This is written after reading Norm's post on Friday, April 23rd 2004, so if you want to read it in context go to plaristocrates.com and read that first. I'm writing it here since I consider it bad form to write long posts in other people's comments that aren't really replies (don't throw that back in my face, I know I do it on occasion).

In some ways it's encouraging to hear about a man who was strong enough to live and die by his beliefs. It is also scary. It is scary bacause I know that his beliefs and mine weren't the same.
My beliefs are vague and blurry at the edges, one of the centers around which they are formed is that I'm, if not wrong, probably not entirely right either. The same goes for other people, I don't take much on faith alone. This doen't mean that I don't have some firm ideas of what is wrong, but it's always easier to say that another person is wrong than coming up with what is actually right in any meaningful situation. So how do I stand against somebody who's so certain of what's right that he's willing to risk his life for it? Answer: I probably can't.
I don't know anything about Pat Tillman, had never heard or read his name before today and I still don't know more than what I read in Norm's blog and from that I have to admire him. But in general, people who see what is right without doubt worry me. Some will be closer to what I would consider right and some further away, some will be offended that I don't see things the same way.
The problem with my world view is that sometimes you have to make real choices. Choices are difficult when the foundation you base them on is little more than solidified mist. So I usually go for the easiest choice, I go to university instead of doing volunteer work for the Red Cross or something like that. This has led me to a point where I don't think I've ever really done anything very significant for another person. Does this make me self centered? Probably. But I wouldn't want to center my life around anybody else. Other people are important, my family and friends more so than people I don't know, of course that's only true from my viewpoint. And that is of course the only point I can really see the world from. Empathy is good and I like to think that I don't have less of it than the average person, but if I'm to be perfectly honest (I hope you appreciate this, it doesn't happen very often) I think I use it more to try to see what other people think about me than anything else. So, self centered, but at least I care about what other's think of me, which is kind of the same as caring about others. And I do.
I'm bad at writing this sort of thing. Could probably do better if I didn't let the words flow straight from thought into final text, but that is what makes this a blog. I write and then lose my way before coming to the point, only the top of my mind coming out.
The world is a pretty rotten place in large parts (at least the parts having to do with humans, most of the rest of it is quite incredibly beautiful) and I don't really do anything to change this for the better. Nothing more than trying to keep myself from changing it for the worse and at the same time changing myself for the better. If I want to make the world a better place, I try to make something beautiful. Or at least new and interesting. It won't do much, but it will do a little. Put a tiny bit more order in the grey mash of chaos so to speak. Maybe the world will be a better place for having one more engineer in it, I don't know.
Feel free to count the times I've used the words "I", "me", "myself" and the like in this post. Because this is after all about me (of course it is, it's a sinking blog!), centered about that which I call self like an electron cloud around the nucleus (otherwise I'd just scatter randomly) and keeping all those other self centered individuals outside. But I suppose I have a few free valence electrons after all, depending on the situation they might give rise to a current or maybe even covalent bonding... analogy taken too far, and it wasn't very good to start with. Whateverness.

pofo
when it all comes down to it, probably not a bad person.



PS. the party in the lobby was quite dead when I went down before, maybe it's gathered some momentum now.