This series is a continuation of my conversations with an atheist friend of mine. These are my edited responses from that conversation. The forty-sixth through fiftieth entries deal with introversion/extroversion, social interaction and popularity. I’m sure we could have a whole discussion about why some kids are popular and some are not. Suffice it to say that it seems almost arbitrary to me. Although physical attractiveness seems to play a lot into it, doing extra curricular activities that play on qualities of attractiveness are also important. The guys should play sports that demonstrate physical prowess, and the girls should dance or cheerlead. Noting that that statement is awfully sexist, I would argue that popularity is sexist. Popularity reduces everyone to a certain paradigm, and outside of that paradigm you simply don’t fit in. I think one also has to be average in other respects, such as and especially intelligence. You can’t be too smart or too dumb. Too smart, you are made fun of for being a nerd. Too dumb, you’re made fun of for being, well, dumb. I don’t remember any “dumb” popular people. The popular people squeaked by grade wise and didn’t attract any attention. I tried for a minute or so to think up an unattractive popular person from high school. I could not. Same for my college career. I can’t think of an ugly popular person. People have to be drawn to someone to make them popular. The first thing someone notices about a new person is how pretty they are, not how well spoken or smart or athletic. It is physical attractiveness. People are shallow, me included. Now, I’m not arguing that attractiveness is the only important quality. I can think of many, many pretty people that aren’t popular. Outward self-confidence is important; self-presentation is important. You have to know that you’re popular to be popular. That is connected to knowing how to handle oneself in public, knowing how to talk smoothly, knowing amicable gestures and body language, not being socially awkward (see SC part 48). There is a lot to it, and I’m sure psychologists spend entire lifetimes studying the issue. Additionally, I’ve noticed that people who do not care about popularity are not generally popular. Again, you must know you are popular to be popular. There definitely is a hierarchy to popularity. Just speculating, I’d have to say that the Alpha Popular comes from the paragon. They are the most attractive, the most adept at social convention, most self-confident, etc. They are the epitome of such a character. Others aspire to be them. From personal experience I think that adolescence is the trigger for all of this. I remember being great friends with just about everyone in elementary school, but when puberty kicked in I wasn’t good enough anymore. I suspect it was because of my demure stature. I was a nerd and not good at sports, so I simply became irrelevant.
This series is a continuation of my conversations with an atheist friend of mine. These are my edited responses from that conversation. The forty-sixth through fiftieth entries deal with introversion/extroversion, social interaction and popularity. Previously I talked about my own personal social interactions (Part 46) and speculating on why people find bar hopping of all things so interesting (Part 47). This time I work on physical interactions. Speaking of social awkwardness, not a social interaction goes by where I don’t screw up physical interactions. I don’t know when to shake someone’s hand or when not to; is it a handshake or a high five? Also what kind of hand shake? Is it going to be a regular one or the one where you grab around each other’s thumbs? And then is this the kind of person that tries to get your fingers to snap when you pull your hands apart or what? Some guys also like hugging. That leaves me clueless as to when that is socially acceptable. Bumping fists has become a big thing as well recently. I have no idea what to do about that. I feel like Barack and Michelle Obama fistbumping while it is happening, but in hindsight I think I look like an idiot. And then there are the interactions towards girls. I never know if I am suppose to hug someone. I don’t particularly like hugging anyway, but I know quite a few girls (and the more extroverted they are the more they want to hug) who hug for all occasions. I haven’t seen you in five years...hug. I haven’t seen you since yesterday...hug. I’m sad...hug. I’m happy...hug. And then there are other forms of physical contact -- a jovial slap on the back, a punch in the shoulder, etc. I just don’t get it. I always try to anticipate when each action goes where, but I think I force it too much. Others often give me quizzical looks. Granted, I’ve gotten a lot better because I always try to stick to handshakes. It is difficult to go wrong with those. When I am in a group I can always just follow someone else’s lead. But it is baffling to me how the cool people know what physical interaction is appropriate. Did they all go to Debutant school and all have some sort of secret look to know how to act? Aside, dancing also confounds me. I’ve had some dancing lessons, so I kind of know how they do it. However, as far as complicated moves, I’m at a loss as well. Do any nerds have physical interactions figured out?
This series is a continuation of my conversations with an atheist friend of mine. These are my edited responses from that conversation. The forty-sixth through fiftieth entries deal with introversion/extroversion, social interaction and popularity. Last time we started a whole new topic focused on social interaction. I summarized my own personal trouble with social interactions. This entry is a bit of a rathole. I send a bit of time wondering why certain activities are so interesting to some people. I frequently have issues of believing people beneath my time. It is an issue that I have struggled with and come to terms with over the last few years. I, honestly, don’t find very many people intellectually stimulating, and that is not to say that I believe I’m smarter than everyone else. I believe quite the opposite in fact. There are many people more knowledgeable than me on a great many subjects. The problem I have is that I don’t know many people that share similar interests with me. Why have a conversation with some acquaintance about some topic I find inconsequential when you could be doing something you find interesting? Most of the people I don’t give much attention to aren’t bad in any sense of the word; they just aren’t interesting to me. Conversely, I try not to be offended when people act like I’m not worth their time. If we don’t share something in common, there is no reason to interact except to be polite. Indeed why do we make friends with certain people and not other, because we find them interesting. Following along that line of reasoning, what makes certain subjects/activities interesting to certain people? I wonder why it is that certain activities have been socially adopted as the “things to do”. For example, why is going bar hopping an activity that so many find fascinating? Having been drug “out” on many occasions, there is nothing particularly fun about it. You just end up spending a lot of money. It’s much easier to purchase what you need to make your own drinks and do it at home. I wonder if this speaks to the laziness of people, which is not to say that I think people who do go bar hopping are lazy. It is just a lot less mentally taxing to go drink than it is to enjoy a concert or some such or read a book. Also I think some of the popular enjoyment of the activity results from spontaneity and from the social interaction it allows. I remember from my Psych 101 class that a trait of extroversion is spontaneity. It makes sense that an extrovert that has made no plans for the evening suddenly decides to go out, and bar hopping is the easiest activity. Also, think about what there actually is to do that can be done spontaneously. Going out to eat, seeing a moving, there isn’t very much. I think a lot of my particular situation is that there isn’t much to do in Starkville besides going out to drink. There is no symphony or theatre company, no art shows or the like, just a lot of bars. I hope this problem is somewhat alleviated when I move to TX because there are so many big cities nearby.
This series is a continuation of my conversations with an atheist friend of mine. These are my edited responses from that conversation. The forty-sixth through forty-eighth entries deal with introversion/extroversion, social interaction and popularity. Previously we talked about globalization, peace, and war. Here we completely change gears to a new topic. This issue can only be dealt with from a personal point of view since it deals with one’s interactions with other people. Being a bit of an introvert, I have found that with most extroverts that they must have something to do every weekend or even during the week if they are bored, and if you or I are not able to attend these impromptu events frequently, we introverts are generally forgotten about. Unfortunately, most extroverts are perfectly happy just going out to some sort of bar and just talking. Having been drug out to events like that, I do not find that appealing. I find it to be a waste of money, so I often decline the invitation. I do admit to being a “stick in the mud” though. The last two years while I have been in graduate school, I have kept mostly to myself. All the friends I made while I was an undergrad had left, and I was not in any of the same classes as the rest of the people in the same year of my program. So I just did things on my own mostly, which is great usually because I like to keep busy. However, in those moments when I just want to relax, it is nice to have someone around. And in actuality, I am much more comfortable in social interactions with just a couple of people instead of some sort of party environment. The field of physics doesn’t seem to be very social at all. It could just be that the students at MSU and the few places where I’ve visited actual physicists aren’t that social, and everyone else is. Meteorologists, especially of the non-research variety, tend to be very social, so I don’t really have to worry about finding things to do, people come to me. Generally they come to me with things I don’t particular want to do, but they do come. I have had trouble having best friends. I believe this originates from the fact that I don’t really hang out with just one person. I have several groups of people that I do different activities with. Close relationships develop because two people spend large amounts of time together. That involves a lot of time just hanging out with each other, which I do not do much of. Additionally, I too have trouble finding people to do interesting things with me. This has a lot to do with uniqueness. There aren’t many people interested in the things I am interested in, but I can cultivate that interest in people we already know. Example, I wanted a bunch of people to watch the transit of Venus with me, and I convinced one non-scientist friend of mine to join me. He was skeptical at first, but when we finally got to see it through the telescope, he was awestruck. I have also shown this friend the rings of Saturn and the great red spot, and he is fascinated with astronomy now. So I now have an astronomy friend. I have had to do similar things with gardening, computers etc. You can cultivate interests in others, and in fact aren’t some of your own interested started because friends introduced those ideas to you.
This series is a continuation of my conversations with an atheist friend of mine. These are my edited responses from that conversation. The forty-third through forty-fifth entries deal with globalization, peace, and war. Last time I covered globalization. Is it good or bad? What do we lose from globalization? Could it lead us to peace? Here I chat about it preventing war. At this point, I think the globe has become homogenized enough that WWIII is unlikely. However, oblivion is always an option. Some new faction might arise very quickly somewhere. We know very, very little about the power structure in China, for example. I also don't see the dark ages reoccurring. The dark ages were a result of one large empire, the Romans/Byzantines collapsing. There are too many countries on separate parts of the globe for that to happen again: US, Europe, Australia, Korea/Japan, China, South America, Russia. What could happen is a global economic collapse. That definitely could set us back, but some region would make it out. We aren't so interconnected that if one regions falls everything falls. See how well the US and China are doing despite the Eurozone crisis. Even though Germany is a member of the Eurozone, it is doing quite well. In stock investing, diversification is important to minimize losses. I hope that those that wield the power to affect globalization recognize this and prevent the global from becoming so economically interdependent that there is no diversification. One bad thing globalization has brought us is the sweatshop and exploitation of workers. I would hope that technological achievement will allow us to the pass the threshold of sweatshops. Eventually, robots will be able to perform all of these mundane, physically demanding tasks (Let's just make sure they don't become sentient.). Hopefully this will happen sooner rather than later. However, I think that there will always be a class system; there will always be someone on the bottom having to perform the tasks that are just too complicated enough for the most sophisticated robots. As long as the world is driven by money instead of some grand ideal of betterment (a la the Star Trek universe), there will always be the workers separate from the power holders. [Presently, it really disturbs me how much money is involved getting elected (I thank many of our logically incompetent Supreme Court justices for that.), and it gets worse every year.] It concerns me, and has for quite a while, how dependent the economy is on growth. Growth is what makes the world go. This is clearly not sustainable as economic growth can only be achieved as long as the population is growing. And this is partly why I think leaders ignore our population problem because if we face it we have to rethink how economies work. I am no economist, so I don't have a clue how to go about retuning our economic system to something other than growth.
This series is a continuation of my conversations with an atheist friend of mine. These are my edited responses from that conversation. The forty-third through forty-fifth entries deal with globalization, peace, and war. Last time I discussed why I think global peace is possible. Now to tackle this from the perspective of globalization. Is globalization good, bad? Who does it hurt/help? We are kind of at a half globalization currently; most of the middle east and parts of S. America are left out as is pretty much the entire continent of Africa and other scattered Pacific nations. What has it gotten us? We are well connected, the spread of ideas is nigh instantaneous, any good imaginable is easily obtainable, costs of those goods are dropping. From that I can see globalization is a positive thing. But what did we have to give to achieve it? Exploitation is number one. From what is trickling out of China, the conditions there are reprehensible. What companies are doing to workers is more like indentured servitude, forcing them to work overtime for minimal pay. What globalization has done to them is war by another name: economic war. They suffer while we bask in our cheap iPhones. And if we thought the propaganda from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq was easily manipulated, that is nothing compared to the lines we are fed regarding what we do to people on the bottom rung of globalization. Granted though, I own a lot of the cheap products that are created by these poor people, and I don’t do a thing about it. A lot of it is because they are faceless, and this is the economic hardship we place on others to serve out capitalistic wants. They are faceless causalities. However, it is true that there will always be the weak, and they will always be exploited. It is the nature of humanity. What about the loss of unique cultures as a result of globalization: I agree that it is somewhat of a problem, but I have very little concern for it - mostly because it isn’t my culture being threatened. As I see it, the only way to prevent further cultural loss is for everyone to stop cross-cultural communication altogether, which just won’t happen. Loss of culture has been happening for millennia, and it certainly won’t stop if the entire planet collectively decides that globalization is a bad thing, so I don’t think it is a valid reason to stop globalization. Now is globalization going to lead us to world peace? I’m not sure I could even speculate. I suppose you could argue that as globalization occurs large scale war will decrease, but I doubt that small scale war will be solved. There will always be localized conflict (e.g. do you think globalization will solve the Palestinian/Israeli conflict? That will never be fixed unless they both completely lose their cultural identity. That will take hundreds of years at least.) I guess I’m just not thinking about this long term. Given enough time, globalization will help peace because we will become homogenized to the point that there is only human culture. I just don’t see that happening though. In the US there any numerous distinct cultures even though we are the same country. Southern culture is nothing like west coast culture is nothing like northeastern culture. I don’t think globalization will completely solve war. To summarize: globalization is good and inevitable. Loss of culture happens naturally anyway, so we might as well achieve some good (peace) as uniqueness is lost.
Greetings and Salutations, Welcome to the Eleventh Annual Christmas Mass E-mail. I hope this finds each and every one of you well. Usually by about Thanksgiving I start thinking about what I want to go in this correspondence, and after much inner turmoil, it isn’t until Christmas Eve itself that I finally decide what topic it is I want to cover. This year, on the other hand, is completely different. I’ve known exactly what I want to write about since the middle of September. It, as usual, has to deal with some of the troubles I’ve been dealing with over the course of my year. My dad isn’t a guy of many words, but he makes them count when he speaks. One of my earliest memories is of a balmy summer’s evening spent playing in the backyard. My dad pushes me on the flimsy tire swing under the old pecan tree, and after one particularly strong shove he stares off in his usually way and passes along this life lesson, “Son, one of the most important things you have is your health. You can’t buy it, take it, or receive it. You have it, or you don’t. Take care of yourself. You get one shot.” I’ve had that repeated to me in so many words at least a couple of times a year ever since. The lesson is one of the best pieces of advice he’s given me. I bring it up because this year I’ve watched someone I care about suffer with a pretty atrocious disease while I’m helpless to do anything. I can’t make them better; I can’t give them my health, as much as I want to. I hurt watching someone I care about hurt. Throughout these months of their recovery I keep reflecting on what my dad told me. I’ve been very healthy my whole life, so I, naturally, take my wellness for granted. It has never occurred to me that others wouldn’t be as lucky as I am. You are supposed to be fit when you are young and gradually your physical condition takes more work as you age. Unfortunately, life doesn’t take a nice, neat path between birth and death, so it is up to your own self to take care of your own self. Your health is the best gift you possess. Consequently, the best gift I can give you is the same advice my dad still gives me: Take care of yourself. (After you’ve stuffed yourself with the third helping of Christmas brunch, go for a walk tomorrow, and take the time to enjoy it.) Additionally, the best gift you can give is to take care of everyone around you, even if it is just a smile when you know they’re having a bad day. They will thank you for it into old age. And there you go. I’m enjoying my time at Texas A&M; just a few (more) years of grad school left. Once again, congratulations to all of you who have really done something amazing this year, whether it’s finishing a degree, getting married, starting a family, finding a new passion in life or any other accomplishment. But never be satisfied; always strive for more. Always question, learn, grow; otherwise, what’s the point? Enjoy the season, appreciate the little things, and take the time to give yourself some credit for making it as far as you have. Reply to let me know how you’re doing and what you’ve accomplished; wanting to hear from you is half the reason I send this every year. As I’ve been having to teach as part of my assistantship, here is a teacher-themed requisite bad joke… A new teacher is trying to make use of her psychology courses. She starts her class by saying, “Everyone who thinks you’re stupid, stand up.” After a few seconds, Little Johnny stood up. The teacher said, “Now, Little Johnny, no one is stupid. You don’t think you’re stupid, do you, Little Johnny?” “No ma’am, but I hate to see you standing there all by yourself!” Best wishes, happy holidays, Battalio http://www.battalio.com/
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