Beauty In The World

Because of my choice in friends - people who are open to alternatives to the gender and sexuality binary, people who don't buy in to all the stuff that I write and complain about - I tend to be friends with a lot of people who could very easily be described as hippies. Which means that as a result of this, I am exposed to a great amount of stuff that could also very easily be described as "hippie dippie" or "woo woo" stuff.
Now, I am going to save us all a lot of time and reading by summing up my opinion on this stuff: do not believe. I believe the woo woo to be on the same level as the invisible creation man in the sky who punishes and rewards one species on one planet in one solar system of the entire universe that he created.


In case you are unclear about what I mean by the woo woo, I shall clarify, because there is some hippie dippie stuff that happens to not fall under the woo woo category (y'know, because there is scientific evidence for it). Things that do (and of course, this is opinion, not fact, as I am not an expert): astrology, homeopathy, energy work done through simple touch (massage is not this), praying to your God or Goddess of choice, and many other things that I would need to be reminded of, but you'll see the pattern here soon enough.


The pattern here is simple, and is in fact the exact same reason I have a problem with sports stars thanking God when they win the game. It is the same reason I have a problem with people going to confession to get forgiveness for their sins. All of these remove the humanity from a choice.


From a christian perspective: when you do well, it is God's work, when you do poorly, it is your fault (yay guilt!).
From a non-christian perspective: when you get better, it is because someone touched you in just the right way, or because the onion juice you diluted into oblivion cured you, and if you get sick, it is because your diet is full of pollutants and you havn't cleared your body of the nasties that wander in through your food.
When someone is strong and independent and knows what they want, and you ask them their birthday and you respond, "oh, it all makes sense now - you are Scoprio!" and or maybe it's "oh, you are Leo!" or maybe "oh you are Taurus"
Go look at all of the signs at the same time, and you will see an absurd amount of overlap.


"I know why you did it. You were afraid, who wouldn't be?" These beliefs granted you safety. That there was something up there watching us, be it a God or the idea of all creatures being connected, or that the stars and their gravitational pull on each other somehow has any effect on my personal characteristics. It makes sense to see patterns in humanity, but the criterion for the patterns is way too loose, and as science has shown, humans are fantastic at forgetting things that hurt us and/or don't fit with the way we want to be.


And if that is all it is, to make yourselves feel better, I can completely understand why you did it. But please, consider what it is doing to you when you are not looking - it is removing the humanity from Choice. I value choice above all else - it is what defines me personally as alive - my ability to choose. A plant lives, a plankton lives, but there are only select creatures on this planet who are truly alive. Most if not all of them fall in the animal kingdom.


These beliefs do not remove choice from people, but they at least partially remove the idea that the things that follow from your choices are directly following from those choices. Credit is not being given where credit is due. If you pray for your God to help you out, and then you finally confront your drunken father who has been abusing you and you get him arrested and into rehab and your family doesn't fall apart - it is not because of God. It is because you were an impossibly strong human being who was able to step up and take responsibility for your own life and make things better. If you are sick and someone poked you a couple times and you go around being nice and feeling better, it is not because someone shifted your energy pathways, it is because you decided that you were tired of wearing the grumpypants and that you wanted to make a change in your life.


But the problem with people, is that we generally do not believe ourselves to be impossibly strong. We are told our whole lives that we are weak, that we need help. We know that change is hard, we know that it is sometimes impossible. So we invent things to serve as catalysts for change, when in reality they are not catalysts, they are excuses to get things rolling.


So when something happens to me like the things that have happened recently - one after the other, events seem to be happening around me that are exactly what I need. Huge potential for things to blow up in my face and ruin a lot of things for me are not  blowing up - and random acts of kindness from people are. Stuff in my life has just been working recently. And from a woo woo or God perspective, the stars are aligned in some way, or I did something to deserve this.


I believe none of that. I believe in coincidence. I believe that a lot of stuff has been going well for me, and I am so incredibly grateful for that. And when things start to go poorly, because they will, because nothing good ever lasts (because life is imperfect), I will realize that it is a coincidence, and that I need to work hard to turn things around. I will not blame it on Venus or Mercury going retrograde. I will not blame it on the gays. I will not blame it on the thetans inhabiting my body. I will blame it on life being what it is and then take responsibility for fixing it.


Try this for a week: when things go well, be happy about them and when things go wrong, be sad about them. Do not ascribe any meaning to the events beyond the events themselves - see the beauty in the good, and the ugly in the bad. Enjoy the beauty, and eschew the bad.


When people say that atheists see no joy or beauty in the world, they are off base - we see just as much beauty, because we look at the world and we see the world in all of its glory and power, and to a lot of atheists, there is nothing more beautiful than that.

On Attractiveness of Skill

A preface on the subject. Part of being attracted to someone is their physical attractiveness. This is not all that composes how attracted I am to someone, but it would be foolish to say it didn't matter in the least. This post is STRICTLY about physical attractiveness. If you want to call me shallow for my standards of physical attractiveness, you are full of tautology, because that is just what physical attractiveness standards are: shallow. The important part to remember is that there is more to attraction than this, I am merely not talking about them, because that isn't what I want to spend the next week of my time doing.

Ok, now that we have that out of the way, I want to make clear what I mean by attractive in the physical sense (as every time I use the word attractive will mean from here on out unless otherwise stated). Actually, scratch that, that is bloody hard to do. Put simply, if I am attracted to a person, it means that I think that sex with them is something I would not be opposed to. This is not to say that I am going to take efforts to make sexual activity happen between us. But this is to say that if for some insane reason we ended up in bed together, I would be physically enjoying myself. It's a pretty simple concept, try not to make such a big thing out of it.

One of my goals here is to describe my "type" without using any clichés, which I know is going to be impossible, so just bear with me. No, you know what, that is going to be to hard, so lets try something else.
Lets make a list of possibles, like in the DSM - they don't say "if you have these symptoms, you have the following condition" no, they say if you have a certain number of these traits, it is likely you have the following condition and it would be a wise plan to consult a professional who knows what they are doing to get a better idea - but you never confirm it. Which is why we still have doctors and not computers with statistical analysis engines being the psychiatric diagnosticians. Point being: there is no formula for a type, but there are patterns and generally identifiable characteristics.

I want you all thinking about your own Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Sexual Attraction. It is a worthwhile exercise I have found.

There is a long list, and I have it in my head, and since this is a public blog, I think I'm going to keep it that way. But there is one that I think I can confidently say without offending anyone terribly - it is my personal attraction, and if you look at the people I date, you will see it is true.

I generally like slender people. I don't really know why, but something about slender people is attractive to me. But wait, that isn't really true is it - I might know why. Let's think about this. Thought experiment time! Why is it (for me personally, not for everyone) a trend to be attracted to slender people?

Sexually have I found slender people to be better in bed (meaning that are they a fit for me - nobody is universally good in bed. Sex between people is a relationship just as any other activity between people, and some people are a good fit and some are not) as a general rule? Now that I think about it, no. That isn't true at all, and I can think of a couple counterexamples.
So I am not attracted to them because they are generally better in my experience in bed with me.

Could it be.... actually, that's all I got. Why else could I be more physically attracted to a certain type almost definitely if it has nothing to do with any correlation with sexual ability?

And what do you do when you come to a nonconclusion about a question and don't know what to do? Start doubting your assumptions - perhaps I have defined this question incorrectly?
Yes, I answer myself (since I am recapping my own thought experiment, I already know where this is heading), I made an incorrect assumption. It was actually the first one I made - physical appearance and personality are actually not unrelated. Didn't think about it at first, the whole "don't judge a book by its cover" thing and all, but think about it - if someone has a lot of piercings, there is a pretty good chance their ambition is not to be come a state senator. Not that we could never have a senator with piercings, it's just that people that tend towards political activity and the public forum and being a part of our political system and people who tend towards many many piercings don't have a lot of overlap. And of course there is some as with all categories, but it would not be unreasonable to make this assumption.

So what can we reasonably say about thin people? Erm. They are thin. Shit. dead end.
Welcome to my thought experiment, I ask a lot of questions, and don't answer a lot of them.
What is it not reasonable to say about thin people? Ah ha! What can you reasonably not assume about thin people? What do thin people not do? Nope, still nothin

Ok, maybe I was questioning the wrong assumption - maybe I am not attracted to thin people at all, but possibly a quality that is really highly correlated with thin people. But obviously since I have been with people who I am highly attracted to but who would not be considered as thin as others, this quality is not perfectly correlated with thinness.

Right around this point in my thought experiment, I went off on a huge tangent about qualities that the people I surround myself with have, and things that correlate with thinness, and even went out to questioning that physical attractedness has anything to do with sexual desire whatsoever. I will save us a buttload of time by letting you know that all of these tangents got me absolutely nowhere, so we'll get to the stuff where I actually figured things about myself out. And where did I find it? The same place I always do - back at the beginning. But not my beginning, the first idea about how a species operates on a large scale. Darwin - yeah.

What makes a certain portion of its species go on? Fitness. Reproductive fitness primarily, but other kinds as well. Back long ago, people who couldn't fight off the occasional animal got dead really fast and couldn't go on. Makes sense to me. But obviously, ability to fight off animals isn't important today (there is still a standard attractiveness standard related to this, which is why the rugged mountain man with a gun and an elk head on his wall is still the hottest thing out there to some people - and that's cool, to each his or her own) so there are going to be those who find something else as a marker of reproductive fitness. Reproductive fitness sounds weird - like soley the function of your genitalia determines your fitness. Which we know not to be true. Women who smoke and drink frequently are less capable of carrying healthy offspring. Men who smoke (I don't know about drink) are less likely to be able to impregnate a woman. Obviously, there is more to it than the function of your genitalia. Let's just use the word fitness from now on - just a general fitness in life. To be able to do well in life, whatever that means to you, is your definition of fitness. If it means running a company is doing well, then that is fit for you. And if having children and raising them in the country is to do well, then someone who is very capable of doing that with you is going to be very fit to you. This is how I account for different tastes in people - I think it stems (in part) from your version of what it is to succeed in life.

So what is fitness for me? What do I consider success in my life? Well, I want to join a circus company and spend my life in the air and playing with fire and spreading creativity around and making beautiful art with my body. I also want to write that book about the philosophy of movement, specifically movement as language and means of communication. I want to leave the place I am in constantly and connect with as many people as I can and share with them the creative vision of whoever I am working for. And since we are all kind of narcissistic, we want someone with similar views as us as form of self love, but also that you want someone to fit with you, so it only makes sense that we would want people in our lives who support us in one way or another. So what kind of person fits with that lifestyle of circus and writing?

I don't need someone who can do the exact same thing, but I need someone who can help me, I think.
I think what I need is someone who can keep up with me (and obviously this goes both ways - if (s)he can keep up with my stuff, but (s)he is a religious leader in charge of persecuting the gays, I am not going to be able to keep up, i.e. that we won't be able to connect - when I say that I need, I mean that it is half of what would define a relationship, the other half needs to be there too) and connect with me on those levels.

So I'm kinda lazy, and stereotyping is easy, and we all do it every day, and there is no point denying it. We're all a rittle bit lacist (if you havn't seen Avenue Q you are not allowed to get upset about that). What kind of person can connect with me on that highly physical existence that I have? Oh man... in physically minded people. Oh man... in-shape people.
All in shape people? Psh, no - tons of in shape people whom I don't feel the slightest desire to sleep with.
Frustrating topic for me, you see.
If not just in-shape people, then what? Ok, I've got it - people who do stuff. That's what it is - people who do stuff. It doesn't matter what you do, so matter as you do it. If you swim, you swim your heart out. If you rock climb, you go out and rock climb and kick ass at it. If you climb a rope and do tricks on it, you come train with me and my friends. If you want to kick a ball around a field, you commit yourself to it. Have you ever met a person who was really intensely into honing their body who wasn't thin?
Finally got it.

I am not attracted to a nice body alone, I am attracted to nice bodies that were gained from years of work and perseverance at perfecting the physical discipline intended.
"I don't care what you believe in, just believe it"
~Shepherd Derrial Book, Firefly
I don't know about that, but I do agree when it comes to physicality. I think that in this society of laziness and apathy and technology and way too many ways to fail to take care of yourself mentally and physically it is of the utmost importance, in order to survive, to keep yourself sharp. I think that is success - to keep your mind and body working effectively for a long time, and to do that, you have to work them out.

So swim, do circus, tricks, play soccer, do triathlons, speed skate or whatever. Just do it and kick ass at it. Then in your downtime, do puzzles or crosswords or debate or play scrabble. Or do really lengthy thought experiments and see where you get to. And whatever you decide to do, kick ass at it.

I guess that is really what I am attracted to - people who kick ass in their respective areas of life.
Psh, and I thought I liked thinness...

*Edit* Because I feel like an example is deserved, I am going to use one, and hopefully it won't offend anyone. I was at this party last week in Tucson, just a friend's party, old high school friends and whatnot. Anyone, some non-high school peeps show up, and we get to know each other. We are talking, and the girl in question is pretty cute (there were three people I didn't know, all of them pretty good looking), there is no doubt about it. Also noticed she looked like my friend Madeline, but that is irrelevant. Any way, we finally get to (this is in no way even close to the conversation that happened)
"Gerardo, how do you know these lovely people?"
"Oh, Fenix - I didn't mention that? I play men's roller derby now! This one plays for Jr. Derby, that one on the men's team with me, and she plays for Tucson Roller Derby"
"Oh, I had no idea. Hey She, which team do you play for?"
"Oh, Fenix, how pleasant of you to ask - I play for vice squad, but I also play for the saddletramps [all star team]"
"How interesting, I happened to be at the Saddletramps vs. Tex Pistols [all star team from somewhere in Texas], I don't remember you - who were you"
"Oh, I'm Lindsey Loblow"
"Really? You mean Lindsey Loblow the roller derby skater who was the fastest, most agile jammer on the track that continually confounded the other team's defense and generally kicked ass"
"Yes Fenix, the very same - I am she: Lindsey Lowblo"
"Wow, Lindsey, somewhere in the last 8 sets of quotation marks you just got a lot hotter!"

Just for reference

In case you were wondering, this fake conversation but entirely true story (at least as it occured in my head) is actually the reason I did this whole thought experiment in the first place.