn’t work. All of this sparks a question for me, however: in what case is going it alone a better philosophy than banding together, other than businesses in a free-market economy?

I’d love examples, if you’d be willing to give them.

Resolutions, pt. 2

1. Get that six-pack I’ve been working on for the past 6 months.
2. Finish writing my book.
3. Read 50 books.
4. Read 100 books.
5. Get something published, even something small.
6. Take a roadtrip this summer.
7. Volunteer my time with a worthy secular organization (I’ve done enough church volunteer time to have a degree).
8. Make 5 new friends.
9. Organize my living space for optimum productivity.
10. Get a date.
11. Take a class in something I’ve never done before.
12. Limit my television time to less than three hours a week. (Ongoing)

Remember these? I’m dragging them out to revisit them, and refocus, and brag on the ones I’ve completed already. Anything I’ve done is struckthrough.

YAY!

The Promised Post (or, “sufficiency, pt. 2″)

It’s the post everyone’s been clamoring for! It’s the long awaited post on sufficiency! It seems like it’s been forever since I wrote the original post, but I got so many good responses that I wanted to write a new post on the topic. There were so many good ideas and good thoughts on the topic, ones that I had not considered and ones that I had not considered enough.

To start, I guess the entire idea of sufficiency started with my rocky two-date relationship with Alex, if you could call it a relationship. I laid on my bed wondering what sufficient was in a relationship, and then I expanded it to life itself. What is a sufficient life, I asked myself, and what does it look like? That led to the previous post, which led to all the great comments and more thought about the issue. Then, I got myself into another relationship, one which has a lot of potential to go somewhere, and it raised the question for me again. What is sufficiency?

I said that for me, sufficiency is living, breathing, and existance, and that everything else is just icing. I still hold to that view. In the light of a looming relationship, and the wonderful feelings of contentedness that come from them, however, I am going to modify it a bit. Sufficiency is not existance, as we know it, but a fulfilled existance, in my opinion. For myself, it is enough to be living and breathing, because I am highly self-fulfilling. There are plenty of things I want, but nothing I need. For others, however, something more might be required for a fulfilled life, such as volunteer work, religiosity, charity, relationships, material possessions, and so on. The list could literally go on forever, I think, because there are so many motivations. This was pointed out to me quite astutely in the comments of pt. 1.

This leads to something else that was touched upon: community in sufficiency. Everything that I have mentioned as motives will eventually put you in contact with someone else, for better or for worse. We do not live in an isolate world, but rather in a communal one. If we weren’t, how would we reproduce? The role of community in sufficiency plays such a large role. I confess, I don’t know how I missed that detail in my first musings on the topic. Our community adds in an element that I would argue is totally different yet related to individual sufficiency.

Individual sufficiency is amazingly pliable; everyone is different and has their own definition of sufficiency and its’ form (something I missed, as well). Communal sufficiency is, on the other hand, very rigid in Western thought. When we think of the idea of a sufficient community, we think of two basic structures: families and neighborhoods. Families usually consist of Mama, Papa, and the 2.3 kids. Mama raises the kids, Papa makes the money, and the kids spend it with Mama’s help. Every little girl’s dream is to get married. They play house, they have their dolls and pretend families. Every little boys’ dream is to become an adventurer of some sorts, seeking riches and love, and settle down with the girl at the end. Literature and media portray this to our world constantly, effectively sealing the traditional thought of the family in the minds and hearts of America.

Is that a good way to do business? What of non-traditional families? I don’t have any statistics on the topic, but I’d be willing to bet that children of non-traditional families (read: single parent homes, and homes with “two mommies” and “two daddies”) undergo more stress and more pressure to conform to societal norms than the child from the traditional family because of the power of a norm. With the family being glorified as the ultimate solution to juvenile delinquency and anti-social behaviors, more children than ever are being subjected to a subliminal message that their lives are not alright and not valuable.

Neighborhoods are the new tribe. Seriously, they are. In the old days of tribal culture, there was the witch doctor, the “Mama,” all of the little families, and the chief. Now, we have the religious family that doesn’t hand out candy on Halloween, the neighborhood mom that watches all the kids, all of the families going about their lives, and the community activist who deals with the association. Neighborhoods act as tribes for people to be involved in.

For a while, we were highly individualistic and didn’t care so much about neighborhoods. That changed in the 1940s when America went to war, and eventually dropped the bomb. The neighborhood started to play more into the public eye. It was in the 40s and 50s when people were introduced to the family unit and the neighborhood unit.

Sufficiency on a community scale doesn’t deviate much from this. Ever. When it does, it’s punished by religious leaders or political ones. Western thought thrives on these units. Without them, we’re nothing. We are dependant on community, community is dependant on politics, and politics is dependant on us. Communal sufficiency is a cycle of continuity. Whether that’s good or not, well, that’s for another time.