Teeth

Those of you who knew me last year probably remember my problems spring quarter. All of my wisdom teeth got infected at once. I had four extractions and three root canals in under a month. At the peak I was going in twice a week, gutting my family's savings and my time. By the end I had developed a resistance to Novocaine. No wonder I was so depressed and assholeish that quarter.

I remember my relief at the end of the quarter, knowing that the ordeal was finally behind me. I was wrong. Yesterday I went in for a routine checkup. I left with three root canals. If I'm lucky I'll only need two more appointments. The next one is tomorrow. Already I can feel the crushing dread: it never gets better and it never ends.

Then again, I'm not the same person I was six months ago. Back then I would have curled into a ball and cried. Now... well, I still want to curl into a ball and cry, but I'm also wondering if I can benefit from this. They say that hardship makes us stronger. In order to overcome our obstacles we have to grow and develop the power to cope.

 The short term hardships are:

• Pain (operation)
• Pain (recovery)
• Time loss (transit, dental work)
• Fear (hopelessness, needles, pain)
• Negativity (grouchiness, anger, from other hardships)

The time loss is inevitable. At least this is all before reading period and not during prime study seasons. The pain is also unavoidable. The needles hurt a lot, and there will be a 2-3 day period where my teeth will hurt like hell. Painkuillers can only do so much. I've gotten pretty good at eating with sore teeth, and I no longer I accidentally rap them on each other. My pain tolerance is improving a little bit. Silver linings.

So the big things are learning to live with the fear and not worsening my personality in the process. The fear happened because every time I came in for my last appointment they'd schedule "just two more". Nothing would be okay ever again. Every time I saw the light at the end of the tunnel, the tunnel would stretch. And even when I thought it was all over... yeah, I think I have good reason to be afraid.

There are two things I can do to deal with this. First, I've arranged both of my next appointments to be before I go home for break. If you need "just two more", too bad. I get a two week break before the next evisceration. There's a hard cap on when I last go in. Certainly not as bad as "first week to eleventh."

Number two. It might help to understand the core of the fear. I think it's all a manifestation of my feelings of powerlessness. There was no way I could have prevented my teeth problems. There's no way I can reduce the number or costs of my appointments. I don't even know when it is going to end; the goalposts shift so much I lose even that tiny bit of knowledge. I feel like I have absolutely no control over my situation. This isn't something I can just accept; the only way to deal with it is to take back my agency. Only then can I escape the omnipresent fear.

How do I do that? I dunno. I've tried to keep the pain and time loss from impacting my academic and social life. Keep at least a little bit of power over the rest of my life. That's the only thing I can do. I might be able to extend this. If I do more I will have more things in my life that I can control, which takes the edge off the dread.

This segues nicely into the personality problems. I'm sure at least a couple of you noticed how irrationally controlling and spiteful I got last quarter, and I'm feeling that start up again. The pain and stress and fear mess with my head. I know this is hard to quantify- how do we know what we have felt in different circumstances?- but it's obviously there. I used to swear pretty rarely, and only with great effort and gravity. The day I got my wisdom teeth out I started swearing like a sailor. That definitely wasn't a natural evolution of my personality.

This is the thing I worry about least and should worry about most. It's an incredibly subtle hardship that can hurt both me and others without me ever realizing why. It also emphasizes a flaw I have: I let fear/anger/pain cloud my thinking. A Better Me would be able to function at least as well as Current Me even under extreme stress. I may not necessarily be able to stop feeling the fear/anger/pain, but I should be able to cope with it. I think this can be improved by being constantly aware of how my personality is changing. So if any of you see me acting more abrasive/sociopathic/angsty than normal, give me hell about it.

Eleven hours until my next appointment. I'm not looking forward to it.

On Elitism

Hm, haven't been here in a while. Life has a bad habit of sneaking up on you, then clubbing you with a tire iron and running off with your cell phone. I'd like to reflect on a set of ideologies I've encountered over the past few years. It's not directly related to improvement, but I think understanding how the ideals work is rather important to our growth and maturation.

Most people are unconscious. They do things without understanding why they are doing them. Other people are conscious and have developed a soul. They understand themselves and can influence the people around them. Only the conscious are really aware of what's going on.

Most people are background characters. The story of life passes them by, and they just go through the motions without understanding them. Some people have narratives. They have agency over their own lives and those of the backgrounds. Only the main characters are really aware of what's going on.

Most people are sheep. They follow the will of society without thinking about it. Other people are the shepherds. They see how the societal machine Works and can make it affect them less, or influence it. Only the shepherds are really aware of what's going on.

Seeing a pattern? The first one was something somebody I respect said last year. The second was said two years ago by somebody close to me. The third was what I believed three years ago. This is an idea that was independently developed by three very intelligent people. It made the world seem so obvious.

The overarching thema is to divide society into two groups. There's the unconscious/sheep/unwashed masses who do not have agency or influence over their own life or, as one person put it, the ability to consciously analyze reality. The other group is the conscious/shepherds/elites who have this ability to think for themselves. They are the movers and shakers of the world. Naturally, everybody who comes up with this idea automatically assumes they are part of group two.

Now this is an extremely comforting idea, the idea that you are more special than the faceless horde around you. It also has a lot of glaring problems. For example:

-Just because you don't know another person's life in depth does not mean you can make a sweeping condemnation of it. Most people have dreams, aspirations, and self-doubts just like you do. You might not be able to get in their head, but they cannot get in yours either. Can they see your eliteness glowing like a beacon? If not, maybe you can't see theirs.

-Self awareness isn't a discrete unit. You can have a measure of consciousness between "stick" and "Buddha". You can't break people into "self aware" and "not self aware", because people are things besides sticks and Buddhas. Imagine trying to break people into "babies" and "geezers" with nothing in between. That's what we're trying to do here.

-Similarly, self-awareness can't actually be maximized. Becoming one of "the conscious" implies that you have achieved the epitome of awakenedness, which would be like trying to achieve absolute mastery over lifting things. In the grand scheme of things you will never, ever, become Buddha. Additionally, self-awareness isn't a one-dimensional thing. I may understand more about what makes me angry, but you might know more about what makes you happy. Trying to compare one person's consciousness to another's is mathematically meaningless.

-The entire idea is just Objectivism with a heaping scoop of metaphysical superiority.

It's poison. It convinces you that you are Above other people and know more about them they do themselves. They will never understand you, for you are an Elite and they are just the Sheep. It's not a large step to start believing that you can ignore other people's opinions on matters and even violate the rules that keep civilization functioning. I've certainly been there. Once you start believing only the Elite posses the truth, you're no longer part of the "little people".

I can't say why this belief is so popular. I mean, all three of us came up with it, and I'm sure far more have too. I think it might be a defense mechanism. The world isn't an unimaginably complex network of connections where the aspirations of a guy in Kansas can tank the price of your morning coffee. A world where billions of people are fighting tooth and claw to achieve their dreams. Much easier to believe that only a few people affect things, and the rest are along for the ride. Easier to think that everybody's dreams and "2.5 children and a white picket fence" and only you, only you, truly hold a burning desire. It makes you special. You don't have to prove to the world that you deserve what you want. By being Elite you already deserve it, and it's only a matter of taking what should be yours.*

But you are not special. You do not hold the secret truth that ascends you as a human, the one thought that makes you a render of worlds. Everybody else  has their dreams and desires, hates and revulsions, struggles with themselves, just as you do. Everybody else has gone through trials and tribulations, gained reality and revelations just as you did. Everybody is just as awake and just as conscious as you are. You do not tower above humanity. You are looking it in the eye and saying "I'm taller." But you're not. We are all the same height, and only by standing on the shoulders of others can we see further.

My thoughts do not make me Elite. If anything, my actions do. We must prove our worth, not steal it through Right of Consciousness. We all have our brilliance inside. All that matters is how we face the outside.

*A friend just suggested a third reason. We judge ourselves with respect to others. When we say "I am good," we really mean "I am better than everybody else." Believing ourselves to be Elite allows us to say "I are inherently better than others", and therefore "I am a Good Person."