Health

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Some discussion of cancer–not the zodiac sign

Yesterday, reader StephenB suggested that I write about what I thought might be the next big medical cure coming our way—he suggested cancer, Alzheimer’s, and Parkinson’s diseases as possible contenders—and what I thought the “shape” of such a cure might be.  I thought this was an interesting point of departure for a discussion blog, and I appreciate the response to my request for topics.

[I’ll give a quick “disclaimer” at the beginning:  I’ve had another poor night.  Either from the stress of Monday night or something I ate yesterday (or both, or something else entirely) I was up a lot of last night with reflux, nausea, and vomiting.  So I hope I’m reasonably coherent as I write, and I apologize if my skills suffer.]

One hears often of the notion of a “cure for cancer”, for understandable reasons; cancer is a terrifying and horrible thing, and most people would like to see it gone.  However, my prediction is that there will never be “a” cure for cancer, except perhaps if we develop nanotechnology of sufficient complexity and reliability that we are able to program nanomachines unerringly to tell the difference between malignant and non-malignant cells, then destroy the malignant ones and remove their remains neatly from the body without causing local complications.  That’s a tall order, but it’s really the only “one” way to target and cure, in principle, all cancers.

Though “cancer” is one word, and there are commonalities in the diseases that word represents, most people know that there are many types of cancers—e.g., skin, colon, lung, breast, brain, liver, pancreatic, and so on—and at least some people know that, even within the broader categories there are numerous subtypes.  But every case of cancer is literally a different disease in a very real sense, and indeed, within one person, a single cancer can become, effectively, more than one disease.

We each* start out as a single fertilized egg cell, but by adulthood, our bodies have tens of trillions of cells, a clear demonstration of the power of exponential expansion.  Even as adults, of course, we do not have a static population of cells; there is ongoing growth, cell division/reproduction, and of course, cell death.  This varies from tissue to tissue, from moment to moment, from cell type to cell type, under the influence of various local and distant messengers, ultimately controlled by the body’s DNA.

Whenever a cell replicates, it makes a copy of its DNA, and one of each copy is sent into each daughter cell.  There are billions of base pairs in the human genome, so there are lots of opportunities for copying errors.  Thankfully, the cell’s proofreading “technology” is amazingly good, and errors are few and far between.  But they are not nonexistent.  Cosmic rays, toxins, other forms of radiation, prolonged inflammation, and simple chance, can all lead to errors in the replication of a precursor cell’s DNA, giving rise to a daughter cell with mutations, and when there are trillions of cells dividing, there are bound to be a number of them.

The consequences of such errors are highly variable.  Many of them do absolutely nothing, since they happen in portions of the genome that are not active in that daughter cell’s tissue type, or are in areas of “junk” DNA in the cell, or in some other way are inconsequential to the subsequent population of cells.  Others, if in just the wrong location, can be rapidly lethal to a daughter cell.  Most, though, are somewhere in between these two extremes.

The rate of cell division/reproduction in the body is intricately controlled, by the proteins and receptors in that cell, and the genes that code for them, and that code for factors that influence other portions of the genome of a given cell, and that make it sensitive or insensitive to hormonal or other factors that promote or inhibit cell division.  If a mutation in one of the regions of the cell that is involved in this regulatory process—either increasing the tendency to grow and divide or diminishing the sensitivity to signals that inhibit division—a cell can become prone to grow and divide more rapidly than would be ideal or normal for that tissue.  Any given error is likely to have a relatively minor effect, but it doesn’t take much of an effect to lead to a significant increase in the number of cells in a given cell type eventually—again, this is the power of exponential processes.

A cell line that is reproducing more rapidly will have more opportunities for errors in the DNA reproduction of its many daughter cells.  These new errors are no more likely to be positive, negative, or neutral generally than any other replication errors anywhere else in the body, but increased rate of growth means more opportunities** for mistakes.

If a second mistake in one of the potentially millions (or more) of daughter cells of the initial cell makes it yet more prone to divide rapidly than even the first population of mutated cells, then that population will grow and outpace the parent cells.  There can be more than one such daughter populations of cells.  And as the rate of replication/growth/division increases in a given population of cells, we have an increased chance of more errors occurring.  Those that become too deleterious will be weeded out.  Those that are neutral will not change anything in the short term (though some can make subsequent mutations more prone to cause increased growth rates).  But the ones that increase the rate of growth and division will rapidly come to dominate.

This is very much a microcosm of evolution by natural selection, and is a demonstration of the fact that such evolution is blind to the future.  In a sense, the mutated, rapidly dividing cells are more successful than their more well-behaved, non-mutated—non-malignant—sister cells.  They outcompete for resources*** against “healthy” cells in many cases, and when they gather into large enough masses, they can cause direct physical impairments to the normal function of an organism.  They can also produce hormones and proteins themselves, and can thus cause dysregulation of the body in which they reside in many ways.

Because they tend to accumulate more and more errors, they tend to become more dysfunctional over time.  And, of course, any new mutations in a subset of tumor cells that makes it more prone to divide unchecked, or that makes it more prone to break loose from its place of origin and spread through the blood and/or lymph of the body will rapidly become overrepresented.

This is the general story of the occurrence of a cancer.  The body is not without its defenses against malignant cells—the immune system will attack and destroy mutated cells if it recognizes them as such—but they are not perfect, nor would it behoove evolution (on the large scale) to select for such a strictly effective immune system, since all resources are always finite, and overactive immunity can cause disease in its own right.

But the specific nature of any given cancer is unique in many ways.  First of all, cancers arise in the body and genes of a human being, each of which is thoroughly unique in its specific genotype from every other human who has ever lived (other than identical twins).  Then, of course, more changes develop as more mutations occur in daughter cells.  Each tumor, each cancer, is truly a singular, unique disease in all the history of life.  Of course, tumors from specific tissues will have characteristics born of those tissues, at least at the start.  Leukemias tend to present quite differently from a glioblastoma or a hepatoma.

Because of these differences, the best treatments for specific cancers, even of classes of cancers, is different.  The fundamental difficulty in treating cancer is that you are trying to stop the growth and division—to kill—cells that are more or less just altered human cells, not all that different from their source cells.  So any chemical or other intervention that is toxic to a cancer cell is likely to be toxic to many other cells in the body.  This is why chemotherapy, and radiation therapy, and other therapies are often so debilitating, and can be life-threatening in their own right.  Of course, if one finds a tumor early enough, when it is quite localized, before any cells have broken loose—“metastasized”—to the rest of the body, then surgical removal can be literally curative.

Other than in such circumstances, the treatment of cancer is perilous, though not treating it is usually more so.  Everything from toxic chemicals to immune boosters, to blockers of hormones to which some cancers are responsive, to local radiation are used, but it is difficult to target mutated cells without harming the native cells to at least some degree.

In certain cases of leukemia, one can literally give a lethal dose of chemo and/or radiation that kills the bone marrow of a person whose system has been overwhelmed by malignant white blood cells, then giving a “bone marrow transplant”, which nowadays can sometimes come from purified bone marrow from the patient—thus avoiding graft-versus-host diseases—and there can be cures.  But it is obviously still a traumatic process, and is not without risk, even with auto-grafts.

So, as I said at the beginning, there is not likely to be any one “cure” for cancer, ever, or at least until we have developed technology that can, more or less inerrantly, recognize and directly remove malignant cells.  This is probably still quite a long way off, though progress can occasionally be surprising.

One useful thing cancer does is give us an object lesson, on a single-body scale, that it is entirely possible for cell lines—and for organisms—to evolve, via apparent extreme success, completely into extinction.  It’s worth pondering, because it happens often, in untreated cancers, and it has happened on the scale of species at various times in natural history.  Evolution doesn’t think ahead, either at the cellular level, the organismal level, or the species/ecosystem level.  Humans, on the other hand, can think ahead, and would be well served to take a cue from the tragedy of cancer that human continuation is not guaranteed merely because the species has been so successful so far.

Anyway, that’s a long enough post for today.  I won’t address matters of Parkinson’s Disease or Alzheimer’s now, though they are interesting, and quite different sorts of diseases than cancers are.  I may discuss them tomorrow, though I might skip to Friday.  But I am again thankful to StephenB for the suggestion/request, and I encourage others to share their recommendations and curiosities.  Topics don’t have to be about medicine or biology, though those are my areas of greatest professional expertise.  I’m pretty well versed in many areas of physics, and some areas of mathematics, and I enjoy some philosophy and psychology, and—of course—the reading and writing of fiction.

Thanks again.

*I’m excluding the vanishingly rare, and possibly apocryphal, cases of fused fraternal twins.

**There are also people who have, at baseline, certain genes that make them more prone to such rapid replication, or to errors in DNA replication, or to increased sensitivity to growth factors of various kinds, and so on.  These are people who have higher risks of various kinds of cancer, but even in them, it is not an absolute matter.

***Most tissues in the body have the inherent capacity and tendency to stimulate the development of blood vessels to provide their nutrients and take away their wastes.  Cancer cells are no exception, or rather, the ones that are do not tend to survive.  Again, it is a case of natural selection for those cell lines that are most prone to multiply and grow and gain local resources.

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How strange or odd some’er I blog myself

Hello and good morning.

It may not be morning when you’re reading this, but it is morning when I’m writing it, and since the time any given person reads it is variable—it could be anywhen from noon back round to noon, and in any time zone—the only stable point from which to make departure is that time in which I am writing.  Thus, again:  good morning.

I’m using my laptop today, which is easier and faster, though it may lead to the post being more wordy and rambling than the ones I wrote on my phone.  Perhaps not.  Those who’ve said anything at all have said they can’t tell the difference.  It feels different, of course, but then, it would feel different, wouldn’t it?  A laptop and a smartphone are, despite many common attributes, very different devices with which to work.

I’m waiting for the second train this morning, rather than having gotten up for the first as I did the previous two days.  It’s not that I wasn’t up frequently during the night; I was awake well in time to come for the first train, but somewhat ironically, since I’m not feeling quite as physically ill, I was able at least just to lie there “in bed” and wait until five minutes before my alarm went off before getting up.

Of course, given my traditional greeting, in case you don’t know, it’s Thursday, the day I’ve long reserved for writing my blog posts, even when I didn’t write them any other day.  As with the time, you might be reading this on pretty much any day of the week, but I’m writing it on Thursday, and that’s not going to have changed, unless reality is far more fluid than it seems.  I’m pretty sure it’s not.

I’ll briefly relay an issue I had when I arrived at the office yesterday, already sick and uncomfortable, forcing myself to go in when I should have stayed in bed because it was payroll day.  Suffice it to say that I had to rush to the restroom when I arrived, only to discover that the toilet paper had not been maintained as I’ve always asked people to do, even in my absence, and I was caught rather short.

I decided to enact a temporary, prison-style system of people having to be responsible for their own toilet paper, since they couldn’t be responsible for looking out for each other according to very simple procedures of letting someone know when they take the last replacement roll from the cupboard.

I’ll revert to the old system today, for stability’s sake, but it’s frustrating that grown people don’t take simple steps to be considerate.  I wish I could fit everyone at work—including myself—with a shock collar, to activate when someone does something rude or inappropriate.  Of course, the person I have most complaints about is myself; the very fact that I get so angry about everything, and always feel so tense, just makes me hate myself more every day.

I have an electric stunner at the office—I bought it because in Unanimity, some characters use them for specific purposes, and I needed to know how they sound and look when activated, and how easy it was to get one.  I do various things to hurt myself when I’m either too angry at myself to hold back, or so stressed out by various things people do that I want to lash out, but I can’t allow myself to do such things, so I let it out where I can, at myself.

I’ve destroyed my own writing and art work, I’ve banged my head against desks and walls and tables until I bruise myself, I’ve punched walls—the first two knuckles of both of my hands are slightly bulbous from my having done this often over many years—I’ve thrown away precious items and books, and I’ve hurt myself in more extreme ways than these, but I won’t get too much into that*.  I don’t want to have to title another blog post with a trigger warning, especially not on a day when the title is supposed to be a minced Shakespearean quote.

The point is that I’ve never tried using my stunner on myself, mainly because I’m nervous about how it might interact with my chronic pain, which is at least partly neuropathic in character.  I don’t want to trigger muscle spasms or neural feedback loops or the like.  It probably wouldn’t do any bad or good, though; I’ve used TENS units with no particular benefit, even at very high power.

That’s the character of my life.  Each day is a loosely connected string of things I do to try to distract myself from chronic pain, tension/stress, sleep loss, dysthymia/depression, and deep inability to connect with anyone despite being profoundly lonely.  It’s a shitty ride, I’ve gotta say.  I’m not even going to give it one star on TripAdvisor.

People sometimes say** things like, “Hang on, keep going, there are people who care about you, you’re not alone.”  And that’s nice, and I’m sure there are people who care, at least in the abstract sense.  But it’s at least a bit like saying, “Hang on, keep going, there’s a supermassive black hole in the center of most galaxies!”  It’s true, and it’s interesting.  It’s something I care about.  But it has no apparent impact on my daily existence and the fact that I hate myself and hate my life.

I don’t have any answers for myself, in case that’s not obvious.  But I’m getting wearier and wearier of just plodding along, without any goal, and with no one nearby to talk to, with all the people I’ve cared most about not wanting to be around me.  Who can blame them?  You’ve read my writing; how much time would you want to spend with me?

Anyway, that’s enough for today.  I hope all of you out there are doing well, and have things for which to live, and people around you who love you and care about you and want to spend time with you.  If you do, please be grateful and treasure them.

TTFN

me distorted

*Although I will give a caution about one long-past event:  don’t hit yourself in the kneecap with a ball-peen hammer, even if you’re doing it to distract yourself from chronic pain.  Just…don’t.

**Or, to pick nits, they write such things.

This is an addendum, to be added to today’s blog post at the end.  The train I’m waiting for is delayed, and they keep running an automated announcement overhead that it’s delayed “10…15 minutes”.  But it’s already 25 minutes late, and according to the app that tracks the trains, it’s going to be at least 10 more minutes before it gets here, so the announcement is just wrong, and that grates on my nerves far more than it ought to do.  Of course, as always with delays, the train will be more crowded, because people who would have missed the usual scheduled time, or who arrive early for the next train, will be aboard.  I feel like I’m going to split in half because I’m so tense about it.  When the whole universe, or at least everything related to humans, feels like the Enemy, it doesn’t take all that long to become shell-shocked.  I feel that I have no escape and no comrades, like I’m the only member of my species in a strange, foreign universe.  I think I’m on the verge of some breakdown.  Hell, maybe I’m already in the midst of it.  I don’t know what to do.  I need help, but my need is no claim on anyone else’s abilities; my need is my own problem.  It’s a need I don’t think I’m going to be able to meet, and when one is unable to meet one’s needs, one deteriorates and/or suffers and/or dies.

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The borogroves sure are mimsy today, aren’t they?

It’s Friday again, and another weekend approaches.

Yippee.  Huzzah.  O frabjous day.

I think I don’t work tomorrow—at least, I’m not supposed to—so there probably won’t be any blog post then (which will be Saturday, unless some hitherto unimagined catastrophe literally throws the days of the week out of order).

I may be posting a new video on my YouTube channel this weekend, though.  I haven’t made one yet, so there’s no guarantee that something won’t stop me from doing so.  I’m unlikely to be lucky enough to be involved in an asteroid impact between now and tomorrow, but there’s a functionally limitless number of things that could, in principle, stop me from recording a video.

Nevertheless, it is my intention to make a video, so I probably will.  This is a different type of thing than fasting; no physiological processes and neurological feedback loops are likely to interfere with my commitment to making a video.  Evolution is, so far, utterly blind even to the existence of videos…though that could change.

I’m still not sure what topic I want to address in the video, unlike last time.  I may literally just start my timer, start my video, start to talk, and see what happens.  If that sounds like an inauspicious way to start a video, well, you’re reading the written equivalent of it right now.  If you enjoy this, you’re proof that it can work.  If you don’t enjoy it, that’s not proof that it cannot work, since your lack of enjoyment doesn’t preclude anyone else from enjoying it.

People do seem to have trouble understanding that others can like things that they themselves find disgusting.  I can sympathize with that, and fall prey to the failing myself, but that doesn’t make it reasonable.

It’s true that all mammals, let alone all humans, have more in common than they have differences, but nevertheless, the potential differences just within a given species, given sexual recombination of genes and the sheer number of genes each individual has, is well worthy of the adjective “astronomical”, so we shouldn’t be surprised that others like things we find repugnant.  In fact, given that the number of possible combinations of gene pairs in human DNA alone is vastly larger than the number of (for instance) light years the visible universe is across*, maybe we should switch our use of the terms “biological” and “astronomical” to describe very large numbers.  Unfortunately, I think most people wouldn’t catch onto the nuance of saying that something was “biologically large”.

Oh, well.  It was a brief dream, swiftly shattered by the one who dreamed it.  Typical.

Anyway, so, I’m back on food again, more’s the pity.  I’m tired of having all these biological urges and needs and drives.  They’re very irritating.

Also, I’m tired of how stressed and angry I get about things people do at work.  Don’t get me wrong—the specific things I’m thinking about are worthy of anger.  But the problem is that I get so stressed, and so angry, and it just makes me hate myself more and more all the time, without any evident upper bound to the process.

I wish it were true to say, “I can’t stand it anymore”, but unfortunately, I’m able in principle to continue standing things for who knows how long.  I wish I would just collapse into a heap, and literally, physically, not be able to go on.  It would take so much out of my hands and would be such a relief.  Unfortunately, there’s no clear sign of that happening, though I try to sabotage my own health as much as feasible without being Baker Acted.

And here is another maddening thing that just happened:  the trains this morning, it turns out, were all shifted to one side of the track, as was the case last week once.  But this wasn’t announced early, unlike last time, so I went to my usual spot to start writing this while waiting.  Then, when the “announcement” was made, it was just posted on the overhead light board; there was no verbal announcement, though they give recorded verbal reminders about such things usually—they’ve been informing us, ever since Labor Day, that the system will be running on a Sunday schedule on Thanksgiving, which is in November, for those of you who don’t know.  Labor Day was in the beginning of September.

I only failed to miss my train because I always start getting ready to board five minutes early, and I looked up from my writing to notice that there was no one on my side of the tracks.  Only then did I see the notice that trains were all boarding on the other side.  I was able to take the elevator up to the bridge, but I had to rush down the stairs on the other side because my train was approaching, and my knees and hips and ankle were miffed about that.

It would have been nice for one of the people who always gets on the same train I get on to have said something to me, rather than just letting me sit there typing on one side of the track by myself.  I’d like to think I would have said something to them, were the situation reversed.  Maybe I wouldn’t.  Maybe it’s an instance of the bystander effect.  Maybe it’s one of those rare circumstances in which my reticence to interact with strangers is obvious to everyone, and I seem so unpleasant that no one wants to interact with me even enough to say, “Hey, all the trains are boarding on the other side for some reason…better cross over.”

Better cross over.  That’s the best idea I’ve heard today, that’s for sure.

Okay, well, that’s it for today’s disjointed meandering.  I hope you’ve found some modicum of joy in it.  It would be nice to be able to do at least something positive for the world, even if it’s small.  It would be far better than what I usually do.

*Using the particle horizon as the measured “distance across”. **

**Actually, since there are four bases in human DNA (guanine, cytosine, adenine, and thymine), if they were assigned randomly, then even a string of 1000 base pairs has 1.15 x 10602 possible combinations.  If memory serves, this is larger than the String Theory landscape, which number is already so vast as to lead many physicists to say it can predict anything and therefore it can predict nothing.  And human DNA is on the order of a billion nucleotides long.  My computer calculator can’t deal with billionth powers of four, but a billion is a thousand times a thousand times a thousand, so 41000 cubed should be about 101806 unless I’m missing something.  The diameter of the visible universe in Planck lengths is only 5 x 1061, which is not even close to the same order of magnitude.  Of course, the maximal information within a horizon the size of the visible universe is larger still, but then again, that’s a measure of the maximum entropy possible within that region, so that’s almost a given.  I think it’s 210^123 or something along those lines.  I may be getting at least some of this wrong.

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I dare do all that may become a blog; Who dares do more, is none

Hello, good morning, and welcome to another Thursday, which makes it time for another edition of my ever-popular “traditional” blog post on this 6th day of October in 2022 AD/CE.  I hope you’re all doing as well as is physically possible.

Of course, if there is only one universe, not a multiverse, and the “many worlds” description of quantum mechanics is not literally right, then there is only one way that things are and thus only one way that things could be, and so it’s true that everyone is always doing as well—and doing as poorly—as it’s possible for them to be doing.  I’m not sure that’s comforting, but it doesn’t tend to have much impact on daily life, so unless you find the question interesting in and of itself, as I do, I wouldn’t let it worry you.  Try not to think about it.

I’m disappointed to have to report to you all that I have not extended my fast, despite my hopes and intentions yesterday.  I was more affected by my immediately preceding illness, which was mainly GI-related, than I had really recognized, and by mid-day I was not only thoroughly wiped out, but I was also getting dizzy and giddy and loopy, as well as other related adjectives.

At times it was kind of amusing and even a bit fun—certainly I was less stressed out by things than usual, once I got to the loopy stage—but my mental clarity was not good, I was very tired, and I was in slight danger of passing out from standing up too quickly.  That has happened to me before, one time earning me a mild concussion, so I prefer to avoid it.  As it was, I had to drink water, since I knew I was already a bit dehydrated, and it wouldn’t be too safe to do without.

It’s odd for me to think why I care about being overly dehydrated when I frankly don’t even like myself, let alone care about my personal health in the long term.  I think it’s mainly because I don’t want anything to interfere with my mental acuity disproportionately.  The one thing I have in this world is being smart-ish, and I don’t like things that interfere with that, certainly not in an acute fashion.

It’s not comparative intelligence that matters to me; I don’t need to feel like I’m the smartest person in the room or anything.  In fact, I tend to enjoy myself much more when I’m with people who are smarter than I am than otherwise.  Those are the situations in which one can learn something new, in which one can be challenged and can grow, and that’s always fun.

This was always Dr. Doom’s biggest failing, to my mind, the insecurity that required him to demand that his was the greatest intellect in the universe.  Well, in the Marvel Universe, he may well be a contender for the smartest human, but come on, there are beings like the Stranger, and Eon, and all those living computers of Xandar, or whatever that was.

Anyway, that’s neither here nor there—which means it must be in the potentially much larger set of places that can’t be described as “here” or “there”, which will depend on how we define “here” and “there”.  But I’m not going to go into that right now; it’s beside the point*.

Still, being able to do what I do mentally, and to do it well, to understand interesting concepts and ideas, to learn new things, to accomplish mental tasks quickly—these are some of my few remaining joys, and they are mainly without detrimental consequences, unlike eating too much or any more troubling potential bad habit, most of which don’t appeal to me in the slightest.  So I don’t particularly like having them impaired, especially on a day-to-day basis, at work, when I have tasks to accomplish upon which others have come to rely.

Perhaps if I were able simply to be away for a retreat of some kind, or have no assumed responsibilities, it wouldn’t matter if I were too wiped out from being sick before fasting, but as it is, right now, it’s not an acceptable trade off.

I did, however, keep up my fast until well after sundown, so it was a good full 24+ hours.  And I did feel some benefits, I think, or I talked myself into thinking I felt them.  But, since the benefits are psychological ones anyway, talking oneself into them is the same as actually getting them, at least up to a point, so I guess it doesn’t matter.  It’s a bit like courage—acting as if one is brave, in a real danger situation, is actually being brave, which is not to be confused with being fearless.  Fearlessness is pathological; fear is a superpower, to quote or at least to paraphrase the 12th Doctor**.

All right, well, I think that’s enough talk about nothing whatsoever for today.  I mean to try to do another video soon, one that I’ll keep shorter than the last one by starting my timer before I start recording, but I’m not sure what subject I’ll address.  Maybe I’ll talk about some of the pitfalls of listening too closely to the philosophical interpretations of brilliant people, from Bohr and Heisenberg to Hume and Popper and so on.

I think admiring smart people and considering smart arguments is both fun and useful, but controlled and directed iconoclasm is essential to avoid getting caught up in personality cults and related cognitive biases and fallacies.  The people we admire are all just flesh and blood and bone, and they are all finite.  Not one of them has authority over anything in the natural world.  It’s easy enough to speak as if one has authority, but saying it doesn’t make it so.

Maybe I’ve just said enough about that to make my point.  I doubt it.  We’ll see.  In the meantime, I hope you are all having a good week, maybe even better than you would have expected, and that you are as happy and healthy as you’re able to be, and not just in the way I mentioned earlier.

TTFN

doctor-who-listen-meditation

*Get it?

**Series 8, episode 4, “Listen”.  One of the best episodes of Nu-Who, in my opinion.  Though, if you only get to watch one episode at all, I would probably recommend the one that got me interested, which is Series 9, episode 11, “Heaven Sent”.  It is possibly the best hour of TV I have ever watched, though that is specific to me and to my interests and proclivities.  Anyway, having seen clips from it on YouTube, thinking it looked interesting, and then deciding to find a place where I could watch it (which I did), all led me to decide that, yes, I need to watch Doctor Who, at least the new ones.  So, I went back to Series 1, Episode 1 (“Rose”) and watched the whole of new Doctor Who as far as it has gone.  Later this month we will have the 60th anniversary special, in which the brilliant 13th Doctor regenerates into Ncuti Gatwa’s 14th Doctor.  It’s one of the few things to which I am looking forward.

scared is a superpower

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G’mar chatima tova

Hello there.  It’s Wednesday, October 5th, 2022.  It’s also Yom Kippur, “the Day of Atonement”, the highest of the Jewish High Holy Days.  It’s a day on which observant Jews fast—from food, water, sexual relations, and other such things—and usually go to synagogue and take part in communal prayers relating to…well, to atonement, such as for the things that one has done wrong over the course of the prior year, and so on.

I’m no expert, and obviously I’m not observant, or else I wouldn’t be writing this post while going to work on this Wednesday morning.  However, I do like the fasting process, though I am not actually a religious believer of any kind, at least not in any sense that most people would use the terms.  I find that fasting every year on this day is a nice way of psychologically (or mentally, or spiritually, however you like to characterize it) cleansing oneself a bit.

It’s a separation from the immediate satisfactions of such carnal desires as the one for food that is so easy to indulge in the modern world, and which can by used by those with chronic mood disorders and similar problems as a source of tiny and transient comfort or relative joy in a world otherwise defined by unpleasantness.  This indulgence, however, as with most such things, has negative long-term consequences when it is done for pleasure/escape (however fleeting) rather than for its biological purpose.

So, it’s good to break that cycle sometimes.  I’m not going without liquids, because I was already out sick yesterday with a gastrointestinal bug, and I don’t want to leave myself dehydrated or volume depleted, but I’m only too happy to have a strong reason to go without food.  No one at the office is going to try to push food on me if they think I’m avoiding it for quasi-religious reasons.

Without such reasons, people are annoyingly pushy about trying to get other people to eat, even when the other people make no secret of the fact that they are troubled by their weight.  It’s almost as if there were recovering alcoholics in the office (there are, sometimes) and people kept offering them drinks…or tried to slip Percocet to recovering opiate addicts.  It’s frankly unconscionable, and the people who do it ought to be ashamed of themselves, but they seem actually to puff up their egos by offering food.  It’s madness, it’s reprehensible, and it’s disgusting.  If you are reading this, please don’t do it, ever.

With that out of the way, I think I’m going to extend this fast a bit.  I’ve done that before, just a few years ago…I had done the full fast on the day proper, including liquids*, though I’d had to go to work, which was fine, since it wasn’t as though I had a temple to visit or was a member of any community.  But I extended the fast because it cleared my mind a bit, and I felt more at ease with myself.  In fact, when I broke it, after about three days (I think), I was actually disappointed.

But, of course, it’s hard to resist the eating drive.  For Yom Kippur, the one day fast, there is a strong enough religious, or social, or communal, or “spiritual” impetus if you wish, to push past it, and then, once one has pushed past it, it’s easier to continue.  One has already cleared the activation energy, now one just has to let the reaction continue.

So, this year, I’m hoping to continue the fast for a longer time.  Longer than one day, hopefully longer than three days.  I would like to keep it up long enough to reset completely some of my habits regarding food, so that when (or if) I restart, I’ll be able to approach eating simply as a necessity, not as a pleasure.  It would be particularly nice if I could achieve some manner of “spiritual” equanimity, but that may be an impossible dream for me.

I’m also hoping that, by making the announcement here, in my blog, I’ll have the added social impetus—to which I’m only very weakly susceptible at the best of times—to keep me pushing forward.  It’ll also give me something to write about.

Another nice thing about fasting is that it will save me money, and that’s always nice.  I’ve banked a great many calories in my abdominal fat, exchanging money for centripetal adiposity, and I’d like to reverse that process at least to some degree.

Hopefully, as has supposedly been the case with many a seeker after internal peace, the process of fasting will help me clear my chaotic and cluttered and extremely unpleasant mind somewhat.  Also, hopefully with some lost weight, my back and hips and knees and ankles, and even the rest of me, will have less pain.  My understanding of physics and physiology, which is well above average, suggests to me that this will probably be the case.

So, in case there’s any use to it, please wish me luck.  And if you are Jewish, and are celebrating Yom Kippur, so to speak, “May you be inscribed, for Good, in the Book of Life”.

realistic-yom-kippur-concept_23-2148639612

*Abstaining from sex seems to happen all on its own, weirdly enough.  Ha ha.

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Get up get over and turn the tape off

Well, it’s a shitty, shitty day today already.  I realize that’s redundant, of course.  I could simply say that it’s a day today.  They’re all pretty shitty a lot of the time, which is a phrase, at least, that sort of rhymes.  Pretty shitty is kind of pretty; one could use it in a ditty.

That’s enough of that nonsense.

I awoke very early, even for me, with worsening pain than usual in my right lower back and hip, radiating down into my foot and calf, with spasm and tenderness in most of the muscles.  I’d had a decent pain day the day before—which I guess would be yesterday, duh—partly because I took larger than normal doses of naproxen, in addition to aspirin and acetaminophen, and as always I was trying some behavioral interventions such as those with which I constantly experiment.

But I think I was lured into a false sense of security; probably the relative decrease in pain was as much a random fluctuation as anything else.  Also, I realized by the end of the day that I had started to develop edema—accumulation of fluid, that is—in my legs, especially the right one.  I suspect that’s partly due to the effects of the high-dose NSAIDs and other meds on my kidneys’ clearance functions.  So, last night I held off on the naproxen.

While trying to massage out some of my pain, I noted that my son, to whom I had sent an email a few weeks ago, had replied at last to that apologetic note.  But though his email was polite and kind, he basically said that he didn’t want to pursue any relationship with me, at least for the time being, and that he hoped I would respect that.  I can do so, of course; if I didn’t have to have a relationship with me, I wouldn’t do it, either.  He even said he didn’t hold what had happened, what with my arrest and time in prison, against me, which is nice, and that he had fond memories of me and of his childhood with me.  He’s a good person, he works hard and is smart, and all that, like his sister.  I want him to be happy, and I would never try to force my presence on him.  I’m just not built that way.  So, that’s that.  Not a great thing for me, but probably the wise choice for him.

I did record the video I mentioned yesterday, and I already started editing it, which is basically just removing long pauses and umms and coughs and the like.  If I finish and upload it today, I’ll share it as part of the post for tomorrow—I’m scheduled to work—and you’ll be able to see and watch it if you wish.  In case you do, I’ll add now the request that most YouTubers give (which I neglected to do during the recording) which is please, if you’re so inclined, like the video, share it if you’re willing, subscribe if you’re interested, and do please feel free to comment.  All those requests apply here as well, though I guess most of my readers are already subscribed, now that I think about it.

And here I am, at the office already and writing this, quite a bit earlier than I usually arrive, because there was no point just lying around in my room and watching random YouTube videos, some about science, some of British comedy panel shows, and occasionally some about autism/Asperger’s.

It’s the last day of September in 2022, and tomorrow begins the month of October—the month of my birthday, and of Halloween (my favorite holiday), though honestly, right now, I couldn’t give a shit about either one.  Next week is both Yom Kippur and my father’s birthday (I think they’re both on the same day this year, though I may be off on that).

I wish I could see my father, and my mother, but of course, they have both “passed on” as the euphemism goes.  I’m afraid I was probably a very disappointing son for them, not least because I had seemed so promising.  I’ve basically let down all the people who are most important to me in life, regularly and consistently.  Consistency is good, I guess, as far as it goes.  I just wish I had a drug or alcohol problem to hang it all on, so that I could have hope of conquering the problem and receiving minor accolades for the success, a la the famous Christian parable of the prodigal son*, or just succumb to an overdose or something if not.

Unfortunately, my problems are basically internal and inherent.  I’m just not very good at humaning, it turns out, if you’ll pardon me for using the au courant contrivance of turning a noun into a seeming gerund of a verb, as in the expression “adulting”.  Adulting, by the way, does not get a red squiggly underline in MS Word, but humaning does.  I guess that means I really did just make it up.

I’ve been trying to do it all my life, of course, and I have put a lot of effort into it.  But my return on investment has gone deeply in the negative, I’m afraid, though that’s only if you discount the fact of my two children.  Anything I went through up until they were born was repaid at an unimaginable rate, so I can’t complain about that.  But that’s all past, now, and they are alive and well, and they’re doing their thing and living their lives and that’s good, that’s outstanding.

I wish I could have been there to witness more of it.  But if wishes were horses, we’d all be waist-deep in horseshit.  Which we may be in a metaphorical sense—more than waist-deep, I would say—but obviously that’s not literal.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for today, and it’s nearly all I’ve got, period, full stop.  I don’t see how I can possibly go on much longer.  I hate the world, I hate my life, but most of all, I hate myself.  I’ve got to find a way to escape.

Which word makes me think of the Radiohead song, Weird Fishes/Arpeggi.  Here, I’ll embed some version of it in “video” form below, so those of you who are interested can listen.  It’s a beautiful song.

*Which I’ve always hated as a clear case of injustice and even cruelty.

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Nothing to say but “What a day, how’s your boy been?”

Okay…I’m going to hopefully keep it relatively short today.  That should, in principle, be easier than writing a long post, but in practice, for me, it can be a challenge.  We shall see, I suppose.

When I first woke up today, I thought it was September 20th though I’m not at all sure why.  It’s not, though; it’s the 16th.  That’s just in case you weren’t sure, also.

I’m very tired and feeling pretty poorly this morning, but I have to go to work, and I’m going to have to go to work tomorrow, too, unless I’m very mistaken.  I don’t quite understand how it is that people at the office don’t realize how worn down I am.  I feel as if I’m dropping bits of flesh as I walk, like a cheesy, movie zombie, but apparently I don’t look much different than usual, based on the way everyone acts.

It’s probably my fault.  I tend just to keep going, day after day, without much personal complaint.  I mean, I complain about the way people in office do things, when they cut corners, or don’t follow the general, promulgated guidelines and whatnot, but I don’t often complain about myself.  I do complain a bit, like about the fact that I feel tired, that I don’t want to have to stay late and everything, because I’m always the last one out no matter what, but maybe people just see that as the way I am.

Again, as I’m sure I’ve run the topic into the ground already, I apparently have the trait of alexithymia, a difficulty recognizing, or being able to characterize, one’s own emotions.  I’m not sure how I feel about that*.  Anyway, I guess I have a pretty deadpan face no matter what, and even when I say that I don’t feel very well, or don’t feel great, people just sort of “Oh, that’s too bad” kind of thing, and then everyone just goes about their business.  I think I need to work on being more melodramatic.

Maybe it’s just that I’m always negative.  Anything’s possible in this world.  I don’t tend to be the world’s biggest optimist.  I know, that’s unbelievable, right?  I’m also never sarcastic.

Anyway, there’s just not much more to say about it.  I’m much more tired than usual, but I’m going to have to work tomorrow anyway, unless I’m very surprised, and then after having Sunday off to do my laundry, I’ll have to work Monday.  Hopefully whatever I have right now will turn into pneumonia and kill me soon, or something like that.  It would not be a tragedy.  It’s not like I’m likely to do anything more that’s useful with my life.

I wish I could just make myself lie down on the floor in the office at every full stop, but my tendency toward insomnia makes it difficult for me even to rest during the day when I’m worn out.  Or maybe that’s unrelated to my nocturnal insomnia.  I don’t know.  It’s difficult to tease these things out, and it’s not like I have anyone else helping me with it.  You people (the ones reading) are the main ones I share things with, but it’s not quite the same as having someone around who sees me from moment to moment or even from day to day.

Last night I had a hard time falling asleep, but I did sleep through to my alarm this morning after I finally dropped off.  I haven’t heard my alarm in weeks, so that was kind of surprising**.  I took half a Benadryl last night when I went to bed, because I really wanted to be able to sleep.  It seems to have worked as far as that goes, but I feel a bit groggy now, and still just physically wiped out.

Mentally, it’s hard to tell.  I feel like I’m not very alert or clear-headed, but I seem able to do my normal things in the morning so far.  Meaning, for instance, when I check my keys and wallet and all the stuff that I have in my pockets, and which I check again every time I move from one spot to another to make sure I still have everything, they’re all there, and—obviously—I’m remembering to check them.  Which is better than forgetting, certainly, though it would be nice, upon occasion, to be able to feel confident that, yes, I did remember them, and to remember that I remembered them, so I don’t have to keep checking over and over and over throughout the day until the moment I go to bed at night, or at least until I get dressed for bed.  But I always have to keep checking myself; I don’t seem to have that sense of personal certainty that so many people give the impression that they have.

Then again, most people seem to feel sure about a great many things that they cannot actually be sure about, and if I had to choose between the two states, I’d rather be the way I am, with no tendency toward easy certainty about epistemologically uncertain things.  I don’t admire overconfidence or dogmatism.  I think they are responsible for a great many of the ills of civilization—people who think they know how things ought to be and how other people ought to behave and what’s really behind everything.  This is my repeated point in reframing the X-files poster statement into, “I don’t want to believe.  I want to be convinced by evidence and reason.”

Ah, well.  Reason is something I have in abundance about some things, but in which I am very poor regarding how best to manage myself, emotionally and in general.  I’m too tired to bother trying to manage myself, anyway.  I’m not worth very much effort, even from myself.  I need just to let it go.

And, as you can see, I didn’t end up writing a very short blog post after all.  I feel as though a therapist is now telling me “That’s all the time we have today,” as has happened to me before in therapy.  I have the unfortunate tendency to drone on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on…

You get the idea, right?  Anyway, I expect, assuming I’m right that I’m going to have to work tomorrow, that I’ll be writing a post then.  If I don’t, either it means that work was cancelled, at least for me—maybe my coworker will return from his back surgery with miraculous rapidity—or that I’ve succumbed to severe enough illness that I won’t be able to make it in or to write, or that I’ve died.  That sounds kind of nice.

*Ha ha.

**It’s the Beatles song Good Morning, Good Morning, which is a perfect morning alarm.  It even begins with a rooster crowing!

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We’ve been trying to reach you, Rob

Guten Morgen, bonjour, buenos días, ohaiyou gozaimasu, and good morning.  It’s Wednesday, at 10 to five, and I’m already on the train, because despite being sick, I still couldn’t sleep, and if anything, I awakened sooner than usual.

Yes, I am still sick—it’s rare that anyone really, actually, gets over a respiratory infection in 24 hours, after all—but I also still have to go to work.  That’s particularly true on Wednesdays, when I have to do the office payroll in addition to my other, regular duties.  It’s not a dirty job, but nevertheless, someone has to do it.

I feel even less that I have a topic to write about today than I did yesterday, but as regular readers will know, that never stops me from writing.  It’s a bit analogous, I suppose, to the jocular saying that one should never let facts get in the way of a good story.  So:  never let lack of a subject stop you from writing a blog post.  Goodness knows most pundits and politicians and even most journalists nowadays don’t let lack of subject matter stop them from writing or speaking at length.

Still, my energy feels unusually low today, even for me.  Maybe I should write about how unreasonable it is in our culture that we demand of ourselves that we go to work even when we’re ill, thus increasing the chance that other people will become ill, and probably reducing overall productivity of the workforce and decreasing the overall quality of life for everyone.  As if we needed to push that down lower than it already is.

But I suppose that subject has been addressed innumerable times in many ways by many other people.  If you need it discussed beyond a few words to trigger the thought, I’m not sure what world you’re occupying.  Perhaps your life is so satisfying that you don’t even comprehend how anyone could be less than happy.  More likely, you’re so worn down and resigned—dare I say, fatalistic—that you don’t even recognize, let alone consider, the possibility that things could improve.

I feel you.

So, what should I write about?  Or should I try to write about anything at all?  Should I just start spewing random sentences in question form, as though initiating a Socratic dialogue?  Would there be any benefit to that?  If so, what would it be?

I’m not good at small talk in general, and I’ve gotten worse at it over time, as my socialization has diminished.

I did very briefly pick my guitar up yesterday, because I had watched a video of someone reacting to the Radiohead song Knives Out, for which I had learned the lead guitar part some time ago, and I wanted to see if I could still do it.  I couldn’t do it from memory—I needed to get out the tabs—but it wasn’t too bad.  And while I had that out, I quickly fiddled (so to speak) through part of the lead from Big Log, by Robert Plant, and a bit of Wish You Were Here, and then the chords from One Headlight and A Space Oddity.  I made a video of me playing and singing the latter a while back, which I guess I’ll embed below as a space filler.

Then someone noticed that I was playing—I usually only play when no one else is around—and so I put the guitar away.  Anyway, I wanted to watch a reaction to the Radiohead song Lift that I noticed on the YouTube list, and the chords for that involve a B add…ninth, I think*, that gives me a terrible hand cramp to try to reach, so I wasn’t going to try to play along.  And listening to that song, and the reaction, made me want to cry, so I had to stop all that.

So that’s it.  I actually did get out the black Strat at the office, or picked it up and turned on the amp, since it’s always sort of “out”.  But who knows if I’ll ever play it again?  I wouldn’t be surprised if I don’t.  It’s like picking up your kids—there will be a moment when you pick up your child in your arms for the final time, and you will never pick them up again after that, and odds are, you won’t even realize that it is the final time when it happens.  You’ll just never happen to pick them up again.  Likewise, there will be a last time that you hug or even see each of the people you love, and then one of you will be lost to the other, or both will be, for the rest of time.  So don’t take those things for granted, okay?

That’s about all I’ve got for the time being.  Hope you have a good day.

*Yes, that’s what it was.

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Demonstrandum in the middle of nowhere

Good morning, everyone.  It’s Tuesday, the 13th of September, and I’m coming down with something again.  Meaning I think I have some upper respiratory virus, because I started getting mild chills overnight, and a low-grade elevation of my temperature, and my throat has that sore, itchy, irritated feeling that comes with fighting a virus.

I’m assuming it’s a virus—well, not truly assuming; I’m drawing a tentative conclusion based on experience and knowledge.  It doesn’t seem like a bacterial infection, those tend to be more localized, and I don’t think it’s a fungus, since those are rather rare and occur only in specific circumstances…and I’ve never heard of a prion disease that presents in this fashion.  Whereas I’ve had many iterations of “colds” throughout my life, and this feels a lot like most of them.

It doesn’t seem like Covid, but I suppose it could be one of the later variants, tempered down by my already-exposed immune system.  In any case, although I must go to work—that’s why I’m writing this blog post today—I am masking even more thoroughly than usual.

It’s remarkable that the wearing of masks was resisted so much by so many crybaby wusses in America.  People in east Asia have been regularly wearing masks when they get a cold since long before the first SARS virus.  It’s simple courtesy to recognize that, though you may have to go to work because there are people and things depending on you, it’s good to take some minor precautions to decrease the risk of spreading your sickness to the people around you.

I understand the spirit of independence, and I am glad to live in a country where the more common saying is, “The squeaky wheel gets the grease” rather than “The nail that sticks up gets hammered down”.  But it’s not independence or free spiritedness to refuse to take simple, easy precautions to reduce the chance of you spreading a disease to your fellow Americans (as the case may be).  That’s just being a spoiled and entitled ass-wipe.  And the only good thing to do with ass-wipes is to flush them down the toilet.

Anyway, that wasn’t what I was going to write about today.  Actually, I didn’t have anything specific in mind to write about today, which is why I know that wasn’t what I meant to write about today.  Logic.  If there exists no class of things: [Topics considered to write about on Tuesday, September 13th, 2022, AD] then {the inexplicable and inexcusable refusal to use masks when ill} cannot be a member of that class.  Quantum Electro Dynamics*.

Ah, Logic.  Ah, Reason.  Ah, Evidence and Argument.  How I pine for you in the human world.  Of course, I don’t hold it against anyone that they have emotions, even strong ones.  It’s not like people designed themselves, after all, and emotions exist for good, sound biological reasons.  They are the drives, the utility functions, of organismal behavior.  And they served humans well in the ancestral environment, else humans wouldn’t be around.

But reasoning minds have achieved much more; they are much more versatile and powerful, and modern civilization is largely due to their work, though motivated by those underlying emotions and their various, often-conflicting, utility functions.

But you’ve got to tame your elephant, to borrow Jonathan Haidt’s metaphor.  Otherwise it’ll run rampant and trample everything, and it won’t get you anywhere you really want to go, except perhaps by luck.  Train it.  Maintain discipline.  Reward it when it’s good and correct it when it’s not.  Don’t just be the rider of your older brain, be the pilot, be the driver.  It requires effort, obviously, but I think it’s probably worth it.

In other words, what I’m saying is, don’t trust your emotions to guide you—they’re not reliable.  Listen to them, notice them, but don’t trust them.  They developed to help make quick decisions about hunting and gathering, avoiding lions and hyenas, and interacting with a tribe of maybe forty or fifty people at a time.

Every complex animal in the world has emotions of some kind; anyone who doubts that is simply in denial.  Only humans (among species native to the planet) have human-type brains, with big, complex frontal lobes and complex, symbolic language with syntax and grammar and logic and all that jazz (sometimes literally).

But those brains are powerful—again, see Jonathan Haidt’s metaphor of the elephant and the rider.  If they are not managed, they can be horrifically destructive.  And if you get a herd of unmanaged elephant-brains** or brain-elephants, they can do a terrific amount of harm, especially if they’re armed with modern technology (most of which was not made or designed by people with no control over their personal elephants, but is nevertheless available now to the billions of people who could not have made it, and who don’t bother even trying to steer).

Anyway, this has all been meandering and peculiar, I guess.  As I said, I’m a bit under the weather.  It’s annoying to be in south Florida and to be both sweaty and chilly.  I wish I could just lie in bed somewhere, maybe have some Jell-O or something.

I must be feeling sick.  I don’t particularly like Jell-O.  But it is easy on the throat.

I wish I didn’t have to go to work today.  Though it’s not a wish I would waste on a genie if I found a magic lamp.  I’d probably ask for some kind of special, personal powers that I could use to achieve world peace…through my absolute dominion over everyone and everything!  Bwa-ha-haaaa!!

Again, anyway…that’s enough silliness.  I’m really not going anywhere with anything today.  I just wish I could rest for the day, but I can’t, so tough luck.  A person has to do what a person must do; willingly accepted duty, and a reasonable sense of honor, and a general sense of courtesy should guide one in one’s actions, if one wishes to be other than merely a jumped-up monkey throwing feces…or an idiot protesting against a simple health precaution, pretending to take a stand on principle when one is actually simply throwing a tantrum because one doesn’t want to do something sensible and healthful, like take a nap.

Naps are good.  So are masks in the right circumstances.

*Q.E.D. in other words—quod erat demonstrandum, “what was to be demonstrated”.  That’s my little nerdy joke, playing on the earlier nerdy “joke” that was the naming of quantum electrodynamics by physicists, shortening it to QED, because why would you not?

**The elephant is a metaphor of a powerful beast carrying around the conscious mind.  I am not implying that elephants themselves are destructive by nature, though of course, they can be.

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Add title – stir until smooth

Whew.  You would think that after a day off, I would be more wide-awake this Monday morning.  However, you would be wrong if you thought that.  It’s not as if I did anything that drained my energy yesterday.  I did my laundry, for what that’s worth.  I watched some fan-reactions to Doctor Who episodes by the Gallifrey Gals, which is fun, but it’s not exactly draining, and I’d seen them before.  I didn’t even watch any golf or football, nor did I even play any PS4-based golf myself, which I sometimes do on the weekend.  I just lolled about.  The only words I even spoke to other people were in 7-11 when I got some food, and a passing “Hola” in response to the same from my new housemate when she was outside, and I was on my way to said 7-11.

I am tired.  Physically, I mean.  I feel that hitherto, Mondays have been the days in which I often write longer posts about more disparate subject matter than during the rest of the week, and I had guessed that was because of having a day off the day before.  Today, however, I don’t think I’m going to be doing that.  In fact, I can’t really think of an interesting topic.

I considered making an announcement that, okay, I’m not going to be writing about my distress anymore, about how I could really use some help if anyone has the wherewithal, otherwise I’m sure I’m going to die soon, because I’ve said it already, over and over, and no one is coming to help, and it’s just getting boring, and continues to be frustrating.  Well, I don’t think I’m going to make any “official” policy statement along those lines right now, because I don’t like to make promises (or threats) about such things, since I honestly usually don’t know how my moment-to-moment decisions might change.

I will just say that I’m veering along those lines.  I would dearly love it if anyone out there were able to help me, and had the inclination, since I don’t appear able to help myself, but I don’t think there’s any such person out there, and I doubt it would be worth anyone’s while, anyway.  What would be the point?  How could anyone gain at all, in any way, by helping something like me not to die?  There’s probably even a secret addendum to the Hippocratic Oath that specifies that, as part of the ethos of doing no harm, it’s better not to help people like me, since to keep me around is, by the nature of my being, a net harm to the world.

I don’t really think there is such a hidden bit to the Hippocratic Oath, by the way.  I’m sort of joking.  I know, it’s not very funny.

I’ve said before that I wish I had a drug problem or an alcohol problem, because those would rapidly become impossible to ignore, and there are more readily available resources for people dealing with those.  But I just don’t seem prone to such things.  One of my biggest problems, ironically, is that I’m able to keep moving forward in many different situations—not necessarily well, but to survive and remain superficially stable—for a long time.  I’m able to survive, even if only by the proverbial skin of my teeth, well past any point where there’s any good reason for me to do so, and I’m able to do it without causing undue drain on society, so to speak.

It’s really annoying.

I suppose there are probably a lot of people who, if they thought about it, are in a similar situation.  There’s the old quote—I don’t recall who said it—about how most men live lives of quiet desperation (and I assume it referred also to women).  I think it probably describes a great many people in the world, people scrambling every day to get by, to survive, to avoid overt disease and injury, with the goal simply of getting to the next day to do the same thing.

Now, for people who have family and friends with whom to spend time, I’d say that daily effort is almost certainly worth it.  There may be no real external meaning to life or the universe, but being with one’s friends and those one loves in general surely makes such considerations not very important.

For people who have issues socializing and who cannot be with the people they love—because those whom they love don’t necessarily want to be with them—it can be a real grind.  It’s hard to take a speculative approach to it, with the idea that if one just waits long enough or keeps trying, keeps going, their loved ones will come back to them, or they’ll meet new people they’re able to be close to, or something like that.  It feels too much like a person at a casino who keeps playing because they imagine that, sometime in the future, if they just keep playing, they’re going to hit a huge streak of luck, or someone who keeps playing the lottery expecting that, someday, they’ll win it big.

The odds are not with you.  If simple perseverance would guarantee eventually coming out ahead, then the casinos and the lottery would not be in business; they would have long ago gone bankrupt.  In the long run, on average, the house wins…and it wins well enough that it’s not really even a near thing.

Ah, well, it’s all pretty absurd, so expecting or hoping for lives that are deeply rational from an objective point of view is probably too much to ask, at least as a starting point.  Maybe that could be a civilizational aspiration, to strive to make a world where most people can live rewarding, satisfying lives in which they can pursue useful and meaningful projects and be with people they love and who love them.  It’s probably not happening to most people most of the time right now, but I don’t think the laws of physics forbid it from coming to pass.

It’s entirely possible that, overall, for most of the world, better days really are coming.  But I don’t think it’s the case for me.  My stake is almost spent, and I don’t think I’m even going to have any chips to cash out when I stop playing.  I guess that’s the way it goes.  In the end, everyone breaks even.