So today as I sat in front of Eileen, my new portable gaming rig, a thought came to mind---just what was it that drives people to do the crazy things that they do ever so often, and more importantly, why they sometimes end up turning away from the very thing that gave them the biggest pleasure in the first place to work on something that is, comparatively speaking, more mundane?
Of course, this thought came about through a few triggers. The biggest one was the story of Annabel Chong, which, if you haven't known by now, is about the infamous Singapore pornographic arts actress who did a massive gang bang film back in the day. She has since returned to a more mundane existence, stating for the record that ``Annabel Chong is dead, and in her place is the evil doppelganger''. But of course, sensational as this story is, there are more mundane stories that I have of the people around me that fall in roughly the same category of people who went through a massively crazy period before falling back into a mundane existence.
I suppose there are a few ways of looking at this phenomenon. One way that I found to be rather interesting is the perspective that everything that we do has a certain notion of a ``finite limit''---meaning there is only a finite amount of energies that we can devote to a certain task, and once this energy is gone, it will never return. In some senses, this is a rather accurate if unscientific way of thinking about things. It actually is an idea that is loosely paraphrased from an Aikido practitioner's saying of ``we only have a limited number of breakfalls that we can do in our life-time, so we should make good use of it''. But to the main point: we can sustain only a finite amount of interest in something, before the brain gets bored with the enterprise and moves on to something else. This means that for any activity that we may do that is not theoretically essential (like breathing, sleeping or eating for instance), we can only sustain a finite amount of interest and corresponding energy into the matter before we start to lose complete interest in it in the manner of a ``burn-out''.
Empirically speaking, it does seem like a sound perception---do too many of the things you like and it will end up being something that you hate. The question then is not whether this principle is correct in practice (we are taking it so a priori), but whether we can work around the principle to achieve an effect that appears to contradict the given notion.
Let me provide an example to illustrate this point. Suppose I am learning a new skill, say driving. Without loss of generality, we will assume that, based on the above-mentioned principle, I will have n hours of interest in driving for the entirety of my lifetime. These n hours are taken to be absolute---they assume that if I did nothing but drive, I would spend only n hours of them on driving in this life-time. There are two rather extreme ways of seeing this: I can choose to drive only a few hours in a week and end up stretching the perception of time to about n divided by the number of hours per week to claim an interest counted in weeks, or I can just keep driving during the 16+ hours that I am awake and claim differently. Both methods consume all the n hours eventually, but which is the better allocation of time?
To most people, it would actually make more sense to ``spread out'' the time, partly due to the fact that it is likely to be impossible to be working on the skill/activity non-stop, but partly because the activity needs to be stopped intermittently just to maintain some level of interest for the practitioner. Back to the Annabel story quoted above---why did she quit her glamorous job of being a pornographic actress to go into web development? Maybe she got sick of all the sex---one tends to have more intercourse when one is a pornographic actress I suppose, or maybe she is just sick of all the attention (for some loose definition of ``amount of attention one wants in a life time''). Either way, it got her thinking and snapping out of the crazy zone and moving on to something more mundane.
When I saw that story, I got really concerned, because I can see myself ending up like her, and no, I don't mean ending up as a gang-bang porn star. What I mean is that I can see myself ending up in the crazy zone doing really apeshit crazy stuff, and then suddenly quitting it all to do something more mundane. Actually, among many of my friends both past and present, it would appear that they are in a similar danger themselves of getting stuck accidentally in the crazy zone. Now, the problem is not the getting stuck in the crazy zone part (you're too crazy to realise it, but woe to those around you), but that the eventual ``crash'' out of the crazy zone will mean that you will never go back to that activity again. I can see how Annabel might have some distaste with her ``crazy zone'' life---that explains why she decided to kill off that personality. And in the case of my own circumstances, I can see myself foregoing research completely should I end up being in the crazy zone for research. That is one thing that I hope never to do, simply because I cannot just live with the mundane---it bores my mind to death and I end up vegetating and becoming exactly like the kinds of ignorant people that I have sworn that I will never be.
And that's why I try to maintain a healthy list of activities to keep me occupied. Previously, I call these activities the different ``facets'' of myself, but now I think they are merely activities that I, the central Ego, choose to do on my own time. There is a sense of consolidation of my fragmented psyche (a product over the last half a decade, I might add), with the general understanding that I need to keep all the activities sufficiently interesting so that I can keep things moving on well into old age and eventually towards my death.
It is not true that if one does not dedicate 100% of one's waking hours to the task that one is not passionate enough---there is a difference between passion and sustainable passion. Basing on the principle stated above, raw passion is like falling very deeply in love with someone, kissing/hugging/holding hands and doing all kinds of lovey dovey stuff in every possible mushy way---sure it's fun and invigorating, but what happens when one runs out of ideas on how to impress? Is it still love/passion? Sustainable passion, it seems, is something that comes in controlled waves---the fire is there, but it is not a bright explosion in the sky but the soft burning embers of a kindling flame, slowly but surely consuming both fuel and oxygen. A sustainable reaction may take longer on the get go, but it will definitely outlast anything that starts quickly and without foundation.
And that of course, brings us back to the sore topic that seems to plague me ever since I started writing in a semi-public manner---relationships, or specifically, romantic relationships. So the last part in the saga saw me getting pretty hurt from quite a few angles, and then deciding that I wasn't really ready for a relationship now, even though I seemed to be more ``experienced'' having gone through a couple of iterations or so. In a way, that position still holds, but based on the observations that I'm having, I am actually swinging further outfield on the whole let's-not-even-get-involved camp. You see, there is really little reason to be involved in a relationship that leads to marriage. I don't mind the companionship and all the other perks from a relationship, but marriage as a concept is something that is starting to make less and less sense the more we proceed through the social advancement.
I believe that I have argued about the purpose of marriage in another entry, but I am too lazy to look for it. I shall restate the argument here again: marriage is about the strategic union of economic or political powers---there is really little else to the matter. And since everyone is more or less more independent now than before, we find that the dependence factor that is prevalent in marriage is getting eroded away. The proof of this direction of change can be seen in the rising divorce rates in all the countries that have divorce as a legal cop-out from a ``failed'' marriage---if marriage were really something desirable, why then are the divorce rates on the rise? Are the married people learning something that they didn't know when they were still single?
Anyway, it is already getting late here as I write this entry, and given that I'm running some horrid cold from being up too late over a few nights, I think it is best if I retired to bed for now. But before I go, I leave behind this question for pondering:
Must the bulk of a country's population growth come from procreation of the ``natural citizens'' or should a country be thankful of population growth from any source?
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