Lessons

In his now-typical fashion, Landon Wilkins has left me another couple of questions to answer -- which I am more than happy to attempt.  Landon writes:

So here are my two questions:

1.What are the most valuable/important lessons you think everyone should learn? 

2.What are the most valuable/important lessons you've learned?

As a knee-jerk reaction, I admit I want to think that these are the same question phrased a little differently.  But then, of course, I think further and realize this is not the case.  I think I'll answer the second one first, since it's easier to talk of myself before making broader generalizations.

My personal greatest lessons, certainly over the last few years if not through my entire life, have dealt with my ability to help those I care about.  Probably the single most important of those would be that I cannot do everything for everyone.  Trust me, I've tried.  It doesn't work.  I can get close, sometimes, at the expense of everything I feel necessary in outside life, but even then some people get let down.  You have to pick your battles, lest "the bear" get you every single day, as the saying sort of goes.

The next-most important lesson that I've picked up recently may seem odd, or too obvious to even mention.  But it took me until just this past year, and many painful ordeals, to finally figure it out.  The lesson is one that I feel applies to both questions, and to all people, not just me.  That lesson is this: maintain perspective at all times, and at all costs.  Never, but never, allow yourself to forget exactly how much you have to do with what goes on around you -- and how much or how little you affect the outcome of any given situation you are invested in.  Forgetting to keep this perspective not only hurt many people, myself certainly included, but also nearly cost my life and a close friend's sanity.  For the sake of the privacy of those involved and for the sake of space, I will not recount the story (even if asked; please trust me that for now it is best that this remain hidden), but suffice to say it was a very sharp wake-up call for me and for all that I was doing and feeling at the time.

Since that lesson seems to apply so well to everyone, I suppose I may just as well move into the first question.  What do I think everyone should learn?  Well, there are a lot of things we all need to learn in life.  I think some of us are just born better-prepared for certain lessons than are the rest of us, but then each person has their own unique strengths.  It's up to all of us to capitalize on that and use it to get a leg up over our weaknesses.  Anyway.  The single most important lesson, or rather the most important challenge, is in my opinion to learn to defeat pride.

That's right, pride.  As in Seven-Deadly-Sins pride.  Wrath, envy, lust, sloth, excess, and greed are all important to avoid, but pride is in my experience the root of all of them, and far more problems besides.  One form of pride is the source of lust and enemy to love, believing that others are just objects to be used for gratification rather than companionship.  Another type believes that others are not as much entitled to their property or status and fosters greed and envy and excess alike.  One type believes that it is above working and engenders sloth.  Wrath is derived from the belief that one's feelings are more important than others' and that offense must be retributed against even if it was with good reason.

Pride is essentially at the root of all selfish or sinful or misanthropic behavior, and must -- must -- be stopped if we as human beings with souls and hearts are to function in harmony with one another.  In a comment on a previous entry here, IamtheEnder writes:

It is painful to see harm done. Why would anyone want that? It doesn't make sense to me to do anything but good.

 

I agree that it is very painful to see harm or pain inflicted on anyone else... but it is often actually a relief from pain that drives such an action.  We see something that hurts us, and we feel the need -- a prideful need (lest this seem too tangential) -- to fight back against its source.  Someone inflicts pain on us, and the natural and instinctive response is to drive pain into them tenfold, to get revenge or to serve justice on behalf of another for whom we care.  It's wrong, morally, but it's natural.  What we should do, in all cases, is to accept the action that caused us pain in the first place and try to make amends as best we can. But this is not easy.  It requires forgiveness, and it requires strength.  More so than I personally feel I have.

All I can say, in the end, is good luck to all who genuinely want to rid themselves of pride and to exchange it for perspective.

Music Sympathy

I don't know about anyone else, but when I'm in a bad mood, I can't deal with listening to happy music.  Or not much of it, anyway.  And usually, the music I do listen to is even more depressing -- it synergizes with my current bad mood and makes it worse.  I listen to music that sounds like I feel.  Good moods mean happy music and playful sounds, while bad moods mean dismal, gloomy melodies with depressing lyrics when applicable.  However, certain songs with neutral styles (most notably Duran Duran's What Happens Tomorrow and Lover Reef, a collaboration by several contributors to OC ReMix) in my experience have the baffling ability to fit with almost any mood at all and even to enhance it.

Sometimes, even I cannot quite define my musical preferences.  Some songs that fit with the outward mood grate at me and don't sound "right," while others that are totally dissonant with how I think I'm feeling just seem to click for what seems like no reason.  In some rare cases, I'll be listening to a song, even one I'm not very familiar with, and I will be able to think nothing short of "that's it: that is how I feel right now."  One such song I heard for the first time on a very, very grim day during which I was thinking over my whole life and how messed-up it was at the time.  That song, Suzumebachi's The Ballad of Sir Kibbles, resonated with me in a way songs rarely ever manage to, and to this day I feel that it is the story of my life crammed into a three-minute instrumental.

But still, all music has a distinct "color" and mood associated with it.  In fact, perhaps that very concept of "color" explains the strangeness in my choices sometimes.  Mostly I like colors of music that are close to the color of my mood, but sometimes a triadic color, to borrow the color theory term (melancholic to my angry, or orange to my red... or something like that, I suppose it's not an exact science), can resonate just as deeply.

For my readers and respondents: what are your favorite songs for certain specific moods, and how do they affect you?  What kinds of songs do you find you listen to when you're in a happy mood?  Or sad?  Or angry?

By way of reply

A little over a month ago, Landon Wilkins made a post on one of my introductory entries.  He asked me two very solid questions that I feel are quite worth exploring here.

First.  Landon asks, "What is your base motivation in life?"  He explained that he wanted to know what drives my actions, and my personality.  I've thought a lot over the years about that one and, especially lately, about what drives personality in general.  I find that certain things are at the core of each and every person's life, and that this selection of traits is different for everyone.  Some people find themselves devoted completely to pursuit of skills, or being the absolute best at what they do.  Some follow their ideals, high thoughts of ethics and morals and justice and other such abstracts.  Some are logical to the extreme, while others follow whimsy and passion wherever it takes them.

As for me, I find that certain concepts are absolutely tantamount to my lifestyle.  I am, above all else, dedicated to justice and to love.  If something is truly unfair, it sits very, very poorly with me, sometimes to the point that I experience physical pain in one respect or another if I am unable to do anything to fix it.  In my life, I need to feel that things are fair and just, else I more or less shut down and am unable to cope.  On the other side of things, I frequently discover that love drives me.  I do a lot of strange, abnormal things, and most of them, one way or another, come down to love.  Love for other worlds and new ideas, love for certain people, love for creation... but that warm feeling of love lies beneath them all.

Subsidiary to those two primary drives, I look for logic and reason, for understanding (in a largely philosophical sense of the word), and for gratification.  I am very much a selfish type of person, in that in my spare time I generally do whatever feels best at the moment.  I waste an enormous amount of time just reading dumb websites or playing video games, for no better reason than that I felt like it.  This is the same reason that I flaunt my odd style of dress, and that I carry a bag stamped with my own design -- I am very egotistical and, despite my joking about it, I realize that at times it is a huge problem for me.  If the bottom line doesn't come down to me getting something tangible, I tend to write many activities off as wasteful (even if they are helpful to others in whatever way).  However, of course, this flies in the face of my two bigger motives, and as a result I find myself in very frequent and very heated internal conflict over it.  I cannot feel as though justice is being properly served if I am wasting my time so badly while others that I care about suffer (because, of course, everyone has their own problems), and at times I cannot indulge both myself and my sense of love simultaneously.

The second question (or questions, I suppose) Landon posed is: "How do you want your life to be?  What do you want to do, experience, achieve?"  I honestly don't have many specific plans.  I'm trying to cover as many contingencies as I can, what with getting my degree in a field I don't particularly want to work in (CS).  I want to be an artist, or at the very least operate in a creative capacity.  I don't really care whether that's as a video game designer or as a writer or as a graphic designer or what, but I need to create.  It's just What I Do.  Having a job doing so is... well, it would make life much less painful if my current employment experience in retail has taught me anything at all.

As for personal life goals, I know exactly who I want to marry.  I know more or less what steps I'm going to have to take to make that happen, and I'm mostly on the right track.  I haven't got any particular preference as to how I want my family to be, though I do know that I'm going to wait for at least a few years after marriage to have kids if I end up deciding to have them at all.  I want to emulate the examples of my parents as best I can, since to be quite frank they are, without exaggeration, the only couple I've ever known of who have made no major errors in raising their children.

At some point, I wish to explore the world, to see places like Japan and Ireland that are so in tune with me in one or another way.  There are idols I hope to someday meet, like Graham Stark, Paul Saunders, Tarn Adams, Lynne Triplett, Niyazi Sonmez, and frankly a boatload of others.  I want to publish my games, board, tabletop, and computer alike, and get my worlds noticed by some semblance of a mainstream audience.  I want names like the Sigil Galaxy and Little Heartless and Cog Cyprian to be known, even if only in small niche communities.  I want to share all of the fascinating developments in my mind with the entire world, and to inspire others to see as differently as I do.

And beyond the mundane achievements and status that I want, I have a more transcendental need for my life's course.  I need to help people.  I need to use my apparent aptitude for understanding how people's minds and emotions operate and interact to help them solve their problems and to make peace with themselves.  Like creating things, it is again What I Do, and therefore beyond my ability to stop needing to have in my life.

Hopefully, Landon, this entry has given you an adequate answer to your questions.  And as a note both to Landon and to my other regular readers, and to anyone else who happens to stumble onto this page: please ask me questions, that I may try to give you answers.

The Intro (Part 4): The big one

I know I'm way behind on this (almost a full month, actually), and I'm trying to get myself caught up.  But to be perfectly frank, I've been avoiding this entry.  It needs to be said, but I wish I didn't have to be the one exposing myself to some potentially very unpleasant comments and opinions.  Might as well come right out with it.

I am a furry.

That's right, one of those people with a thing for anthropomorphized animals.  Before anyone says it, or even thinks it, I neither practice nor endorse bestiality in any form.  However, I do like artwork of humanoid versions of various animals, as seen in (for instance) Broken Plot Device or Housepets!.  I like cats, in general, and my own fursona (portmanteau of "furry persona," otherwise known as my alter-ego in the furry fandom) is a white housecat named Cog -- and yes, that was the impetus behind naming my blog "cogthecat."

Probably the best rendition I have of my fursona at present is the (admittedly somewhat pitiful) BuddyPoke interpretation I've made.  It's not very detailed, or completely accurate (it's missing one of the black patches on his fur and he has no wings in that version... it's a long story as to why he is supposed to have them), but you get the idea.

Before I go on, I need to address some of the common myths and misconceptions about furries that are mostly propagated by mainstream media to people who just don't care to do the research (and then end up just getting spread everywhere).

First.  Probably the most obvious one is that furries practice bestiality.  There are people that practice bestiality, and there are people that are furries, and sometimes those two groups overlap.  However, they are by no means equivalent, and people that practice bestiality are looked down on by the other furries just as much as by the rest of the world; either you do practice that or you don't, and being furry has nothing to do with it.

Second.  Furries are all gay men between ages 16 and 25.  Again, not true.  There are furries in this specific demographic, true, and there is indeed a vast majority (80%, last I checked) of the furry fandom that is male.  A majority of furries are also youthful.  I have no answer to the absurd male-to-female ratio in the fandom, but I do know that the furry lifestyle and ideology is very appealing to youth who want to find themselves and find a connection to the fandom for one or another reason.  The nature of the fandom, specifically that it is much more easily practiced via the Internet than out in the judgmental public, makes it very accessible to young people with an understanding of technology.  As for sexual preference, I myself am very much straight (as is my girlfriend, who is also a furry) -- thus proving that at least two furries are not of the stereotypical gay male group.  The reason that so many furries identify as homosexual or bisexual is, plain and simple, acceptance.  There is a very -- VERY -- tolerant atmosphere inside the furry fandom at large, simply because if you can accept being furry most people generally believe you can accept anything.  People that would otherwise never have "come out" find it very easy to do so in the furry fandom because furries as a whole will accept frankly just about anything.

As a result of this last point, furries do have a decidedly unpleasant habit of being very open about things that are sometimes better hidden.  It's such a strongly tolerant atmosphere that sometimes furry fans lose sight of what should and should not be shared in a public setting.  It is an impulsive and indulgent subculture, often with its members just doing whatever comes to mind whenever they feel like it.  Now, I've probably made the drawbacks of this outlook fairly clear by now.  But on the other hand, it is extremely liberating at times to not have to worry about being looked at weird for favoring a certain fashion style, or for standing just that half-an-inch closer to someone than is socially appropriate in other situations.  Sometimes you just plain want to be weird, and furries will gladly let you.

Now before I go on, I should probably mention my personal definition of being furry.  Perhaps I should have done this first.  But regardless:
To be a furry, also known as a furry fan, one must like something to do with anthropomorphized animals.  This ranges from running about in a full-body fur suit just for kicks and giggles all the way to just liking the Bugs Bunny cartoons, or Disney's The Lion King (for which, by the way, there is an entire sub-fandom within furry culture).

Moving on.  The third big myth is that all furries are just in it for the porn, or that furry fandom is a strictly sexual matter.  To be honest, there is a huge, HUGE amount of furry porn out there, and often it is not filtered nearly as well as it should be (for example on FurAffinity, which is sporadically very, very NSFW but generally just fine for the kiddies; sometimes the NSFW artwork will just decide to be on the front page as it is updated).  However, I must stress once again that this is a preferential thing.  If any one furry likes drawing or looking at pornographic photographs, that's their choice.  Same goes for "normals" looking at furry porn.  Same goes for furries looking at furry porn, and "normals" looking at other naked "normals."  I hope my point is being made here.  If you look at it, that's your business.  If not, then fine.  But just as not all non-furries look at porn, not all furries look at yiff (the accepted term for the furry equivalent... it is known as "the noise two foxes make when you rub them together," though this is often referred to in a tongue-in-cheek manner).

The fourth major myth, and the last one I intend to cover here, is that of identity.  Some people have heard that furries TRULY BELIEVE that they are animals in spirit, or that they can transform into their fursonas during a full moon, or that they share a connection with dragons or elves or whatever.  And that's not entirely untrue either.  Some furries do, in fact, believe that they are lycanthropic (turn into animals, i.e. werewolves) or that they are animals in spirit (therians), or that they are not entirely human (that they are more than their physical bodies; this group is called otherkin and comprises some furries as well as those who believe they are connected to elves, fey, or other mythological beings, among some others).  But the majority of furries belong to none of these groups and just like anthropomorphized animals for one or another reason.

I do feel that I need to cover the reason that these myths get started before I wrap up.  Since furry fandom really started entering the mainstream consciousness, virtually all of the media attention pointed to it has been negative.  Most furries just want to live their lives in peace and as they choose, but some few choose to behave in especially extreme ways, getting themselves noticed by tabloids and the more paranoid side of the media.  Those media outlets, of course, jump at the chance to highlight people behaving strangely -- because scandal sells magazines.  Or papers.  Or increases viewership.  Whatever these outlets focus on, they know it goes up, up, up when furries are involved because furries are Weirdos And Deviants And Perverts Oh My, and people like hearing about people that they can look down on just for being different without fear of reproach.  More recently, the 2003 CSI: Crime Scene Investigation episode "Fur and Loathing" (WikiFur has an excellent article on the whole ordeal from furry fandom perspective) actually called in several local furries as consultants and extras to make sure that they got it right.  Of course, those consultants worked hard to correct the many misconceptions and inaccuracies in the script, but in the end they were overruled by the director and producer, who preferred to make the episode as racy and as scandalous as possible, in the process badly damaging furry fandom's public image.

This kind of damage is happening all the time, and as a result the fandom is very close-knit, often having a difficult time showing itself (as it is with me).  In the hopes that someone would actually notice and bring it up, I myself have worn a collar and tag out in public nearly every day -- not only because I like the fashion statement.  I keep wondering if anyone sees it and wonders about the fandom because of my odd fashion sense.  Or even if someone might ask me straight out whether I am a furry or not.  Maybe it'll happen, maybe not.  But if it does, I will happily answer any and all questions on the topic, because furries are just not that bad.

The Intro (Part 3): The first elephant

So, borrowing the metaphor of the "elephant in the room," or something very very important that no one wants to discuss but is on everyone's mind, I have a few things to bring up before I can consider my introduction really finished.  I'll only be covering the simpler one this week, as life outside has become extraordinarily taxing of late.

The first elephant... the first of two things I consider part of my core definition, yet hesitate to even mention to anyone.  Religion.

I am LDS -- that is, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, or a "Mormon," in common vernacular.  Being in Utah, there is of course a strong LDS presence.  But in Salt Lake City itself, that presence is diminishing rapidly.  The Church is not actually shrinking, but it has stalled out in its growth in this area.  The masses that move in are often either already LDS or strongly against the idea of converting, leading to a very sharp divide between the two parts of the population.  If you're living in Utah and not LDS, you hate the Church.  If you are LDS in Utah, you love it and treat everyone else with as much disdain as you can get away with.  I admit it, I'm one of Those People that honestly kind of looks down on everyone that comes from "lesser" moral standing.

But I do not mean to suggest that LDS people are any less or more flawed and human than any other group.  In fact, I am keenly aware of my own imperfect nature, in spite of my supposed higher morality.  All I truly have is a higher set of ideals to work towards than many.  The majority, I would say, content themselves with simply being what they are and ignore the ideas of sin and personal improvement.  This honestly makes perfect sense to me.  Without high ideals to work toward, it is much, much easier to live with one's flaws.  It makes it so easy to accept them, and to ignore them as being unimportant compared to just living freely.  But that does not make it right.

Not even, in fact, from a sociological standpoint.  If all of humanity simultaneously decided to ignore the grievous personal faults that exist in virtually everyone, world society would disintegrate within a generation, possibly faster.  No one would teach the children to better themselves, nor to concern themselves with the future.  Flaws would be learned and passed on, individuals would grow further and further from morality and ethics with each passing year, or month, or even each day in an especially morbid case.

However, I digress.  I will be blunt here: the LDS religion is pretty weird.  We believe, among many other details, that you and I were alive before being given bodies, that we will go back to that state after death, and that at some point no matter what happens to our bodies in the meantime those bodies will get back up pretty much of their own volition and accept our spirits back into them.  And all of this because a Jewish fellow bled a lot in a certain special spot a couple of millennia ago on behalf of the father that created the universe and just wants us all to be happy.  But it's certainly not much stranger than most other religions: in Islam, Jesus was a prophet who taught truth and goodness through all his days, except that silly business about being God's son -- he lied to everyone about that one little detail.  In Buddhism, one is expected to do good things all their lives and deprive themselves of every human pleasure, so that someday after they die a few more times they can come back as a cow.  In some sects of Jainism, you're a horrible bad person if you don't suffer through every second of your existence.

Any religion or system of beliefs can be brought down to something absolutely silly.  But for me, the Latter-Day Saint faith is the only one free of contradiction.  It contains every component I feel true religion should: a complete explanation of everything relevant, from the macroscopic deific scale to the microscopic, myopic world of humanity; total internal consistency, and the freedom from contradiction by any means other than differences in personal interpretations; a purpose for existence in general that leads to morally and ethically upright conduct in all areas of life; and most importantly, a personal feeling that it is correct.  Logic and sensibility and justice are a very big deal for me, and the LDS faith provides something that no other religion I have yet seen does.  Mormonism makes sense, and the only reason I see that one would reject it is personal pride (mind you, this is a very broad category and I am vulnerable to it just as much as the next person).  In my experience, the deeper one studies into LDS doctrine, the more sense it makes, and the more it stands on its own as being if not correct, at least logically valid.

I am opinionated and stubborn about this, and I feel I can justify that as simply possessing yet another specific flaw.  But as far as concerns me, it is right.  It is best left as an exercise for the reader to determine whether what I say here is in fact true, and I accept that many (many, many, many) people do not agree with any of it.  But this is, nonetheless, my belief and my faith.

The other elephant, probably far bigger a social "problem," is to wait until next week.