So, yes, I, Seth Zygarlicke, now have a blog.
Whether you choose to read my posts is completely up to you. That's the beauty of mankind: we have a choice to do things and behave in unique ways. If you find what I have to say interesting, you may continue to read further posts, hanging on every word and frequently checking to see if I've updated it. If you think I'm full of myself (which I technically am) and find what I have to say boring/uninspiring/offensive/elitist, you can read this first post and maybe one more and promptly forget this exists.
But, regardless of what you think, I'm choosing to write about various things that I find interesting. Such things could involve video games, TV shows, films, music, politics, exercising, psychological phenomena, food, and, what I anticipate to be most frequent, critiques of my generation's behavior.
As I've already alluded to and maybe you have guessed it already, this first post is about choice. Maybe less on choice and more on how thought and choice interact.
Isn't that what makes us human? We have the ability to analyze a situation--rationally and irrationally, subjectively and objectively, emotionally and practically--predict consequences of our actions, plan strategies depending on possible outcomes, and ultimately choose the option that leads to the most desirable or logical effect. We choose what we want to do based on what we want to happen.
Humans think, animals
act.
But do we think? Better question: do
all of us think? With each passing year, I see less and less legitimate thought processes going into decisions. Maybe I'm growing older and becoming more aware of such things--or just more cynical in general--but I find it harder and harder to perceive the evidence of thought one puts into his/her actions. More simply, I see a lot actions done by people that they clearly did not think through, and these actions are becoming more frequent.
Consider this:
You see anything wrong with this? Some people I've shown it to didn't. Troubling, indeed.
Evidence: Tattoo rates are at an all-time high right now. In 2003, 14% of people had at least one tattoo, which rose to 16% in 2008, and now 21% of the U.S. population has one. That's one in five American citizens. Why is this? Why the steady increase over time? My answer: people are thinking less.
--Quick illustration of my point: Did you see that I deliberately left out the date and instead said "now" in the latter-most statistic? Obviously, "now" = 2013, but did you realize just
how obvious it was since the dates were going up by 5 years and piece together that the "now" made sense because 8 + 5 = 13? Or did you just read "now" and think the included dates were arbitrary?--
I hypothesize that the majority of thought concerning a tattoo focuses on "What should my tattoo be?" with a small minority being "Am I going to regret this in five years when I'm job-searching?" I recognize, the decision to get a tattoo does not generalize the amount of thought a person puts into each decision he/she faces...
...but it
does illuminate an interesting trend. This trend is further evidenced by the increasingly popular, vomit-inducing phrase "YOLO". People say "YOLO" to justify irrational, pleasure-seeking actions. Example:
Dudeface: "Bro, you goin' hard tonight or what?"
Broman: "Naw, bro. I got
sooo hammered last night. I don't think it would be a good idea."
Dudeface: "Oh, well, I wasn't aware that you lived
two lives, bro."
Broman: "Shit, man, you're totally right. YOLO. Let's go pregame at my place."
As you can clearly see, Broman initially had an averse reaction to the notion of getting drunk on consecutive nights. But all logical thought was thrown out the window when Dudeface brought up the concept of "YOLO" and Broman succumbed to the paradoxical pleasure of killing his brain cells. Using the term "YOLO" is a way for kids and young adults to disregard logic and reason and engage in activities that jeopardize their physical, mental, financial, and/or social health. It's how kids get out of thinking.
More evidence: I did a brief stint as a high school math tutor in late 2011, early 2012. The kids I supervised were all struggling (they had a D or below in the class) in Algebra 2. Was this because the kids were dumb? I didn't think so. They lacked motivation. Specifically, they displayed no interest in thinking. I quickly picked up on this and tried in my own, limited way to remedy it. When pressed with questions like "when am I going to use this in real life?", I would say you won't. No, you will not need to know your trig identities, nor how to find the inverse of a 3 x 3 matrix, but you
will need to know how to
solve a problem. It will be imperative that you have the ability to take some conundrum, identify your tools for solving it, predict what the answer might be, and use your tools to get from A to B. In order to do this, you must think. You must reason. You must analyze. The kids refused to do this. They even refused to do the simplest of computations like 3 x 8 in their heads and instead pounded out the answer on their overused calculators...
I found this incredibly disheartening.
The trend seems to pick up with each passing year. College is not a cure, either. Yes, some kids do reform their ways and learn how to use their brains effectively, but too few are they in number. Too few people in my generation--when presented with a problem, complication, or decision--take a minute to weigh their options, think from different perspectives, and acknowledge the ramifications of each outcome.
But I will admit to two things:
1.) I agree that it's a good thing to once in a while ignore your inhibitions and just have fun. This self-indulgence helps keep morale up, giving us a more positive and cheery outlook on life. I just wouldn't recommend doing this everyday.
2.) I acknowledge that I, too, am guilty of not thinking sometimes. For example, sometimes on Twitter I see a succulent tweet and hasten to respond to it in a somewhat dickish fashion, neglecting how my 140 characters might be perceived by the original tweeter, which leads to a confrontational conversation. For any of you whom I've done this to, I apologize.
"Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it."
--Henry Ford (The guy who invented the Model T and founded Ford Motors)
Consider the above quote mine and Henry's challenge for you: Think. I encourage, nay
implore you to make a conscious attempt to think of how what you say or do will affect not only yourself, but especially those around you and your social environment as a whole. Put yourself inside someone else's brain; consider the long-term; take ten seconds to read that text/tweet/facebook comment and try to understand what its effects might be. That is all.
Thanks for reading this far. I'll try and post something new next week.
