For Your Intellectual Fix

In my rant below, I mentioned that I would put effort into the serious issues I care about and develop them fully, if not quite to academic standards. Well, I have a research paper to write for poli sci this month, so I'll be devoting my academic brain to that until it's done, and then in April I have exams, so I won't be writing anything serious until I get to Berlin. I'm currently planning to write a reasonably comprehensive description of Western government.

However, I'll only be starting in a month and a half, so if you desire intelligent commentary on current events I suggest you check out Crooked Timber. It's a blog run by a variety of academics, and I've really been enjoying it. I learn a lot from their insight, especially on subjects I knew very little about, and their posts are often funny, or sarcastic. Go check it out.

The problem is that there are too many problems

I've decided that since I'm no longer going to be writing out my serious thoughts on this blog, I could use this blog to rant. And I do feel like ranting. Hopefully when I read this tomorrow, I won't cringe too much.

As you know, I've decided that my career will lie in chemistry. I think that I will enjoy my work and that it will be of benefit to the world, and that's all I really want from my job. Having a salary that I can live on will be a bonus. But it seems that every week I read or hear about something that makes me want to switch. AIDS and malaria are terrifying problems for the developing world, especially Africa, so maybe I should study medicine- do I really want to study medicine? Developing economies are in a mess, so I should be an economist. Politics is messed up, so I should study political science, or maybe law. Corporations are psychopathic, so I should become a businessman and reform it from within (this will never happen. Fuck business.)

In all honesty, I only want to be a chemist. I've always loved science, and I think chemistry is awesome, so I've never seriously contemplated switching out of chemistry. Instead, I've decided that I will also devote myself to a noble cause. I don't know which noble cause yet, but I think I'll figure it out one day, once I've actually lived in the real world. So I'm fine with where I'm going in life.

Reading about these global issues does make me temporarily pessimistic, and I think that maybe humanity is doomed. But really, I'll always be an optimist, which I rationalize because there's no point to being pessimistic- bad shit will happen, and all you can do is hope for the best. That being said, my optimism isn't so much rational as it is an ingrained behavior, as I never chose to be an optimist, and becoming a pessimist seems as likely as becoming a born-again Christian. In fact, I tend to agree that our personalities are determined by our genes and our environment, so not being an atheist or an optimist seems impossible.

The frightening array of problems that the world isn't really a problem for me, because I'm an eternal optimist with a relatively fixed direction in life, but they do bother me because they make good people indecisive. Based on zero first-hand experience, I've concluded each of the many problems requires many people focused on solving it, so if people are confused by the state of the world, then less people will want to volunteer. And if people don't work to solve all of these problems, then my optimism is just silly, isn't it?

Fuck blogging

I've figured out why I rarely write in my blog. This epiphany came to me when instead of writing on the topic of socialism and capitalism, I was swearing and typing garbage in frustration. I don't enjoy writing in my blog. I usually enjoy what I've written even though it could use a lot of improvement, but the process is generally difficult and time-consuming. Sometimes, late at night I will find it easy to write, only to have to revise it the next day when I realize how terrible it is. No matter what everyone else thinks of it, I find it terrible, and I have to rewrite it before other people read it and don't bother to reread the good version. During this revision, I usually wish that I hadn't published it in the first place.

In the end, I've usually published a post that I can be proud of. I value my writing because it forces me to clarify and organize my thoughts, which is the painful part of the actual writing process. Generally, at least Isabel and Vlad will read and enjoy it. But the more I write, the more frustrating not being able to write well gets, and the less interested my friends become.

So in future, I'll be rewriting my old posts until I am proud of each, and until each one is an accurate and excellent representation of my beliefs. At that point, I'll publish it online for anyone who cares. I won't be blogging for blogging's sake, I'll be writing for my own benefit.