Kilroy Café #50: "The Tragedy of Success"

Here is the latest Kilroy Café philosophy essay. You can click on the image above for a larger version or print it out on a single page via the pdf file. The full text is also below. Also see other Kilroy Café newsletters and the KilroyCafe Twitter Feed.

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The Tragedy of Success

By GLENN CAMPBELL

No one wants to experience poverty or misfortune, but wealth and comfort can be just as debilitating. Success, in any field, isn't all it is cracked up to be. It can open doors, but it can also become a drag on personal growth and set you up for catastrophe later.

The requirements of life are relatively simple and cheap. If you have just enough resources to meet those needs, you are going to use them efficiently. Once you have excess resources, however, you tend to become less efficient and more arrogant about how you use them. You take on more burdens and obligations to absorb that extra time or money, and soon you feel just as trapped and "poor" as you did before.

There is nothing wrong with having money in the bank, but it is human nature that when people have extra resources (or the illusion thereof) they are likely to use them. Instead of a simple apartment, they acquire a country estate with maintenance costs many times greater. Obligations mushroom, so that no matter how much money one has, it is never enough.

When your obligations are greater, you are much more vulnerable to unexpected change. You have to generate a huge income now to support it all, and if you can't, the whole house of cards will collapse.

At the root of most personal catastrophes is the euphoria of previous success. Once you win one great prize, you think the sky's the limit, and you start wasting resources and taking on obligations as though success was your right. Now, you can't simply fall back to the simple state you were in before. If your destiny shifts just a little, all your obligations will come due and there's likely to be a disastrous crash.

When you are struggling for success—for love, money, fame, power—you think this goal is all you need. When you get there, though, you face a whole new set of challenges. Will you fall victim to all the seductions and addictions of success, or will you know when to stop? If you don't stop, success will kill you just as surely as poverty will.

Success tends to stop personal growth in its tracks, because once you find something that works, you usually stick with it. Because you don't want to give up a good thing, it can be extraordinarily difficult to change gears. Success builds a protective cocoon around you that restricts your openness to the world and inhibits your motivation. Barring a calamity, you tend to follow the same easy patterns for the rest of your life.

If you find success as an actor, that's what you'll always be, and if you find too much success in one role, you will be forever "typecast" there, because that's what the world expects of you.

Many a rising young star has been brought down to earth by taking the logical next step in a perceived progression of successes. They accept the irresistible promotion offered them, and in the process they move from free and happy to burdened and trapped. Every "success" is potentially like that: a prison rather than a panacea.

It would be ideal if you could experience all the benefits of success while holding your needs and obligations at their pre-success levels. Success without obligation is the finest reward, but this is a scarce commodity. The world will rarely hand it to you, so you have to create it for yourself.

The first step is to redefine "success". We are used to thinking of it in external terms: as millions of dollars, a high-ranking position, a plaque on the wall or fame among people you have never met. These are all things you can point to publically to prove you are successful, but they aren't what matters within your own world.

Internally, the most valuable fruit of any success is freedom. The greatest prize is to be able to do what you believe is most important at the moment without being held down by past obligations. Money, and to some extent fame and recognition, can sometimes help you achieve this freedom, but it isn't necessarily true that 10 times the money will give you 10 times the freedom. You also have to control your expenses and obligations.

Any "success" that also results in greater risk and obligation may not truly be a contribution to freedom. Think of the typecast actor or the struggling business owner. Many of the stereotypical roles seen as "successful" are little more than gilded prisons you would never want to inhabit yourself.

When you are poor, you have to carefully manage you pennies to make sure outflow matches inflow. Success requires the same sort of careful management. Just because you can do something within your expanded resources doesn't mean you should do it. You still have to monitor the burdens and obligations of every action, and refuse those "successes" that dig you in too deep.

Freedom is the real coin of the realm. Rich or poor, your lifelong allocation of time is still the same, so you have to make the most of every minute.

—G .C.

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©2009, Glenn Campbell, PO Box 30303, Las Vegas, NV 89173. See my other philosophy newsletters at www.KilroyCafe.com.
Released from Ft. Collins, Colorado.
You can distribute this newsletter on your own blog or website under the conditions given at the main entry for it.
You are welcome to comment on this newsletter below.

Kilroy Café #49: "The Handicap Principle"

Here is the latest Kilroy Café philosophy essay. You can click on the image above for a larger version or print it out on a single page via the pdf file. The full text is also below. Also see other Kilroy Café newsletters and the KilroyCafe Twitter Feed.

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The Handicap Principle

By GLENN CAMPBELL

In the 1970s, biologist Amotz Zahavi developed a theory to explain some of the most perplexing behavior and physical displays in the animal world. He called it the "handicap principle".

Loosely defined, the handicap principle says that animals will deliberately waste resources in an ostentatious way as a signal to others of their overall fitness. They will accept a theatrical "handicap" if it furthers their evolutionary aims.

The simplest example is the ridiculous plumage of the peacock. You see them strutting around the farm or zoo displaying a huge fan of feathers. The display offers no direct survival advantage. In fact, it is a significant burden, since carrying it around makes the bird more vulnerable to predators. Why, then, did it evolve this way?

Obviously, the display is a turn-on to the female peafowl, who has ev0lved a corresponding preference for big feathers. To put it in our terms, she figures, "Wow, if he's got this fancy, expensive car, he must really be strong and powerful!" Like females everywhere, she tends to fall for the display and overlook underlying fitness. Only after she marries him does she find out he's just a jerk with big feathers.

Males are by no means immune to such deception. Take human female breasts, which are unique in nature. They are far larger than they need to be to give milk and positively humongous compared to other mammals. For pure survival, they are significant handicap, flopping around and getting in the way as they do. They exist mainly as a signal to the male of overall fitness.

And the male falls for it! In his animal brain, he thinks, "Wow, if she's got knockers like that, she must be really fertile!" It's a somewhat honest signal because breasts consist of fat and to produce them you have to have energy to spare. But in another sense, it's just advertizing, which is vulnerable to all kinds of manipulation and deception.

Is breast size related to ones actual suitability as a mate? Most of us would say no—intellectually at least—yet males and females still play the game: women dressing up their breasts for display and men going gaga over them as though they meant something.

Zahavi would understand.

Once you grasp the handicap principle, you see it everywhere, especially in the social world. When most people gain extra resources, what's the first thing they do? They usually put those resources on display with some kind of pompous purchase that serves no purpose other than crowing to the world, "I have extra resources."

The flashy car, the high fashion, the palatial home—all of these supposed "luxury" items are actually a burden to use. For example, no luxury car is as reliable or easy to maintain as an economy model. The only reason for owning such absurdities is displaying them, to try to prove to others your underlying quality.

But there is also real quality, which is separate from any signal. As a species, it may be our destiny to put on empty displays, but as individuals, we need to recognize these displays as fundamentally phony and distracting.

Animals use signals because they save energy. If you're a buck deer and you see that some other guy's antlers are bigger than yours, you're not going to mess with him because it's a good bet he's more powerful. Likewise, if you're driving down the highway late at night and need a place to sleep, you might just stop at the motel with the biggest and prettiest sign. You guess that with all they have invested in the sign, it's probably not a fleabag.

These open signals can tell you something, but they aren't very subtle and they're not usually telling you the whole story. As soon as you have the means, you should be probing below the surface, trying to differentiate actual quality from advertized quality.

Actual quality is what really works over time. The best way to judge it, if you can afford to do so, is some sort of operational testing. The best way to choose a mate is not breast size or car size but to actually interact with the product for a while, under conditions closely resembling its intended long-term use.

Our society is based largely on signals—on advertizing, hyperbole and pompous displays that have little to do with underlying quality. That's just how society works.

But that doesn't have to be the way you work. The only lasting satisfaction in life comes from quality—both detecting it in others and producing it yourself. The strutting peacocks producing fancy signals will always get more notice, but they rarely feel successful. They're fakers and deep down they know it.

In the long run, it's better to be real.

—G .C.

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©2009, Glenn Campbell, PO Box 30303, Las Vegas, NV 89173. See my other philosophy newsletters at www.KilroyCafe.com.
Released from Lumberton, North Carolina.
You can distribute this newsletter on your own blog or website under the conditions given at the main entry for it.
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Kilroy Café #48: "Escape from Narcissism"

Here is the latest Kilroy Café philosophy essay. You can click on the image above for a larger version or print it out on a single page via the pdf file. The full text is also below. Also see other Kilroy Café newsletters and the KilroyCafe Twitter Feed.

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Escape from Narcissism

By GLENN CAMPBELL

We all started out as narcissists. When we first became conscious, the universe seemed to revolve around us. There were parents hovering over us attending to our every need. When we cried out, the world promptly responded, as though our own feelings were the only ones that mattered.

Unfortunately, the outside world doesn't work that way. In reality, we are only one human of billions, and for the most part no one gives a damn about us and our needs. We gain the attention of others only by noticing their needs and providing some sort of service to them.

Intellectually, we can accept that we are not the center of all creation, but emotionally it is very hard. It's a long, painful journey from egocentrism to globalism. We have to unlearn the self-serving habits of our youth and learn to see the big picture.

Narcissism isn't "self-love" as much as self-centeredness. There are some very unhappy narcissists who do not love themselves, but they can't step out of themselves long enough to see what others need. Therefore, they miss cues from others, step on people's toes and don't get what they need from them. A narcissist is a bull in a china shop, because he doesn't "get" how the world really works.

The narcissist expects others to serve his needs just because he has them. "I'm hungry, so feed me." He assumes that if something is important to him, it must also be important to others. He thinks others exist only to give him what he wants. After all, that's how things worked in his childhood.

When this theory fails to get results, he tries leverage. He throws a tantrum or uses some other threat, bribe or seduction to try to coerce compliance. If being "needy" doesn't get him what he wants, he tries power instead.

While power and neediness may both work on occasion, they aren't nearly as effective as a third method: understanding the inner needs of the person you are dealing with and giving them what they need in exchange for what you need.

This is the conceptual leap the narcissist is unable to make: Others have needs! When other people hurt us, it isn't because they want to but because our needs conflict with theirs. Finding a middle ground requires subtlety and grace that the narcissist doesn't have. He is so blinded by his own needs that he can't truly grasp someone else's.

The narcissist makes a good swindler, but he is also easily swindled because he can't grasp the hidden motivations of the people he is interacting with. He automatically assumes that his goals are the same as everyone else's, and he is shocked and surprised when that's not the case.

The self-centeredness extends not just to people but to systems. To truly understand, say, an electrical system, we have to step outside ourselves and see what the system wants. What are its own independent rules? Although we may have goals of our own (Become an electrician and make a lot of money.) the electrons don't care. To become a good electrician (and one who doesn't kill himself), you have to understand the inner needs of the electron.

Take another system: photography. Most people's vacation photos are terrible — because of narcissism. Their snapshots may be meaningful to them but they are dull and bland to the rest of us. This is true even in a supposedly interesting location like Times Square or the Grand Canyon.

The photos are boring because the photographer can't see what actually appears in the viewfinder and evaluate it on its own merits. He thinks, "This is a very special moment, so if I take a picture of it, the photo will be special, too." He fails to see that camera is an independent system that has to be understood on its own merits.

You can tell a person's relative level of narcissism by watching them compose photos at a tourist attraction— or indeed by watching him do anything anywhere. Does he take the time to understand the system or person he is dealing with, or does he plough ahead blindly, expecting the world to cater to his needs?

We are all narcissists to some degree. We are all trapped in one body that is the center of our perception. We mature, however, by learning there is bigger world out there. Yes, we have needs, but often they are best served by setting them aside and understanding the needs of others. With that knowledge, we might find the key that unlocks the others and eventually gives us what we want.

You may be hungry right now, but it's not the end of the world. If you can set aside the sensation for a while and learn about someone else's hunger, you might find a way to solve both of your problems at minimal expense.

—G .C.

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©2009, Glenn Campbell, PO Box 30303, Las Vegas, NV 89173. See my other philosophy newsletters at www.KilroyCafe.com.
Released from El Paso, Texas.
You can distribute this newsletter on your own blog or website under the conditions given at the main entry for it.
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Song #11: "Blood on the Windshield"

My latest song concerns a miscarriage of justice in the Deep South. Intended for a mature female voice. Here is the tune (.mp3), the sheet music (.pdf) and me singing the song, poorly (video 2:27 5/23/12). The full lyrics are below (not too meaningful without the music). Both the tune and the words are my own original work. I've gone as far as I can within my current technology. Now it's your turn! Midi file available upon request.

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Blood on the Windshield

Mother Moon rose twice on a Southern night.
She would swear to God what she saw alright
Was the Douglas boy.
Can't trust those eyes.
But the sheriff said nothin' happened here
Nosy Nellie needs to know.
It's a simple case of knowin' your place
When the brothers need to show.
There ain't no crime.

There was blood on the windshield.
Blood on the wheel.
Blood on your hands,
Now how does it feel
When all you can get is
What you can steal.
In bed with the Devil.
Makin' a deal.

Got a helping hand from the Ku Klux Klan
When both Earl and Dave from the feed lot store
Came around just to chat.
All friendly like.
Sayin' no one here has ever took exception
To the Douglas Family.
If the younger member hit a little bump
On his daddy's property,
It's black and white.

There wasn't blood on the windshield.
Blood on the wheel.
Blood on your hands
And blood in that field
And blood in your hair,
Now how does it feel?
In bed with the Devil.
Makin' a deal.

If I had a way I'd leave this town.
There's a darkness lurking all around.
After fifty years, you'd realize
For justice here, you close your eyes.

Mother Moon rose twice on a Southern night,
But she's not sure now in the dark daylight,
'Cause the sheriff says nothin' happened here,
And the law should know who would disappear.
If there ain't no body, there ain't no crime,
So there ain't nobody to blame that time
He got blood on the windshield.
Blood on the windshield.
Blood on the wheel.

Lyrics and tune copyright © 2009, Glenn Campbell, PO Box 30303, Las Vegas, NV 89173.
Conceived near Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Released from Las Vegas.
Here is my complete song archive.
My songs and screen stories are indexed at LoveStrangely.com

Kilroy Café #11: "Invasion of the Mind Parasites"

Here is a reprint of an old Kilroy Café philosophy essay. (It was published 6/11/08 as a PDF but this is its first appearance as text.) You can click on the image above for a larger version or print it out on a single page via the pdf file. The full text is also below. Also see other Kilroy Café newsletters and the KilroyCafe Twitter feed.

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Invasion of the Mind Parasites

By GLENN CAMPBELL

They come into our brain because we invite them, but once they arrive, they don't want to leave. They take up residence in our neurons and eat up precious cognitive resources. They delude our thinking and make us believe we can't live without them then they slowly drain our life force and give us nothing in return.

Mind parasites.

We may not know what consciousness is, but it's clearly a finite resource. There is a limit to the number of thoughts you can think in a day. Mulling things over in your head takes time, so the more things you try to think about, the less time you have for each.

"High quality" consciousness is when you have plenty of time to think about the things you have done and are considering doing. It tends to result in wise decisions and positive outcomes. "Low quality" consciousness is when you process the world only superficially—a few seconds here and there. This results in ritualized answers and many stupid mistakes because you haven't thought things through.

If you subdivide your consciousness by thinking about more and more things during the course of a day, the quality of your thinking is going to degrade and, by extension, so will the quality of your life.

Think of the driver you encounter at an intersection, cell phone glued to his ear. What can you expect from his driving? His reaction times will be slowed, and clumsy errors are likely—the penalty of divided consciousness.

Some studies have shown that drivers on cell phones are worse than drunk ones. Some jurisdictions have responded by banning the use of hand-held cell phones while driving, but speaker phones aren't any better! The problem isn't the use of the hand but the division of consciousness, which distracts from the business of driving.

Likewise, when you experience too much mental stimulation during the day, the quality of your inner life will deteriorate. Today, unfortunately, we receive far more stimulation than is healthy, and it is actively marketed to us as a positive thing. Who would choose five TV channels when they could have five hundred? The trouble is, with so many options available, you're naturally going to watch more, and the quality of your non-video life is going to suffer.

The mind parasites are objects and activities that we voluntarily take into our lives but that drain our mental resources thereafter. Big screen TVs are going to be watched, and video games will probably be played—over and over. Even buying a book can be a parasitic drain because it creates a pressure to read it, to the detriment of, say, just sitting and thinking.

All sorts of seemingly "good" things are mind parasites in disguise. Every new activity or obligation is a tax on your cognitive resources, leaving less for all your other activities. People tend rationalize the loss by believing that they can simply become more efficient in their existing activities, but it's a delusion. Why volunteer for one good cause when you can join ten? Well, with ten projects going on at once, you can't possibly to generate the same creativity and wisdom you could for one.

Once upon a time, stimulation, like food, was hard to get. If you lived in a remote village in the pre-electronic era, you had plenty of time to think things through. What you longed for, however, was new ideas. Now, however, there are too many ideas, and we tend to get fat on the easiest ones and ignore the rest.

Overstimulation breeds passivity, the most destructive disease of modern life. When you don't have time to think things through, you tend to let others make decisions for you. Overstimulated people won't venture far from their comfort zone, because they understand, rightly, that their driving skills are horrible. If something upsets them, they don't despair for long; they simply change the channel.

It's really sad. The mind parasites have created a society of zombies. They aren't bad zombies out to suck your blood or anything, but you can't expect much initiative from them. They may respond honorably to the stimulation in front of them, but don't expect them to act preemptively or understand the long-term implications of what they do.

How do you control the mind parasites? You lock them out. Instead of 200 channels, you opt for zero: no TV, no radio, low noise and limited obligations. Your resting point should be a place without stimulation, from which you can make occasional selective forays into the modern world.

The mind parasites may seem attractive in the store, but you don't want to invite them into your home.

—G .C.

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©2008, Glenn Campbell, PO Box 30303, Las Vegas, NV 89173. See my other philosophy newsletters at www.KilroyCafe.com.
This issue was re-released from Las Vegas.
You can distribute this newsletter on your own blog or website under the conditions given at the main entry for it.
You can Retweet this article on Twitter™.
You are welcome to comment on this newsletter below.

Kilroy Café #47: "Dark Star Duet: A Model of Dysfunctional Marriage"

Here is the latest Kilroy Café philosophy essay. You can click on the image above for a larger version or print it out on a single page via the pdf file. The full text is also below. Also see other Kilroy Café newsletters and the KilroyCafe Twitter Feed.

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Dark Star Duet
A Model of Dysfunctional Marriage

By GLENN CAMPBELL

There can be a lot of reasons why marriages fail, but one model seems common. I call it the "Dark Star Duet."

Imagine a binary star system: two stars revolving around each other. One star is normal like our sun, and the other is a black hole. The black hole sucks up more energy than it gives, and the normal star must give more than it gets. A continuous stream of matter and energy is drawn from the healthy star to the black hole, never to be seen again.

This is the perfect model for how many marriages work—maybe even most! One party is the provider, perhaps too strong and adaptive for his or her own good, and the other is the perpetual child: needy, jealous, demanding and increasingly unstable.

This model knows no sexual preference. It happens in gay relationships and straight ones, legal marriages or ad hoc ones. "He" or "she" could be either party, so I will just call them "A" and "B" using the masculine gender.

There have always been substantial differences between "A" and "B". "A" is the responsible one, the flexible one, the one who can rise to any challenge. "B" is insecure one, the inflexible one, the one who freaks out at any unexpected change and who always needs a crutch to lean on.

From the beginning, "A" could probably see some of "B"s helplessness, but it seemed endearing at the time, since being able to help made "A" feel loved and useful. "B"s insecurities seemed like nothing love couldn't fix. It turned out, however, that love only made things worse!

That's the dark side of security. Whenever you have a communistic system where people are supposed to share everything equally, one party inevitably starts taking too much while the other must give more than his share to make up for it.

If insecure party "B" faces a painful decision in the real world but has the backup plan of obtaining the artificial protection of "A", he's usually going to take the easy way out, expecting rescue. "A", being ever-adaptable, is usually willing to play the hero, especially to avoid "B"s bad behavior.

But "B"s behavior gets worse and worse! The more he relies on "A", the more "B"s self-esteem plummets and the more panicked he becomes about facing the outside world alone. Soon, he can't politely ask for "A"s help, which would be too humiliating; he has to manipulate "A" through temper tantrums, health complaints and other forms of trickery.

This bad behavior may not have been present before the marriage, when "B" was reasonably independent and functional. Marriage created the dysfunction! "B" assumes marriage means his partner will take care of everything, especially when "B" is feeling unwell. Indeed, "A" is usually willing to pick up the slack to keep the peace, which essentially gives "B" permission to be even more ill and dysfunctional.

Soon the binary model becomes obvious: Star "B" is sucking energy out of Star "A" and giving little in return.

You might think this would automatically result in divorce, as "A" gets tired of covering for "B" all the time, but it usually doesn't. It's a duet, remember!

"A" feels responsible and recalls his promise to stick by his partner "in sickness and in health." As "B" becomes more "sick" and detached from outside reality, "A" feels he can't withdraw because "'B' would never survive without me."

It's the perfect dance of Yin and Yang, addict and enabler, black hole and entrapped star, and it will usually continue as long as sufficient resources are available to support the system.

In most cases, "A" isn't willing to make the break unless the dysfunction gets so bad that he has no choice. Especially if there are children involved, the costs just seem too high. So he must survive through appeasement, denial and overcompensation. Marriages like this can limp along for years, and they are all around us if we care to look.

That's a shame, because "B" would actually do better on his own, facing the real world directly without the artificial and debilitating protection of "A". Unfortunately, "B" won't go gracefully. He has to be pushed.

If the mutual dysfunction exceeds the resources to support it, the system will collapse eventually. Divorce will happen, but can take a long time to get to that point: years or decades. Too bad it can't happen sooner, at the first milestone of trouble, but it's human nature to hold on… and on!

I can't tell you how to escape, but I can tell you counseling isn't going to help. There's no talking it out, because ones whole personality is the issue.

You either take action or you don't.

—G .C.

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©2009, Glenn Campbell, PO Box 30303, Las Vegas, NV 89173. See my other philosophy newsletters at www.KilroyCafe.com.
Released from Las Vegas.
You can distribute this newsletter on your own blog or website under the conditions given at the main entry for it.
You can Retweet this article on Twitter™.
You are welcome to comment on this newsletter below.

Kilroy Café #3: "Sex Fraud"

Here is a reprint of an old Kilroy Café philosophy essay. (It was published 5/30/08 as a PDF but this is its first appearance as text.) You can click on the image above for a larger version or print it out on a single page via the pdf file. The full text is also below. Also see other Kilroy Café newsletters and the KilroyCafe Twitter feed.

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SEX FRAUD

By GLENN CAMPBELL

WARNING: This issue may not be suitable for young readers. Or old ones. Conservatives may consider it inappropriate. Liberals, too! Come to think of it, just about anyone with gonads is bound to be offended by what I'm about to say.

Sex.

There, are you offended yet?

No? Then maybe I need to expand that statement.

Sex is meaningless.

In fact, it's one of the greatest frauds ever perpetrated on humanity. Sexual attraction is responsible, on the whole, for far more suffering than pleasure. If the whole thing went away, we'd all be better off.

I'm not saying sex can't be pleasurable, especially if it's been denied to you for a while. I'm also not arguing for its public suppression. On the contrary, I think people should have sex whenever & wherever they want, because as soon as they have unlimited access its meaninglessness becomes obvious.

Sex is like chocolate cake. It sure can be enticing from afar and when you take your first bite. As soon as you eat your fill, however, it quickly loses its appeal. If you're surrounded by chocolate cake and can eat as much as you want, it soon becomes as routine and uninteresting as cornflakes, and your hungers move elsewhere.

The human sex drive is certainly a powerful force—when denied—but the promises it makes are illusory and unfulfillable. Sex seems to be telling us, "Follow me and I'll give you eternal bliss." Unfortunately, such a state can't really be achieved.

The most you can reasonably expect out of sex is a temporary release from the drive. If you scratch the itch, it will go away for a while. When any hunger is relieved, it is usually pleasurable, especially when accompanied by a drug-like high, but such happiness can't last long and tends to decrease in intensity with every repetition.

Just because an itch goes away doesn't mean your life has meaning. The next question, after intercourse, is, "What do we do now?" and sex by itself doesn't provide any answers.

More than just procreation, sex is a human bonding activity, like mutual grooming. It certainly plays a role in drawing people together and encouraging intimacy, but it isn't intimacy itself. That's something much more complicated and difficult to sustain, requiring entirely different skills.

How do two people get along when they get so close they can clearly see each other's flaws? The answer in many cases is that they can't and shouldn't, but sex draws them together anyway.

The real tragedy of sex is how it is used to sell people things they don't need. It's such a powerful drive that if you censor it and ration it out in tantalizing little bits, there's no end to the stupid dog tricks you can get people to perform.

Think of the sexy girl in a car dealership ad. How does her presence have anything to do with the performance of the vehicle? Yet she wouldn't appear in the ad if the pitch wasn't successful—if guys weren't being duped into buying inappropriate cars by her smile and cleavage.

People are suckered by sex into a vast array of inappropriate and ineffectual purchases. Those include not just cars and consumer products but also destructive relationships and bad lifetime investments.

Instead of being the euphoric bliss it is promoted as, sex more often lands people in prison—and not just the kind with bars on the windows.

—G .C.

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©2008, Glenn Campbell, PO Box 30303, Las Vegas, NV 89173. See my other philosophy newsletters at www.KilroyCafe.com.
This issue was re-released from the Phoenix airport, Gate A20.
You can distribute this newsletter on your own blog or website under the conditions given at the main entry for it.
You can Retweet this article on Twitter™.
You are welcome to comment on this newsletter below.

Kilroy Café #46: "The Fallacy of Justice"

Here is the latest Kilroy Café philosophy essay. You can click on the image above for a larger version or print it out on a single page via the pdf file. The full text is also below. Also see other Kilroy Café newsletters and the KilroyCafe Twitter Feed.

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The Fallacy of Justice

By GLENN CAMPBELL

Whenever someone is hurt by the illegal actions of another, they are usually moved to seek "justice" for the crime. Unfortunately, justice usually does nothing to repair the damage of what happened. Justice is an illusion mostly, not a real solution to anything.

Justice is a theoretical accounting system in which all bad acts are paid for with corresponding punishments. If a member of your family is murdered, you are probably going to tell the press, "I won't rest until this killer is brought to justice!"

But no justice can bring back the lost loved one. It can't turn back a moment in time that has already past. It can impose pain on the guilty, but it rarely makes them accept responsibility for what they have done. Justice alone can't make you whole. By focusing on the person who caused your loss, you may be neglecting more productive actions to cope with it yourself.

If your family member had died of an incurable disease, their death may have been no less painful or tragic, but you wouldn't be seeking redress. You would move quickly into the healing process, learning how to adapt to your new life circumstances. If, however, the death could be attributed to some outside party, like a drunk driver or a doctor who did something wrong, you are more likely to go into revenge mode first. This can extend the "anger" phase of grieving for years and delay the "resolution" phase.

The Chinese proverb says: "He who seeks vengeance must dig two graves: one for his enemy and one for himself." Revenge may disable the culprit but it also cripples the avenger for as long as his crusade continues.

Justice is good for only one thing: It can sometimes prevent similar tragedies from happening to others. Obviously, if someone has killed once, there is a fair chance he'll do it again. To the extent that a past action predicts a future one, justice can take a destructive person off the streets or otherwise dissuade him from repeating his behavior.

Deterrence works best for low-level crimes where the response is swift and the penalty is painful but recoverable. It is certainly true that most drivers will stop speeding once they have received a ticket or two. Justice works here!

However, it is not necessarily true that justice deters serial killers. They know they'll get the maximum penalty for just one killing, so why not kill 20? Justice also does not deter impulsive risk-taking or lapses of judgment, like teenage drag racing or drunken brawls. Even a competent, rational justice system can't do much to deter major crime, because almost everyone who commits one doesn't read the law and has no plans to get caught.

Unenlightened societies (like ours) rely almost entirely on justice to deter antisocial behavior instead of addressing the underlying factors that breed the behavior. It may make you feel good—and look heroic in the press—to hunt down criminals and lock them up, but if your social system is cranking them out even faster, you're just assuring an ever-growing, ever more vicious prison population. If someone is released after spending many unproductive years in the slammer, has he really been reformed or just hardened? Justice hasn't thought that part through.

If your life has been touched by crime, you can't afford to wait for justice. Yes, you may have a responsibility to society, even to the perpetrator, to see the transaction through—say, by testifying in court. For society to function, there must be an illusion of justice, where crimes reliably result in punishment. We all have a stake in maintaining this illusion, but justice probably isn't going to help your situation personally.

The fact is, there isn't any justice. The world is and always has been an unjust place where virtuous people are routinely crushed and the immoral get most of the earthly rewards—legally! You can spend your whole life waiting for justice, waiting for some authority to recognize how you've been wronged and compensate you for it, but for the most part it ain't gonna to happen. Instead, you have to take matters into your own hands and seek your own resolution.

Your main task is not vengeance but to deal with the tragedy as it is now, on Day Two, regardless of how it happened. You must approach it as an act of God no one can be blamed for.

What is more important than justice? Actual results! As a moral entity, your goal is to secure the best possible future for yourself, the people you care about and your society. Justice in the court system or at the end of a gun barrel has little to do with your future. Sometimes, the best future is achieved by letting justice pass. It all depends on the situation, not on a rigid formula of crime and punishment.

Remember the stages of grief: denial, anger, negotiation, depression and acceptance. Your primary job is to get to acceptance as quickly as possible. Obsessing over justice probably won't help you get there, only delay your arrival.

—G .C.

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©2009, Glenn Campbell, PO Box 30303, Las Vegas, NV 89173. See my other philosophy newsletters at www.KilroyCafe.com.
Released from Bedford, Massachusetts.
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Kilroy Café #10: "Male Sports Addiction"

Here is a reprint of an old Kilroy Café philosophy essay. (It was published 6/10/08 as a PDF but this is its first appearance as text.) You can click on the image above for a larger version or print it out on a single page via the pdf file. The full text is also below. Also see other Kilroy Café newsletters and the KilroyCafe Twitter feed.

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Male Sports Addiction: A Clinical Profile

By GLENN CAMPBELL

Untreated mental illness is one of the greatest tragedies of our society. Vast human potential is wasted by demons in the mind.

One such disorder afflicts primarily males and is so pervasive that it is often seen as "normal" in spite of its devastating effects. This disease has spawned a huge legalized industry of pushers and traffickers who provide the vulnerable victim with the illusion of happiness. Like cocaine and alcohol, this addiction draws the victim away from productive pursuits and encourages him to neglect his family and responsibilities as well as his own health and future.

I am speaking, of course, of spectator sports and their insidious hold on the male brain. The average male, if given the opportunity, will watch sports all day and all night, discuss sports continuously with other males and act as though sports really meant something, while all constructive and meaningful activities fall by the wayside.

Why does it matter who Notre Dame is playing this weekend? It doesn't mean anything! Which team wins the game has absolutely no bearing on any conceivable human problem. It is hard to see how sports can even qualify as "entertainment." A ball gets thrown around a field in exactly the same way it was done last week, while in living rooms around the country, you have clusters of males gathered around the screen, transfixed and thoroughly engaged as though something important was happening.

Every so often, the room erupts in communal groans, explosive cheering and vigorous whoop-whooping, and you have to wonder, "What kind of insanity is this?"

Obviously the sports gene must have passed me by, because I have never felt the urge. For a while I tried fit in, forcing myself to watch, but I never had the same feelings I saw in my brethren. Eventually, I had to admit that the lust wasn't in me. I have since "come out" to my close friends and family, who recognized from the beginning that I was different, but I am still reluctant to discuss my sports disinterest in public for fear that I might be seen as "fruity" and somehow not a man.

The male's obsession with sports resembles in many ways his inexplicable interest in pornography. Both are useless, repetitive "watching" behaviors that serve no productive function yet seem to fascinate the male to no end. I mean, how many times can you view jiggling breasts and the crude sex act and not get bored? Quite a lot, it turns out, but the man's interest only lasts up to the moment of his own release, at which point the whole fascination with gynecology, phallic operations and the female form instantly vanishes.

Sports are more dangerous than sex because there is no obvious point of satiation. An average male can watch mindless sports until all the pizza is gone and the fridge runs out of beer—and he's ready to do it again as soon as those supplies are restocked.

Pornography has an evolutionary basis. Obviously, there is a reproductive role in a male wanting to inseminate anything with two breasts. The sports obsession is harder to explain. Perhaps it is the modern expression of a "war" gene. There appears to be a primitive emotional urge within the male brain to band together with other males in a "team" and beat the crap out of other teams. In modern society, males rarely have an opportunity for physical warfare, so watching it done in a staged environment could serve the same neurological need.

Males also seem to have a built-in predisposition to the collection of statistics and arcane facts, an illness I call Male Data Collection Syndrome (MDCS). Give the male access to any kind of useless and repetitive information, and he will be inclined to write down the numbers, build a spreadsheet and plot a graph, no matter how meaningless the data may be. Sports provide ample opportunity for such vapid statistical analysis, as numbers are generated every time someone throws a ball or swings a bat.

The people who suffer most are the families. The world is full of children who are forced to grow up without fathers, even when the sperm donor is physically present in the home. All potential "quality time" is absorbed by the sports addiction, and unless the children can quickly learn the language of sports and join Dad in front of the tube, they're effectively left to raise themselves.

I pity also the man's spouse or significant other, who thought she we would be at the top of the man's list of interests and not seventh behind the NBA, NCAA, NFL, MLB, NHL and PGA. The legend of the "football widow" is no joke. Everyone tries to laugh it off, but how can you have a meaningful relationship with someone whose first love is a team of muscular guys? Sadly, due to the year-round, 24-hour sports cycle, there is now no relief from widowhood for these long-suffering victims, who see their romantic dreams being sucked away by ESPN.

It's not unfaithfulness exactly, but it isn't the kind of undivided attention the woman thought she would get.

—G .C.

ALSO SEE: Preening and Nesting Behavior of the Human Female: A Study (Kilroy Cafe #7)

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©2008, Glenn Campbell, PO Box 30303, Las Vegas, NV 89173. See my other philosophy newsletters at www.KilroyCafe.com.
You can distribute this newsletter on your own blog or website under the conditions given at the main entry for it.
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Kilroy Café #45: "Work Sucks!"

Here is the latest Kilroy Café philosophy essay. You can click on the image above for a larger version or print it out on a single page via the pdf file. The full text is also below. Also see my other Kilroy Café newsletters.

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WORK SUCKS!

By GLENN CAMPBELL

After years of scientific study, I have determined that work sucks.

I caution, however, against the over-interpretation of my findings. Most people need to work for both financial and psychological reasons, and I am not suggesting that everyone withdraw from it immediately. If you have to work to survive and to assure the health of your loved ones, by all means do it.

My only conclusion is that having control of your own time is better than ceding control to someone else. If you have the option of pursuing your own goals instead of someone else's, you should probably do it.

For teens in the audience who may be unfamiliar with the concept, "work" (aka "a job") is trading your time, skills and attention to someone else in exchange for money. Money, in turn, is used to buy things you need, like food, shelter and internet access. It's hard to imagine, but without money (yours or someone else's) you couldn't go online, and if you didn't eat, your body would go offline permanently!

Most of us have to work to make money to live, but that's not the only function work serves. It also gives people something to do. It lends them direction when they otherwise might not have any.

The fact is, when most people have time to themselves to use however they wish they invariably waste it on meaningless activities. They'll text each other all day, hang out at the mall, spend hours on YouTube, and engage in various repetitive and addictive behaviors. Work and the economic pressure behind it at least force them out of the house to do something.

When you first get involved in work, it can be seductive. You become part of a "team" engaged in a common task, and the fact that you have to show up at a certain time and obey certain rules helps give structure to your life. The money you earn can also be appealing. With it, you can buy some of the things you see on TV that everyone else already has.

But work can also be a drag after a while. It becomes especially intrusive when you begin to discover more important things to do with your time. I can't say what these things might be, but let's suppose there was a social cause you believed in that needed your attention. Work would probably prevent you from helping as much as you wanted.

If your work does nothing more for society that cramming unhealthy food down its throat, doing it may begin to depress you. The money you make doesn't compensate for the icky feeling inside when you realize you're not doing right for other people and going nowhere with your own life. The money, too, is never enough. Once you start spending it, you realize how inadequate it is. If you play this work game for long, it eventually feels like prison.

Indeed, for the vast majority of the world's population, work is little more than slavery. They don't call it "slavery" these days because technically people are free to leave their jobs, but if they do, they and their families will starve.

Once you have been in the workforce for a while, you will probably start striving for a better job that gives you more of the things you want and less of the things you don't want. But work is work—serving someone else's interests—and there will always be a limit to the satisfaction you can get from it.

Even "good" careers like doctor or social worker can get you down after a while. Turns out, almost every worker is a slave, if not to an economic system then to a governmental one where they are serving a bureaucracy more than the people they really want to help.

Ultimately, you may find that you have better uses for your time than any employer does and that your own intelligence knows the best way to serve others. That's when you realize how much work really sucks. It's a drain, and it should be avoided whenever possible. When you need to do it, you'll do it, but you don't want to do any more of it than necessary.

You can avoid work through a combination of extreme frugality and finding innovative ways to make money that involve relatively few compromises. Frugality may be painful, but not as much as working long hours at a job you don't like for things you don't need. Unfortunately, I can't tell you the moneymaking ideas. They are unique to your time, place and skills, and you have to find them on your own.

The ultimate goal is to spend more time doing meaningful things and less time doing non-meaningful ones. That, over time, is where your life has to lead.

—G .C.

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©2009, Glenn Campbell, PO Box 30303, Las Vegas, NV 89173. See my other philosophy newsletters at www.KilroyCafe.com.
Written at the Food Court in Eaton Centre, Toronto.
You can distribute this newsletter on your own blog or website under the conditions given at the main entry for it.
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