Elliot Rodger: It's not Just About the Sex, Christians

Elliot Rodger is kinda a jerk. Putting aside the horrendous actions he committed, he is also a product of a very pervasive cultural lie. He bought into a very radical logical conclusion of something we tell all boys and men. The premise: if you don't have sex, you're not a man. And as a good man, you deserve sex.

Several good friends have posted some great articles about the topic. Here's one about the backlash to the backlash to the backlash: #YesAllWomen. Here's a great one about how nerd culture reinforces this: Your Princess is in Another Castle. (thanks Sabreen). Or another piece targeting the fundamental issue of hyper-masculinity in our culture: Elliot Rodger and the Price of Toxic Masculinity.

However, there's another response that cropped up recently. "If masculinity is defined by sexual immorality then it is a warped definition of masculinity." The allusion is that the way of sexual purity is the answer and correct definition of masculinity. Specifically the Christian one (disclaimer: cis-hetero middle-class Christian virgin male checking in).

I would argue that no, Christian Purity Culture is not the One True Answer for all the woes laid here.

Why? Because here are some of the lines of reasoning that have been taught in churches. I won't cover them in depth, just mention them. And let me be the first to say I still fall into some of these traps.

• If you aren't married, then you aren't a real mature man yet, and therefore shouldn't be given real ministry responsibilities.
• If you have pre-maritial sex, you are broken and polluted and used goods.
• Sex is AMAZING so you should want it. Masturbation is bad. Thus, the only gateway to sex is marriage, so if you want to have sex, better get married ASAP (Ring by Spring is a thing).
• Since God is taking care of His People, and marriage is good, if you aren't married by your mid-20s -- or, gasp, 30s -- something must be wrong with you.

And, of course, if I followed The Plan, I am a good Christian, and therefore deserve a hot smokin' wife and we will bang our way to Paradise. For serious.

See, it's not the problem that we aren't all sexually pure beings that is ruining things. The real root of what is going on, in this case, is Entitlement.

Elliot Rodgers explicitly mentions that he deserves sex. Since women are the gatekeepers of sex, and have denied him sex, they are the enemy and must be punished. They have emasculated him. And thus his only manly recourse is through violence. See the logic? That as a stand-up gentleman he has suffered the lowly status of not-banging-all-the-hot-chicks and his outburst of violence was punishment and righteous retribution for them denying his mandated birthright as a MAN.

Bullshit.

There are many things I feel the individual is mandated as a basic right. Chance to work, good education, basic safety net via either social or governmental means. Sex ain't one of them.

Nerds, just because you've been outcast doesn't mean you are deserved your comeuppance and bang the hot girl who suddenly realizes she's been wrong all along to spurn your advances.

Even in the Bible, God never promises you're going to marry and get steamy times between the covers. Heck, Paul in his letters even mentions his ideal is we all remain celibate (that topic deserves its own post to unpack, but let me leave this here).

And above all, by being denied it, you are NOT required to reassert your masculinity through other means. Especially through violence.

Because sex is not a checkbox. It is not a status symbol to have or lose your virginity. It is a mutual act of submission and intimacy between two fully realized, self-actualizing, empowered individuals. Each with their own agency. Each with their own intricate desires and needs and dreams. It is not something you do on someone. It is not tied to your masculine identity.

Secular or religious, you are NOT entitled to sex. And we should stop tying masculinity to men's sexual prowess. Or, if you're Christian, lack of sexual exploits. Same difference.

"Authenticity" versus "Holiness"

The Gospel coalition has an article today about the rise of 'Authenticity' in the church.

In general I agree with the overall sentiment. Right now there is a groundswell of people exalting "authentic" and sharing about our "brokenness." Which, overall, is a good thing. Casting Crowns even had a lovely song of critique that Church is just a Stained Glass Masquerade where too often we act like we have it all. So the fact people are finally opening up about their hurts and getting healing from an open community is good.

But at the same time, as this article notes, there's a sweet spot. Share something too small ("I struggle with lying about my age!") and people ignore you. Share too far and too heavy and people buckle ("I have a crack addiction and murder people every night!"). So once again we are playing a social game. Finding the just-right point. People with the biggest hurts or those who "have their life together" get marginalized. It's counter to the whole movement of inclusive community.


On top of that is the downward cyclical cycle it can create. Everyone starts sharing and saying how low they are, and how we are stuck as the scum of the earth, and soon that's your identity. Being scum becomes your identity. We fall into the trap of just co-ruminating about our faults and take on being broken as our identity, just making us depressed and continuing the cycle. [bonus reference, footnote #10 from here] Plus, TGC deftly provides this snippet to illustrate:

"While we think self-deprecation causes us to be more relatable and empathetic to non-Christians, it's ultimately communicating a sense of disappointment, disillusionment, and discontentment," Stephen Mattson wrote for Red Letter Christians. "It thrives on negativity and kills our sense of hope."

TGC claims the answer is to instead pursue "Holiness." Elevate the pursuit of the perfect. Yes, provide room for the broken aspects, but don't stop there. Keep moving towards Holiness.

TGC further claims that true Authenticity is the process of sanctification. The growth towards Holiness. The question is rhetorically posed, "could it be that the most authentic thing any of us can do is faithfully pursue holiness and obediently follow after Christ?"

As I said at the start, overall I agree and it is a good message. It also helps point out some of the traps and flaws I see rising up around me as people single-mindedly pursue "Authenticity" in the church. Airing all your problems. People co-opting the movement to grandstand about their problems and use them for attention. Being stuck just complaining and never doing anything. All great points that people should keep in mind!


But I also perceive that we aren't far enough to have concern. The "Authentic" movement is still relatively young. And it still hasn't addressed some of the more serious underlying problems plaguing people. I previously mentioned that even in "Authentic" circles you aren't allowed to go too far with your sharing. There is the unspoken rule that you don't derail the group with your giant baggage load. That is still something for "behind closed doors." And that is just born from common sense and social contract. But at the same time too many people leave because they feel like there's no way for them to share. We don't have the "behind closed doors" spaces fully open and available. So people who are hurt and marginalized by their sins and past instead turn elsewhere.

What is especially painful is TGC's claim that "We've become too comfortable with our sin, to the point that it's how we identify ourselves and relate to others. But shouldn't we find connection over Christ, rather than over our depravity?" Perhaps. That's quite a laudable goal. But at the same time the human condition is defined by being broken. We all struggle with sin and I find the strongest characteristic about the Church is accepting people who have struggles and walking alongside them. That means that sometimes the best people are those who are broken in the same way! When you are struggling with a secret sin and then find out that someone else struggles or has struggled with it, you have an instant connection. A massive load is released. You realize this person gets you in a way others do not. Ignoring this aspect of the human condition, our ability to have empathy especially with those who have the same wounds as us, would be foolish.

Lastly, what is wrong with an image of a community of broken but struggling individuals? The veneer of happy smiling families with 2.5 children, a dog, and a white picket fence isn't what wins people into the Church. Holier-than-thou and look-what-I-have doesn't bridge the gaps. To me, being vulnerable and being there for people in their hurt does. Saying "I am just like you, but I am empowered to be better" is a much better testimony than "God has blessed me with a perfect life." Because, let's be honest, you don't have a perfect life.

Oh, and the reason there is a sentiment of discontent and disillusionment? It's because we pretended we were perfect and had all the answers too long. It's because we live in a multi-religious Post-christian plurality. It's because the Church mortgaged away people's trust. It's because they decided it was time to die on a hill for things outside their jurisdiction too many times. It's the economy. It's wars. It's the whole broken bloody world. But that's another whole rant.

So my point is yes I have seen these problems. And I agree that just staying in the comforting and accepting rut isn't healthy. And definitely there are some places where this is a seductive niche hole and people should fix it. But I personally don't feel like the church at large is fully servicing the range of brokenness in the community and providing safe places for people to share and receive care yet. So we should focus on doing more of that instead of clucking our tongues. "Authenticity" hasn't supplanted "Holiness." And that's actually a bit of a problem.

Look For What's Missing

I remember when I first moved out to Folsom. It wasn't the first time I moved. After settling into work and a basic routine I started looking for groups to join. Near the top of my list was a Christian community for young unmarried adults. These are amazingly rare. Church after church mentioned their collegiate hangouts or their adult studies or a young married group, but no one seemed to have a young adult one. I was becoming a little discouraged. When I finally came upon one, I decided to put it to the test. I would see if they were genuinely interested in me. Who would greet and ask me to events? Would they care when I didn't show up? Were they truly interested in investing in me?

Lucky for Fusion, they have a few notable smiling people who take it upon themselves to greet and connect people to the community. I was soon awash with invites to random events from the official car wash fundraiser to more mundane picnic activities and birthdays. For a while, that was good. I slowly figured out people's names and had a full schedule of events. But doubt crept back in. The majority of the events seemed to be mass invites. When I setup an event I mass-invited the whole Facebook network. Was I merely building a large pool of bodies so I wouldn't have to stand alone in the party?

So I tried another set of experiments. If I intentionally withdrew who would notice? If I disappeared from Facebook would anyone comment? Did I exert enough "pull" on the social group that my absence of presence would register?

I remember a guest speaker we once had at Catalyst. I forget most of his talk, and for now I'll call him Wesley since I forgot his name, but I do remember one anecdote he shared. When he was younger there were the cool dudes of his youth group. They would hang out together and share stories about the radical things they did throughout the week. Wesley felt left out and always wanted to somehow get into the cool kids circle. He thought that perhaps if he became cool enough they would invite him. It didn't work. Finally he decided to make his own cool kids circle. He would invite people to events and make his own circle of friends to share radical things with. He switched from being on the outside looking in to building his own inner circle. He didn't need the "cool kids." He didn't have to wait to get invited. He just needed to reach out and make friends. That revelation sticks with me.

As humans we respond to positive stimuli. When we feel hungry we seek food. When someone is talking to us we devote our attention to them. We are much, much worse at identifying the absence of sudden stimuli. I do not spend most of my day noticing how not-hungry I am. It is in the rare case you are isolated in a dark and silent room that you realize how much ambient noise you are constantly filtering out in your everyday life. You focus on the road while driving. We notice the well-dressed or horribly dressed. The average, the normal, the background gets filtered out.

A few months ago my co-workers were playing Ultimate Frisbee. I put down my keys, phone, water bottle, and my silver ring on the field. People on occasion have asked about my silver ring. I wear it on my left hand on the middle finger. It is a Sterling Silver band with the word "Purity" engraved onto it. I've had it since High School. It's a great little reminder to myself and an interesting conversation starter with others. But on this particular day when we moved off the field I grabbed everything except my ring. We never found it in the field that day. So for the last two months I haven't been wearing the ring. No one has made a comment about its absence. Not even my family when I visited them. I'm not sure people have noticed.

We respond the same way to social stimuli. According to Facebook I have 577 Friends. I only interact with at most around 20 per day. But I'm not crippled with missing the other 500+ I don't see for months on end. We respond to active stimuli and filter out the absences. There are exceptions, such as missing one of my co-workers who shipped out. But eventually that subsides. We require constant incidental interactions to build up and maintain relationships.

Of course, it doesn't have to be this way. We can choose to be more aware of what's missing. In this interesting blog post the author Kristin notices we are driven to proactively fill the gaps and holes in our lives. But sometimes while trying to stuff ourselves full we don't take the time to truly understand why the gap was there in the first place. Or, as she puts it, "What’s missing quickly becomes buried under the ever-growing pile of what’s there." Common gaps include acceptance, love, recognition, and stability. Being aware of our bias towards positive stimuli can lead us to also look around a little more at what is lacking. Then we can pursue the root cause and not just treat the symptoms.

Taking this to a social context, this has two major implications. First, be active in making friends. Do not wait for people to "notice" you. Very, very few people have enough of a magnetic personality or such shining skills that they draw critical acclaim just by standing there. Instead, people get to know people who take time and effort to interact with them. This is much harder than passively waiting. But relationships take effort. Do not rely on people magically discovering you're a diamond in the rough. And yes, this will mean you will fail. People will turn down invites, or eventually you'll realize you're the only one putting effort into the relationship. But it also opens up so many potential great relationships with amazing people who invest in you as well.

On the flip side, don't feel bad about being left out. Friends will drift apart, and sometimes you can't salvage it. Sometimes people will just plumb forget your appointment. It happens. It is not a slight towards you per se. So always remember to give a modicum of grace before firing off an angry spurt onto social media. People don't respond to neutral well, so be able to forgive them.

The second corollary is be aware of negative space. For example, look around for people who are a bit more withdrawn. They don't understand this bias yet, and maybe one is just waiting to be discovered. Be that discoverer. Also, be aware of your own negative space. If the only thing you talk about is negative things going on in your life, people will think you're a negative person. If the only thing you post on Twitter is trivial nonsense, people might assume you're full of trivial nonsense. This is completely unfair, but be aware of it. I personally only post interesting things I find to Facebook and rarely anything personal. Obviously this doesn't mean I don't have personal things to share, but I just don't like blasting it out to everyone unless it's important.

As in all my advice pieces, I caution you from taking this too far. There is a distinct inverse relationship between believing in a meritocracy and feelings of self-worth. I am not saying the more you do the more friends you will have. I am not even saying the more gaps you see the more happy you will be. And I know several people who are already aware of this bias and performing admirably at watching out for those who are absent. But I encourage you to take a moment to reflect and see if this is a blind spot you can address.

In closing, I leave you with the cliche phrase "Be the change that you wish to see in the world."* Be proactive, be that friendly person, go out and show the world instead of waiting for it to discover you.



* This was apparently never said by Ghandi. He actually said, "If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. ... We need not wait to see what others do." which removes the implicit that social change can be a result of solely personal change. Still means they go hand-in-hand though.

Becoming the "Other"

Sermons, lessons, and articles all have a very specific tone to them when dealing with "others".

A sermon might bring up an example of how some person did wrong. For example, I recently listened to one on how different people respond differently to your aid. In one case it was a poor person. After helping to pay their rent, it became infeasible to support them any longer and the speaker went over to tell them so. They were rebuffed with a series of slurs and thrown out of the house. He realized that by throwing money at the problem, he wasn't helping them get back on their feet. Different people will respond differently he said. There were other instances where even using the wrong information and wrong techniques people would improve and become whole. But with "correct" systems others wouldn't. It was an excellent illustration of why we need personalized efforts, of why it often is dependent on the individual you are helping, or why sometimes it is all out of your control. This was all from the viewpoint of us. This was the viewpoint of the trained to help "others".

Another anecdote was commenting on how broken individuals can end up as leeches. They come with a story of being hurt and being in need and no one was there. So, you feel for them and come alongside them. But then they latch on to you. They devour your time and energy and emotional endurance. Finally they pop off after you're drained and can't give any more. They are that way because they only consume and are broken. They are surrounded by love but they never seem to have enough or can't feel it. It was done with humorous enactments and we all have seen these "other people" in action. But again, this is from the viewpoint of us normal people. The ones being devoured and preyed on by those "others".

This article covers the subject of "The Distress of the Privileged" and clucks its tongue at those poor privileged slobs. They grew up in times past and suddenly the world around them has changed. They are no longer in the right, and in fact are accused of being the Bad Guys. Suddenly, they have a real distress and need to be validated since without their notice or consent the world around them has turned against them. But don't hate them! They are well-meaning good people who are just out of their element now. We should come to them with kindness and love and bring them over to our side. If only their eyes were opened, and they weren't rebuffed by hostility they too can join our humble ways. Address their distress but help them realize it pales in scope to our pain and distress. We should treat the "others" with love and not look down too much on their backward ways.

This very blog is founded on this principle. In one respect it is about my own views, musings I've had, and things I want to work on. But it is written in such a way that I still come out the victor. I am at least trying. I have evaluated and seen the faults and seek to change them. Unlike those "others" out there. Those fools who have yet to see how inefficient they are, unable to face fears or come to terms with putting on airs for the world at large.

Time and time again I see piece after piece about those "others" out there. Clucking tongues at their backwardness. Sighs at their silly notions. Laughs at their poor grasp on the facts. We nod knowingly and give each other slaps on the back safe in the feeling that we are the elite, well-adjusted, all-knowing, capable, clear-minded individuals who can help and correct these poor souls. Noblesse Oblige.

Too often though I can't share in that. Too often I wonder if I am not that "other" person. Am I ungrateful to the help I've been given and will scream and curse if it's all taken away? Do I leech off my peers and friends looking for an emotional hit from them contributing nothing? Am I one of the privileged stuck in times past?

And that simply scares the crap out of me.

Often times because I am quite explicitly the "other" person. For the majority of my life I identified as Republican (and all my liberal friends may now boo and hiss). So all those articles making fun of Republicans, taking quotes out of context, reading horrible horrible things into the comments and ideas they had were painful. I was filled with rage and indignation. I was wounded that they would dismiss my views so easily and think me such a fool. I hated it when people would approach me for conversation on one hand then post a down-the-line dismissal of my side on the other. I now sit somewhere between the two parties and simply get a sound beating from both ends.

Or some of the articles on how horrible heterosexual well-educated men are. We are evil or simply naive and knowingly or unknowingly are reinforcing an oppressive patriarchy. We are so afraid of losing our power we will go to great lengths to subvert the feminine power. Well, except those few feminist males. You're OK. On one hand yeah people should get on board with this. On the other hand I'm exactly the person they're talking about. And the language they use hurts.

You might argue that this is good. After all, tribalism is natural. It help reinforce the healthy community we are building. Plus, with my visceral reactions I am realizing my faults. I can identify with the "others" and become one of "us." I am one of those select "others" we have tried to reach for so long and now you are coming around! This should be an article about my triumph and keen sense of being able to learn from any circumstance, even when I'm told I'm part of the "us" crowd. Three cheers for me!

Still hurts.

Still scares the crap out of me.

Still exposes to me how little I've grown and how much further I need to climb.

I could just recede. I can curl up and stop listening. If only I wasn't noble and kept trying, or was dumber and didn't see, or didn't care and stayed down. There is so much I could do. And I really want to sometimes. And I do sometimes.

Have you ever experienced this? Stood in a crowd and suddenly realized you identify with the caricature being painted? Realized that if you don't smile and go along you run the risk of being the "other" paraded on stage for all to see? Have you ever taken a look at your own writing or piece and wondered what it is like to be the "other" you are painting?

On My Mind: Where's the Justice?

In my last post I talked about the perversion of demanding a reward. I did X, therefore I deserve Y. For example, I'm a nice guy, where is the girl I'm owed?

This post will look at the other side of the coin.

There are some things that, in theory, should be easy to get mad about. Holocaust? Extremely tragic and justifiably we should be angry about it. Rape? A violation of a person and should be dealt with accordingly. Serial Killers with no remorse? Probably not the healthiest thing to have in our populace. Jerk embezzles millions of dollars of your money? I'd be pretty pissed.

And really, that's all a good thing.

There was an article about a particular atheist (hat tip Skye). He was visiting a Buddhist Retreat. Overall the stay was bearable, but at one point someone finds out he's a Jew. The next question is "Do you think it’s time for the Jews to work to change the karma that caused the Holocaust?" As a result the author was a little pissed. One of my friends commented thusly:

Complete inner peace comes at a cost. In many ways it is the act of shedding one's humanity and accepting a larger perspective in which the struggles and problems of humanity are trivial. As a result you feel disconnected from reality and become desensitized to the world around you. You may be at peace within, but the world outside still burns.

One of humanity's defining features is the ability to feel strong emotional responses to things. Whether it is the anger at a terrible deed or the jubilation from a joyous occasion, emotion is a powerful reminder of the preciousness of life. But emotions are a double edged sword that can both cause and cure suffering. Anger without restraint can drive otherwise rational and non-violent people to respond to terrible acts with more terrible acts.

I like to think that true enlightenment lies between these two extremes, in embracing emotion and letting it move you to action without allowing it to control you.
-Ben

That second paragraph is what I mean. To feel emotions. To feel passionately about a subject. That is a good thing. To desire good in the world, to want the best of others, that is a good thing. We should be able to feel emotions. We should be angry about things like this:


But sometimes we hold back a little. After all, in our western culture it's the enlightened level-headed philosophers who are the greatest right? We should be poised. We should rationally work through these problems. Letting emotions and gut instincts rule us means we devolve into savages and follow our poor misconstrued judgement. And yes, that is good.

Just don't think it's OK to withdraw and hide in a shell and make it all rational. Living in a world of pain and feeling nothing sounds good, but what about a world of love and not feeling it either. Being unable to feel hate sounds like a great idea, but what about when that hate is deserved and is what can drive you to action? Sure we can talk about being motivated by love only and how noble it is, but they are two sides of the same coin (Dark Side of Force anyone?). Feeling emotional responses means loving something and being angry when that something is taken away.

There is of course a darker side to this. I believe that while we should love and feel vehemently about justice we should also raise up mercy. A rigid worldview that only desires justice is like the unbending Inspector Javert of Les Miserables. Giving everyone their due means punishing those who slip. It means continuing the cycles of poverty. It means you have to have perfect knowledge to give out perfect justice. But we can't. We instead have to work on hunches and bits of information fed to us. And I feel there are many times when mercy should triumph.

Sadly, there are some people who bringing harsh reprimands is the only way to get them to pay attention. It is the only thing they respond to initially. We can talk about an ideal world of love and compassion, but sometimes anger and pressure can be an effective tool to snap someone out of their hole. On a few occasions I've received blunt treatment from a friend. It hurt a lot. But it also forced me to re-evaluate things in a new light. It prompted growth now that my focus was tuned into the problem. Anger can provide focus and can be an effective tool. Hopefully we resort to it as a method of last resort, but to ignore it completely robs us of efficiency.

I think it is OK to get angry. I think being angry shows we feel. It shows that we care. It is something that can kick us into high gear to do something about it. Yes it can be perverted, and no we shouldn't randomly lash out when hurt and angry. But I feel like righteous anger is a thing. And it is OK to rave and shout sometimes. Because it's a response you only have when you care deeply about something.

And caring matters.

Why I Don't Like to Talk About Politics

Ugh. Stupid 24/7 News Cycles. One day it's candidate A did something stupid. The next candidate B isn't looking so good in the polls. Then gaffes from the staff come out. Then there's a Joe Biden sighting with ice cream.

Frankly, I don't like talking about politics. It boils down to a few reasons.

First, usually when a discussion erupts there are at least two people who are more passionate and well-informed than me, so I just let them do all the talking.

Also, I think I'm weird. I have on many occasions switched positions after hearing some strong interesting evidence I didn't know about before. This is apparently rare since I never seem to see other people doing the same. More often than not the "winning" group claims victory and sweeps all opposing points away as poppycock while the "losing" group licks their wounds, return to their echo chamber of choice, and research how to win next time (again sweeping away all opposing points as poppycock). So, these things tend to be futile.

Finally, I'm super weird. I subscribe to both Instapundit (a right-wing blogosphere commentary and aggregator) and Mother Jones (one of the most left-wing publications around). I literally will see a piece of news break and both sides react completely differently. What is weird is that if you only listen to one side they sound completely reasonable. I went on a binge of just reading Mother Jones and found myself slowly starting to agree with everything they wrote. Previously I only knew about Instapundit and was becoming a hardcore Conservative. The net result is that now I can stand and see the merits and faults of both sides. I try to rationally understand and take seriously both positions. That makes things awkward.

To my liberal friends, I am a conservative. I will bring in points from the Right to counter their rhetoric. Especially when it starts getting pretentious with phrases like "How can anyone believe..." As it turns out, there are people out there who do believe that, and feel they arrived at said conclusion based on factual logical thought and evidence. Some may be ignorant of facts, but others have some legitimate bones to pick.

To my conservative friends, I am a liberal. I will drop-kick someone when they try to parrot an oversimplified talking point. No, liberals are not an evil conspiracy bent on making sure the working class is dependent on them. No that statistic is taken way out of context and doesn't account for the other underlying problems.

This odd position adds tension to relationships, often ends with the fiery avalanche of facts and figures I didn't know about, and generally isn't beneficial to most conversations.

In short, I tend to end up as that other guy. The one who either doesn't speak up or seems to always not be on your side. So unless a serious error arises and one side is doing all the talking, I'll let others do the fighting. Besides, it's hard to talk when your mouth is full of popcorn. And popcorn is delicious.

Stereotypes and Surprises

On a few occasions people have commented that they "didn't expect that" from me.

From my standard introductions, I fit the bill of a classic Asian nerd. I'm medium-to-short height, medium build, short black hair, wear glasses, young looking, not especially ripped (read: weakling), I work at Intel, I have an advanced college degree, I play games, and know quite a bit about lots of things. Sounds like the perfect classical Asian nerd. Knowing this, it should follow that I also know about the latest tech, tend to have the newest gadgets, can be counted on to do quick mental math, always texting, am handy with computers, play an instrument, have conservative values, tend to be socially reserved, don't do any sports, stay at home a lot, know my native language, not understand social norms, always eat rice, scored a perfect score on the SAT, play DDR, and put forth a smile no matter what. Sure some of those are true, but not all of them.

At first glance, I easily fall into a stereotype. I know many of my friends fall into similar stereotypes. You've got ripped jocks. You have delicate beautiful girls. You have quiet giants. You have charismatic business men. From a glance, you can categorize most people and get quite a lot right. After all, stereotypes have an element of truth to them. Plus, once they realize they fit in a stereotypical grouping, we naturally tend to gravitate towards fulfilling those expectations. If you already go to the gym and are complimented on how strong you are, you realize that is a unique and valuable feature and continue to get stronger by going to the gym and living that lifestyle. If you are known as the pretty girl you tend to reinforce that notion and add to that valuable commodity through style, make-up, and careful diets. (This is why you should compliment kids on their hard work and not on innate ability. The former develops their desire to keep trying harder challenges and pushing their limits. The latter causes them to seek simple tests and maintain a high score.)

But that doesn't mean the stereotype encompasses everything. We used to have a saying that in Mudd West were the destructive explosive people, South was the quiet people, North were the Beer pong players, and East was where the nerds of the nerds went. I happened to live in East, and after telling this anecdote to the tour groups I'd shrug and say so. Considering I am a rather well-adjusted geek who had just led them on a tour through half of the campus, I hoped some would realize not all nerds and geeks are stuck in their parent's bedrooms and unable to socialize.

Similarly, sometimes I can surprise people who only think of the stereotyped Asian nerd. For example, I have been told I'm quite competent at dancing (I still think I'm crap). This doesn't fit in the classic socially awkward stereotype they have in their mind. Or when I pick up on certain subtle social cues. And those times when I just put it on the line and act completely silly and outrageous. Or surprise people on something I know about the styles and mannerisms of women. These all seem abnormal to people who only know me as an Asian nerd.

Yet we all use stereotypes to categorize others. Even without meeting people we make snap judgements based on how they look and carry themselves. Oh, that girl has a short spiky hair style, she must be a firecracker. Probably lots of fun but you might get tired out if you pursue her and can't keep up the energy level. That guy is wearing a sports jersey. Probably follows the teams, knows lots of facts, might drink lots of beer and probably plays a sport if he's ripped. If not, maybe he's a frat boy. That carries its own load of benefits and stigmas. Oh that guy is wearing skinny jeans and has some tattoos. Gotta be a hipster listening to his hipster music and silently judging us all ironically. Snap decisions just from a glance and we think we know all about them. And once we get hard labels it gets worse as our biases start to leak out. That person identifies Republican? Must be closed off in their own little world of delusions and hates gays. Also, evil incarnate, delusional, ill-informed, or a combination of the above.

And this isn't restricted to personality types and moral value systems. Perfect example is age. At first glance some might think I'm as young as 16. But others have guessed I'm as old as 30 based on my behavior. Or based on someones car what their driving style is. Or their income bracket. Apparently, since I have a Masters degree, I make over $100,000 annually.

Personally, I try to surprise people. Let them think what they want. If they want to know the truth, they'll ask me or find out if they hang around enough (sidenote: ask me a straight question and I will give an honest answer). And perhaps eventually they'll realize I'm not what they expect and start to see me as a unique individual. Someone who can pull a 180 and surprise people. Someone who isn't what he seems at first glance. I like to think I have a few surprises still.

So why then do I feel it is OK to place labels and stereotypes on others?

Try meeting people and seeing them for who they are. Your gut profiling might get you a few traits right, but be prepared to be surprised by the rest.

On My Mind: Social Investments

In the continuing vein of maximizing your return on time investment Wait. That's never been a theme you idiot.

Shush voice in my head.

Anyways, I have lived much of my life roughly according to the following: "if you are awesome enough, people will naturally be attracted to you." Or, another way of putting it, your natural state should be able to make people interested. Be yourself. And if being yourself = being awesome, you are a winner. This has the underlying assumptions that 1) people are naturally interested in cool/interesting people and 2) organically grown "natural" relationships are the best.

The first one makes a lot of sense at face value. I certainly like hanging around interesting people. They tend to make life interesting.

It's the second reason that can be a bit of a trap. On one hand, you don't want to force fake relationships. Being someone you are not, hiding behind a mask, is not healthy and can lead to some very unhappy moments. Plus you either will always have a barrier up (not conducive to deep relationship and trust me people will pick up on it), will have to work really hard to maintain the persona for an extended period of time through a variety of complicated situations (hint, really hard), or eventually somehow morph into that person (hint, really freakin' hard). So don't go around trying to please people, you have to be yourself. On the other hand, taking things "naturally" means to some a very passive approach to relationships. You just be yourself and "let the win roll in" as it were. People who are worth it and like me will naturally flock to me and I just have to wait for them to come.

Just FYI, that's complete and utter crap. You're complete crap Not now dangit.

People may care about how naturally awesome you are. We get interested and wowed by athletes and brilliant minds and smooth talkers. But as detailed in this article they are even more interested in whether you will invest in their lives. If you are not interested in them, then most people are not interested in you.

I mean, let's face it. Why would I expect people to come and ask me to hang out if I never ask them? If I continually say I have a scheduling conflict why would they keep inviting me to events? If I never put effort into a relationship, a sharing of a life, then why expect someone else to put theirs out in the open? Because I'm just that awesome and if-only-they-took-the-time-to-find-out-the-real-me and

yeah right.

The best way of showing how awesome you are is to spend time and share things/experiences/thoughts. Investing in others causes them to open up. And when they open up, they will share about themselves. And if you have commonalities, you can share that part of your life too. And the reciprocation cycle becomes a positive feedback loop. A lot better than waiting for them to ask about your awesomeness that you keep hidden behind a mask of boredom. This is why commonalities naturally form the basis of relationships and friendships. And hatedom like I hate you STOP THAT

Granted, investing in yourself is also good. As many previous posts show I am a huge advocate of self-improvement. But just investing in yourself and expecting the rest of the world to automatically want to be your friend is silly. Why? Because it is rare people will ever find out about your awesome secret skill set. It's kinda a secret. You can't keep charging admission to get a glimpse of "who you really are". People will naturally just head to the attraction that not only doesn't charge an entry fee but gives out free ice cream and hugs to boot.

In short, don't expect people to take time to find out about the "real you" if you don't put in the time to find out the "real them." If you're looking for maximum friendship for your time, invest it in other people instead of yourself. It's more about value added than value extracted. Be the most awesome listener your friends know.


Now if you'll excuse me I have to go beat up myself.

Don't let him get away with this! Call the police! He's a deranged schizophrenic stupid meanie face! HELP! HEL

Right Advice at the Right Time

It's funny how advice seems to contradict itself.

"Just be yourself! If they can't handle you, they're not your real friends and you deserve better."

"Sometimes you have to make sacrifices for the sake of friendship and change for the better."

Hoooo boy.

Don't get me wrong, I am all for people being themselves. At the same time, I also am for self-improvement and for people to be considerate and not complete douche bags. Sometimes you just gotta sit someone down and change them. And yet you shouldn't change people. Letting them be who they are is real acceptance! We all want people to accept us for who we are, so be a great friend and accept others!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH

Obviously the real answer is kinda in-between. If someone is down and out and needs a buddy, cheer them up and accept them for who they are. If someone is being a pretentious jerk, you politely pull them aside and take them down a notch. It all comes down to context.

Here is another classic example. "Give to the poor" and "Help the poor help themselves." Obviously you should help those less fortunate than yourself. I hope we can agree on that. But you don't want to just solve all their problems or else they could become dependent. So, where do you draw the line? Unfortunately, we are really, really good at simplified epitaphs (and arguing about them, see politics) and really crummy at figuring out the in-between point. At what point do you stop simply giving stuff away and start weening them towards self-sufficiency?

At what point do you stop just receiving and start giving to a community?

When do you draw the line between bending backwards to make amends and putting your foot down?

How do you discern the inflection between taking an active role in pouring out resources to making sure you take care of yourself?

What are the signs that you should keep off the knee versus power through and strengthen it?

No idea. I guess that's just something you learn and apply case-by-case.

The world isn't black-and-white, it's full of color.



PS: From my new favorite blog:

A lot of the time people think I’m saying you should be yourself, and that’s not exactly what I’m trying to express.  The idea that you should be yourself gives off this whole negative thought process endowed by laziness and staying in one place, not pursuing something more.  That’s not what I believe.  I believe in growth.  Growth is beautiful.

The Awesomeness of Community

I wrote a post on Wednesday and scheduled it up to be posted today. It was quite depressing (but hopefully insightful), and maybe I'll post it some other time.

On Thursday I went to work and wasn't feeling all that great. A little give-and-take of the goods and the bads, but still feeling down.

That evening instead of the usual Fusion group at church, there were two events. One at the church at 6pm and another fairly far away at 7pm. For perspective, normally the trip to church takes around 30 minutes. To get to the other event would take around 45 minutes. That's a lot of driving for some ancillary event that I wasn't really crazy interested in.

During the day I was busy and felt tired and thought to myself, "maybe I should just skip it all today, go home, eat some dinner, and waste time online or something. Things aren't going great, and do I really want to spend all that time driving out to an event and then driving back and all that gas money and blah blah blah."

But, at the end of the day, I thought to myself: why not. Would sure beat moping by myself at home playing silly games.

So I got out of work around 6pm. Too late to make the first event. Besides, that required signing up online and I hadn't gotten around to that. So I got in my car and started out to Rocklin. As I've previously mentioned, I often do some of my weirdest introspective thinking while driving or biking. So I struggled with some things and plotted out some other things and analyzed whether it was all my fault. Got in, parked, found the building, and got a seat.

For context, the event was Francis Chan giving a light talk with a Q&A. For those who know nothing about him (like I did prior to this event), he's a fairly dynamic speaker in Christian groups. He's written a few very successful books. He's pastoring a church in San Francisco specifically targeting training and raising up disciples who, if necessary, could stand on their own and learn from the Bible independently. He has quite the backstory and is very insightful on a variety of topics. Several times he would talk about going back and reading through the Bible to check and try to figure out if he had made a mistake in interpretation when presented with new arguments.

Overall, it was good. There were a lot of very challenging points. He shared some very interesting stories and said some very smart things. And while it was very good and helped reset me a bit, that's not the point of this post.

All this setup is to talk about the others who showed up. The banter before and after. Having people around that were willing to share their thoughts, talk about their lives, and were interested in your life and well-being. Even though some of them I had only met a few times, and one I met the first time that night, in the span of a few minutes we were open and willing to share.

And that really healed me.

To know that there were people that didn't keep me around for my abilities. Seeing in action people that cared about each other and who cared about you. Not just a few smiles and handshakes and saying "how are you?" without really caring. Honestly talking about what they thought, some of their personal struggles. Asking about what was going on and bantering about locale eateries. But it wasn't surface sharing of information. It wasn't "look what I know." It was in the context of people caring about each other, and caring about me.

And that's incredible.

If you are not part of a community that does this yet, you really, really need to find one. It has pulled me out of so many funks. I more often than not leave with a little extra spring in my step and a happier outlook on life. It enables me to try again after the fifteenth failure.

That's not to say it doesn't fail sometimes. There have been days I went, looking for a little taste of community, and only got friendly smiles. There have been moments when I felt myself or those around me only showboating trying to get in their thoughts so that others would think better of them. Trying to be an amazing community all the time takes effort! From all the members involved! But at its core if you care about others and they care about you it can flow naturally.

So, I heartily recommend plugging into and contributing to a community. Not a social group. Not a forum. Not a group of people who share an interest. A community that lives and breathes and builds each other up and pours out their life into each other. Because it's amazing.

How Informed Are You?

As I mentioned in a previous post, confirmation bias is a serious problem. It is the effect of paying attention to information and evidence that reinforces your beliefs, and dismissing ones that don't. This has been exacerbated recently with the internet where we can easily search for stories that help reinforce our viewpoint. It is accelerating as our searches are custom-tailored to our tastes, allowing us to start to live in a bubble of information that we find pleasing.

So, perhaps as a rational smart person you'd rather be "right" instead of being lead by the nose down a path by your own delusions. Great! Time to look at both sides, right? Walk a mile in someone else's shoes! Well, then you should start gathering information that is in opposition to your views. If you're a liberal, start reading conservative blogs and articles. If you're a Christian, get some atheist literature, or Muslim literature, or something else besides the feel-good Christian stuff.

Minor problem. There is a high chance that being exposed to contrary information will just make you dig in your heels even more. Oops.

So, let's assume you want to be well informed on both sides of the arguments and be able to make a correct decision based on all the facts. As a result you start gathering information from both sides, and are now surrounded by the different sides. But, you now also know you will probably sabotage yourself by dismissing the opposition. How do we get around this?

Well, there are two steps. The first is to seriously empathize with the opposition. Try to understand that as crazy as they may sound to you, it is highly likely they sound completely sane to themselves. It is a rare event that people will intentionally lie to you. No, there isn't a liberal conspiracy in the media nor a conservative conspiracy to make all businesses crush humanity. No those soundbites of tactics you heard from that one person isn't about brainwashing people. The majority of people are honest individuals. Except politicians. They're all liars.

This means that you actually read the articles and listen carefully and try to understand the underlying reasons behind the piece. Don't look for flaws in their logic. Don't Google for your side's response. Carefully step into their shoes and try to understand why they would say the things they say. And do not do this for the purpose of undermining their reasoning. Assuming someone said these things because they're crazy or deluded is a horrible system. They may be self-deluded, but there must be a reason for the delusion and a method to the madness. Be careful that you do not assume people are just misinformed or stupid. You end up just feeding your own confirmation bias. Instead, give a concerted effort to understand them, to get inside their head, and assume they arrived at their position by rational means. Thinking "they must have been tricked and deluded themselves, how sad and I pity them" only puts their argument at a lower standing than yours, and that is not the point of this exercise. The point is to realize when your own bias can be blinding you to the answer.

The second step is to keep bombarding yourself until you are uncomfortable. If you truly are considering the opposition's stance, you should feel very uneasy. Our minds do not like trying to hold two opposing views in tension, so if you start to feel discomfort hold on to that feeling, it means you are taking both sides seriously. If you are not in a constant state of pain and discomfort about your views and the views of those around you, you might be sliding into a confirmation bias fueled complacency or have built yourself a nice bubble.

Gosh, this all sounds really hard! You expect me to not only take the time to research both sides, but to then analyze the thinking behind them, try to become those people, and be in a constant state of discomfort about my own views? This is super lame! And exactly why people are building bubbles for themselves.

For my own part, taking this route has yielded me some very interesting changes. I used to think I was a slightly conservative person, but still very moderate. Now, I know just how insulated I had become. I have reversed my views on several issues, and can now defend either side of several debates. It is a funny thing when I enter into a debate and end up fighting against both sides. Frankly I take it as a sign that I must be doing something right. Now, I won't say I am completely "right". That kind of claim is foolish. And I'm sure several of my friends see me as either too conservative or too liberal or just too plain stupid. But I have actually come to enjoy standing somewhere close to the middle. It is an unfortunately shrinking region these days, but I hope others will join me.

About Me: Self-Improvement

When you look around the dating scene, often times people will ask "what's your type?" Most will respond with a laundry list of parameters of their ideal mate, and specific red flags of people they won't mesh with at all. Then people will follow through with several stories about who would and wouldn't work, or that one time with the really bad date who wasn't up to snuff.

I do have a relatively small, lax list for my requirements (it's mildly tongue-in-cheek at the start), but that's not the point of this post. What I wanted to talk about here is turning those lists back on to yourself.

Many times behind closed doors people will complain about how silly those other people are. You know the ones. Those who think it's always everyone else's fault. It's their fault they didn't have the backbone to ask you out. Why is everyone around me such jerks? How could you be so stupid to miss that detail and ruin our whole project! I'm pretty sure you're one of these complainers. I know I often complain about everyone else. But how often do you look at yourself and wonder if it's your fault? That perhaps if you were a little different, perhaps if you explained things better, perhaps if you were more caring things could work out better?

This is the kind of evaluation I'm talking about. Here's a quick example.

I often play online games with some friends. We learned these games in college, and have since progressed to a modicum of competency. Since we play on the same team, we share the awesome victories and gripe about the defeats. I will say I am definitely the weakest player on our team at this point. And many times I end up being the weak link that loses us the game because I didn't play my character properly or I lost our lane or I didn't save our more important teammates when I was supposed to. But heck, I've been playing this game for over 6 years! I'm relatively competent! It was just that our opponents were too good! It's because they came and put so much pressure on us, there was nothing I could do! It's not all MY fault. Right?

Sounds nice. Maybe helps ease my ego and the fact I let down my team. But it's not the truth. The truth is most of the time I screw it up. And I continue to lag as the rest get better because I don't put in the time to learn from better players, to follow the latest trends in the game, and increase my skills.

As an aside: that's not to say my teammates should have free reign at pointing out every single instance I screwed up. After all, if it's my fault, I should get all the blame and every pointer to expose every time I messed it up so I can learn and do better next time. Right? Well, perhaps, but please do it with some compassion. I know in my head it's my fault already, no need to kick me while I'm down.


Let's bring it back to dating.

Everyone has their list of wants. But how many people evaluate how well they fit others' lists? Can you say that you're caring? That you're honest and trusting? Will to put the others' needs above your own? Are you interested in investing into their lives? Or are you just a giant vacuum of wants and needs and only interested in locking in a wonderful prize who will serve you and make your life complete? Do you measure up to your own list of credentials you want in your dating partner?

I'm not saying go out and remake yourself. Being someone you're not just to attract your imaginary perfect ideal person can make you miserable as you try to maintain the lie. Unless you do it enough it becomes who you are. But that's a whole other can of worms on whether people can change or not.

Anyways, I've rambled on enough here. Point being, don't be that person who just gripes about everyone else. Take a few moments every now and then and apply your list of positive and negatives to yourself and see how you stack up. And be honest. You know you're not perfect, I know I'm not perfect, so find some stuff to improve on and become a little bit more the person you want to be around.

Infatuation with Stories

I think I have a slight infatuation with stories.

I really enjoy telling them and hearing/reading them. Often times, it doesn't even need to be that great of a story to get me hooked.

There are times they get tedious. Or really obvious. At which point I can stop. And this applies to TV series too. I dropped out mid-season of several shows that had connecting storylines mostly because I got bored/pissed/annoyed.

I'm not sure why this is true.

Telling stores is a little obvious. I get to control the mood and timbre of things. I also enjoy sharing. And sometimes it's the only way to keep the silence away. I'm perfectly willing to fill conversation gaps with my voice if needed and then back off the instant someone interjects. I also enjoy the crafting elements and making it all flow together. Best of all when you can describe something super complex elegantly and to someone who didn't expect they'd understand, i.e. most engineering I do.

Hearing stories perhaps hearkens to middle school and high school. There was an element of control, things would resolve, good triumphs, etc. Gave a nice balance to my otherwise hectic life. I could spend an entire day wrapped up in another world, breathing it in, and forgetting the reality around me.

Even the narrative of simple things intrigue me. The stories of game development, simple faux pas events, or the crafting of a meal.

Are other's the same?

Basis of Attraction

I blame one of my female friends for asking pointed questions which then forced me to resolve my views on this topic. You know who you are.

Let's talk for a moment about attraction/dating/relationships. Or, more accurately, my views on them. Feel free to fill the comments section with your own opinions.

For this post, I am focusing on what attributes of a female attract my interest. These roughly fall into two categories.

First, we have the logical ideal woman. This is from years of hearing about what is good for a relationship, things I find desirable, etc. The double-talk list is as follows:

• Intelligent.
• Stable, but willing to change and learn.
• Reserved, but not closeted nor reclusive.
• Energized, but not over-the-top.
• Responsible, but not meddling.
• Humble, but not subservient.
• Stand up for what she believes in, but willing to concede if proven wrong.
• Pretty, but not vain.

You get the picture. =p

Then, there are things that I pick up on when I first meet a girl that instantly hit me in the gut. Logical reasons be damned.

One of the notables is passion and skill. I have a particular weak point for musically talented individuals. Probably because of how many years I've sunk into my own musical skills (with subpar results) and how much music affects me. This is especially true if she can sing and/or play piano/keyboard. Also, being passionate about what they do is key. Just having skill is one thing, and typically the category I fall into. Taking your skills to a whole new level is exciting and definitely draws me to the person. Dunno why, but this is all an instant attention grabber for me.

Another would be a common interest such as games. It's one of the major venues that I can spend oodles of time on, especially when playing with other people. I have literally walked into rooms knowing no one, then played a few games with people and we're buddies. Plus, I love discussing how to play them better and on designing better, interesting, and fair games. Other notables include things like anime, music (see above), faith, cooking, and whatever else.

Ironically while looks can help, they don't have quite the same internal instinctive draw for me. This might be due to self-training and constantly telling myself to look for character over looks, but I'll leave the psychoanalysis for someone else. Don't get me wrong, a girl wearing some seriously elegant or well-thought outfit with a body to match is very eye-catching. But it seems to trigger a different set of attraction than the aforementioned ones. Physical beauty and attraction are one things, but strong subtle gravitation is a totally different thing.

Anyways, typically the initial attraction leads to very fast "getting to know" phases, and levels out in favor of a more "logical" approach to candidacy. No surprise there for anyone. As everyone should already know, initial attraction isn't worth squat once you get to know the layers of the person and whether or not you're actually compatible and willing to commit to being in for the long-term. And then things start getting complicated.

Is Moddability Required?

PC Gamers like to bitch and moan about some very specific things. We complain about bad ports. We complain about not getting content. We complain about DRM.

One of the oddest complaints though is about moddability and dedicated servers.

It's a good complaint given our history. Great games like Half-Life provided gamers not only with a solid game, but also the tools to make their own content. This led to not only customizations but even led to some of the biggest game changers in the industry. Counter-Strike, Team Fortress, Civilization 5's development team, and many more are the direct result of gamers getting into the guts of a game, making new and innovative features, and then sending them along to the playerbase.

It jives very well with the PC Gamer's mentality. We are hardwired to try and get the most out of our money no matter what. We overclock our hardware. We demand games to last 40+ hours of exciting gameplay for our $50. And that is besides having a competitive and fun multiplayer to boot. We really truly are greedy. And so mods were awesome. You already own the game, now enjoy this mod which takes the game and makes it better, or maybe even makes a whole new game. And sometimes that new game even is more successful than the original.

Truly we have a rich history of modding and control. Not only do we make whole new game types, but we also tweak our servers to cater to specific desires. If the original online multiplayer didn't have persistent stats, we added them in. If we wanted to let players purchase reserved slots so they could always join by kicking a non-paid member, we added it in. If we wanted to change the game to one-shot kills, infinite grenades, and the ability to fly, we modded it in.

However, I think we may have reached a turning point.

With the rise of digital distribution, we now have outlets to sell smaller, less polished, nuggets of games. Games that only last a few hours and priced at $5 are available to mass consumption. Before, the only way to get your game out was through forums, downloads, and your rewards were accolades of praise and the occasional donations. Now, you can sell instantly. Also, indie games are well cataloged and tracked in order to be sold. The modding community lacks the same kind of structure universally with only a few select ever making headlines, and typically these are only for first-person shooters. Indie games show up on front pages of Steam, the largest digital distributor of PC games. Mods of varying quality show up every now and then in a magazine.

We have reached saturation of games. There are more games available than you can ever play, even if you're a dedicated game tester. So, everyone must now be judicious about what they purchase. What little time they still have has to be spread over several releases. Gone is the time when one game would rule as king for several months. Now there are block buster games sold every month of the year, and lots of smaller games every day. And that's just for the PC. Many people also play on other systems, such as their iPhone, Nintendo DS, XBox, Wii, PlayStation, browser Flash games, Facebook, and many others. Do you need your game to last you six months? Not really, there's plenty of other games to take its place.

We have reached the point where tools and standalone engines are commonplace. You don't need to own a game on the iPhone before you can play the next Tower Defense game. You don't need a game to develop a new game for the iPhone. You register as a developer, download the tools, and start building. Similarly, the Unity Engine, Unreal Development Kit (UDK), and many other platforms allow you to rapidly build a game within an engine and then send it out as a standalone package independent of other games. Even more amazing is how quickly anyone can build a game using these tools. I remember hacking around in the StarCraft World Editor and just trying to build a basic Chess game. It took me over a week of hard work. Now I could build something similar in a day using these tools. It is astonishing how robust and easy to use for quick design these tools are.

The average gamer is not some punk in the basement. It's everyone from 5-year olds to grandparents. Very few will ever step foot in a forum, do the research to find a mod, and most can't even be hassled to apply patches let alone the 5 step process to install a mod and check for compatibility between mods. The visibility of mods is rapidly dimishing in proportion to the growing gamer player base. While extremely vocal, often time the forumites are the smallest minority yet.

More and more games are coming out with little to no mod support period. The vast majority will only include something simple like a map editor, but no deep set of tools to retailor the engine to your whims. As long as players can make their own maps and maybe add a few cute features, we appear to be satisfied as long as we get patches and new features are promised.

All of these factors in my mind spell an end to modding as a driving requirement for games. Instead, all the great modders have realized they can just build their game using other tools and sell it for money. Using moddability as a requirement for longevity is a joke for the majority of games. Gamers move on within the month, and there is no revenue in mods, just a happier (and very small and select) forum fanbase.

There will still be a place for mods. Great mods still appear and shake up the world. See things like Portal: Prelude which shook the community. A recent mod Nehrim for Oblivion is gorgeous and adds so much to the game. Gamers continue to create patches for "unfinished" games like Vampires: The Masquerade, Knights of the Old Republic 2, and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. It is also still a hot bed for beginners to mess around and being adding new items and small tweaks to the content. However, as a driving force, as something that developers should strive to include, I see little merit anymore. There are better, more profitable ways for up and coming game developers to break into the market. There is higher visibility and more investors awaiting in the indie scene. And the innovation for the past year hasn't come from modders but from small independent developers making their own unique engines, game mechanics, and visuals. They didn't start with a foundation besides their ideas. Why burden them with learning the way your game did things when they can just make their own system?

Truly the only reason to have mod support is to satisfy the annoying group who keep complaining about not having enough control over their own game. And slowly they are getting drowned out in the noise.

Hindsight: HMC's Caustic Environment and the Downfall of Crack

I must first note that I truly loved my time at Harvey Mudd College. I still recommend it as an excellent school, I still look back fondly on my time there, and I wouldn't change what I did there for anything. However, I recently have come to the conclusion that its community is going about things the wrong way.

Arriving my freshman year we were greeted with a variety of things. New roommates. New classes. Tradition and scheduling and alcohol and games and projects that would suck your soul and professors who did AMAZING things.

One thing I gravitated towards was something called Crack in the AC. This is a LAN party held every weekend in the Academic Computing Labs. We played a game called Natural Selection in those days, a very complicated RTS/FPS blended game with Marines and Aliens and tech trees and buildings and jetpacks. It was amazing. The first time I went, I had no idea what I was doing, but I had a blast. I decided then and there I was going to get good at that game and hang out with these people. I even aspired to be as good if not better than a particular gamer Manxome at commanding, to kill Prions repeatedly, and lead my team to victory every game.

I eventually took over leadership of running the event. However, over my four years at HMC I noticed we progressively had less and less people at these weekly gatherings. There was always a resurgence at the beginning of a year, but quicker and quicker people would stop showing up until in the later weeks we just didn't play due to lack of players.

I pondered for the longest time why, and came up with a few reasons.

First, one change I had made was to allow the legendary alums to play with us. I opened up the game server to the internet. While this did provide us with an additional 5-10 players initially, many our friends from years past, it also had the effect of splitting up the people. You no longer were all in the same room, you couldn't shout at the top of your lungs and have everyone hear you. That sense of comradery, the antics that occurred every week, were now missing. Not to mention it was frustrating to communicate with those not in the room via text chat.

Secondly, games moved away from being PC centric. Students would often spend their nights huddled in their rooms around a console instead with their close friends. Why go to a PC LAN party? I don't play PC games!

A really big problem was aging hardware. Trying to play some of the more advanced games were difficult with low framerates, stutters, and crashes. So, some students eventually stopped coming to the labs and just played from their rooms on their personal gaming rigs, and sometimes the effects showed as they curbstomped those actually in the labs.

We lost a core group of gamers to really invigorate others to join in. Without a strong core set of players who were always there and always eager to play until 2am, you didn't have a sense of wanting to join them.

We started earlier and so ended earlier. It became common for people to bow out at midnight instead of at 2am since we started at 9pm instead of 10pm. These short spurts of games instead of epic long streaks hurt the community feeling.


But perhaps greatest of all were the "competitive" gamers.

We began to have more and more players who would practice and become exceedingly good at games. This would be at first glance a great thing. Now you can be on the team of an amazingly dominating player! However, the downsides were plentiful. Complaints about losing due to team imbalance grew exponentially. Getting angry at teammates for doing "stupid" things. The feeling of never being able to get to their level. And the worst was these competitive gamers would usually only play games they were good at, making them sporadic attendees, and often they only wanted to play and not spend time helping others unless it helped them win.

This didn't dawn upon me until later, but I think it highlights something very crucial about the HMC community. It is full of people competing.

Now, HMC's community is actually quite nice in comparison to the majority of schools. It tends to be supportive and helpful and no one is ever cutthroat. Collaborative work is a hallmark of assignments and projects. We are highly encouraged to give aid and ask for help when we get stuck. The Honor Code means we all trust each other with our stuff and even our lives at times.

However, there is an undertone of performance is superiority. If you are not noteworthy in a certain area, you simply are not noteworthy.

This leads to a very strong urgency to prove yourself and perform well. Also, you must be evaluated fairly. So, when you do fail, perhaps it was someone else's fault, and you MUST point that out or else someone might think you're inferior to what you really are.

One of the most common and prevalent ways to do this is to "complain" about how much work you have, the misery you've experienced, and how little sleep you have. In reality, it's more like boasting. I had to work myself through two papers, an all-night MATLAB assignment, AND get thesis done this week. But it's complaining. It's a call for sympathy. It's a call for look at how much my life sucks but I've done it anyways. I am downtrodden, beaten, and so I deserve your attention and respect. Oh my bleeding heart.

Also, if you were an expert, it was your duty to correct others and point out their mistakes. You moron, you don't do it that way! You're smarter than that! Sure you are "helping" correct the mistake and "encouraging" them that they could have found it themselves, but are you really helping? They know the right answer, but feel silly that they didn't realize it. You are so much smarter than me!

It may sound innocuous at first, but I seriously bought into it. It drove me into a very strong sense of cynicism. I was never good enough, look at all my gaping wounds, woe is me. You moron, why'd you do something stupid like that? And only recently was I able to identify it and try to change my perspective.

I admit it was not of my own amazing perceptive powers, nor is the change easy. I have the people at Catalyst to thank, especially M.Robbins who pointed this out to me. So now I continually work on looking not for failures but instead for things I can praise and affirm as being awesome. Positive reinforcement instead of negative reprimand. Affirmation instead of tearing people down, including to myself.

That isn't to say you just gloss things over. Truth in love is a phrase thrown around in church to mean when you sometimes have to tell those you love the hard truth about what's going on and how they have hurt themselves or you or others. But you don't come down on their heads in public with harsh words and censure and make them defensive and unwilling to change. You approach the problem with care, with love, affirmation for what they do right, and guidance on how to change what is wrong. It takes a lot of effort, care, and practice to get right, but you put in that effort because you care about the recipient.


This is not a problem isolated to HMC. I see this occurring everywhere. It's easy to just complain and fish for sympathy from your peers. It's easy to complain about what's going on in politics and the economy. It is hard to do something positive about it. And that is my challenge for myself and for you: to do the hard but better thing.

The Chinese Method I Experienced

Initial reading

I realize this is quite some time since this article, but I thought I'd throw in some stuff on the topic.

NOTE: I am 3rd generation Chinese and 4th generation Japanese. Therefore, I am not a fount of knowledge on direct Chinese nor Japanese methods.

As per usual, this is rough draft writing. I rarely edit things.

I was raised with one basic tenant: do your best.

This applies to many things. Do your best academically. Do your best musically. Apply yourself in a reasonable manner. This meant that getting things like Bs were typically unacceptable.

I did quite well for myself. I took 9 AP tests and got 5s on the majority of them. I made it into Harvey Mudd College and graduated in 4 years. I was accepted into a Masters program and will begin work at Intel in the summer. I took about 13 years of piano lessons, threw in a few years of private flute lessons, was Flute section leader in Band and was known for my excellence in drill downs, musicianship, and leadership. I founded several clubs, played tennis, did basketball with the church team through middle school. I was active in church, joining the A/V team, participating at various functions, helping play for the orchestra at a variety of events. I was well-read for my age, scoring pretty good scores on the SAT. Overall, from an academic perspective, I did pretty well.

My parents had to crack the whip a few times. I was not allowed to not practice piano during the week. If I received low scores there were shakes of the head and threats to ban certain things. Groundings were not uncommon for my sibling when things were out of line or major mishaps had occurred. I often had a feeling that I had to live up to my parents' expectations of me, and wound myself up even harder.

Now, before people start yelling about how cruel and heartless this system is, you need to understand the underlying parts of this method of raising kids. I think the WSJ piece played up the more controversial part, which is that you push and push them into excellence. However, that's not completely true, at least in my case.

My parents were also very in tune with what our capabilities were. If for example I had a very tough teacher, as long as I did my best a B was acceptable. When I headed to college they didn't check up on my grades since they knew they had pounded into me a solid work ethic, and now I had to stand or fall on my own. They understood when I had too much work in one area and so I could relax on something else, like a chore or practicing the piano.

Similarly, my brother is a very different person from me. He's a more "artsy" person. As a result, it wasn't expected for him to be the peak of academics. He didn't get to slack though. There were many times when my parents would come back from a parent conference or see a report card and blast him for getting a B in math. No, he is perfectly capable of getting an A. He got them usually by the end. He was just slacking.

Back to differences! I mentioned I did piano for 13 years. For those playing at home, that means I started at 5 years old. Through my senior year of high school. Please do NOT ask me to come play at your wedding, because I'm pretty bad. However, contrast this to my brother. He quit piano before High School even began. He instead picked up drums and guitar. Oh yeah. Really my parents didn't ming if I made it to my senior year. They were content that I had some music in my system by then. However, I stuck it out just so I could have a super special Senior Recital. My brother just decided nope and did other things.

And that was perfectly OK.

You see, the trick to the Chinese method is to expose and push them at the things they enjoy and you know they can do. I was sent to a variety of sports camps over the summers to sports I was horrible at, like baseball. I was a constant attendee of Science Camps. However, you don't arbitrarily push forever and ever. Or rather, you shouldn't. Instead, while kids don't know what's best for them you assert your authority and make them do things that pay off in the end. Those piano lessons? Totally worth it. I had a really fun time with the recital, it was quite the ego booster to get some awesome scores, and the training has really come in handy. There are fewer better ways to impress people (especially ladies) than being able to bust out music skillz. Well, I guess dancing works too.

I mentioned that I played basketball for a while. I admit, I was complete crap at it, as many can attest. However, I was kinda forced to do it. If there is anything I disliked the most, it was probably the basketball. Mostly because I never applied myself to get good, and so I was never that good, and so I kinda just hung around. When I hit High School, I flat out dropped. And my parents were cool with that.

You see, the problem comes when they start to exert forces when the child is completely able to survive on their own. I have a few friends who suffer from this now. One commented that they had achieved everything their parents had asked for, specifically financial success in a solid job. So, the parents could go shove it. I was frankly surprised that their parents were still meddling to that degree even after college. My parents like to know what I'm up to, and like to be involved, but I rarely feel like they're meddling. It's more of an offered hand of help. Meddling pretty much ended around High School.

That doesn't mean they weren't active in my life. In High School they helped shuttle me to all the events, they were integral components in the Band, they helped me decide on a college. This wasn't meddling, this was enabling. They went to every practice, every recital, every parent-teacher conference. They had an active hand in monitoring and cheering me on. There was constant, steady pressure to succeed, and they cheered me on every step of the way.

Contrast to what I saw with some of my other friends. The parents only showed up to crack the whip. When I went over to their house the parents just left us alone. My parents would always greet my guests, check if they needed any food or drinks. I've heard stories about parents who tried to pigeonhole their kids into what they believed the archetype required for "success" as the kid went kicking and screaming.

Again, I did not have any of this. I was encouraged to explore what I wanted, and when I found them I was expected to full my full effort into it.

Granted, as I stated at the beginning, I do not have a purely traditional FOB mother. My father is Japanese. My parents are Christian. We lived in the suburbs of LA. My story is not that of a super-powered-chinese-or-die growing up. I ate a combo of Chinese, Japanese, Mexican, American, Italian, and pretty much everything diet, not rice every night. I am perhaps NOT the typical Chinese upbringing.

Which perhaps is comforting. It means I was able to reap the amazing benefits of the style. I pushed myself to do things I didn't think I could do. I have skills that I am amazingly thankful I have. I have a very strong relationship with my parents because I know they care about me and want what's best for me. However, I don't have the negatives. The sometimes meddling mother. The injured feeling that I don't control my fate. The rebellion that I am merely a product of parental tinkering and not my own exploration.

It means the system can work.

Obligations

Ha, anyone miss me? No? Cool.

Was just thinking about something and thought I should write it down. Commence unedited garble.

I noticed that in general people pick up on obligations. If someone got you a Christmas Card, it is standard procedure to add them to your giant list of people who need to get your Christmas Card next year (assuming you didn't have any spares on hand to distribute). Similarly, if someone does something nice and considerate, often times this is repaid in a similar gesture.

There are of course partial exceptions to this rule. One recently mentioned is how women in bars tend to act. It is not uncommon for ladies to pay nothing for all their drinks for the night, instead relying on random bar goers treating them in exchange for some conversation time. Granted, most of these fellas are expecting a tad more than conversation, but that isn't a requirement. Did you know there are some women who go to bars simply for the free drinks with no intention of the after-party?

However, I mentioned to my parents this phenomenon and how it seems like certain groups are much more conscious of this. My mother is Chinese, and matter-of-factly replied that I was absolutely correct. In Chinese culture, you are expected to keep close tally of your debts. Being indebted to someone is something you should get out of quickly to prevent accruing more debts, and as a matter of courtesy. Also, in case you missed this amazing WSJ article from last week, you should read it and enjoy[1]. One of the key highlights is that in Chinese culture children are heavily indebted to their parents. They spend so much time and effort on you, you should return the favor in the form of respect, finances, and time especially as they get older. Similarly, I noticed that as we went out to eat with the family, the uncles would fight over the bills. One might treat the first time, then another would treat the next. If someone was doing better than the other, things would shift and the more well-to-do would forcibly take the bill to help watch out for the other family, but in general there was a subtext of tic-for-tat.

However, she pointed out, the Japanese are almost fanatical about this concept of debts. I recall several times when we had to write down what we received as gifts. This was not only for our benefit of writing Thank You notes, but also so that our parents could keep track of how much was spent on us by the Aunts and Uncles and so they could give similar amounts in return. If we got a $30 gift card, we had to make sure a $30 gift card was our response next time.

Granted, I am 4th generation Japanese, so maybe stuff has deviated a bit form being in America. Talking with the Japanese exchange student we have this month, I've learned a few things about how Japanese work in the homeland too. For example, it is still expected that the men take care of the ladies. This means picking up the tabs when the group goes out to eat, making sure to walk them home, protecting their honor, etc. Girls expect this though and so do not perform anything extra for their male companions. In some ways, this is an excellent arrangement. Men take the lead, act as guardians for the ladies. Good. Yay chivalry. On the flip side, you have to go out of your way to net yourself a girlfriend.

In America, I find it fun how sometimes people subconsciously pick up on this but not as consciously. For example, I'm sure many will gripe about that one person who always asks for things and never gives back. Or perhaps how one person tends to grab the checks. Or when you go out of your way for someone there should be some repayment. Yet we don't typically talk about the balance sheet of gifts between groups.

Ironically, while I consciously can spot these things and keep tallies in my mind, I've found I have no qualms about letting the scales tip a bit in the other person's favor. I've told a few people that one thing I desire is money. Not so I can spend it, but rather so I can give it away. When you live paycheck to paycheck, when a friend is in need it's hard to just toss some cash their way. When you have a nice buffer region, it's so much easier. Repayment? Don't usually need it. Even when buying joint gifts I may remind the person I bought a joint gift with to repay me perhaps once, and then never mention it again. More often than not I just forget. Money owed isn't important enough to me.

Anyways, those are just my ramblings.

[1] As a side note, I was not subjected to the pure form of this, nor do I 100% advocate this style as recorded in the article, but I do see the merit of the thinking. For example, I took piano lessons for 14 years. I am obviously not a concert pianist, but the skills I learned have come in handy a surprising number of times, and so I'm thankful I was subjected to the practicing and that my parents spent the money.

What is Love?

I recently was asked the question: what is love?

I honestly could not answer. I have never been in a dating relationship nor am I married, so I couldn't try to describe it from personal experience in those areas. Most of the love I have experienced is either via family or what I discern from other sources.

Historically the Greeks actually have four words for love. Storge is natural affection, typically between family members. Philia is for friendship and "brotherly love." Eros is passionate love, reserved for a desire. It covers dating and marriage, and is not necessarily sexual. Then there is Agape. This is true love. Not just mere attraction, but a deep unconditional commitment love. Modern Biblical scholars point out that Agape is used heavily in the Bible to describe the love of God has for us. For this discussion, let us focus on having Agape love.

Here are a few fall-back cliches about love from different realms:

• As a gamer: Love is a status flag you can be in with another character. You gain it probably by saying the right things and doing the right actions. You will have to show interest in the other person, but if you perform enough positive actions, they automatically fall for you.
• As a scientist: Love is the biochemical cocktail of emotions that are triggered via memory, circumstance, and self-designed conceptions of your environment. There may be ways to influence the reaction to another person via hormones, pheromones, and perhaps there are latent DNA encodings about what we feel are a good mate to fall in love with.
• As a philosopher: Love is a state of being. A connection perhaps. Or maybe it's a kind of disciplined reaction you train yourself to have in reaction to another particular person. It may be a kind of mystical force unknown yet by science. Perhaps the universe conspires to match certain individuals (soul mates). Or perhaps it's just jumbled hormones and we "settle" for someone we can obtain.
• As a romantic: Love is getting struck by lightning and falling back in love every day and every second.
• As a cynic: Love is random firings of your brain that get you in trouble.
• As a Christian: "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres." - 1 Corinthians 13:4-7. Also, "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life" - John 3:16.
• From the Cartoons:

• A friend's answer: "Love is an unconditional commitment to the good of another person."
• From the movies: "When you fall in love, it is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake, and then it subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots are become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part." - Captain Corelli's Mandolin
• From a Romantic Comedy: Love is something that just kinda happens but then the universe conspires against them.

It's a tricky question to say the least. Really we would like to think it's more than just emotions or that you can buy love by spending enough time and doing the right things. As a society we seem to enshrine love as one of those pure, good emotions that everyone should experience but so few get. It is also one of those emotions that we are allowed to get caught up and get lost within. It is definitely a good thing.

Yet for some reason it is really hard to nail down, at least in my mind, what love is. One problem is it is not just an emotion. You do not just feel love and get warm and fuzzy. Love has an action component. You are supposed to act out in love. You are supposed to engage with the person you love, and let the bond of love grow and prosper. It has investment and tangible results. Getting married and spending your life together is supposed to be the end result of love. You have to declare love. You don't have to declare, say, being happy. It is perfectly fine to keep being happy locked up inside. Yet love is supposed to have an outer appearance.

Even if we strip it down to just an emotion, it isn't a simple emotion. There is an underlying assumption that it can last. Real love weathers the good and the bad. It acts as a secure anchor. The solidity of love is what distinguishes it from just a passing fancy. However, it also has a very wild side to it. It can completely change your perspective on things, and sometimes make you do things that normally are neither healthy nor in your own best interest. Yet you do them anyways because you are in love. It is a common trope to give your life away in the name of love.

Then again, perhaps there isn't a perfect answer. Perhaps love really is what you make of it. It has so many facets it's really quite unique and plays out differently amongst different individuals.

I think for now I'll settle somewhere between my friend's definition and a deep emotional response. Then again, I'm sure actually falling in love one day will change my life's perspective.