So I’m sitting here reading the Bible on my Samsung Galaxy Note, and I realized that I do in fact except Jesus as my personal savior. Also, I think I’m going to have kid’s after all–a girl actually–and I hope she’ll grow up and marry a nice, hoelesome fellow like Rick Santorum.

Also, I need to gain some weight and get rid of my book collection. And buy one of the new Mustangs. Theres’ no replacement for displacement.

I wrote a few years ago about the only way I knew of to become immortal. Basically, it was the simple concept of understanding the brain well enough to transfer its characteristics to a digital form before dying. Check it out if you have a moment.

But perhaps there’s another way.

What if you could manifest within others the same passions that you have. The same interests and desires. The same undeniable force to experience beauty and wonder, and to share them with others. The desire to model and explain things. The desire for a more educated and tolerant world.

What if you could infuse a person, or 10,000 people, with enough of those attributes. Would that be like living on after death?

I think so.

Many mistakenly think this is what parenthood offers. I think this is a sad and selfish way to live. You don’t gain immortality through bringing a life into the world and trying to propagate your views into it, and through it. That’s something worse than selfish, bordering on criminal.

Children grow and become different people. You might be a philosopher and engineer, work your whole life to give this to your son, only to have him say he hates science and wants to be a poet who uses acid and paints with fecal matter. Less extreme examples of deviation from a parent’s plan are likely to be nearly as disappointing.

I think a far more effective way of doing this is to simply link up with those who share your views already. Or find those who are close to doing so, and perhaps try to imbue them with your interest. The difference is that they are free to do otherwise, where your children are not until they are 18.

Seek out those who share your passions. Share your views. Your projects. Get people to take them on. Work on some of theirs before you pass. Share enthusiasm.

If those truly are your passions in life, then they define you as a person to a significant extent. And as such, others who share those perspectives and tastes and values — they become you. You become them.

And perhaps when you pass, you’ll imagine that there are many you’s still out there being you. Then you (or some active piece, anyway) will have survived.

One could even start a community for this. Older people getting ready to die could come and pitch their identity to others. And people could either accept or pass on taking on that identity (see projects, etc.) on behalf of the other person. If they did, it would be a life-long commitment that could never be rejected or ignored.

Someone who received such a commitment from someone could then take that degree of comfort in passing, as they will now live on to that degree.

Anyway, something to think about later. Thoughts?

::

I had a significant public speaking experience yesterday. I did a full talk in front of around 80 people at the SANS Mobile Device Security Summit in Nashville, Tennessee.

For some reason I wasn’t very nervous at all. I then did a panel with three other people, speaking ad-hoc on random questions, and I think I represented myself and my company really well.

I used to have moderate issues with speaking in public, but it appears that all these years of debating with people, and talking to customers in small to moderate groups has made it what it should be — a mostly non-event.

Basically, be confident in your content and the rest comes naturally–especially if you have a conversational style of presentation.

I even had the odd experience of having people come up and congratulate me or thank me for my talk, and then become nervous when preparing to speaking to me. It was rather surreal.

Overall, it’s quite empowering to know that public speaking is a tool that I now have. I have much to say. ::

Notes

¹ Thoughts on public speaking by Sam Harris.

I often take criticism for my desire to own expensive things, live in nice neighborhoods, eat in quality restaurants, and otherwise surround myself with what most in the middle class consider to be the upper end of things. When I say I take criticism, what I really mean is that I’m often accused of being a snob.

I don’t actually disagree with what these people are almost saying. The problem is that the word snob already has a meaning, and I prefer that words be used precisely. As such, I think elitist is actually a better way to describe my worldview. It’s still not accurate because I don’t believe in the super-elite building and controlling society over the educated and intelligent, but I do believe in the educated and intelligent controlling society over the uneducated and stupid.

This distinction is important, but I lack the time or perceived need to go into it here, so I’ll continue.

What I really mean to accomplish in this piece is to give a number of examples of why I prefer nice things. These aren’t philosophical “why it’s better to be better” arguments, they’re real-world facts about the state of the world that affect my (and others’) mood.

Nice Neighborhoods

1. I’m not likely to be in physical danger.
2. There’s less trash.
3. There are fewer potholes.
4. Fast food restaurants have napkins and condiments out in the common area, as opposed to under security supervision.
5. There are no bars and no bulletproof glass between me and gas station attendants, and gas station bathrooms might actually be a) unlocked, and b) not gross.
6. The people in the service industry are likely to be smiling and pleasant, and less likely to treat you as if you’re about to scam/rob/cheat them out of something.

BMW

1. Any BMW dealership I go to in the country I am going to be greeted by people who are happy and pleasant.
2. I will be treated respectfully, and by the third time I come in they’ll probably have learned my name.
3. The common area will have free food, drinks, coffee, etc., and the bathroom will be pristine.

Tumi

1. I have a Tumi person I buy from. She knows what I own and knows what pieces I might be interested in picking up later. She knows my preferences and will likely tell me if a new line is coming out soon that I want to check out.

The basic idea here is that if you associate yourself with high quality things, the ecosystem that surrounds those things is likely to be highly positive. And I mean that from a mood/mental health standpoint.

I don’t want to be surrounded by poverty, ignorance, and failure. I am too sensitive to it. I pains me to see it–especially when I think I know what causes it, and how to fix it.

I wish to spend my time surrounded by positivity and to have pleasant experiences when I’m doing essential things like traveling, eating, or filling up on gas.

That is why I like nice things. ::

Sometime around this week marks one year that I’ve been back home in the Bay Area. It’s been the best year of my life.

My work is going well, I now live around 30 miles from two of my sisters and just around an hour and a half from my parents, I’ve finally cleaned the house, I have my home network up (with a real firewall and my home domain), I have an entertainment system (with a TV), and I’ve read a good number of books this year–which I have enjoyed discussing with friends.

Add local talks to this (Sam Harris), the local meetups (Ruby, Overcoming Bias, Reddit, etc.) and you have a fairly solid list of things to be happy about.

On top of this win pile is the fact that Susan–after six months of struggling–is starting to really like it here. She’s getting used to the rude people, the bad drivers, and the highs are starting to pop against that background.

Then there is the food, our new friends, and the food. Susan prefers that we mention food twice if I mention it at all.

Soon I’ll be starting to cook for myself instead of eating every meal out (a first in my life), I may get into Jujitsu again with a new friend who’s joining the team from San Francisco, and I’m about to dive into photography. I think my table tennis rating has risen since arriving, and I intend to enter 1-5 tournaments this year–hopefully breaking the 1500 mark for the first time and perhaps making it to 1700 or so.

To sum, I’m happy.

It feels distinctly as if the last 18 years of my life have been preparing for a life that was supposed to come. And now it has. This is the life I wanted, and with the generous help of chance, I built it. I’m home in San Francisco with a great job and great friends (Georgia, California, Scattered Everywhere), and life has presented itself as an opportunity–just as I imagined it would.

I omitted astronomy in my list of pursuits, but that was only so that I could mention it now. Astronomy makes me feel even more thankful. When I look at a distant star or a distant planet, I don’t think of it as far away. Everything is far away until you get there. People don’t really believe Jupiter is 45 light minutes away–just as they are surprised to see their old home town bustling along after an extended absence.

It’s the same with happiness and suffering for me. They are not far away. When you use a telescope and contemplate time and distance, you realize this. The phenomenal Thai restaurant in SF is the same distance from me as Congo. My luck comes in the form of my brain convincing me otherwise.

Either way, I am happy, and I’m thankful for that. But there is work to be done. For I know the real distance between myself and Congo–even when others do not. ::

This is me pwning on a Green Machine.