push the buzzer, rat boy

PUSH THE BUZZER, RAT BOY


Well, finally, after what seemed like forever as if it was required to load up a sled dog team and head up to the far northern reaches of Canada to the last of the boreal forests ( permafrost? We don’t need no stinking permafrost! )( Life in the Boreal Forest ) and fell a few choice trees and head back on down and then process the wood into paper and then wait around for the soy beans to be harvested for the ink and then wait for the last two printing houses to be merged so that you can get the presses up and running at a hefty price increase, they sent me my long ago ordered post apocalypse fiction, that “Eden” book. And I ordered the used copy anyway, so what gives? Damn post office ( The Post Office Book: Mail and How It Moves ) probably. I know, I know, there are a million workers waiting to retire from the post office and there is $1.39 left in the pension system because the jerks running the thing decided to invest with the bank promising 1 ½ % return instead of minus 1% ( after factoring in inflation ) and then they got all surprised when the bank bought a trillion dollars in derivatives ( All About Derivatives (All About Series) ) and lost it all when suddenly someone decided a green wood, cinder block and drywall cube two hundred miles from a water source wasn’t worth a half a million dollars. I suppose that’s my fault, so let me go ahead and spend more for postage while waiting twice as long for anything to be delivered. I read the first page and a half and was rather impressed. But I didn’t want to get started on it and get all excited and have my miserable existence for one friggin second light up with joy and happiness and then get all disappointed and butt hurt when it was time to put it down and go to bed and get up in the morning and have to commute because no one wants to read my drivel and support me in high style as I insult them and call them names and point out all their faults. Go figure. I might start it tonight, or I just might wait for this weekend so I can read it all at once. I can read a two hundred page book after work and finish it that night, but this one is three hundred. Besides, I was trying to wade through another book, How We Decide ( How We Decide ).

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How We Decide is a pretty good book. I had added it to my wish list but then found it in the library. It is good enough I’ll buy my own copy. I know you are smarter than me ( as I keep saying, I’m not smarter, just far more paranoid and focused ), and you could read the book and instantly be enlightened, but this is one I’ll need to read more than once to thoroughly comprehend. It is all about the actually processes our brains use. For instance, the ability to learn through mistakes ( a super computer programmed to pick from millions of possible chess moves will not beat a human champion, but a computer programmed to play over and over and learn from its mistakes will ). It covers how experts do better through instincts rather than conscious thought and real time analyzing ( the instincts are much faster and are a distillation of previous experience ). It covers the placebo effect ( The Placebo Effect: An Interdisciplinary Exploration ), which was really interesting. A placebo pain killer was used before an electric shock was given, with the subjects feeling less discomfort. An energy drink was given in two samples ( but with the exact same product ), with one presented as a generic and the other a costlier version. All reported that the expensive version had much better effect. Blind taste tests with wine were given and the purportedly expensive fine wine always did better. We equate cheap with bad and our brains reminded us of that. Assumptions guide perception ( or, as I’ve already said, what the thinker thinks the prover proves ). But today, let’s talk about another subject the book covered, the pain avoidance factor.

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Our brains hate discomfort. You would think this is obvious, as no sane being relishes sticking a red hot poker into ones genitalia ( Opus Genitalia ). But the brain responds to pleasurable experiences and demands that you replicate them. It isn’t just that we want to never experience pain or discomfort, we also want to get high and groove, baby. It’s natural. Your brain is a friggin hippy ( Hippie ). I’m sure that one of our ancestral Puritan forefathers is glaring at me right now from on high, his face screwed up in a prune configuration and proclaiming that I’m defiling God’s will and such. Look, I said I need to reread the book to fully understand it. It isn’t that we can’t discipline ourselves, just that it is a natural state to wish to avoid discomfort. You can re-talk your brain into different behavior. It is just that you first need to be aware of this trap that your brain has set for you. I’ll go out on a limb here and even say that I think this is a book you really need, if you are inclined to avoid the pain of prepping and relocating, far more than practical advice books such as those on how many millions of rounds you need for your Mattel Rifle. It isn’t about resources as much as attitude adjustment. And this book can be used as an instruction manual on how to retrain your brain. Which rhymes and sounds pretty cool. Retrain Your Brain, Please Refrain From Being Profane. That’s all I got right now.

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So, please forgive me for just assuming that you were worthless and weak, afraid of crapping into sawdust, experiencing a bit of a chill in winter if you didn’t have central air, telling the wife to shut her stinking gob and go get two buckets of water from the creek, actually working any muscle group other than your flat ass ( Galactic Ass Creatures From Uranus ), etc. I’ve been trying to sell junk land, bike commutes and trailer living, not even thinking why you won’t do it. I figure, it is logical to do so. But the brain is almost never logical without practice and discipline to force it to disregard emotion and intuition. And when it is logical it is logical about the wrong things ( analysts of stocks miss the boat more often than random picks because they overload the brain with information and hence are susceptible to making more mistakes or being unable to withstand emotions-they are TOO logical ). The brain is run by emotion as a survival tool ( the intuition or emotion keeps you alive long enough to think slower but logically ). Unless you want to sacrifice to change your lifestyle because it actually improves your life, actually avoids discomfort ( you are trading one far more uncomfortable thing for a lesser one ), you will never consider it. It is wired in to us. So, you are all still screwed, but at least you can be excused.

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