I’m writing this on my mini laptop computer again today, because I got tired of the frustrating process of doing stuff on the smartphone.  Really, writing and texting and everything else via the smartphone is more often than not terribly annoying.  I know Steve Jobs got inspired by Star Trek: The Next Generation and wanted to make some version of a tablet with their touch-screen controls and all, but that was fiction.  If he wanted to make something more useful based on Star Trek, why couldn’t he have put some money into warp drive or something?

Of course, he was mainly a software guy, not actually any kind of physicist or true engineer or something, any more than Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos or Peter Thiel or any of these other successful billionaires and so on are.  Don’t get me wrong; I’m sure they’re all reasonably clever, and they’re decent at business, especially at business that doesn’t require them to manufacture things that require serious production and safety and stress testing and all that.

Well, okay, Musk does make cars that are often quite decent (from what I have seen) and rockets that are sometimes quite impressive (and often not).  But mostly what these really successful business people seem to be good at is marketing, AKA self-aggrandizement.  Likewise for successful politicians.

They don’t actually have to be exceptionally good relative to their competitors, they just have to convince enough people that they’re cool and clever, and that if those people want other people to think that they are cool and clever, they should buy their products or use their services or whatnot.  It’s all rather pathetic on their part, and even more pathetic on the part of the people who faddishly embrace them.

Again, don’t get me wrong; I like things about Amazon, for instance, especially the ability to get books that I never was able to find even in Barnes & Noble or Borders (RIP) or Books-A-Million.  And I publish through Amazon when I publish my own books (or, rather, when I used to do so) because of their reach, not that it did me any particular good—I, unlike the humans to whom I referred earlier, am not a natural self-promoter.

I wish humans were less enamored of having obnoxious, “flashy”, egotistical (often male) tribal leader types and instead focused on competence and level-headedness.  Just imagine if most of our politicians were not interested in bombast and attention and rhetoric and recognition and “importance” and were just mainly interested in doing a good job on behalf of the people who elected (i.e., hired) them.

I don’t know what point I’m trying to make here.  I never plan these posts out ahead of time, so they are very much just whatever pops out of my mind on any given day.  In a way, all of you reading are only slightly more surprised by what you read here than I am by writing it.

Still, I don’t think I’m alone in wishing people would be less flash and more substance.  Then we wouldn’t have brain-worm-dead people like RFK Jr. in charge of the nation’s healthcare and medicine organizations when he is not merely unqualified but is anti-qualified.  Ditto for the one who appointed him (and for the abysmally cowardly congresspeople who approved the appointment and the poor misled people who elected them all).

If people in general were less interested in seeing who “owns” or “destroys” someone else in mere “debate”, but instead were interested in seeking reliable information and solutions together, things would likely be better.  If we want to try to model things in our society after Star Trek, I wish we could try to instantiate some version of Vulcan philosophy and practice.  Mr. Spock is so much more admirable as a character than nearly every other person on the original Enterprise, and Captain Picard in TNG is almost Vulcan in his own character.

We shouldn’t, of course, seek to eliminate emotion; that’s hardly possible.  Emotion is what gives us impetus, and indeed, that may be its entire biological “purpose”.  But we can try to govern our passions (to quote Spock) to make them our faithful servants rather than our capricious and chaotic masters.  This is not impossible by any means.

Not that I am a master of my own emotions, especially my negative ones.  But I do not consider them to be anyone else’s major concern, and certainly no other person is responsible for them or to blame for them.  I try not to let them destroy me, though I am so inclined.  But if we could all put more emphasis on, for instance, Stoic philosophy, on Vipassana and Metta and similar meditation practices and some of the ideas from, for instance, the Tao te Ching, I think all the world would be better.

I guess for now, at least, it’s a pipe dream—whatever it is I’m “dreaming” about, that is.  Frankly, I’m not sure what I’ve written here today, so far, or if there’s any coherence to it at all.  If there is not, I can only apologize at this point, because I have no intention of starting this post over.  Hopefully I’ll be able to get through this day less down and discouraged than I was yesterday*.

The world is terribly annoying and disappointing and, yes. discouraging, and my own personal life is in some ways even more so of all three of those things.  I try not to let it defeat me, but perhaps that very determination to keep playing the stupid game of the stupid human race and the stupid universe is the very thing that should count as being defeated—being fooled into taking part in the pantomime that is “civilization” instead of making my quietus, or perhaps finding some other path.

I guess I have to figure that out for myself, as with most things for most people.  Please try to have a good day if you can.  It would be nice if someone could do so.

*Apparently, I was so plainly depressed that someone (or perhaps “the algorithm” itself) on Threads thought that I might need help, and I got another one of those “someone thinks you’re having trouble and might need someone to talk to” or whatever that message is, along with a link to the mental health/suicide hotline.  Frankly, I’m amazed that I don’t get such suggestions every day, since I spend at least part of each day thinking about dying—and not thinking about it as a passive thing.