Central Purpose Update: Musings on the Future

As is typical of neglectful blog authors I would apologize for my absence, only I'm not going to. Due to recent thinking I have been enjoying my life much more than before lately, and have been vigorously involved in seeking employment. Yes, I'm still unemployed and receiving no callbacks, but my drive and motivation isn't harmed in the least. If anything, I find that as a result of my thinking my drive has increased.

If you'll recall, some months ago I wrote a post that mused on my central purpose in life. I've done more thinking and collected more observations from my thinking, values, and emotional responses, and I have decided to pursue the life course of becoming a chef. In my context this amounts to a phenomenal identification, as just mere months before I was directionless in life. What made things "click" for me is this comment by Burgess Laughlin on Trey Given's blog:

> “In my imagination, I’m like Ayn Rand and woke up one morning at the age of nine and resolved to be a writer.”

Jeff Britting, archivist for The Ayn Rand Institute and author of the short but very informative biography, Ayn Rand, notes that “[e]ven at an early age [6 to 8], her predominant interest was literature.” He also notes that Ayn Rand began writing at age 8. (p. 7)

It was later, at age 9 — after observing herself in action — that Ayn Rand formed “the idea that writing would be the defining passion of her life and the career she would pursue as an adult.” (p. 8)

The point here is that Ayn Rand’s approach was objective, that is, she looked at facts (such as her own interests, emotions, abilities, and experiences) and then drew conclusions logically from them. In particular, her approach was inductive, which seems to be the approach you are taking now.

Formulating a central purpose in life can be challenging and time consuming. Best wishes for that venture.

I looked at the facts of my life. What do I like to engage in the most? Cooking. What do I like to think about the most? Cooking and nutrition. What do I like to read about the most? Cooking and nutrition. Where do I like to go the most? Good restaurants, food shops, bakeries, candy stores, etc. What's one of my most favorite television shows? Good Eats. A few months ago I told myself that my interest in food preparation and nutrition was that of a mere hobby, but when I look at the facts I see that it is taking up more and more of my time, and I see it's becoming my life rather than just being a portion of it.

Looking back now I see that this interest was always present within me, but there were various obstacles that prevented me from making the identification. For one, I've been on the Standard American Diet for most of my life, during which I disliked eating and wished that humans didn't have to eat in order to live since the food I ate left me feeling bad and in an emotional tailspin. When I tried engaging in cooking when I was younger the adults in my life not only insisted on supervising (which is proper), but also in helping out in the process beyond what was needed, depriving me of enjoying the activity, and were in fact responsible for ruining some of my undertakings. Television-wise, I dislike, and still am adverse to, typical cooking shows (excluding Good Eats). However, I did thoroughly enjoy gazing at cookbooks and daydreaming of preparing some of the recipes.

When I started living on a Paleo diet back in 2009 I suddenly started loving eating again: Food tasted better, my hunger wasn't painful when it was present, after meals I felt satisfied and healthy instead of overstuffed and miserable, and I could function better. At first I started living off virtually nothing else but bacon, eggs, spinach, and deli meat, but I wanted to take it further. However, the person I live with is in disagreement with my nutritional standards and believes my lifestyle to be unhealthy, so I had to break off from having meals with this person so I could prepare my food to my own nutritional specifications. I then started cooking and baking, and when I recognized that I needed more variety in my diet I started trying recipes outside of my comfort zone, and it eventually has led to this point where this interest takes up a significant portion of my life.

As a result of making this identification I have been a lot less interested in constructing blog posts and much more interested in cooking, looking for recipes, applying to restaurants and food shops, thinking about my aspirations, and so on. I have to say that my sense of life has been given a much needed boost by this, and I have been in virtually one long good mood for the past several days. That's another good thing: My sense of life has been predominantly negative for the majority of my life, and it took several months just to reach a state of indifference; finally I'm getting closer to happiness.

To be honest, as a result of this identification I've been considering actually quitting blogging. Reiterating from my previous posts, my original purpose in starting up a blog in the first place was to practice my writing, as I believed that I wanted to be a fiction/non-fiction writer. However, very shortly after starting and during the reading of Walt Disney's biography, I realized that I didn't value writing as intensely as I had been telling myself. I didn't daydream about it, I didn't engage in it that often, and I didn't enjoy the writing process that much. After I learned that, my blogging habits were in danger since I knew it was largely irrelevant to my ambitions (whatever I thought them to be at the time), but I was able to continue on after I identified what activist and epistemological purposes writing can serve. It's still difficult to sustain, however, since I still haven't successfully integrated my writing practices into my life, especially now considering my revealed ambitions.

I have decided not to quit writing, but things will change around here. Benpercent is likely to have a shift in focus, from activism in general politics to activism in the food and health industry. Musing Aloud will stay the same in its theme, but you'll probably notice that I'll more frequently post on cooking and personal health related topics, maybe even go so far as to track my self-improvement in cooking by tracking the recipes I try and grading my execution of them. As for posting frequency, I'll throw everything into the wind and say I'll just do my best, as my past efforts to remain consistent in my habits have been a failure.

In my life away from writing I need to restructure my habits as well. As a brief sampling, I need to change what types of blogs I follow, what books I seek out, by what means I'll achieve my career ambitions, what I focus my spending on, and so on. I may even apply to culinary school, but that is still in the thinking phase as I may soon be living on my own and have a greater need to focus on my career. While many things are still uncertain, I love that I have made enough progress in my thinking to have at least come to the point that I'm entertaining questions to a specific course of action.

Honestly, my main worry is about specialization. Paraphrasing Henry Hazlitt from Thinking as a Science, it's better to know one thing well and to be ignorant of a great many things than to know many things poorly. In other words, it's better to be really knowledgeable in one area instead of generally okay all around. I know that I'll be making myself greatly ignorant of many things as a result of choosing what to concentrate on, but I ask exactly what general knowledge is it that I can afford to neglect? For instance, is it desirable to study economics just enough so that I know the basic principles and can deal with my personal finances optimally, and okay to neglect advance technical knowledge? Or should I still make an effort to obtain that advanced knowledge, only working at a slower pace to attain it since it isn't a priority in my value hierarchy? Overall, I'm worried about what I'll be neglecting in other specializations by choosing my own.

But still, even with these questions, confusions, and my struggles to get a job things are going great for me. Life is worth living when you know what your life should be.

A New Book to Look Forward To!

I love the first one, so it's good to hear that the sequel, Good Eats 2: The Middle Years, will be coming out in just a few months. If this book series maintains the level of value the first one has set forth then I'll forgo purchasing DVDs of the television series, as it would be completely unnecessary.

Perhaps I might give a review when it comes out. A definite purchase on my part.

Percolating Writing

One of the difficulties I run into in writing is making sure I do an adequate amount of thinking for each piece. Some pieces take only a few minutes of thinking while others can take hours of planning. Some pieces have actually taken me over a month to think about before I felt ready to write about it.

As such, sometimes I run into the problem of trying to construct a piece when I have done an insufficient amount of thinking. Those pieces I usually end up either leaving uncompleted or deleting them upon completion, no matter how much time I spent writing them. (I don't feel bad about not having a product to show for my work since the actual writing serves as practice anyhow.) On some rare occasions I have recognized that I did an insufficient amount of thinking, went and did some introspecting, and then came back to the piece and wrote beautifully.

I would like to remedy this problem of underthinking an idea. It's the reason why I don't do as exhaustive writing as I've done before, like with Dr. Doolittleism in Foreign Policy and Slavery or the Highway: "Volunteerism", which I consider to be some of my best writing.

Here's an idea I got spontaneously yesterday while walking. I thought about how I remedied my underthinking before by actually starting work on the piece and then noting my deficiencies, and going back to do additional introspection, which cured my problem. What I was thinking of doing is this: When I get the urge to write extensively on some subject, I'll go out and construct a detailed outline on it, including clustering ideas, writing the theme, organizing the points, and all, and then afterwards putting the outline down for an indefinite amount of time so that I can gather more introspective material. In other words, turn my outlining into a process in which drafting applies.

Already I am seeing benefits to the drafting process. I have outlined a piece I don't plan on writing for a while due to a need for more evidence, but already I've noticed that after completing the outline I came upon new thoughts I want to include in that piece, thoughts that would have been otherwise neglected if I had taken to writing the piece right away.

I don't know how well this will work, but it's worth trying. This isn't a self-improvement venture I plan on tracking on this blog; I just thought it would be worthwhile to share a possible good writing practice.

A New Proof for My Resume

Well, since the last notification of my employment situation things have not changed much. I did manage to snag an interview at a hardware store, but disappointingly did not get the job, and restaurants are still indicating that they want only people with previous experience. At the very least, I've stopped being harassed by those multitudes of insurance companies, though I plan on increasing my presence on job websites and so may open myself up again to such harassment.

While I still have hope for the future of America, my personal situation leaves me a bit discontent. I have long-term optimism, but definite short-term pessimism: I believe economically, especially for Michigan, we have yet to hit the bottom of the hill. To avoid at present a lengthy analysis to why I believe this, I'll just say that given a certain set of ideas a man is going to act a certain way. Since our politicians have yet to reexamine their ideas, they're simply going to apply the bad ideas that got America (especially Michigan) into this economic mess to begin with, which will but exacerbate the problems. The worst is yet to come.

But I digress. There's little to do in that area except be an activist for positive long-term change and live the best I can in the meanwhile. If my disappointment should surface, I'll just try to get myself lost in goal pursuits or the enjoyment of a value, or to sleep it off.

Anyhow, the main purpose of this post is to present a possible new way of establishing credibility for my resume. After having reached a compromise with the person I live with, I am virtually free financially to be able to focus my funds on other necessities and to invest in certain things to increase my employability.

Keeping in mind how I'm focusing on restaurants, I thought it might be a good idea to construct a professional food portfolio. I realized that while studying and practicing would allow me to add new skills to my resume, it probably wouldn't impress restaurateurs very much given that it would still need to be concretely proved to them. So what I thought I could do is go out and purchase a cheap digital camera, use it to photograph the various dishes I prepare, upload them to my computer, arrange them into a recipe, print them out, and then organize them in a three-ring binder. This portfolio would, of course, only be available upon the employer's request, but I think it would do well to enhance my credibility and worthiness since it would show I can put my money where my mouth is.

So now I consider myself in the market for a camera, and would appreciate some input. What considerations do I need to take into account? What do I need to know?

What I desire is a simple indoor camera that can take high-resolution pictures, and for it to be able to hook up to my computer via the USB port so I can upload pictures. In all honesty it need not hold more than ten or so photographs at one time, since I plan on uploading the pictures approximately right after they're taken (that is, after I have eaten what I photographed). Battery life is not much of a concern for me either.

I know there are many camera junkies out there, so got some suggestions?

"Good" vs. Evil

A few days ago or so it dawned on me that I don't know a proper antonym to the word "evil." Sure, one may immediately respond that "good" or "moral" would be fitting, but I don't think they're appropriate given how intense the word "evil" sounds, and by intense I mean the degree of badness this particular word connotes.

For example, take the word "bad." When we say "bad" we have a certain degree of meaning attached to it. In the moral context, when we visualize its referents we see children standing by broken vases, dogs having wet on the floor, taking candy from a baby, and so on. "Evil," however, makes us visualize murderers, rapists, dictators, and the like. "Bad" and "evil" are both similar to each other in that they both present the same end of the moral spectrum, but they differ in their intensity in that we speak about much much worse things when we speak of "evil" than we do "bad."

As such, I believe that "good" and "moral," while they do denote the opposite end of the moral spectrum, don't go far enough in that opposite direction to match the intensity of "evil." When I visualize its referents I see children having done their homework, adults being responsible for their own well-being, a layman developing his intellect through study, and so on, but nothing that could counter villainy.

I have received two good responses in regards to this conundrum already, but I'm not entirely convinced. Ms. Zawistowski recommends "normal" and Mr. Fleming recommends "righteous." "Normal," while I agree it is technically correct to call such a person that when he is acting completely and consistently moral, seems to have too much of a morally neutral connotation. "Righteous," on the other hand, seems to be the proper word, but may perhaps be more appropriate in comparative situations against those in the wrong, as opposed to signifying a man's moral status independent of the moral statuses of those around him.

I ask my readers then: What would be a good antonym?

Selective Memory: Writing Aid

For some strange reason when I write something down it gains a significance that stays in my memory, regardless of whether or not I actually consult the writing again. For example, with the blue notebook I carry around in my pocket it is often the case that I can write a list in it and never have to consult it again to remember it, but if I don't write it down in the first place then I can't remember those thoughts. Writing, therefore, may be a technique that could assist me with my involuntarily selective memory, specifically in regards to my reading.

What I plan on doing is keeping a scrap notebook at hand when I'm reading something, and then write down my thoughts whenever I deem that I have come across some material or thinking that's worth remembering. The emphasis here is not on constructing well-formed notes to study for later on, but simply writing something down to force myself to put into coherent words my thoughts and engrave them in my memory.

But then again there could be a potential conflict. I notice that when I read something that's really interesting I get nearly totally absorbed in the piece, and so am interrupted by any outside stimulus. Today while I was trying to read an article and write about it at the same time the writing broke my concentration, made my mind wander, and eventually made it so I couldn't get as absorbed in the article as I had before. I believe that intense concentration itself may contribute to successful memorization, so I may only be hurting my efforts if I cancel out one memorization process in favor of an inferior one. Given this, it may be better to write my thoughts down after I have finished the reading piece, kind of like a summarizing essay. However, if it is the case that I am not interested in reading something but find benefit in doing so anyway, or else have little choice in the matter, writing at the same time could force me to concentrate. I'll adjust my habits according to the type of piece I'm reading. If it's for my personal studies and I'm intensely interested in the piece so as to be absorbed, I'll hold off the writing until the end. If I'm not highly interested but will read the piece anyways, I'll write to aid concentration. If I'm both highly interested and believe it to be beneficial to take proper notes, I'll read the piece at least twice, once "purely" and the second with note-taking.

That sounds good. I think I'll employ the third method when I get to studying Cookwise, which has yet to arrive at the library. Knowledge and good habits may be a struggle to achieve, but they priceless possessions once obtained.

An Urge to Sacrifice?

Given the proper moral context I have no fondness nor grievance towards charity as a concept -- except when I'm an unnecessary and most unwilling recipient of it.

As my other posts have indicated, for the time being I am unemployed and am dependent on somebody for shelter and internet access, with my grocery needs primarily satisfied by myself (the person I live with is in disagreement with my nutritional standards, so I rely on my own savings so that I may exist independently in that area). Right now all my necessities are being taken care of and I am fine and in good health. I may be frustrated in that I may not be able to satisfy all my economic wants, but it's a reality I must deal with for now and can cope with.

Absurdly enough, however, there's a person in my life who, despite being aware of the fact that my necessities are taken care of, nonetheless views me as a perpetual object of charity. He has offered me money on many occasions, and I have politely declined him, but he has persisted (and continues to persist) to the point that he has bypassed the threshold of politeness and I fully express anger at him. We have an agreement that if I were to need anything I would ask him for assistance and that he would not be allowed to offer me assistance until that event, but I fear he will soon attempt to subvert that agreement.

Simply put, whenever the matter of my spending money comes up he offers to subsidize whatever it is I plan on purchasing, and he has in at least one instance commanded that I take his money. I am not frivolous with my money: My spending habits include groceries, health supplements (fish oil, vitamin D [which I'll stop soon in place of tanning], and a multivitamin [to assist with a magnesium deficiency and to cover general bases]), bills, gas, and limited luxuries such as almond butter (very cheap at Wal-mart) and dark chocolate. The next wasteful luxuries I plan on spending my money on are some movies that will open in May and June, and even at that seeing both of them combined will probably cost me less than ten dollars (I forgo the movie snacks). I am not irresponsible with my money, and with my savings I am optimistic that I will be able to sustain myself until I do find employment.

None of this deters the person from constantly offering me charity. I try to avoid taking charity from him since not only am I able to sustain myself but I also do not find the person to be of personal value to me, so it would, I think, be immoral for me to accept help from him except under certain circumstances. I also think that accepting unnecessary charity would harm my sense of self-dependence and train myself to habitually look towards other people for my livelihood.

Throughout my purchases he exclaims that he "feels bad" to see me spending my money so, as if somehow I was pained and resentful to be carrying my own weight. Even assuring him that I feel no disdain towards such responsibility, that I actually enjoy it and prefer it to the alternative of financial dependence, he still "feels bad." I believe I have told him that maintaining such emotions is irrational, but still he refuses to readjust his ideas.

What I don't understand is why he feels as if he needs to give me charity. When I decline his offerings he is obviously pained that I have done so, and such discontent has grown over time, with him becoming more and more persistent and upset with each declined offering.

More observations need to be made, but I have a hypothesis: His offerings are a result of his endorsement and subconscious integration of the morality of altruism. Altruism states that the moral good lies in sacrificing one's values for other men, which makes morality completely dependent on a social context. Under this theory it is only possible to be moral when other men are around and are willing to accept sacrifices. When the available men aren't willing to accept sacrifices, however, then not only has one's offering been declined, but one has also been prevented from performing what is considered to be a moral action. When I reject that person's offerings he is not pained at my suffering, since I'm not suffering, he's pained that he has been prevented from doing his "duty." As I reject his offerings over time he comes to start viewing himself more and more as a person who has moral failings, and his persistence increases as a result of his increasing guilt.

I am not certain as to whether this theory is the case, but I am certain that he's an altruist. Unluckily for him, I will continue to decline his offers in the near future (except in extraordinary circumstances) since I'm a selfish egoist, not an unselfish altruist. I do not demand nor practice sacrifice.