Never Delete Anything

I only recently learned of the English expression of a "pack rat". I guess it means someone who never throws away anything. While I myself am not a pack rat per se, I indeed seldom delete anything that is in the digital form, especially photos. A few glasses of wine made me think why I'm like this. And as usual, the wine makes me sentimental and philosophical.

I find that my inability to delete any photos roots in the fact that I have a fundamental mistrust in my being able to assess significance. Put it another way, I have, somehow, developed a strong sense that circumstances change and my thoughts change, and therefore my current thoughts and reactions are not the final word. I do not know what I may think in the next few days, not to say months or years. So, who says what I think of as ridiculous and insignificant at the moment won't become important to me sometime down the road? Who says something so mundane as a photo of my wife standing there doing nothing won't be cherished when she is all wrinkled up and able to walk only stiffly? Who says that the I'm-bored-out-of-my-skull video of Rocky's yellow car leaving the parking lot will not, 20 years later, take on a different meaning?

Therefore, when I find something useless, something that seems to be a waste of space and resources, I always have a voice at the back of my head that reminds me of the consequence of losing something forever. I remember, when I was a freshman in college, I lost my favorite pen. The pen really stood out among the preciously few things that I had to my name at that time, so obviously I was upset. However, what struck me the most was the thought that I would never see it again for the rest of my life. For the rest 60 or 70 years (the number having diminished significantly since then) that I had left on this earth, I would never see my pen again. I was sort of floored by the expanse of this idea that I had to stop and think about it for a few minutes. I realized that day that the word "never" is a poignant one because it is necessarily framed by life and death, i.e. the span within which human beings have an elusive notion of self.

I had a similar thought when the train started rolling the day I went home after graduation from college. Friends and classmates who were scheduled to leave later were all over the platform waving their hands. I knew, and I knew for sure, that I would never see some of them ever again. The impact on my retinae of the photons that reflected off their faces was final. FINAL. With this thought I tried to take in their images. Some of these people I never really looked at for the whole four years because I simply did not like them. But everything seemed forgivable in the context of finality. I suppose, at that moment, I transcended my usual, petty self and looked at things through the eyes of a dying man.

If I have not lost you so far, congratulations. To conclude I say, never delete anything. Life is too short for deleting, and judgment too poor.

Ranching in the Valley, Silicon Valley

Ranching is the raising of a herd of animals, usually livestock. - wikipedia

We pick that rabbit out of the hat while everybody wonders how the hell we did it.
- Gordon Gekko

YouTube and the YouTube Kids are the hottest topics these few days in the Silicon Valley. Inside and outside Google - the chubby, middle-aged former cool dude turned elephant who forked over 1.65 billion dollars to make an offer the Kids can't refuse - hot-blooded hasbeens, wannabes, and rounders in the trench experience such a full range of emotions, and at such intensity, that the collective reaction could be called an emotional bubble.

For those of you still wondering what just happened, I'll make it easy for you. What transpired was as simple as a high-tech equivalent of ranching: you raise the herd, then you sell the herd. You may start to have this rotting feeling that California and Texas just might have so much in common, but it's true. Of course, in a place swarming with swashbuckling venture capitalists, you up the ante. Instead of gaming cattle, you game people. But, really, what's the difference? Beneath the surface, the fundamentals are one and the same.

The similarity starts with valuation. How do you put a value on a herd? By head count, of course. The language used by those in the know is $ per head. Each head has (most often) two eyeballs, so it's also $ per eyeball. What happened was that ranchers and cowboys at YouTube sold their cattle, uh, users for $s per head (Exercise: figure out the actual number).

Stop right there, you say; this absurd analogy ends here. After all, the YouTube's and Skype's of the world did not exactly sell... bovines. In fact, the entity known as a "head" in Silicon Valley high-tech ranching typically has a striking, two-percent difference in gene composition from those creatures known for milk or steak. Moreover, such entities are supposed to have free will.

However, as far as processes and transactions go, detailed biological and spiritual analysis seems like splitting hair: it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. For one, regardless of what kind of ranching you do, the "heads" never have any say over the sale. More importantly, much of the population do not even care about the fact that they have been sold.

Of course, to be fair to Ranchers of the Silicon Valley kind... ranching isn't exactly easy. I mean, it isn't easy to attract a herd. You have to find green pastures. You have to pay for the infrastructure to keep them green - and greener than other pastures. You have to make it a good time so that valuable creatures come "herding". You have to push it over the tipping point. You have to have such star animals as LonelyGirl15.

In any case, now that the herd has been sold, the cattle drive begins. Will everyone survive the journey? Will the City Slickers get them there intact and let them multiply on newer, greener pastures? Or, will there be the kind of stampede that forever haunts the ranchers in their worst nightmares? Under the peaceful and tame surface, free will is lurking; it's too bad that, in the business of ranching, it is considered a threat.

Think What

Among all vertebrates, the human beings are probably the only species that think and talk about sex. In fact, watching others have sex is the most important driving force behind computer technology that have made rich many of us in the Valley. Other animals like horses do not seem to dwell on the subject of sex. When horses are "in heat", they follow the Nike slogan. Simple as that. They don't deliberate on it or strategize over it. You don't even see them prepare for it. You've never seen a horse who seems more interested in watching than participating, either.

Aha! you say, now I know why. Horses do not think or talk about sex because... they cannot think or talk at all! That's correct, except that this is the beginning of my thesis, instead of the end.

Indeed, human beings are endowed with the ability to think and talk. That makes us live at the top of the food chain, seemingly above all other animals. But as much as the gods favored us, the favor is incomplete. We are not endowed with the subjects of thinking and talking; what we have is abstract abilities and pure potential. In other words, intelligence and languages resemble a loaded gun without a clear target.

What do you think would happen if you breathe into animals the ability to think and talk, but without telling them what to think and talk about? They think and talk about sex. Before they could think and talk, reproductivity was all they lived for. Now you present them new toys with which they don't know what to do, they'd of course apply it to their passion of life. If a horse could think and talk, you wouldn't want children to be around it. But human beings are not much better at all. Just surf your TV channels and have a look yourself.

Intelligence and speech in a human body really constitute a flawed combination. Sometimes, it feels like giving human beings a bigger brain is a mistake. They still go ahead and do all the old things they do, but in the process just make it more complicated, simply because they now can, with neurons to spare. I'm not sure where I'm going with this train of thought, so I wisely sign off.

The Biology of Snobbery

An ancient fable from China tells the following story. A guy sells spears and shields in the street. He says his spears are the sharpest and they can pierce any shields, and his shields are the toughest that no spears in the world can penetrate them. Of course, some smart-ass in the audience is bound to ask what happens if he pits his spears against his own shields.

I've been fascinated by the dynamics around snobbish people. If a snob is among normal human beings, he will be the hot knife and others will be butter. But what happens when snobs meet each other? I've observed how they behave in the vicinity of each other, but at the same time I'm puzzled - I lacked a framework or metaphor to explain what I saw, so I was often left in amazement, feeling "how can they..?!".

Today it finally hits me: I was trying to understand snobbery as a human behavior, but the fact of the matter is that it is sub-human. Snobbery is governed by a part of the brain that we share with monkeys and other animals. I do agree that snobs are also people, so to make them feel better, I'm willing to upgrade the assessment to gorillas - but no further. A gorilla meets other creatures and size them up. If it sees only "inferior" spieces, it pounds its hairy chest and begins to walk around pissing and shitting. After having marked its territory like so, it sits down in the middle, intoxicated by the smell of its own waste.

Why happens when two gorillas first meet each other? Of course, the two could have heard of each other's heroics second-hand, and therefore they could already know the other has something big and swinging. But let's assume they are total strangers. Well, the first reaction is invariably hostility and contempt. I would call such contempt "tentative contempt", because an experienced gorilla knows "you never know". A gorilla could recall that when it was young, when its contempt was not tentative enough, on one occasion it was bitch-slapped by a counterpart who looked like it had trouble walking, but turned out to know some Kong-Fu. In any case, when two gorillas meet the tension is palpable.

What happens next is a matter of style, but the goal is the same: they have to size each other up. If the gorillas were from the wrong side of the hill, they would make noises, kick dirt, and pound chests. Other gorillas would frawn on such practices; they'd prefer to have quieter sessions of "you show me yours I'll show you mine". They could also try to simply stare each other down. In any case, the sizing-up is a dance the gorillas do to determine the escalation or abortion of the plan of domination and "tentative attempt".

When two gorillas are big enough, they wisely abort the plan of domination. Not only that, they begin to like each other's smell. To celebrate the new olfactary harmony, they usually piss in one pot to concoct their joint brand of "elite" liquid. Other, similar-sized gorillas would join; the ritual could escalate into a full-blown pissing contest, which creates a pond. The scent of the pond usually makes surrounding areas a place of worship. The scent is also aphrodisiac and powerfully excites some ancient parts of the brain in the opposite sex.

However, one would be mistaken in thinking that the pond is a state of stability and the gorillas live happily thereafter. Far from it. The situation is a truce, not peace. Gorillas continue to size each other up. By doing so they constantly get on each other's nerves and have skirmishes. In fact, the Association by the pond is like a mob in which everyone's toting a gun. There are factions and conspiracies. After some time, the mob members all become just a bit abnormal; they seem just a little bit on the edge. Before long they behave as if air were their enemy: picture gorillas with this subtle, but permanent, expression of anxiety and distress on their face.

(Because the Association of Snobs is like a mob, I hereby coin the term smob. I can give you a tour of Silicon Valley smobs the next time you feel like going to the zoo.)

OK, this theory seems to be doing quite well, but I begin to regret my upgrade of snobs to the status of gorillas - because these people are capable of doing things that are evidently below a gorilla. In the jungle, the lesser gorillas usually just walk away, limping and licking their wounds. If gorillas are infected by the spirit of human snobbery, however, many loser gorillas would instantly turn on a charming smile, wag their tail, and try to be the winner's best friend. Man, that's low. Therefore, I have to admit that the current theory has serious flaws and I may have to abandon it. Thanks for reading.

Master by Birth, Slave by Upbringing - Part I

I'm about to get started on a complex topic and I don't know where to begin. As a result, I'll just go with the flow. I'll just meander around but I promise there's a conclusion in the end.

The first observation I'll make is that most people in this Land of the Free are slaves. No, they don't have a master cracking a whip at them. They are not governed by physical violence such as beheading or mutilation. But the modern man is enslaved by something subtle. To watch such slavery is like watching laser-guided bombs hit the target: it's clean and efficient; if someone calls it bloody you dismiss it as propaganda. Heads do not roll; they are vaporized instantly. In modern times it seems OK to kill so long as no blood and guts are visible, which is to say that beheadings on TV were more wrong in presentation than in the act. I seem to digress, but I did not. The point is that modern slavery, just like modern warfare, is more brutal than their ancient counterparts. And yet they have a modern look and feel that makes them appear OK.

What has happened in the human history is that slavery has been internalized. Slaves have not changed in thousands of years, but Masters have come a long way. The whips and torture chambers have been installed in the individual's head, and these now feel like do's and dont's, "moral" or "religious" obligations. Most of the time, such feelings are neither moral nor religious; they're just convenient to the ruling class. Sentiments and "temperaments" that are good for the productivity of the worker ants are lauded as "value". In modern socienty, Masters don't crack whips - they program. They "educate".

How do you keep people in one place and dope them into believing that's where they belong? How do you convince people that they are no more and no less than what they are doing? How do you install in them such a sense of trespassing that they are full of guilt when they violate the "value"? Techniques to this end have been dramatized in movies like The Truman Show, but most of all in the Matrix. Yes, the answer is that you build a world and a value system so pervasive that people who venture out of it by mistake want to be "reinserted".

But machines are machines. They don't have a soul and therefore they resort to only grotesque mechanical means. Like intercepting the spinal cord. In the real world, Masters are subtle. A method of control of far greater scalability is for the programmed to program others. Think of control and victimization as an epidemic, and think about how to start it and perpetuate it. Therefore Masters in the real world identify the perfect carrier of the virus. The Parents.

People are born free and programmed to be slaves by their parents. It takes an extraordinary spirit to fight off such a fate, but that's why there're the fat cats and there're the worker ants. The society therefore remains stable and ticks like clockwork. One would be all for the seemingly happy life, but the method with which this is achieved is sheer brutality. Under the calm surface is bulging desperation. Think about the pain, guilt, conflict, panic, and all the gut wrenching emotions one is programmed to feel the moment he seeks to deviate from the programming. These hit you not as verbal arguments or preaching, but right in the stomach. That's the moment you realize that you have been programmed and you're not at all "a clean slate".

If this sounds too dramatic to you, think again. It may appear to be a trivial matter, but how many people have trouble making demands? You talk to such people and they say, uh, I'm just not good at it, I don't "feel comfortable" doing it, etc. If you put them in a position where they have to make a demand (e.g. when someone really screwed them), they hate it. They'd stammer, their face would turn red, they show signs of interrupted neural transmission. They tend to be highly intelligent people, but they have trouble expressing what they want.

On the other hand, there are the opposite kinds of people, people who have no trouble making demands. Such people may not be very bright, but no matter. They end up as managers and executives, and they have say over the fates of companies and countries. They shout at those who "didn't deliver", even when what they want delivered is worthless. They go berserk when their demands are not met, and yet the demands are often ridiculous. No matter. When they go crazy the "subordinates" are programmed to feel the burden of shame and guilt - how convenient. The last thing in the world that they'd have trouble with is entitlement; they believe they deserve the world. How much of the human history and how many world events have been shaped by such "assertive" people who, at the moment of decision, was moody due to indigestion or a lack of proper sex the previous night?

Of course there're a lot of people in between, but you get the idea. If you grew up believing that the human society is based on rationality, merits and virtues, it's time to rethink everything. This is a programming-based society. You think what you think not because you have reasons to, but because you've been programmed to. Who programmed you? Your parents. This is a fundamental truth of life, and the rest is only justification, halucination, and spin.