Category: Musings

History Has its Eyes on You

In case it isn’t obvious from some of my recent writings, I’ve been thinking a lot about history. This has been mostly the fault of John Green, who decided in a recent step of his ongoing scavenger hunt, to pitch the age old question: “[I]s it enough to behold the universe of which we are part, or must we leave a footprint in the moondust for it all to have been worthwhile?” It’s a question that I have personally struggled with a great deal, more so recently as my health and circumstances have made it clear that trying to follow the usual school > college > career > marriage > 2.5 children > retirement and in that order thank you very much life path is a losing proposition.

The current political climate also has me thinking about the larger historical context of the present moment. Most people, regardless of their political affiliation, agree that our present drama is unprecedented, and the manner in which it plays out will certainly be significant to future generations. There seems to be a feeling in the air, a zeitgeist, if you will, that we are living in a critical time.

I recognize that this kind of talk isn’t new. Nearly a millennium ago, the participants of the first crusade, on both sides, believed they were living in the end times. The fall of Rome was acknowledged by most contemporary European scholars to be the end of history. Both world wars were regarded as the war to end all wars, and for many, including the famed George Orwell, the postwar destruction was regarded as the insurmountable beginning of the end for human progress and civilization. Every generation has believed that their problems were of such magnitude that they would irreparably change the course of the species.

Yet for every one of these times when a group has mistakenly believed that radical change is imminent, there has been another revolution that has arrived virtually unannounced because people assumed that life would always go on as it always had gone on. Until the 20th century, imperial rule was the way of the world, and European empires were expected to last for hundreds or even thousands of years. In the space of a single century, Marxism-Leninism went from being viewed as a fringe phenomenon, to a global threat expected to last well into the time when mankind was colonizing other worlds, to a discredited historical footnote. Computers could never replace humans in thinking jobs, until they suddenly began to do so in large numbers.

It is easy to look at history with perfect hindsight, and be led to believe that this is the way that things would always have gone regardless. This is especially true for anyone born in the past twenty five years, in an age after superpowers, where the biggest threat to the current world order has always been fringe radicals living in caves. I mean, really, am I just supposed to believe that there were two Germanies that both hated each other, and that everyone thought this was perfectly normal and would go on forever? Sure, there are still two Koreas, but no one really takes that division much seriously anymore, except maybe for the Koreans.

I’ve never been quite sure where I personally fit into history, and I’m sure a large part of that is because nothing of real capital-H Historical Importance has happened close to me in my lifetime. With the exception of the September 11th attacks, which happened so early in my life, and while I was living overseas, that they may as well have happened a decade earlier during the Cold War, and the rise of smartphones and social media, which happened only just as I turned old enough to never have known an adolescence without Facebook, things have, for the most part, been the same historical setting for my whole life.

The old people in my life have told me about watching or hearing about the moon landing, or the fall of the Berlin Wall, and about how it was a special moment because everyone knew that this was history unfolding in front of them. Until quite recently, the closest experiences I had in that vein were New Year’s celebrations, which always carry with them a certain air of historicity, and getting to stay up late (in Australian time) to watch a shuttle launch on television. Lately, though, this has changed, and I feel more and more that the news I am seeing today may well turn out to be a turning point in the historical narrative that I will tell my children and grandchildren.

Moreover, I increasingly feel a sensation that I can only describe as historical pressure; the feeling that this turmoil and chaos may well be the moment that leaves my footprint in the moondust, depending on how I act. The feeling that the world is in crisis, and it is up to me to cast my lot in with one cause or another.

One of my friends encapsulated this feeling with a quote, often attributed to Vladimir Lenin, but which it appears is quite likely from some later scholar or translator.
“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.”
Although I’m not sure I entirely agree with this sentiment (I can’t, to my mind, think of a single decade where absolutely nothing happened), I think this illustrates the point that I am trying to make quite well. We seem to be living in a time where change is moving quickly, in many cases too quickly to properly contextualize and adjust, and we are being asked to pick a position and hold it. There is no time for rational middle ground because there is no time for rational contemplation.

Or, to put it another way: It is the best of times, it is the worst of times, it is the age of wisdom, it is the age of foolishness, it is the epoch of belief, it is the epoch of incredulity, it is the season of Light, it is the season of Darkness, it is the spring of hope, it is the winter of despair, we have everything before us, we have nothing before us, we are all going direct to Heaven, we are all going direct the other way – in short, the period is so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insist on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

How, then, will this period be remembered? How will my actions, and the actions of my peers, go down in the larger historical story? Perhaps in future media, the year 2017 will be thought of as “just before that terrible thing happened, when everyone knew something bad was happening but none yet had the courage to face it”, the way we think of the early 1930s. Or will 2017 be remembered like the 1950s, as the beginning of a brave new era which saw humanity in general and the west in particular reach new heights?

It seems to be a recurring theme in these sorts of posts that I finish with something to the effect of “I don’t know, but maybe I’m fine not knowing in this instance”. This remains true, but I also certainly wish to avoid encouraging complacency. Not knowing the answers is okay, it’s human, even. But not continuing to question in the first place is how we wind up with a far worse future.

Kindred Spirits

This weekend I spent my time volunteering with a charity which represents people who suffer from one of the many chronic diseases and disabilities at a local barbecue cooking competition. This came about because one of the competitors’ daughters was recently diagnosed with the same disease as I, and so wanted to invite someone to advocate and educate. What’s interesting is that his daughter is approximately the same age that I was when I was first diagnosed.

Being diagnosed at that particular age, while not unheard of, is nevertheless uncommon enough that it gave me momentary pause, and in preparing to meet her my mind this week has been on what I ought to tell her, and moreover, what I wish I could tell a younger version of myself when I was diagnosed. She was, as it turned out, not greatly interested in discussing health with me, which I suppose is fair enough. Even so, I have been thinking about this topic enough that it has more or less solidified into the following post:

I could tell you it gets easier, except I would be lying. It doesn’t get easier. People might tell you that it gets easier to manage, which is sort of true inasmuch as practice and experience make the day to day stuff less immediately challenging, same with anything. And of course, technology makes things better and easier. Not to be the old man yelling at the whippersnappers about how good they have it nowadays, but it is true that in the ten years I’ve had to deal with it, things have gotten both better and easier.

The important thing here is that over the course of years, the actual difficulty level doesn’t really change. This is depressing and frustrating, but it’s also not that bad in the big scheme of things. There are a lot of chronic diseases where things only get worse with time, and that’s not really the case with our disease. We have the sword of Damocles hanging over our heads threatening us if we mess up, but if we stay vigilant, and get nothing wrong, we can postpone that confrontation basically forever.

It means that you can get to a point where you can still do most things that ordinary people can do. It’s more difficult, and you’re never not going to have to be paying attention to your health in the background. That’s never going to change. You’re going to be starting from an unfair disadvantage, and you’re going to have to work harder to catch up. Along the way you will inevitably fail (it’s nothing personal; just a matter of odds), and your failure will be all the more spectacular and set you further back than what’s considered normal. It’s not fair. But you can still do it, despite the setbacks. In fact, for most of the important things in life, it’s not really optional.

Whatever caused this, whatever you think of it, whatever happens next, as of now, you are different. You are special. That’s neither a compliment, nor an insult. That’s a biological, medically-verified, legally-recognized fact. People around you will inevitably try to deny this, telling you that your needs aren’t any different from those around you, or that you shouldn’t act or feel or be different. Some of these people will mean well but be misguided; others will be looking for a way to hurt or distract you.

If you’re like me, and most people, at some point, you too will probably try to tell yourself this. It is, I have been told, an essential part of adolescence. Futile though it may be to say this then, and believe me when I say this that I mean it in the nicest way possible, that I must declare: whoever these sentiments come from, whatever their intentions, they are straight up wrong. You are different and special. You can choose how to react to that, and you can choose how to portray this, but you cannot change the basic fact. That you are different is not any reflection on you or anything you have done, and accepting this is not any sort of concession or confession; on the contrary, it reflects maturity and understanding.

It follows that your experience and your path may not be the “normal” one. This is neither good nor bad, but simply reflects the special circumstances which exist as a matter of fact. The fact that everything is that much harder may mean that you have to pick and choose your battles, or get extra help on some things, even if those things seem normal and easy for other people. This is to be expected, and is nothing to hide or be ashamed of. People around you may not understand this, and may give you a hard time. Just remember, as I was told when I was in your shoes: The people who matter don’t mind, and the people who mind don’t matter.

Angry in May

I am angry today. I don’t like feeling generally angry, because it’s usually quite draining without being actually fulfilling. Yet I feel rather compelled to be angry. I know several people who feel near or on the brink of desperation because of recent events regarding healthcare in particular and politics in general. I want to help, but there seems to be increasingly little I can do. I myself am somewhat worried about the future. In the wake of all of this I feel that I have the choice between being paralyzed by fear or being motivated by anger. The latter seems like an obvious choice.

The beginning of May is a time of a number of small holidays. April 30th marks the real end of the end of World War II, with the suicides of Hitler and company in Berlin and the transfer of governmental power to Reichpräsident (formerly admiral) Karl Dönitz, who would authorize the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany on May 7th, known as VE Day in the west, and celebrated as Victory Day in the now-former soviet bloc on May 8th, due to the time difference between London and Moscow (and a few mishaps regarding paperwork and general distrust of the Soviets). Depending on where you live, this is either interesting trivia, or a very big deal.

Victory Day in Russia is one of the really big political occasions and is celebrated with an accordingly large show of military force. These parades are a chance for Russia to show off all the fancy toys that it will use to annihilate any future such invaders, for ordinary people to honor those they lost during the war, for old people and leftists to pine nostalgically for the halcyon days when the Soviet Union was strong and whippersnappers knew their place, and for western intelligence organizations to update their assessments on Russian military hardware. This last one has caused problems in the past, as miscounts to the number of bombers and missile launchers (the soviets were cycling them to up their numbers) led to the impression that a bomber and later missile gap existed between the Soviets and the US for most of the Cold War.

Speaking of bombastic parades, the First of May is either known as an occasion for maypole dancing, or for massive demonstrations with masses of red flags. Prior to the 1800s, May Day was something of a spring festival, likely originally associated with the Roman festival for the goddess of flowers, Flora, which took place on the first official day of summer. As Roman paganism fell out of fashion, the festival became a more secular celebration of springtime.

In 1904, the Sixth Conference of the Second Internationale declared that the first of May would be a day of protest for labor organizations to demonstrate, in memory of the May 4th, 1886 Haymarket Affair in Chicago. Subsequently, May Day became something of a major event for labor and workers’ rights groups. This was solidified after the formation of the Soviet Union (they seem to be a recurring element here), which, as a self-styled “workers’ state”, made May Day celebrations a big deal within its borders, and used the occasion to further sympathetic causes abroad.

This caused something of a feedback look, as governments taken in by anti-communist hysteria sought to either suppress (and thus, in many ways, legitimize) May Day demonstrations, or to control such demonstrations by making them official. Thus, in many countries, 1st May is celebrated as Labour Day (generally with the ‘u’). In 1955, Pope Pius XII declared May Day to be a feast day for Saint Joseph the Worker, in counter-celebration to labor celebrations.

May the Fourth, is, of course, celebrated as Star Wars Day, for obvious reasons. Historically it has been the day that I dress up in full character costume for school. Unfortunately, this year I was too sick to actually attend school, in costume or not. I was also recently informed that in Ohio in particular, 4th May is recognized primarily as the anniversary of the Kent State Massacre during the Vietnam War. To quote the friend who explained it to me:

So today is May 4th, affectionally known by most as Star Wars Day. That is what it used to be for me until I went to Kent State. Now May 4th is a day of remembrance. Because today in 1970, the National Guard opened fire on a group of students peacefully protesting the Vietnam War and killed 4. It has become a day for the entire campus to go silent, to walk the memorial, to relect on how important it is to speak up about what you believe is wrong. Politics is not always elections. Sometimes it is holding a candle at a memorial of people killed by the government. Sometimes it is remembering and refusing to forget. Either way, it is action. That is one of the most important lessons I have learned at Kent State.

The opening days of May have for some time now been a time of year when I typically pause and reflect. Having several small holidays- that is, holidays well known enough that I am reminded of their passing, without necessarily needing to go out of my way to prepare in advance -have helped add to this. Early May is typically long enough after cold and flu season that even if I’m not back in the thick of things, I’m usually on my feet. It’s also after midterms and standardized testing, while not being yet close enough to final exams that I can feel the weight of all my unfinished work bearing down on me in full force. Early May is a lull when I can get my bearings before hunkering down for the last act of the school year and hit the ground running for summer.

So, where am I? How am I doing? How am I going to come back into school roaring?

I don’t know the answer to any of these questions. There are too many things up in the air in my life, both at the micro and macro level. I feel uncertain and a little scared. And I feel angry.

Inasmuch as I have any real self confidence and self worth, I pride myself on my intelligence. I like that I can recall off the top of my head several different holiday occasions in the space of a fortnight, and succinctly explain their historical and cultural context. I enjoy being a know-it-all. I loath the unknown, and I detest the substitution of hard facts for squishy feelings. I consider these principles integral to my identity and personal value, and find it difficult and troubling to envision any future where I do not possess these traits, or where these merits are not accepted.

Once Upon A Time

Once upon a time in a magical kingdom in Florida, a certain tourist hub instituted a policy for guests with disabilities. This policy, known as the Guest Assistance Card, allowed those who were familiar with its existence and could justify its use, powers unseen to mere mortals. With one of these mystical passes, a disabled guest and their party could avoid the long lines which plagued the kingdom. Although this could not heal the guests’ wounds, and could never make up for the challenges faced by these people in everyday life, it offered the promise of an escape. It kept true to the dream of a magical vacation unbound by the stresses and turmoils of everyday life.

Unfortunately, in a storybook example of why we can’t have nice things, there were evil-doers with poison in their hearts, who sought to abuse this system and corrupt it for everyone. Shady businessmen would rent their grandparents in wheelchairs to rich families craving the awesome power to cut lines. Eventually it became inevitable that the kingdom had to close this loophole. When it did so it shattered the hearts of many a handicapped child and their families.

Alright, I think you’re all caught up on the backstory here.

Though it disappoints me greatly that it came to this, with the level of abuse being turned up in tabloids and travel blogs, it was inevitable that Disney would have to end this program. As one who has used it myself, I will be the first to admit- it was overpowered. But from the impression I got from the guest services folks, that was part of the point. The point was never to get to the lowest common denominator necessary to adhere to federal anti-discrimination laws. The point was to enable these guests to enjoy their vacation. To enable magical moments which, for some of these kids, might never happen again.

There are many reasons why, for a long time, Walt Disney World was the default Make-A-Wish Foundation (and similar) destination, and this approach to disability is one of those reasons. The new program which replaced the GAC is workable- it basically works as a sort of on the go fastpass, giving you a return time equal to the listed standby wait minus ten minutes, after which you can go through the fastpass line at your leisure. But it is mundane compensation rather than a magical silver lining to living with disability. It is a crutch rather than a tricked out motorized wheelchair.

I don’t blame Disney for this change in policy. I know how some of the people were using the GAC, and they really had no choice. I do blame the ringleaders of these black market operations, and the people who paid them. As far as I am concerned, these people are guilty of perfidy, that is, the war crime of abusing the protections of the rules of war (such as feigning wounds) to gain an advantage. As for Disney, I am disappointed, but understanding.

I wish that this fairytale had a more appropriate ending. I wish that I could say that the evil doers faced poetic justice and were made to wait in an endless line while having to listen to the sounds of children crying and complaining about waiting. Unfortunately, this did not happen, and these few bad apples spoiled the bunch.

On 3D Printing

As early as 2007, futurists were already prophesying about how 3D-printers would be the next big thing, and how the world was only months away from widespread deployment. Soon, we were told, we would be trading files for printable trinkets over email as frequently as we then did recipes and photographs. Replacing broken or lost household implements would be as simple as a few taps on a smartphone and a brief wait. It is ten years later, and the results are mixed.

The idea of fabricating things out of plastics for home use is not new. The Disney home of the future featured custom home fabrication heavily, relying on the power of plastics. This was in 1957*. Still, the truly revolutionary part of technological advancement has never been the limited operation of niche appliances, but the shift that occurs after a given technology becomes widely available. After all, video conferencing in the loosest sense has been used by military, government, and limited commercial services since as early as World War II, yet was still considered suitably futuristic in media up until the early years of the new millennium.

So, how has 3D-printing fared as far as mass accessibility is concerned? The surface answer seems to be: not well. After all, most homes, my own included, do not have 3D printers in them. 3D-printed houses and construction materials, although present around the world, have not shaken up the industry and ended housing shortages; though admittedly these were ambitious visions to begin with. The vast majority of manufacturing is still done in faraway factories rather than in the home itself.

On the other hand, perhaps we’re measuring to the wrong standard. After all, even in the developed world, not everyone has a “regular” printer. Not everyone has to. Even when paper documents were the norm rather than online copies, printers were not universal for every household. Many still used communal library or school facilities, or else used commercial services. The point, as far as technological progress is concerned, is not to hit an arbitrary number, or even percentage of homes with 3D printers in them, but to see that a critical mass of people have access to the products of 3D printing.

Taking this approach, let’s go back to using my own home as an example. Do I have access to the products of 3D printing? Yes, I own a handful of items made by 3D printers. If I had an idea or a need for something, could I gain access to a 3D printer? Yes, both our local library, and our local high school have 3D printers available for public use (at cost of materials). Finally, could I, if I were so disposed, acquire a 3D printer to call my own? Slightly harder to answer, given the varying quality and cost, but the general answer is yes, beginner 3D printers can now be purchased alongside other hardware at office supply stores.

What, then, have been the results of this quiet revolution? One’s answer will probably vary wildly depending on where one works and what one reads, but from where I stand, the answer as been surprisingly little. The trend in omnipresent availability and endless customizability for items ordered on the internet has intensified, and the number of people I know who make income by selling handicrafts has increased substantially, but these are hardly effects of 3D printing so much as the general effects of the internet era. 3D printing has enabled me to acquire hard protective cases for my medical equipment. In commercial matters, it would seem that 3D printing has become a buzzword, much like “sustainable” and “organic”.

Regarding the measuring of expectations for 3D printing, I am inclined to believe that the technology has been somewhat undermined by the name it got. 3D printers are not nearly as ubiquitous as printers still are, let alone in their heyday, and I do not expect they will become so, at least not in the foreseeable future. Tying them to the idea of printing, while accurate in a technical sense, limits thinking and chains our expectations.

3D printers are not so much the modern equivalent to paper printers so much as the modern equivalents of fax machines. Schools, libraries, and (certain) offices will likely continue to acquire 3D printers for the community, and certain professionals will have 3D printers, but home 3D printing will be the exception rather than the rule.

The appearance of 3D printing provides an interesting modern case study for technologies that catch the public imagination before being fully developed. Like the atomic future of the 1950s and 1960s, there was a vision of a glorious utopian future which would be made possible in our lifetimes by a technology already being deployed. Both are still around, and do provide very useful services, but neither fully upended life as we know it and brought about the revolutionary change we expected, or at least, hoped for.

Despite my skepticism, I too hope, and honestly believe, that the inexorable march of technology will bring about a better tomorrow. That is, after all, the general trend of humanity over the last 10,000 years. The progress of technology is not the sudden and shiny prototypes, but the widespread accessibility of last year’s innovations. 3D printing will not singlehandedly change the world, nor will whatever comes after it. With luck, however, it may give us the tools and the ways of thinking to do it ourselves.

* I vaguely recall having seen ideas at Disney exhibits for more specific 3D-printing for dishes and tableware. However, despite searching, I can’t find an actual source. Even so, the idea of customized printing is definitely present in Monsanto’s House of the Future sales pitch, even if it isn’t developed to where we think of 3D-printing today.

Ne Obliviscaris

How accurate is it to say that you will never forget something?

Obviously, not terribly. After all, “never” and “always”, being infinite, are not generally applicable on a human timescale. And, even if we assume that forgetting can only occur by the act of a living person, the nature of human memory over extended time periods makes “never forgetting” a rather unfulfillable promise.

This week represented a fascinating, if bittersweet, milestone for me. As of this Wednesday, I have been disabled for a majority of my life. The dramatic saga of my diagnosis was one such event which I have committed to “never forgetting”, even though I know that this task is impossible. In some respects, I feel as though I have already failed at this task. Promises made to me and to myself about not letting this label define me or limit my grand endeavors have proven impossible.

They tell you, when you’re dealing with a disability or a chronic disease, that you can’t let it define you or limit your options; that meeting a certain medical or legal definition doesn’t make you any different from your peers. While the thought is nice, I have increasingly found that mindset to be idealistic and impractical. Having your options limited is pretty much the definition of disability, and accepting that isn’t pessimism, it’s being realistic.

Whenever I take an unmodified psychiatric assessment, it always flags me for possible risk of depression and/or anxiety, with a healthy dash of obsessive-compulsive and paranoid symptoms. This is because I answer honestly on questions like “I feel different from my peers” and “I am sick a lot”. The fact of the matter is that I am objectively different from my peers because my body does not function within normal parameters, and I am sick a lot for the same reasons. Devoid of context, these statements might indicate a problem. Upon explaining that, yes, I do experience great everyday stress, because I have to cope with artificially supplementing missing organ function, most doctors agree that my apparent pessimism is completely justified, and in fact, represents a mostly-healthy means of coping with my present situation. After all, it’s not paranoia if your statistical chances of dying are vastly increased.

As for the issue of defining myself, it is my experience that people generally define themselves by the struggles they encounter and how they meet them. For example: if a person’s lifelong struggle is to climb Everest, I do not see why they should not describe themselves as a climber. For my part, my greatest struggle by far is staying alive and keeping my body from annihilating itself. This may seem relatively simple as a life struggle to the perfectly healthy and the uneducated, in the same way that climbing an oversize hill may seem like a simplistic goal for someone unacquainted with proper mountains.

To me at least, having someone tell me I can’t let my illness define me tells me that person has never really had to deal with serious health problems. Because taking proper care of oneself is a defining struggle. I am proud of the fact that I have managed to keep my body alive despite several key systems giving up on me. I am proud that I have managed to keep myself in a state that I can actually participate in life, even if my participation might be different from others’.

And yes, I understand that what is meant is that I ought not let my issues engulf the entirety of my existence- that I ought to still have non-health goals. But trying to plan goals completely independently of my health is setting myself up for failure. No matter how hard I try, no matter how much I will it to be so, I cannot change my basic physiological requirements. At best, I can try to make my personal and health goals work in harmony, but this does require me to let my disability set the boundaries of what challenges I undertake.

Yes, I can still run a marathon. But I couldn’t step outside and do it today. Not only would I fail, but if I persisted against medical advice, I might even die trying. Dealing with my health means I have to plan and make compromises. I can’t be completely single-minded about these kinds of goals because my health requires constant focus. Lying to myself, or having others lie to me, doesn’t help, and only increases the chance that I’ll feel worse about my situation. Accepting this, in effect, letting my disability define my boundaries and dictate my life, is the only way I will ever be able to move beyond it and start accomplishing other goals.

Revisiting the Future

A little less than three years ago I was on a seven day cruise on the Disney Fantasy. It was New Year’s Eve, and our ship had just passed into the Bermuda Triangle. The live show that evening featured the tribulations of a trio of teenagers coming to grips with the fact that they could no longer reasonably claim to be mere children, and would soon have to enter the dreaded “real world”. It struck a chord with me, even though I was still a couple years younger than the protagonists, and graduation seemed far off. Still, it was the first time that graduation, and the world beyond it, truly struck me a genuine, personally relevant concern.

Despite little of immediate, lasting consequence occurring on that particular cruise, I have nonetheless come to consider it something of a turning point in my life. About this same time, it began to become undeniably apparent to all interested parties that the school’s strategy towards my disability of masterly inactivity would most likely not be sufficient to assure my timely graduation. At the same time, I began to solidify my own doubts that the school administration would prove capable of overcoming its bureaucratic inertia. In short, it became clear that following the “normal” path would not end with my triumphant graduation and ascension to the most prestigious colleges with a full scholarship, etcetera, etcetera, as I had previously planned.

Shortly after we returned home, I began to receive fliers from various academic institutions. I chuckled at this, feeling appropriately flattered that they would deign to waste the cost of postage on one such as myself, yet nevertheless regarding their outreach as premature, and not of genuine concern. After all, with the delays which the school had made in processing various transfer credits from my online classes, it was suddenly unclear what my graduating year ought to be listed as. How could I give serious consideration to such far-off problems when I could not even confirm my graduating date?

My eighteenth birthday, which I had previously imagined would mark the milestone of my victorious conquest over public education, and the commencement of my proud campaign into the “real world”, was spent, like so many other days of my life thus far, in a hospital bed, struggling for survival. Although I knew that such an occasion ought to merit some manner of recognition and self reflection, given my circumstances, I was too preoccupied with the difficult task of evading imminent death to give much thought to the future. I promised myself, as indeed my parents promised me, that once I had recovered, and these temporary troubles with my schoolwork had been dealt with once and for all, that we would have a grand celebration for my birthday. Nothing came of this promise; indeed, I have not had a proper birthday party with a guest list and presents since.

The last day of my fourth year of high school was bittersweet, to put it mildly. On the one hand, summer meant a welcome reprieve from the daily stress of regular classes (by this point, most of my actual academic progress was being accomplished at home with the assistance of a tutor, and this would not change), and a temporary truce between myself and the administrators who, during the school year, sought to harass me daily over my apparent lack of progress. On the other hand, it was the last day I would see any of the friends I had made in school. They, unlike myself, had been able to keep their heads down, and stick to the normal path. They had graduated. All of them were college bound, and excited about it. Despite my efforts to be empathetic, I could not bring myself to subject myself to attending the graduation ceremony that I could not participate in.

Shorty before that day, I had resigned myself to the fact that I was going to remain in high school for an indeterminate period. Neither I nor the administration could come up with an estimate for my completion, owing to missing or misplaced records on their part. Guesses ranged from three months to four years. With no new data, and a history of disappointment, I gave up on guessing. With no graduation date, I could not make plans for college. With no plans, I had nothing to look forward to. Working mainly from home rather than subjecting myself to the degradation of school, the days and weeks began to meld together. With no real future to look forward to, I gave up on the future altogether.

This may sound like a purgatorial dystopia. And indeed, it was. I joked about this much with my friends over text messages. Yet I would be remiss if I didn’t last say that it was also quite liberating. With no change from day to day, I could stop worrying about anything beyond the present moment. After all, I had total job security. There was always plenty of schoolwork to ensure that I never had energy to make use of any free time I might have. There was no petty social drama; no conflict of any kind. So long as I had no expectations, I could never be disappointed. It was a dystopia alright, and a perfectly executed one at that.

Yet, within the last two weeks, something has changed. Last week, my special education case manager contacted me regarding some manner of questionnaire meant for outgoing seniors. My natural response was and remains to ignore it. If it is important enough, they will get it to me another way, and if it isn’t, I’ve just saved myself a great deal of effort. Still, this bears relevance if for no other reason then because it is the first time which they have recognized me as a senior, and on track to graduate. The same week, I received a mass email from the guidance department (where they got my address in order to spam me remains a mystery) regarding generic scholarship offers. Suddenly, it seems, my tranquil little dystopia is under siege from the “real world”.

After years of doing my utmost to avoid imagining a future outside of a weather forecast, I am suddenly being made to explain my life plans. A younger, pre-cruise version of myself would be excited. Things are back on track. Things are getting back to normal. Except, things can never go quite back to normal. Trying to relive past fantasies is a fool’s errand, and trying to navigate the coming future by the plans a different me made many years ago, or by whatever cookie-cutter claptrap the administration may find in their self-righteous self-help books, will only end with me facing the same problems as now five years from now.

Imagining a realistic future which is completely independent from both the administration and my own childhood fantasies is both difficult and daunting. Indeed, given the nature of my disabilities, and the apparent track record of my forecasting abilities, it begs the question whether a future plan which extends beyond my next quarterly hospital visit is even knowable in any meaningful capacity. Given that I cannot say with any absolute confidence that I will even still be alive in five years, does it really make sense to speculate on what a life for me might look like?

Coincidentally, on that same cruise which seems simultaneously so recent and so distant from me, I saw for the first time the filmic adaptation of “Into the Woods”. While I shall endeavor to avoid spoilers, suffice it to say that the theme of planning for the future, and having said plans go awry does come up. Indeed, one of the songs, arguably my favorite of the lot, focuses on the dilemma faced by one of the protagonists when pressed into a snap decision which has the potential to radically affect her entire future. The conclusion she reaches is to avoid the dichotomy altogether, and to keep her options open rather than back herself into a corner. It turns out to be the correct decision, as both alternatives collapse in the long run. This is interesting advice, which I think I shall endeavor to apply to my own like situation.

So, what can I say about my future? Well, I can say that even though I may not be absolutely confident in a specific graduation date, that I will most likely graduate from public school in the next year or so. I can say that I would like to continue my education and attend university, even if I do not yet know where and precisely how I will make attendance work, or how I will be able to apply given the problems with my transcript. I can say that I intend to travel and learn about other places, people, and cultures, as traveling and learning have had an undeniably positive impact on my life thus far. I can say that I intend to continue to write and speak about my experiences.

But perhaps most importantly, I can say that my path will not be the “normal” one, and as such, it is perfectly acceptable to not have every detail planned out. Just as I can learn without a grade, and have a positive role without having a neatly defined career, so too can I have a future without having a plan.

Facing Failure

I am in a particularly gloomy, dare I say, depressed, mood upon the eve of my writing this. Owing to the impending blizzard, United Nations Headquarters has been closed, and subsequently the events which I was to attend for the Women’s Empowerment Principles have been “postponed indefinitely”. The news reached me only minutes before I was to board the train which would have taken me into the city, where I had arranged for a hotel room overnight so as to avoid to having to travel during a blizzard.

This left me with an urgent choice: I could board the train, and spend a day trapped in a frozen city that was actively trying to dissuade people from traveling, or I could cut my losses, eat the cost of the hotel room, and return home to ride out the storm there. It probably surprises few that I chose the latter option; the option touted as the more sensible, strategically conservative, objectively correct option. Still, making this choice left me with a bitter taste in my mouth. It leaves me feeling as though I have failed.

I do not like failure.

Actually, that statement is inaccurate, or at least, misleading. I don’t merely dislike failure, in the same way that I dislike, say, sunscreen. No, I hate failure, in every sense of the word. I loathe it, detest it, and yes, I fear it.

This is not to say that I have such strong feelings toward losses. I feel this is an important distinction. Though I do have an adversity to unnecessary losses, sometimes, such sacrifices are necessary. What I hate is trying, making sacrifices, and then failing despite, or even worse, because of those efforts. The important distinction, at least in my mind, is that losses are a strategic principle, and a passing phenomenon, while failure is a state of being, whether for a few moments surrounding a particular exercise, or for a lifetime.

As one might expect, this makes me, in general, rather risk averse. Of course, this itself presents a paradox. Not taking a given risk also entails the inverse risk contained in the opportunity cost. That is to say, by not taking a given bet, you are effectively betting against it. This means that refusing to accept risks is always inherently itself a risk. So, for example, one cannot accept a zero percent chance of food poisoning without not eating altogether; and if one were to attempt to do so, they would quickly find themselves confronted by the more urgent problem of starvation.

The blizzard that closed the UN put me in a no-win situation. As a rational person, I can accept this, and act to cut my losses. Either I canceled my trip, resigned myself to staying at home, and ate the cost of my hotel reservations, or I purchased my train ticket, defied government instructions to stay home and avoid travel, put myself in danger, and spent the day trapped in a hotel room. I understand rationally why I chose as I did, and rationally, maintain that I made the correct decision. Yet I cannot escape the feeling that in choosing to abort my plans, I have failed my objective. Even if there was nothing to gain by getting on the train, I cannot suppress the feeling that my conscious choice invited some moral failing.

Some cursory research suggests that this particular feeling is not unique to myself, nor is it a new field of philosophical musings. Humans feel more emotional and moral responsibility for acts which are consciously undertaken than for merely following existing plans. This feeling is so prevalent it carries legal weight; binding contracts cannot be made by failing to decline an agreement; they require active assent. This might explain why I feel particularly upset with myself; If I had made no choice, then any perceived failure could only be an act of God, and out of my control. By making a conscious decision to cut my losses, I made that result a personal consequence, at least to my subconscious mind.

This leaves me at something of an impasse. I know why I am upset, yet can do little to console myself except to distract and reassure the nagging elements of my unconscious mind that I made the correct decision. I am left in conflict with myself, and left acutely aware of the fickleness of my own mind. While I suppose that this state of affairs is strictly preferable to feeling upset and not understanding why at all, I still cannot bring myself to feel in any meaningful way confident about myself in the present tense, particularly as these most recent reactions would seem to indicate that I might not be the single-mindedly rational being that I like to pretend that I am.

As I have indicated previously, I have very little intrinsic self confidence, at least in the manner which most people seem to expect that I ought. For whatever reason, I cannot seem to raise such self-evident feelings of self worth, and therefore, when I project such feelings, it is borne not of some internal passion, but extrinsic, statistical calculation. I base my self-assessment not on my own feelings, nor on others’ opinions, but on data and milestones. And though I feel that this generally gives me a better handle on the limits of my abilities, it also means that when I put my mind to a particular objective, and yet still fail for whatever reason, it becomes not only a momentary setback, but a point of evidence against my worth as a human being.

This can, and historically has, resulted in a mental loop whereby a temporary failure, such as a meeting which I had my aspirations set upon being cancelled by a snowstorm, leads to a general hardening of outlook, which in turn causes me to shift to the back foot, acting more conservatively, and taking fewer risky opportunities. Consequently, I wind up having fewer major victories to celebrate and reassure myself, and am instead left to reflect upon all of the opportunities which I missed. Because I was led to skip these choices by seemingly rational means, I cannot regret individual choices, but rather categorize them as mere symptoms of a general moral failing. These reflections promote further self-doubt, further strategic conservatism, and so on.

So, what can I do about it?

With the help of family and friends, I have come to realize that this is a viscous cycle that represents many of the worst and most self-destructive aspects of my personality and manner of thought. Of course, recognizing this fact consciously is the easy part. Hindsight is perfect, after all. The hard part is determining how to counter this cycle.

Historically my solution to such problems has been to throw myself into work, especially school work. This serves a dual purpose. First, if I am working hard enough, I do not have the time nor the energy to stew over my situation in more general terms. Second, it gives me a sense that I am accomplishing something. From primary through early high school, this approach has generally worked.

However, more recently, as the school has continued to demonstrate its gross incompetence in accommodating my physical disabilities, and as they have become increasingly distraught over the fact that my disability has not healed itself by magic, it has apparently occurred to the school administration that the correct way to inspire me to overcome medical impossibilities is to continually evoke shame each time my medical issues cause me to miss a deadline. Exactly what they aim to accomplish through this pestering continues to elude me. But in any case, this state of affairs means that greater effort on my part is more often scolded than rewarded. For, it seems, every time I attempt to reach out for clarification and assistance, I am subjected to a lecture on “personal responsibility”.

Because the school administration is apparently so “forward thinking”, and therefore does not believe in disability whatsoever, I am told that the fault for my failures is not, cannot, lie in my disability, but only in my personal moral failings. I am told by special education professionals that if I were truly dedicated to my academic performance, that my chronic diseases ought not have any impact on my life whatsoever. My promises that I will do my utmost given what I have to work with fall on deaf ears, because, allegedly, if I were to truly do my utmost, I would already be done on my own.

Needless to say, this experience is extremely stressful, and only deepens my sense of failure, self-hatred and anxiety. It should surprise no one that I am not terribly productive under such conditions, which only exacerbates the problem. Thus it comes to pass that throwing myself into schoolwork and attempting to prove myself wrong; to prove that I can indeed overcome opposition and be successful, only leads to more evidence that I am a failure.

I have looked, and am still looking, into various strategies to deal with this cycle moving forward. One strategy has been to write, and to post here. Another has been to give myself permission to engage in short “micro-vacations” as I call them, or “sanity-breaks” as my doctors refer to them. These short periods can last anywhere from a few hours to a few days depending on the severity of my initial state, particularly as they tend to coincide with when I am most physically fatigued*, but the important part is that they remain constrained to a specific time instead of drawing out into a general malaise. During this time, I temporarily do away with all pretense of productivity, and allow myself to engage in whatever petty amusement strikes my fancy.

*Sidenote: the overlap between physiological issues and mental symptoms is a recurring theme, making meaningful treatment for both all the more challenging. After all, is it really paranoia if your statistical chances of dying are vastly increased? The consensus thus far is that it isn’t. This is the reason why, despite having all of the symptoms, I do not technically qualify for any mental health diagnosis; because in my case, the source is obvious and completely justified.

In this respect, the fact that the same blizzard which set me on this spiral also shut down most everything in the vicinity comprises a silver lining of sorts. Obviously, there is no magic bullet for irrational feelings of failure. But perhaps that is beside the point. Perhaps the point of overcoming this feeling is not to wind up standing triumphantly atop the pile of slain emotions, but to reach a peaceful stalemate. I do not necessarily need to feel good about the fact that I could not accomplish my goals; merely be able to accept it without it destroying myself. Perhaps it might be enough to be able to calmly analyze and discuss my thoughts in writing, without necessarily having to reach a decisive conclusion.

Reflections on International Women’s Day

I stated previously that I intended to bring this blog offline once again in solidarity with the Day Without Women Strike for International Women’s Day on March 8th. Two things have convinced me to alter my plans slightly. First, the strike organizers seem to be calling for only women to actually strike today, and are encouraging men to participate in other ways. This is fair enough. After all, it’s not my voice being put down, and I would have a hard time coming up with a tangible example of a time that gender discrimination has impacted me directly (It impacts me indirectly all the time, by holding back scientific progress by the selective suppression of certain groups’ advancement, but I digress).

Second, and arguably more important, is the point that, while striking and industrial action may be effective means of grabbing headlines, the point of these exercises is not to elicit silence, but conversation. Given that people seem to have this notion that I am a moderately talented communicator, and have chosen to listen to me, it stands to reason that a more appropriate response might be to attempt to add to the conversation myself.

It’s easy not to notice something that doesn’t affect oneself directly. Humans, it seems, possess an extraordinary talent for ignoring things that they feel do not concern them, particularly where knowledge of those things would make their lives and understanding of how the world works more complicated. This is probably a good thing on the whole, as it allows us to get through the day without having an existential crisis over the impending heat death of the universe, and feeling continually depressed about the state of affairs for our fellow humans in the developing world. On the other hand, it also makes it distressingly easy for us to overlook challenges to others when they do not have a direct impact on us.

Recently, I was invited to attend an event regarding the ongoing development and implementation of the Women’s Empowerment Principles at the United Nations. Now, as much as I like to believe that I am a progressive person capable of and inclined to provide and advocate for equal opportunity, it is impossible to deny the simple fact that I am male. And while I can name all kinds of discrimination that I have myself encountered, none of them relate to my sexual and gender identity. And so when it comes to suggesting ways to remedy present injustices, I do not really have a solid background to draw from.

I probably could have gotten away with what I already know. After all, with my limited experience in educating others on specific issues, and with my commitment to the principles of equality in general, surely I have enough context to be able to, if not contribute on my own, then at least, to pay homage to the general notion of women’s struggles?

Perhaps. But, I know enough people whom I respect, for whom this is a serious issue worthy of dedicating entire careers to. Additionally, I like to make a point to be an informed interlocutor. It is my firm position that all opinions worthy of serious discussion ought to have a firm factual and logical backing. And given that, in this case unlike most others, I do not have a personal background experience to draw upon, it seems only correct that I do my due diligence research so that I may make responsible and informed conclusions.

Thus, it transpired that I set myself the goal of becoming, if not an expert, then at least competent, in the field of gender relations and sexual inequality around the world in the space of just over two weeks. A lofty goal, to be sure, but a worthy one. My reading list included an assortment of United Nations, governmental and NGO reports, various statistical analyses, news stories, and a few proper books. Actually, calling it a reading list is a tad misleading, as, in order to cram as much information into as short a time as possible, most of the material in question was consumed in audio format, played at double or triple speed. This is a very effective way of gleaning the key facts without having to waste time on wasteful frivolities like enjoying the plot.

Most of my initial digging started in various UN organizations, chiefly the media center of the World Health Organization. While not always as in depth as respective national organizations, the WHO is useful inasmuch as it provides decent cursory summaries for the global perspective. What was most fascinating to me was that there were surprisingly few hard statistics. The biggest problem listed, particularly in the developing world, was not that women received a necessarily lower quality of healthcare, but that most did not receive health care at all, and therefore properly compiled statistics on gender discrepancies in health were notoriously hard to come by. Rather than telling a story, the data simply does not exist.

In a bitter irony, the more likely data was to exist for a specific region, the less likely significant gender discrepancies were to be shown to exist, at least in healthcare. That is to say that by the time that rigorous evidence could be compiled, the worst elements of inequality had been subdued. This makes a kind of sense. After all, if the problem is that women aren’t being allowed to participate in public, how exactly are you going to survey them? This also hinted at a theme that would continue to crop up: different regions and cultures are starting at tackling gender inequality from radically different starting points, and face accordingly different challenges.

My second major revelation came while listening to I Am Malala. For those who may have been living under a rock during that timeframe, here is the background: In 2012, Malala Yousefzai, a human rights and women’s education activist in rural Pakistan was shot by the taliban, sparking international outrage and renewed interest in the plight of women in the Middle East. Malala survived after being airlifted to the United Kingdom, and has since garnered celebrity status, becoming a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations’ women’s empowerment initiatives.

I have still not yet made up my mind on whether I will go so far as to say that I liked the book. I do not know that is the sort of book that is meant to be liked. I did, however, find it quite enlightening. The book is a first person biography; a kind of story that I have never been quite as interested in as the classic anecdote. If I am completely honest, I found most of the beginning rather dry. The story felt to me as though it had grown rather repetitive: Malala would have some dream or ambition that would seem fairly modest to those of us living in the developed world, which would naturally be made extremely contentious and difficult because she was a girl living in her particular culture.

It got a the point where I could practically narrate alongside the audiobook. And then, halfway through the twelfth or so incident where Malala came up short owing to her gender and her culture, it hit me: that’s the whole point. Yes, it is tedious, to the point of being frustrating to the narrative. That’s the point here. No part of this book would have happened, if not for the constant, grating frustration of sexist attitudes and policies. The story couldn’t progress because of those obstacles, and every time it seemed like one hurdle had been surmounted, another one cropped up. Because that’s what it’s like. And if I, the reader, was frustrated trying to hear the story, just imagine what it would be like to deal with the real deal.

A second revelation also occurred to me. In trying to tell of my tribulations in living with physical disabilities, I have often been accused of overstating the scope of their impact, to the point of copping blame for stirring up unnecessary trouble. People believed, or at least, suspected, that while life might be more difficult in a few select areas, surely it couldn’t effect absolutely everything in the way that I suggested it did. Perhaps, then, the problem lay not with the actual task at hand, but in the fact that my perception had been tainted. Perhaps I was not truly as disabled as I claimed, but merely suffered from a sort of persecution complex. I realized that I had unintentionally, unconsciously, made the same mistake in my reading of Malala’s story.

This also helped to answer another important question: In the developed world, we often hear bickering over to what degree we still “need” the women’s empowerment movement. After all, we have full suffrage, and equality before the law. Discrimination on the matter of sex is illegal, if it can be proven. Given how much better life is for women in the developed world than the developing, is it reasonable to expect more? Are these western advocates simply suffering from a persecution complex? Certainly there are those whose concerns are more immediately applicable and actionable than others, and certainly there are those who will insist no matter how much is done, that it isn’t enough. Such is the nature of politics, and on this the women’s empowerment movement in the developed world is not any different from any other political movement. But on the general question over whether genuine, actionable, inequities exist, it seems now far less unreasonable to me to accept that there may yet be more work to be done than I might have initially been led to believe.

I expect that even this conclusion will be contentious. I expect that I shall be told in short order that I have drawn conclusions from the data which I have aggregated which are faulty, or else that the data itself is biased or misleading. On this point I concede that I am still quite young in my in-depth study of this particular field, and, as mentioned previously, far better minds than mine have devoted entire careers to ironing out the finer points. Reasonable minds may, and indeed do, disagree about specifics. However, if there is one thing which my cursory research and analysis thereof has confirmed in my mind, it is that, on matters of general policy, I would rather err on the side of empathy, choosing rather to be too trusting in the good faith of others, than to ignore and unintentionally oppress.

It follows, then, that I should find myself wholeheartedly endorsing and supporting the observation and celebration of today, International Women’s Day, and reaffirming my support for continuation and expansion of the UN’s Women’s Empowerment Principles.

Pyrrhic Pizza and NerdCon: Nerdfighteria

I am never quite sure what to expect when going to NerdCon, and I am always surprised. The abundance of inside jokes and references is a high entry barrier to most. Even I, who am as well versed in the popular subculture as any, still find many things that are utterly incomprehensible to me.

There is also something distinctly paradoxical about NerdCon. Allow me to elaborate. The stated purpose of this event is a celebration of the community which has made its mark by combining the constructive spontaneity of the Internet with the mild antisocial tendencies of nerdiness. Contrast this with the strictly planned, hierarchically organized nature of commercial conventions. The idea of NerdCon is a celebration of and party for introverts and the socially inept. It is an oxymoron.

The brothers Green repeatedly stated that they believed that all they had done was to set a date and location, and that we, the attendees, had made it an event. Of course, they said this from atop a massive stage, with spotlights and cameras trained on them. It was strange, and thought provoking. Yet even more strange and thought provoking was seeing these people who I recognized from the internet and television in front of and around me, not as polished symbols, but as ordinary human beings.

The night of the concert series, I managed to meet up with some people whom I had previously chatted with online. It was strange to think that they, like myself, had come from faraway locales in order to attend this event, with minimal expectations; and had congregated together to meet each other people whom they only knew based on sparse text-based interactions. We were all immediately friends, even though none of us had ever met. I was continuously self-conscious of this, since I have never had much luck with friendship. It seemed, however, that all the little details which I had anxiously obsessed over were ultimately far less important than the simple fact that I was here. We were all here, together, all else be damned.

That evening before the concert, we elected to go out for food together. Our first choice was the Cheesecake Factory attached to the shopping center connected to the convention center. We were dismayed to discover that the wait was longer than we had until the concert. After we idled around for some moments, unsure of what to do next, a man who worked at the shopping center suggested an alternative. We set out, exiting the mall and heading out into the warm rain of downtown Boston towards where we had been assured that there would be restaurants with a far shorter wait time.

The first eatery we saw which would accommodate our group was a Pizzeria Uno’s. Four out of six of us were wearing our Pizza John t-shirts, we took this as a good omen, and went in. The wait to be seated, we were told, was no shorter than that of the Cheesecake Factory. At this point, two members of our group opted to split off and head back, reckoning that if a long wait was going to be necessary in any case, that they may as well go with their first choice, and also hoping that a smaller table might be more forthcoming. The larger portion of our group inquired as the possibility of a to go order.

We were told, at first, that it would be no more than fifteen minutes. After a brief conference, we elected for a single large cheese pizza. I gave my name, and we settled in for what we expected would be a short wait.

What was fascinating about this time estimate was that it seemed to remain constant regardless of our wait. That is to say, the estimate remained precisely fifteen minutes at the time we ordered, then ten minutes later, then twenty minutes after that. In the same way that a cure for all major illness has remained ten years away for the last four decades, it seemed that our Pizza would forever be fifteen minutes from completion.

At the forty minute mark, I began to despair. It wasn’t that I was exceptionally invested in the our pizza. I hadn’t yet paid for it, and so I had nothing truly to lose. There was the matter of my medically necessitated diet, which was fairly unambiguous on the fact that I would have to eat something, but this was still of secondary concern, even though it was probably the largest actual threat at the time.

Much as I enjoy traveling when I am able, my medical situation means that I am primarily a homebody. On an average day, I interact with the same four or five people (all family and tutors) and cover an area of approximately one hundred square meters. I write approximately four thousand words (average is about one thousand) and speak about three thousand (average is about sixteen thousand), owing mainly to a complete lack of social interaction. All of my friends are either away at university, or off working in the mythical “real world”, while I am left to contend with making the square peg of my medical situation fit into the round hole of my public high school’s graduation requirements.

Being acutely aware of my own isolation and corresponding utter lack of social experience, my greatest concern during the pizza debacle was that it might negatively color the impression of me of these people whom I so desperately wanted to call my friends. I feared that because I had been the person to actually place the order and put down my name, that this resulting fiasco would be my own shame. I feared, and indeed, expected, the immediate and harsh reproach of my comrades for this unmitigated failure to provide.

The scolding never came. The pizza eventually came. I paid at once, leaving a meager tip which I considered quite merciful given the extreme wait. I kept waiting the criticism which I fully expected. I waited to be torn into. Instead, the others tore into the pizza, anxiously attempting to scarf down an appropriate number of carbohydrates in the ten minutes remaining before the concert began. There were smiles all around. The pizza was good, if late. The only complaints were against the restaurant, not myself. The others were eager to give me cash for their share, and we made it to the concert on time.

At the concert series, Jon Cozart performed his piece “YouTube Culture” decrying the personality-cult nature of many modern online communities. The image of an internet celebrity as himself making bank on a song decrying such structures seemed both startlingly ironic, and completely apropos, given my earlier thoughts on the paradoxical nature of NerdCon itself.

There was a pervasive feeling, at least among myself and those with whom I interacted, that we were experiencing something special. It was a feeling as though, by reaching a critical mass of interesting, intelligent, and thoughtful people, we had ignited some sort of chain reaction. There was optimism in a way that I haven’t really felt since the new year, and I was reminded of the great World’s Fairs of yesteryear, when the planet’s great minds would all congregate and unveil their collective vision for the future.

There were sad moments as well, such as when John Green brought up the late Esther Earl in his speech, and was compelled to leave the stage because he broke down crying. There were reminders that they were many who had wanted to but could not attend for one reason or another. But even these were tempered by optimism and hope. Esther, we were told, received joy in her final days from gatherings of friends such as this, and those who could not attend were present in spirit, aided by live commentary and occasional streaming from us. The tone was overwhelmingly positive.

The last time I attended NerdCon (NerdCon: Stories in 2016), it turned out to be an inspiration for me, in part spurring the creation of this very blog. I do not yet know what the result of this year’s attendance will be, but I can state categorically that I left with a far better feeling about the world than when I arrived, which, I believe, makes this year’s attendance a victory.