ethnodat, Author at The Cracked Door

Descartes’s Demons (A Short Story)

“How do you think we should deceive him?” The first demon asked.

“We could make him think he’s reincarnated,” The second demon offered.

“Too obvious. Descartes would figure out his body was an illusion if it changed several times.”

“Time is circular?”

“Ah but can a Descartes cross the same river twice? This would fail if every time he experienced the same thing, he didn’t feel like the same person.”

“Well, we don’t have much time,” The second one stated. “He’s starting to doubt our whole operation.”

“Hmm, this could actually be good,” The first one declares. “Let’s lean into it.”

The demon walks over to the microphone to speak directly into Descartes’s mind’s ear, “How do you know the world exists? What if everything you see, hear, and feel is all an illusion crafted by some evil demons?”

New puzzles flurry unto the screen projecting Descartes’s mind’s eye.

“What on earth are you doing?” The second demon interjects. “You’ll ruin everything!”

“I have an idea,” It responded and put its mouth back up to the microphone. “You think; therefore, you are. But you can only be certain of your own thoughts, since that’s all you can truly know exists in this world.”

The second demon chuckled appreciatively, beginning to understand.

“God must exist, so your reasoning must come from him. And why would he give you faulty reasoning?” It paused for a few seconds for dramatic effect. “But everything else you must doubt.”

It turned and smiled towards the second demon, “We can control him now. Feed him all our ideas, and he’ll think they must be perfect reasoning rooted in the divine. Even better, he will still believe he is doubting everything, going back to ‘first principles.’ Sometimes lean into the storm, and it will blow you to even greater heights imaginable.”

(If you would like to read more short stories, you can browse them here.)

Whispers Among the Stones (A Short Story)

It all started the day my parents moved us to the cemetery to save money. We would hide here among the stones at night and beg out in the streets during the day.

We had nothing, but the little we had decreased every day. On the streets, most people would ignore us as they walked by. I would walk along the path looking for someone who might at least speak with me or do anything but stare straight ahead as if I did not exist.

No one chooses to sleep in a cemetery. Only us and the untold dead.

I saw a former classmate walk down the street. I shouted and followed him. After several blocks he turned around to acknowledge me. I could see the horror and sadness in his face as he had looked at what I had become.

It got worse overtime. We got less and less energy. We would beg closer to the cemetery and eventually just along the road right outside. Few people came by here, but we couldn’t make it much further. Our bodies wasted into our skeletons as we got more and more desperate for food.

Sometimes we couldn’t even muster the ability to leave the cemetery. We just sat there looking into the city that had treated us as if we were already dead.

(If you would like to read more short stories, you can browse them here.)

Reputational Lag: How Our Concepts of Things Often Lie in the Past

When I lived in Chicago, I did some anthropological research into what neighborhoods people considered “unsafe”. I asked a lot of people what neighborhoods they thought had high crime rates. What I noticed was that the present crime rates of the neighborhoods people mentioned were usually not that high. Instead, people would list neighborhoods that had crime rates ten to twenty years ago. As if people’s conceptions of what was safe and unsafe was really based on past decades.

I call this “reputational lag.” Something’s reputation tends to be based on what it was like (or people think it was like) a few years or decades ago.. People recall their past conceptions of the thing, even if it has substantially changed since, and thus, reputations tend to lag behind like this. This can be the case for “safe neighborhoods”, which companies are the best to work at, the best places to visit, and many other things.

Try to be aware of when you formed your perception of a place. For example, just recalling that the last time you thought of a place was when you lived there or visited it a while ago can help you realize that maybe it has changed since.

Have a similar awareness when talking with others: listen closely to when and how they experienced whatever they are talking about. Are they there now or a long time ago? Did they directly experience it, or is it a second- or third-hand account? This helps think through how to evaluate their opinion.

You can use this information to become more aware of what’s around you and to better think about what factors might influence people’s opinions about the world.

The Rainbow (Short Story)

There was a boy who always knew that if you followed a rainbow all the way through, it would take you back in time. Every time he saw a rainbow, he would venture out, but when he would approach the rainbow, it would disappear. Only to reappear further ahead on the horizon.

One day he was visiting his Grandma in a park.

“Oh look a rainbow!” he screamed, running off straight towards it before his grandmother could respond. It was right on the edge of the lake in the middle of the park.

But once he got there, it was gone. As he crouched there panting, his grandmother caught up.

“Where did it go?” he asked.

“It disappeared,” she replied.

He explained his theory: if he could ever catch a rainbow, he could use it to go back into the past!

She chuckled and replied, “The past is like the rainbow. Beautiful to look at from afar, maybe, but from a distance is the only way we will see it.”

(If you would like to read more short stories, you can browse them here.)

What Is Power: Three Understandings of Power in Society

I have spoken to two friends who each have offered an interesting take on what it means to be in a position of power in society.

One friend said that he sometimes thinks of power in terms of who has to bear the consequences of mistakes: Those who are powerful in society (whether through wealth, status, clout, etc.) only have to suffer from their own mistakes; whereas, a less powerful person is someone much more they likely will have to suffer from both their mistakes and the mistakes of those who have power over them.

I find this to be true: the more marginalized in society can often be disproportionately hurt by the bad decisions of others, whether that be governmental policies, managers/employers, or whoever.

Another friend added that the powerful are often shielded from their own mistakes. The wealthy can often afford to make more mistakes with their money and still have more resources to try again, for example. Often those with lower incomes have less leniency to take risks and make mistakes. And when the extremely powerful make mistakes, governments or society itself can often swoop in to save them, considering their success necessary for society to keep going. The less powerful usually get no such luxury.

So, power can offer protection from the mistakes of others and also a cushion from your own mistakes: a type of protective layer if you will.

In addition to liking both of these definitions, I also see power in terms of being forced to understand the perspectives of others in order to be successful in your endeavors in life. Those with less power are often forced to have to understand and consider the perspectives of those with power over them in order to meet their own goals.

The powerful can remain ignorant of what those with less power than them think. They don’t have to consider others’ perspective to be successful in what they seek.

And many with power don’t: they never cultivate the skills necessary to listen to, learn from, and incorporate the perspective of those with less power than them, because they don’t have to. In some cases, overtime, they don’t foster the skills of listening or empathy, becoming used to dictating to others who listen to them.

For them, listening is a choice, in contrast to those with less power for whom listening is often a necessity. Thus, the powerful’s listening skills can atrophy over the course of their lives because they do not choose to cultivate it.

All of these definitions have merits, approaching the similar aspects of what it means to have power from different angles. Each demonstrates the nuances of how power shields people from the harmful impacts of others and oneself like a protective bubble. And from each, there is something important to learn.

No matter where you are in life, it can be important to choose to listen and do what it takes to learn from the perspectives of others. Like the first definition implies, this includes thinking about how your actions may hurt or otherwise negatively impact those around you. If you are in a position where you are not doing that regularly, that could likely be because you actually have a type of power in that situation. If you are not intentionally listening to others and incorporating them into your life, then you should start doing so, before those skills atrophy.

Why Is Life Not Working Out for Me: A Reflection on Andrea Hirata’s “Rainbow Troops”

I recently read Andrea Hirata’s “Rainbow Troops.” It is a fantastic coming-of-age novel about a poor boy growing up in Belitung, Indonesia and about the role individuals, society, and the world overall play in producing poverty. To wrap up the novel’s themes, the main character, In its final pages, reflects on how fate, effort, and destiny influence the direction of people’s lives:

Many of the poor from his island, in particular, give up and blame their poorness on fate. God or the divine must think they deserve to be poor like this. They may be tired, and giving up is the path of least resistance. Working hard can be like picking fruit while blindfolded: you don’t know what kind of fruit you will end up with, but at least you’ll have fruit.

I found this to be an interesting and honest reflection about resilience in the face of difficulties in life. Everyone struggles with succeeding and failing in life, but those without as many resources often lack the ability to safeguard themselves from their mistakes and the mistakes of others (see this more detailed discussion how that happens). This can make it significantly harder to continue to persevere in life choices like education that may prove useful for one’s long-term development. They often cannot handle the risk that they may fail.

Instead, they frequently must choose the safest option professionally: whatever will give them enough money to eat and have a place to live right now, even if that job pegs them into a lower income track. Thus, they narrow themselves to what has worked, even if it may not be the best option for them. Because of this, giving up or blaming yourself can seem like very practical options.

But blaming fate or blaming yourself both ignore the potential role society might have played to put them in this more marginal position in the first place. Societies often act to exclude certain people, relegating them to the status of poor or supposedly undeserving. But it takes time, energy, and emotional intensity to realize that and to determine how to best take action to address it, and those who need such action the most unfortunately often do not have it in them to work through that.

(For a more full discussion about the travails of the socially fortunate, you can read that here.)

The Elitist Fallacy and Why You Should Watch Out for It

There is a surprisingly prevalent but flawed type of argument you may hear people make that I call the “Elitist Fallacy.” The Elitist Fallacy is a way to falsely position one’s skills, approach, and/or discipline as crucial in a given situation.

This is how the argument goes:

1) X Skill is crucial or necessary.

2) I cultivated X Skill through Y Practice.

3) Thus, Y Practice is the only and/or best way to develop a needed skill.

People more often invoke this kind of reasoning implicitly rather than explicitly, especially since when you see the argument laid out like this, you may easily spot its flaw. Just because someone developed a skill one way does not mean it is the only way to develop that skill.

The first two premises may be true: X Skill may be important, and the person in question may have used Y Practice to cultivate X Skill. It is wonderful that they were able to develop that skill in that way. The error comes in assuming that since this was the way they did it, it is thus the only way to develop that skill. There could be many other ways that work for other people, and if you are to present your way as the sole or at least best, you must carefully explain why the others do not work as well as it does.

People often invoke this argument to sell themselves as the sole or best person to hire to invoke that skill, and disciplines often foster it to institutionalize their way to teaching the skill or conducting that type of work as the only important approach so that they receive more attention, money, and/or following..

But, it falsely elevates one’s experiences to rank of the sole experiences in a given matter, making it elitist. As such, watch out for it in others and try to be aware if it creeps into your own assumptions.

Do you assume your path to understanding is the only way to develop a particular skill, and if so, do you have explicit justifications as to why? Try to engage with others around the world who do something similar to see whether they had a completely different way of developing that skill in their context.

Adjusting Expectations When Living in Abroad

Over our lives, we develop expectations for how our needs will be met based on the culture(s) we live in. This includes our physical needs but also our emotional needs, social needs, and all our other needs. There’s nothing wrong with this; expectations help keep us sane and allow us to determine how to make choices in our daily lives.

However, in new cultures, these expectations tend to break down. The most difficult yet most important aspect of long term cross-cultural adjustment is to learn how to develop new expectations and use those to determine how to meet our needs.

Every culture can meet people’s needs. If it did not, people would not survive there. But a new culture may have vastly different methods or tools to meet those needs. In another culture, you must learn how their ways of doing things can and do meet people’s needs in life. And you must not only understand this consciously but internalize subconsciously.

Internalizing that is not always easy, and it’s okay if it takes time. All humans have built a set of expectations over the course of their lives based on how we are used to things happening. This helps produce the (generally subconscious) filters we use to assess the world around us: to determine, for example, what people mean when they communicate things, what they want from us, whether we are safe or secure, and what to expect from another in any given interaction. Without these things, we couldn’t function or handle daily interactions.

But in a new culture, all of this has to be rebuilt. It’s easier said than done, but much of the difficulties one feels in another culture – including culture shock, frustration or anger at local practices, sadness, etc. – deep down stem from the difficulty of experiencing a mismatch from your expectations and subconsciously sensing that you will fail to have your needs met. If so, it’s okay to pause and know that you are doing a complex psychological reset.

Intellectual Vacations

Most people need to take a break every once in a while, whether that be a few week vacation, or sometimes a longer break to help unwind. A physical break can help us detox emotionally from the constant churn of our everyday lives.

An intellectual break can be just as necessary and life-giving as well, yet it doesn’t get the same focus in our society. Take time off from your normal rhythm of production and produce something new yourself.

For example, one could take a few weeks or months off to work on one of your passions. During that time, produce something, such as poetry, a novel, a painting, a new video game, a music album, a beautiful hand-crafted piece of furniture, or whatever it is you enjoy making. Such a goal gives direction for the time and also can give a sense of exhilaration at creating something with one’s own hands.

Many would rather it be in a field or hobby that is different from what they do all day, so if you are, say, a writer slowly becoming tired from having to write all the time for your job, paint, write music, or do something far away from what you normally do all day for work. An academic friend of mine cooks: using his hands to produce great food to detox from reading and typing on a screen all day.

In their jobs, many are denied the ability to make something that excites them personally. Their employers give them tasks, and they produce what the organization needs or wants from that. That can be worth the paycheck and can even be fulfilling for many, but after a while of producing, it can become soul-sucking.

Some do this during their off-hours throughout their normal week, but if you are able, it can be helpful to set aside a few weeks or even months every once in a while to complete something on your own like a sabbatical. Use that time to unwind from the stress of your daily existence and work towards something new that you are proud of.

If that is you, taking time for yourself to create something with your own hands every once in a while can help replenish you from the soullessness of conformity and drudgery. Go on a vacation where you physically unwind, sure, but also make sure you devote time to make something you are proud of.

The Bike (A Short Story)

So one day over the summer, my friend and I walked outside. We got bored playing video games in my home.

On the curb was parked my bike, a really nice mountain bike. It was gray with rear shock-absorbers and like twenty gears. You could ride over just about anything, like a tank. I had just gotten it, and it was barely used. My parents had found it at a garage sale, and it was only a few months old. The newest bike I had ever had.

He walked up to the bike, “Wow, this is a nice bike. Can I give it a try?”

“Uhh,” I began to answer, but he was already gone.

He rode around the block, and I saw him again a minute or so later.

“Wait,” I shouted back. “I want to ride it too.”

But he continued another lap. His second time around, I tried to run after him, but I only lasted twenty feet before giving up.

“Stop! It’s my bike.”

He went around again.

I stamped my feet in frustration. This was MY bike, but he just kept going. Why can’t I have my bike back? I rushed inside and did the only thing I could think to do: called the cops. I came back out as he was turning the corner towards the house.

“Nice bike,” he said, getting off and walking it over to me.

As I went to grab it, a police car rode down the street and parked right in front of us. He must have been patrolling in the area or something, because he arrived really fast.

“I got a call about a bike robbery,” he said from his car seat. Both us stood dead in our tracks.

“Yeah, that was me,” I replied after a few moments of silence. “But I’m fine now. He’s returning it.”

“Well, can I get a brief description for our file?.”

He reached into his dashboard and got out a notepad, and I walked around the car next to his door. My friend just stood there on the sidewalk frozen, clutching the bike.

“Look, we’re fine now. He just went off with my bike, but he was only going around the corner. I thought he was stealing it and called you.”

“Okay,” he muttered. His pen was still pressed against his notepad ready to write. He looked up with a tinge of annoyance. “Well, can I at least have your names?”

I gave him mine, and then I gave him my friend’s. The officer’s face suddenly changed. He repeated his last name for confirmation, a new look of concern across his face.

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yep,” I said. Why couldn’t he just go away?

He jotted something down in his notepad.

“Well, let me know if you continue to get any trouble from him.”

The cop put the notepad down on the passenger’s seat and drove away. My friend, who had crept over to the passenger side of the car during the conversation, was looking down at the notepad. I managed to steal a glance before the cop drove away. It read his name in big letters along with, “attempted theft of a bike”.

Suddenly, everything clicked. The cop recognized his name instantly. His stepfather was a well-known drug dealer in the neighborhood. The police had been looking for any dirt on him for a while so that they could make a move on him. Any excuse to arrest him.

With the police car gone, nothing stood between us. He glared at me. He knew what the cop wrote down and why.

“Here’s your bike,” he said, pointing to it behind him on the sidewalk.

I passed him on the way to it and got on.

He was still glaring at me and began to walk over.

“I just didn’t know what you were doing with it,” I stammered, but that didn’t cover anything. I didn’t know what to say.

He ran after me. Instinctively, I biked away. I had won, had gotten my bike back, but I didn’t want it like this. I stopped pedaling, so he could catch up. He pounced on top of me, pushing me right off the bike. I scraped against the concrete sidewalk. Before I could catch my breath, he was kicking me in the stomach. I lay there, tightened my abs, and hoped for the best.

About two minutes later, we hung out at the park as if nothing had happened.

(If you would like to read more short stories, you can browse them here.)