Articles - Page 4 of 10 - The Cracked Door

The Adventurous Balloon (A Short Story)

A little girl was holding a handful of balloons, but let go. Excited to be free, they all flew into the sky.

One, though, was even more excited than the others, and shot up within the pack. When a wind current knocked the rest down back to earth, it missed the current and soared high above them.

“Where are you going?” The others asked.

“I will ascend to the highest reaches of the heavens!”

And ascend it did. It marveled at the view, rising higher and higher over the earth. Suddenly, its skin cranked in the colder air, and it shriveled up into a raison, falling harshly back down towards the earth.

A Safety Guide for Travelers: Avoiding Petty Crime on the Streets

Traveling the world, I have been to a lot of places. This is a basic guide to how to stay safe in a city environment considered “unsafe.” I will focus on how to avoid being targeted for a petty crime like muggings or other theft while physically on the street, not organized or systematic crime like gang violence or political unrest. Petty crime is what a traveler is most likely to encounter when visiting a new city.

How to avoid being a target of petty crime:

1) Listen to people who live there

In most places with safety issues, local residents will warn you and otherwise advise you on how to conduct yourself. For example, in some cities, multiple people have told me not to take your phone out on the street for fear that someone will nab it. If you make friends in the place, you can also ask them their opinion, but because some people may have unrealistic or false impressions, it’s often best to ask multiple people if possible, to cross-reference with multiple perspectives. People naturally want to help others. Their advice is golden, because they know far more about the specifics of the place than you do as a traveler.

In my experience, many outsiders to a city have stereotyped and otherwise false views of how dangerous a city or neighborhood is. Maybe, they hear tons of horror stories on the news, not realizing that is far from the daily life of someone living in or visiting that space. That said, the best way to determine whether a place has issues with safety is to talk to people who live there. It is not perfect; residents can also have a biased conception of the place they live, but given that this is their reality, their opinions are far better than yours.

2) Notice how others conduct themselves

You should also listen to (or look at) how others conduct themselves in that space. One of the most important ways to stay safe from petty crime like theft is to not stand out. There is little you can do if you physically look different (say you are a different race than most people there), but even in such situations, walking and otherwise moving your body like you are a person who lives there, casually going about their day. Registering as someone who lives there significantly decreases the likelihood of being targeted. In addition to giving you practical actions you can take to avoid being targeted, residents’ advice often implicitly helps you blend in and seem like you belong there.

For example, while on the bus, subway, waiting at the bus stop, or walking down the street, etc., do most people around you (not counting any obvious tourists) have their phones out doing whatever? If so, you are probably safe doing the same. If not, however, then it’s probably best to keep your phone in your pocket as well.

Do people walk fast like they know where they are going (common in big cities)? Do people keep their heads down? Do people say hello to everyone they see walking down the street? I have seen urban neighborhoods with high crime adapt both extremes as a way to cope.

3) Learn to walk as if you know where you are going.

In most big cities, people walk fast and intently, so in many city environments, the best way to avoid being targeted is to look like you know where you are going. It doesn’t matter whether you actually know where you are going; simply walk as if you do. Walking fast, with intent in your step, and not like you are deciding which way to go at each intersection helps with this. In large cities like New York City, this is the default way most people move.

To walk with intent, the most important trick is to pretend like you know what you are doing and not to stop or gawk at the scenery for too long unless you absolutely need to (yes, you can still look at cool buildings and other scenery without stopping or gawking in an obvious manner). Even if you are just aimlessly wandering, set up checkpoints in your mind and walk to them. Decide you are going to walk to that corner or that store not too far away. Walk straight to it like that’s your goal, and then on your way over, pick a new one. Don’t stop and decide where to go; decide as you reach the destination, so you continue moving once you get there, even if it’s arbitrary. If you need to wait to see what is around the corner to decide, then continue moving while you are deciding what to do with the new information.

What if you realize you have been going the wrong way and need to turn around? That is the hardest thing to do when you want to look like you know where you are going, but it happens all the time when you are new to a place (even when I have lived in a city for a long time, I still get lost there). If you need to turn around, do it assertively, not like you are indecisive. That’s key. In many places, you are fine just stopping where you are, turning around, and just walking the other way. Just do it quickly and decisively with intent in your body. Once you are walking the other direction, keep walking at a brisk speed like that was the direction you were walking all along.

If you sense that you are in a significantly less safe place, you can cross the street and then start walking the opposite direction. Unless someone is specifically watching you during the couple seconds it takes to do that, then most people will not even notice that you turned around. In an extreme, worst-case scenario, the best bet would be to duck into some business, wait there for about 30 seconds to a minute (or longer if you are in real danger), and then walk out going the opposite direction. Then, anyone who saw you before will think of you as having gone into that business to buy something, and then when you come out, anyone who sees you now just sees you going about your business after visiting a store. Pretty normal.

If you need to take out your phone to determine where you are going, I find it best to keep walking while checking your phone. Be aware of your surroundings when walking with your phone out to make it look like you know where you are going but are just checking a text or something, and then put it away once you are done. This is rare, and I only need to do this when my GPS is making some kind of error, which I can check for in under a few seconds. Be aware of your surroundings and do it when someone is not near you, on the sidewalk well away from the road where someone can nab your phone as they drive by.

I wouldn’t do that for longer than a second or two, not only for fear of someone taking it, but also because it’s good to look in front of you when you walk. So, if you need more time to look at your phone’s map to reorient, it’s best to stop and go into a business where you can take your phone out for longer. Maybe a convenient store, cafe, or something like that. There, you can take the time you need to get your bearings. In an extreme scenario where you still feel threatened while in the story, I may go into a locked public restroom away from others entirely. If you walk with intent, most people will assume you were just going to that shop or cafe, not knowing you ducked into there to figure out where on earth you ended up and how to get to your destination.

4) Keep precious items near to your body and minimize how often you need to take them out.

If you can, keep precious items in one’s top pockets near one’s hips (not your butt pocket where someone can easily nap it without you noticing). If you are like me and often wear cargo shorts, in places where theft is a problem, you should not put your wallet, phone, or other valuables in the lower, cargo pockets because they are much more stealable. If you are carrying a backpack, keep it over your chest, and any purse or other bag over your shoulder or front waist, so you can keep an eye on it. Anything you are carrying behind you is easier for someone to stab open with a knife and make a run for it.

In areas where theft is a concern, I minimize the amount of valuable goods I bring. I generally always need my phone and wallet throughout the day, but I don’t generally bring my laptop, an extra camera, or other goods unless I feel like I absolutely need them for a specific activity. In some neighborhoods, these are fine, but others not. This would also apply to expensive jewelry or other wearables if I owned any, but they are not my style personally.

Further, I minimize how much I need to get out such items. For money, I often take out enough cash from my wallet to pay for things like lunch, snacks, or other daily items and keep it separately in my pocket. That way, I can pay for daily needs like public transit or food without getting out my wallet, especially in an open market or other public space. For any city that I need to swipe a special public transit card to ride the bus or subway, I also keep that card out, separate from my wallet for ease of use. Keep in your pockets other small items you may need while walking down the street, like a few tissues so that you can blow your nose without having to open your bag to find them.

5) Pro-tip: Listen to directions on your headphones.

Google Maps, for example, does walking directions. Put on headphones and turn its GPS on like you would driving directions. It will tell you when you need to turn, but to anyone else on the street, you look like you are listening to headphones. Listening to headphones actually helps you seem like someone who lives there simply going about your day. It will tell you when to turn as you walk, preventing you from having to constantly get out your phone to make sure you are going the correct direction or not miss a turn. Occasionally, you may need to double check the map if it is misfiring in some way, but that is rare, and in my experience, these checks are often brief; just checking to make sure I need to go left, right, or straight here.

Most often, I will turn on directions to where I am going when I am in a safe place before I leave, put in my headphones, and then go onto the street ready to go. You can also listen to music, a podcast, or whatever else while you walk, or be in complete silence. That’s up to you. Just make sure you are still able to hear enough to not get sneaked up on.

I hope this helps you stay safe in urban neighborhoods. Crime can be an issue in some cities around the world, but they are an overcomable one if you know what you are doing. Most cities are still worth visiting despite the low chance of crime. Most people who live there don’t experience any problems on most days, and these precautions help you make sure you are among the many there who have a wonderful day there.

A New Angle on the World: How Photography Keeps Me Present

*Photo Credit: Me. You can find it* here.

I have discovered that I love photography, especially of taking pictures of the beautiful landscapes as I travel the world. I started to realize when I would get overexcited and bombard my poor friends with dozens of pictures of beautiful landscapes a day, obsessed with showing each new angle of the places I visit.

I have heard many people complain about how taking pictures when they are traveling removes them from the moment. For them, it’s a type of addictive trap that ultimately worsens their vacation experience. They end up spending their time only thinking about the next photograph.

I do not doubt that taking pictures can have that impact on them, but my experience has been the opposite: photography helps me stay in the moment and appreciate the environment in new ways.

Photography forces me to slow down and experience new angles of the places I visit. When I walk around thinking about pictures, I notice the small things. The ways the trees curve in the wind or the shape the rocks form against the hillside. By trying to figure out new and interesting photographs, I experience the environment in a new way. Recently, I have been doing photography walks, where I walk around and try to find interesting photographs to take as I go, stopping every few meters or yards to take a picture. I notice the little quiet moments, whether in nature or in a city, that I would otherwise breeze right by. It helps keep me in the moment.

I also find photography creatively exhilarating. I have aphantasia, which means that I cannot visualize images in my mind. Thus, I often struggled with most forms of visual art. With drawing, for example, I cannot see what I am creating until I start drawing it, in contrast to skilled drawers visualize in their minds what the piece will look like and then start drawing it step-by-step.

With photography, I can bring a piece of aesthetically pleasing artwork by positioning the camera in innovative angles and other ways to tell a compelling visual story. For example, I may set up the lines created by rivers, mountains, and other scenery so that they move towards the corner of the shot because this lack of “conclusion” causes my mind to follow the lines passed the picture, often giving a feeling of curiosity and wonder. I am quite literally creating it right before my eyes.

Maybe this is just me, but whether you do so with photography or something else, you should try to find new ways to explore the places you inhabit. Often all it takes is a little bit of ingenuity to imagine a new way to engage the world around you.

The Pros and Cons of Staying in Hostels

When you are traveling the world, sometimes you have to stay in hostels. As someone who generally does not like sleeping in the same room as someone else, I find it happens a lot less than you think: in most places, there are single room hotels or Airbnbs available within my budget, but that’s not always the case. Here are the pros and cons of staying in hostels specifically for someone like me less accustomed to it and maybe a little skeptical of the whole idea:

Pros

1) Cost: Their obvious advantage is that they are cheap. I remember in New Zealand, the difference was between under USD$10 a night to $80-100 a night in many places, making it worth it. Most places have more of a middle ground, but almost everywhere the cheapest place to stay off the street itself is a hostel.

2) Meeting New People: You can meet fellow travelers. Hostels can provide a nice social setting for fellow travelers. If you read other blogs and forums from digital nomads or other travelers, meeting new people who are also traveling is the most commonly cited reason people list for staying at hostels other than the cost.

At the same time, if you mostly meet people at hostels, you are generally meeting tourists or other travelers, not locals. This can lead to a bubble. This seemed most pronounced in Nonwestern countries where I noticed many hostels would be an oasis for Westerners to mostly hang out with themselves rather than get to know the people in the culture where they were visiting. Some hostels offered “cultural experiences,” but these were artificial introductions rather than just making friends with the people in that place. I found that where you hang out is where you will meet people, so the better way to meet someone was to get an Airbnb by yourself in the part of town where tourists were less likely to gravitate. That way, those around you are mostly those from the culture you are in, so you are more likely to take the cross-cultural hurdle of talking with them rather than staying in your Western bubble.

3) Falling Asleep: I found it easier to sleep than I thought. I worried that I would not be able to fall or stay asleep given potential noise or activity by others, but this was not as big of an issue as I first expected. In some places it was an initial problem, but I was generally able to fall asleep okay, whether the light in the room was on or whether there were others in the room doing stuff as I fell asleep. Two places were an exception because of the degree of activity late at night (which I will discuss in more detail Con #4).

Cons

1) No Private Space: After many days, I wanted a quiet place to unwind in the evening. In some hostels, there was a place where I could hide out when needed, but in many, that was not possible. The constant movement of others could eat at me slowly overtime. One night was generally okay, for example, but not having the ability to be by myself overtime influenced my ability to vegetate, decompress, and otherwise be myself. I was rarely forced into an interaction I did not want but not having space dedicated to me made it more difficult to unwind. It also made more private activities that I do not want someone potentially looking over my shoulder while doing, such as checking personal finances, making personal calls, etc. more difficult.

2) Worry about Theft: Theft is a worry. A few people in the hostels I stayed report having their stuff stolen. Only a few hostels had personal lockers where you could lock your stuff, but it could not usually fit all valuables. This could range from food to precious electronic equipment, and range from theft of stuff temporarily left around to break into locked lockers. In most cases, I had a rental car, so I generally left my stuff locked in my car. That worked, but when traveling, one does not always have a rental car.

This is a probability game. Even if it’s a low probability that my stuff would get stolen, if I stayed at hostels everyday I traveled, each day it is more likely to happen. Even if there is a 1% chance of it happening on a given day, after spending 100 days in hostels, the chances of it happening to you at least once is pretty high. It only takes one moment to loose something valuable to mess with your life. Because of this reason in particular, I do not plan to stay at hostels unless I absolutely have to and preferably if I have a rental car for storage.

3) Noise: Some hostels are rather loud. This depended on the environment, but in my experience, they ranged from rather quiet and chill on the one extreme to common rooms full of talkative people (difficult if this is the only place where you can do work) to one where guests routinely partied until around 1:00 am. This could be a major problem, although even in the latter, I personally was still able to fall asleep at the end of the day.

4) Far Away Bathrooms: Surprising con, but most often you have to walk a far distance to go to the bathroom. This stinks for me since I personally wake up a few times in the middle of the night to visit the toilet.

5) Difficulty Running Electronics at Night: As a data scientist, I often run stuff on my computer overnight, and this is not possible in a hostel, unless you kept those devices in bed with you as you sleep and hoped you didn’t turnover in the night and squash it by accident or something like. This was surprisingly agonizing for me, who is accustomed to frequently running programs that can take several hours to complete.

Overall, I would say that hostels were not as awful as I expected. They are doable (best to choose one with a security guarantee such as locked boxes for your stuff), but I still only do them sparingly. I handled staying in hostels for the better part of a month and a half, but let’s just say it was not ideal and only do. If needed, I could sleep in one for a few nights here and there, but I would only do so if I had no better option.

How to Overcome the Nomad Nihilism

Traveling can encourage a certain type of nihilism. Often every few weeks (or sometimes every few days), you are in a new place. This can produce a constant sense of churn, kind of like a time loop movie, where you constantly reexperience new things and a new setting of people going about their lives. You don’t usually stay in a place long enough to experience the long-term consequences of your actions or to develop roots. Thus, like some of Phil’s benders in “Groundhog Day,” you could, in theory, live as hedonistically as you would like (as long as you do not break any laws) if you really wanted to. Pure hedonism was never really my thing, but I could understand its pull on many travelers.

Each new place starts to fit into the standard pattern of all other locations. You end up looking at people going about their lives, removed from the signals of meaning that ground most humans in their daily lives. You technically don’t need to wake up at a certain time (unless you choose to impose that on yourself), go to work at a certain time, or otherwise follow the rhythms that produce the structure for most people’s lives.

Likewise, you are not connected in the web of relationships that many encounter in their daily life. Instead, you witness an endless stream of new people you meet along the way. If you do not click with a certain person or even those in an entire community, you can simply move on to another place. This produces the advantages of flexibility. You are not stuck with the same people over and over again like how many people are forced to tolerate their neighbors for years on end. This allows you to be yourself. At the same time, though, you are presented with endless choices and often do not have to experience the social consequences of social sanctions for your actions.

All of this can give the feel of endless cycles, leading to a type of nihilism. I can understand Phil’s “whatever” attitude in Groundhog Day much better after experiencing tons of new places in rapid succession. After a while of being in new places again and again, it can feel about the same after a while. What do you want to do today? Whatever you want. Some days that is a grand adventure, but others it’s sitting on the couch and doing nothing. It’s all been done before, and any grand adventure is probably similar to ones you have already done many times.

I call nomad nihilism. It’s the dark side of flexibility. After a while, you can start to feel meh about the specifics of where you are (the new people you meet, the new sites you see, and so on) since to you, it’s all been done before.

Unlike in Groundhog Day, you are in new places, which can produce new dynamics. This only goes so far and eventually these small novelties start to compress into a singular lull. Within this, though, lies the start of the solution.

You still take some things with you, however: your memories, photographs and any other physical or written artifacts, and most importantly, any relationships you made along the way. These grounded me against the meaningless lull of novelty. Notice these are mostly the positives of the places you have been to: the people you clicked with and maybe form a lasting friendship with, not those who never clicked with; the beautiful photographs of the places you found interesting, not the ugly places or tourist traps you wouldn’t go back to again, etc. Except for memories, which are always with us no matter how harmful, you have the choice, meaning you can focus exclusively on the positives.

This produces a significantly different dynamic than regular, settled life. On the one hand, you have significantly greater control to craft the experience that works best for you. You can decide where in the world to go, what to visit in each place, and when to interact with others in a locale with less “intrusions” into your time by others than in settled life. At the same time, this means your decisions do more to craft the experience you have. That day, you can choose to be hypersocial and speak with tons of people you can, or you can choose to be a hermit talking to no one (or anywhere in between).

Over time, your choices influence your overall experience over the long-run. If you choose to focus on yourself or your work in the short term, that is often fine, but if you do that all the time, you run the risk of never finding time for those around you and creating an overall less immersive, less vibrant experience for yourself. The freedom to craft your own experience comes with more responsibility as you are often what stands in the way of living your joy.

Constantly changing environments can also help you see the arbitrary constructions of human existence. Constantly witnessing new environments with new variations of the human experiences can make you notice the parameters that form normal human affairs, whether that be a conversation or seeing how a specific community celebrates a particular holiday. This removes some of the “magic” of normal life that someone may experience if they only lived within one community. The external world losing some of its muster can make retreating into your own world more appealing.

It seemingly hyperindividualizes you. Our society glorifies being completely able to choose when and how you interact with others, and traveling the world is an ultimate manifestation of that. You both learn much more about humanity from seeing the diversity of experiences around the world, and you have the freedom to construct the experiences that you want. It enables you to see the strings that hold communities together, but such a removed perspective can also feel distancing, reducing community to the assemblage of specific factors. To work through its cons, you must figure out how to take time to engage with the communities in which you are in.

You ultimately need a balance between solitude and external. You need to explore, learn new things, and meet new people. These relationships, in particular, help center us, both who we are and how we regulate our emotions. You also need to relax and rest. Finally, creativity is crucial too: I agree with the Youtuber Sisphysus55 that art or creativity is the ultimate solution to burnout. Producing whether for others, just ourselves, serious, or whimsical helps reorient ourselves as well. I found these three to be the pillars of overcoming nihilism: relationships, rest, and creativity.

A Warning from Death (A Short Story)

Hello,

I wanted to write a letter to clear things up. I am quite possibly the most misunderstood person you will meet. Most people fear me, but I’m not scary. I am the one who helps you pursue what is most important in life. I am the End, yes, but the end is what makes the journey a journey. Without it, you would no real reason to focus on what is most important, nor acceptance of what you have. By establishing finiteness, I establish value.

I know very well what it is like to be feared. This is the standard way humans misunderstand me. I have dealt with it for millennia. What I didn’t anticipate was your corporations. They drain bits and pieces of my essence for their profit, all in the effort to give others cheap profit. Momentary happiness or release to hook people into an addiction in which I slowly drain them into me. The endless machine of more and more is ever consuming. It will only expand to engulf your world and everything in it.

What is truly shocking to me is how these humans who drain the life of others for their own profit don’t really gain much of anything in the process. These vampires are too wasting their life. They just spend their life trying to make more instead of enjoying what they have. Addicted to money and the gain for more more more each quarter, they remake their consumers into their own vampiric image. They also leave their employees husks of their former selves, only able to consume with the little energy and money they have. Take me as a purist, but this bends the very foundation of what I am.

So take this my warning. Embrace death so that you can embrace life, but if you embrace this, you are embracing nothing but a shadowy existence that is neither.

Yours truly,
Death

What You Can Learn about People based on the Questions They Ask

You can learn about some by the questions they ask. You not only learn what people think but more importantly, what people want to know about the world around them. This provides a window into who they are.

Here are a few common patterns of question askers to look out for:

1) Those who ask confirming questions:

When talking with you, these people ask questions to confirm what they already suspect. This can be a sign that they primarily resonate with their own past experiences.

Confirming questions are often close-ended, even yes/no questions. Examples might include:

“Oh you went to Italy. Did you like the pasta? I heard it was fantastic there.”

“Was that exam easy? I found that exam easy when I took it last year.”

These people expect a certain thing to be true, and only ask questions based on their past experiences or what they have heard to be the case. Obviously they may be wrong. For the above questions, maybe you found that exam difficult or did not enjoy or eat much pasta in Italy.

Habitually asking close-ended questions can demonstrate a retrospective orientation: they often consciously or subliminally are thinking about their past experiences, whether their own experiences or the experiences they have heard from others. Either way, their mental process for these questions often involves determining parallels from past experiences and using that to determine what must be the case for you in your situation.

2) Those who ask questions about facts

Another type of question asker asks about the facts or specific details of the situation, including the “who”, “what”, “when”, and “where”. For personal stories, their questions may focus on the details of the environment or on people’s external behavior rather than trying to understand internally what people were thinking or feeling.

Examples:

“What color was the car that cut you off?”

“What was the name of the town you visited?”

“What did she look like?”

Sometimes they can feel like detectives, uncovering the details for their police report. Sometimes a few of these questions can be helpful to understand to grasp what happened, but for emotionally intense experiences, for example, too many factual follow-up questions can form a type of distraction.

It can show a fixation of surface-level facts over emotional experiences. I often find these questions most frequently asked by people who are less likely to discuss feelings, preferring a more distant, action-oriented veneer.

3) Those who ask questions about feelings

Talking to this type of person can feel like you are talking to a therapist:

“How did that make you feel?”

“How do you feel about that now?”

“What was it like having that happen to you?”

In regular conversation, I find these less common than Type 2, but I still encounter them from time to time. They focus on how you feel and often seek to sympathize or empathize with your experience. I personally usually really enjoy these questions and frequently ask them, but some who are not used to talking about their emotions may find it overwhelming. This type tends to want to focus on and understand your subjective experience as a fellow human.

4) Those who ask questions about ideas

This type intellectualizes pretty much anything you are talking about. A philosophical conversation about the theory or social implications of the phenomena may seem like their favorite kind of conversation.

I will often see people who do this abstracting the specific things you are discussing into a broader theme to then discuss the merits of in the abstract (e.g. “I’m sorry you got broken up. What do you think the ideal person would look like for you?”). Some people may enjoy moving the conversation into such an abstract direction, but sometimes, it can also detract from the specific experience you want to talk about.

Some may also generalize to understand the social implications of the specific topic at hand (e.g. “I’m sorry that you had that experience during your last doctor’s visit. How do you think we should change the healthcare system to help prevent that from happening again?”). Doing this can veer the conversation close to “politics”, which may or may not be a good thing depending on the conversation.

People who ask these questions tend to themselves be abstract thinkers, those who generally prefer thinking about more theoretical rather than tangible topics.

5) Those who do not ask any questions at all

When speaking in one-on-one conversations, this type is the easiest to spot. They simply stand there listening to when you are done talking and do not ask any questions at all.

This group has two subtypes:

A) Those who seem to prefer to not talk at all: They may not ask any follow-up questions. That can mean they were not interested in talking with you or about that topic, whether they weren’t interested in talking with you specifically or they do not like talking in general.

B) Those who ask one or two simple questions (most often confirmation questions of what they already think like the first group) before ending the conversation. They also may not be interested in talking with you, but sometimes I will see people who seem genuinely interested in talking about the topic but not be able to ask more than one or two follow-up questions about the topic. This can mean they are an internal processor and may need your help guiding them through what about the topic you two should explore in more detail.

C) Those who, instead of asking follow-up questions, wait until you are done talking (or interrupt you) and go into their own point or story. Everyone can do this from time to time, but people who habitually do this often are not listening. Without being aware of it, they think of themselves and their experiences first and foremost.

6) Those who ask open-ended questions

This final group can be the most interesting but also the most complex. They usually ask follow-up questions, whether about your feelings, thoughts, or ideas of your topic. Good follow-up questions keep you within your own thought process and prompt you to explore it in more depth, but sometimes people will also ask open-ended follow-up questions that seek to extend or move your point or story to a related topic.

Examples:

“What do you think of what he did?”

“How would you have approached that differently if it happened to you now?”

“How has your perspective on that changed over time?”

They often have a genuine interest in understanding your perspective, but these questions can often be the most complex to answer, since they require you to think through how you would answer them.

A Letter from a Retiring Medium (A Piece of Complete Fiction)

I have been a median for many, many years, and as I sink into the relaxation of retirement, I want to explain medium-to-medium the secret annoyances of the job that we mediums don’t normally talk about.

Clients usually almost always want to talk to the recently deceased. These young dead with their constant problems and unresolved issues from their mortal lives are by far the most annoying: desire for revenge, love, unfinished business, or whatever. All of this makes them needy and moody. Of course, living people who remain caught in the thralls of life tend to gravitate towards them. Moody attracts moody.

The older the dead the more interesting they get. After one has lived longer than one’s lifetime in the world of the dead, they start to get hit by the fact that their life here is a less significant portion of existence than their afterlife. It takes time, but even those most impacted by fame on earth will eventually seep into indifference about their mortal existence, engulfed by the eternal wave of their afterlife now in front of them. This gives them an insightful perspective about our world, which rash clients, caught up in whatever earthly need or desire they might have, never seem to appreciate.

My absolute favorite to talk to are those who have been dead for tens or even a hundred thousands years. They can be hard to find, but when you manage to summon them, their life on earth is a distant memory that they may not even recall from the piles of eternity that has already buried itself on top of it. Their voices, encapsulating all they once were, all they once sought, synthesizes into a singular, beautiful hum, a single note they beam with the melodious brightness of a distant star.

So good luck as you enter this deadly profession. Your customers will be annoying. Fulfill their desires; resurrect their lovers, their mortal enemies, their family and friends, or whoever they request. But before you get tired and burnout from the drama, make sure to take time to slip into the deeper wells of humanity and rest in the solace of the vast ocean of humans past. It’s your best break from the constant waves of the whims of those who still strive.

Now is finally my time to begin my retreat into this same vast expanse that is existence. I start with retirement from the world of production and sustaining before I, too, will eventually take the plunge into the great expense of eternity. May you take up this mantle well.

Sincerely,
Your fellow retiring medium

What The Good Place’s Ending Leaves Out about Ethics (Reflection #9 in “The Good Place Miniseries)

Eleanor helps comfort Tahinni through her family trauma.

This is my final article reflecting on the Good place (see the previous article and my whole series). It’s been an insightful ride. To be clear, the Good Place is one of my favorite sitcoms, both for breaking new ground in what is possible in a sitcom and for encouraging people to think through what it might look like to truly heal from wrongs in an afterlife. Yet I think its ending leaves something crucial out: only individuals receive resolution and improvement in the afterlife itself, denying any kind of collective rectification of the moral problems facing our world.

In the show, the main group of characters manage to reconfigure the afterlife from a punitive system where literally every human in the last 500 years gets eternally tortured in the Bad Place to a refining system where each individual must work through their moral failings so they are able to join all other perfected individuals in the Good Place. This changes the thinking around justice in itself from one of punishment to self-improvement for all.

One could analyze this shift in itself, but here, I will focus on a crucial aspect of justice that this leaves out: any discussion of rectification of the world to resolve the problems we have created. Broadly speaking, this rectification could look like seeking to fix or repair what an individual has destroyed through one’s immoral acts and more broadly like trying to resolve the structural issues built on the accumulation of immoral and destructive decisions by multiple humans. They get let out entirely in the show’s resolution. Instead, the show’s new afterlife implicitly encourages individuals to focus on themselves as the exclusive or primary focus of what it means to develop morally. Let’s break them down further through some examples.

One day when I was a little boy, I did not want to eat whatever my mom served me for dinner that day, so what did I do? When she went to the kitchen for a second, I threw it all on the floor. When my mom returned, not only did she scold me for throwing my dinner on the floor, but she made me clean it up. As part of rectifying what I did, I had to clean up the mess I made. There could be many situations where fully rebuilding what was destroyed due to the immoral life is impossible (arguably full rectification is never possible), but a person who has done something wrong and feels guilty for it will often try to do the best they can to repair things for whoever they hurt through their actions.

Now this also applies at a larger scale. Humans have collectively built systems that destroy the environment and impoverish many through stifling inequality, and to fully make up for these, we also need to collectively repair their damage. But in The Good Place, all individuals no longer have to fix the problems they create once they die from that when they die. Once they die, they get to go through their own inner perfection and go to the Good Place, even if the systems they were a part of while alive remain just as destructive on earth. As a matter of fact, they would have to undergo an internal transformation after they die whether they do anything to fix the damage they have caused, meaning that the damage they caused does not end up mattering to their existence anyways.

Any positive reformation of anything in this world does not matter in the reformed afterlife system they created at the end of the series. Take, for example, an individual who commits some kind of atrocity, ranging in severity from a parent abusing one’s children or an orchestrator of a mass genocide. That person dies, enters their purgatory, which presumably teaches them the error of their ways and makes them into a better person, and then they go to heaven. That’s great for them, but they do not need to take any concrete action in the world itself to deal with or fix the intense suffering their actions have caused. Genocides and even abusive parents unleash cascading suffering into the world (both to humans and nonhumans) that can take several generations to heal. The show makes clear that the victims of atrocities from others will experience a healing during the afterlife, but that is long after the fact. Why must they suffer in the first place?

Healing occurs only by literally removing people from their environment into a make-believe world. For example, both Tahani and her sister experience healing from the trauma of their parents’ constant abuse, which allows them to overcome their lifelong competition between each other. They then get to experience positive relationships with each other and their parents all as healed people. Instead of fixing their relationship dynamics together, their reformation seemed to occur in their individual purgatories, where they presumably learned the error of their ways and grew as people (with the entire show being Tahani’s transforming state). In the show, they did not know what the others would be like after getting through their purgatories demonstrating that they were not together in any of it. This is innovative in many ways, but its portrayal of healing is entirely individualistic. Each human goes through purgatory in isolation outside of the social systems in which they existed and both created their virtues and vices. For example, for a familial conflict like this, I would love to see them go through purgatory together, probably in a way that changed some of the unfair power dynamics latent in the abuse and resolved everything together.

Also, what about non-human entities that suffered? For example, there is no reformation or healing in this system to animals that humans caused to suffer. A dog abused or neglected by its owner presumably was left on earth to die with no redemption. It also ignores any healing to the suffering of more collective entities like human communities and the environment. Instead of the humans experiencing renewal in a make-believe purgatory, I would love to see humans have to come back to the earth (maybe as some kind of ghost or other supernatural spirit) to reform the suffering their actions have caused in this world to mitigate how much suffering future humans and the environment in this world have to suffer. For example, if someone led a genocide, they would have to spend the next part of their afterlife healing all the damage this caused the world since. As a child, if I spilled something on the floor, my parents, as part of me having to learn my lesson, usually made me help clean it up, instead of whisking me into another room for a lesson, and then sending me on my way.

All of this points to its human-centered individualistic view that does not consider any systematic change to society or the ecological world and ignores the plight of animals and other nonhumans in this world as inferior and cosmically irrelevant. All that is necessary for “moral” perfection is a change in the characters of individual humans, which ignores the calls for systematic justice in both the social and environmental contexts. Even though The Good Place takes a courageous step in the right direction in helping people rethink justice, I think if we were to reimagine the afterlife to better address the injustices of humans, it would need to include the entire world and involve a fuller rectification of what humans have destroyed in this world.

The Ghost among the Banana Trees (A Short Story)

Hello, let me tell you my story. I think many don’t understand how and why I live my afterlife in this forest. Many don’t really seem to understand the forest either or the things that live in it at all for that matter.

I am here to respect my community. There is little left of it, so I cherish what remains. My community was once the center of this place, full of families and their homes, animals, and markets. That was over a hundred years ago. Now, all that is left are the trees. I can still hear the whisper of my kin from the banana trees. That’s why I live in these trees.

History has taken much from us, but time can do that. Society around us changes. Now, Thailand is a country, whatever that means, and people in this area have moved around quite a bit, preferring to build their cities where their lines of stone that they call “roads” meet rather than in the networks that existed in my time. Sure, whatever, but I will not forget this village tucked into what is now a forest.

As I tend to my trees, nearby men almost intrude me with their existence. What fantasies do they conjure in their minds when they feel my presence? I notice their desire and energy gives me more power and reality. I prefer the invisibility; what need do I have from you living humans? Nevertheless, I have never felt as eyed as when men hike through my forest.

It reminds me how the attention the King and those court officials would give me when I was alive. When the Thai king brought me to his palace, his newest wife, oh you wouldn’t believe their stares. His many male officials took one look at my beauty and just assumed I was a slut, sleeping my way to the top. Why else would a woman enter their court?

My community, that was why I was there. My community were the ones who sent me. When they noticed that the king had taken an eye to me, I didn’t even want to go, but they said I could be the community’s ambassador, their hope. They said I could advocate on the community’s behalf at the court. The Thai Kingdom had spent too long trying to ravish our area. Standing on the edge of its borders, his army came after us whenever he wanted to prove his glory through war. The buffer between him and the enemy kingdom, he would slowly absorb us all, one village at a time, squares to capture in his diplomatic chessboard. They convinced me that it would be best for our community for me to go, the marriage might convince him to think twice before sacking us again.

But, the court officials practically came after me from day one. I had some allies, but many took one look at me and seemed to become my sworn enemies. Some opposed my community and wanted to keep it down; I think others were just jealous of how my beauty seemed to give me power. They made up some charge of adultery to get rid of me, finding some guy they could claim I slept with. I did have one lover who kept me warm from the chilling fires of political intrigue, but it was not who they accused me of loving. I was clever enough not to get caught with my actual lover. No, they picked someone who they also wanted to execute, a way to kill two birds with one stone.

I find the big struggles that living humans put themselves through perplexing. Over the years of my afterlife, I have realized how pointless it is. Men most of all. They seem to be caught up in grand narratives of gain and glory. They still do so now. All I see in this modern world is destructive fire, coming to consume my community from all sides. Deforestation, pollution, your society seems almost designed to destroy all I hold most dear. I guess that is how the world works; you can only build your world on the ashes of other worlds’ pasts. But I will keep my coal burning as long as I can. Then, I too will splinter, becoming the seed of whatever comes next.

Likewise, many Thai men seem to become entranced by me when they see me. They notice my beauty and my traditional green dress and project their fantasy for what they consider the simpler, Thai “traditional woman.” Many men in your current world seem to live what they consider unsuccessful lives. I am their solution, their simpler times. If they want to come live with me, to live out this fantasy, I tolerate it. That is their choice. I have more important things to think about to keep my community going than their little mortal lives.

I know others say that I entrap these men in a spell, keep them as a type of prisoner, and make them forget their past lives. I do nothing of the sort. Most men are initially drawn by my beauty, and those who stay do so because they see in me a beauty of Thailand’s past, or what they consider to be Thailand’s past. It’s not my fault if some get lost in their nostalgic world and slowly forget the present.

I am still largely indifferent to the ways of men, after seeing how destructive they can be, but I still enjoy sex with the men who join me. Well, at least with some of them. What the living don’t know about me is that I have multiple banana trees in the forest with multiple men, and you wouldn’t believe how easy it is to hide that fact. Some men are more considerate than others, but for most, they are not used to thinking outside their own world. All I need to do is dote on them. A few minutes of pampering a day, and they assume I will serve them always. Then I can leave for another home with another guy and do the same thing, and neither is the wiser.

Over time, I can slowly pull back my devotion, and they will start doting on me instead. Many men are not used to thinking beyond their quests, their desires, or their cravings enough to ask too many questions about what I am actually up to. They aren’t used to thinking of me as an independent person. To them, I represent the beauty of a bygone past, or what they think the past was like, when women supposedly quietly honored and served their husbands. I am the sense of success that they felt they could never get in the cruel world around them given their lowly positions. I can use this to my advantage.

Some might consider me exploitative, even predatory, but I’m not. They are like pets to me. Dogs live far shorter lives and possess neither as much wisdom or intelligence as humans, but humans still keep them around for their own amusement and affection. They give the dogs great lives in their care. Just like that, a regular human is far younger, less wise, and less mature, and unless they become a centuries-old ghost like me, has no real chance of catching up. I give them a great life, full of a sense of pride and pleasure, removed from the troubles of normal life that the current world throws at them. The mature ones with enough, without the insecurity and self-absorption eventually desire to escape, figuring out the ultimate emptiness of what I’m offering them. In time, they leave. Their choice, I don’t confine them against their will. To the others, life within my care seems to be what they want, so I give it to them. Little do they know that their energy and desire help preserve the trees they live in.