elfs | And still, life goes on.

Even in my weakness and my melancholy (as he is very potent with such spirits), life goes on. It's funny; Yamaraashi-chan and I were talking about the banality of evil the other day, mostly in the context of World War 2. We talked about what it means to have principles, and how most people had never actually sat down with a sheet of paper, listed their priorities in life, established their principles, and tried to live up to them, and to deal with the temptations of context that lead to banal wickedness. I wasn't quite ready to hit her with the whole bit about my appreciation, in principle, of hypocricy, while reserving my anger for janus-faced cynicism. She's only nine.

Odd, too, that FallenPegasus should remind me of the way libertarianism and socialism diverge: both are passionate about politics, both are frustrated with the system as it stands, and both are opposed to political entrenchment as it stands, yet both are very different beliefs. Where they diverge is that socialism believes that motive matters: that if we just got the right people into the right places, everything would be fine. Libertarianism says that motives cannot be trusted: history and experience teaches us that motives don't count for much, that context matters, that power corrupts, that the expectation a politician could withstand the temptations of power is more than we should ask of any human being, and that it is the duty of the people to restrain political overreach.

Odd mostly because I'd just written about those two very subjects in a story (15,000 words and counting) so far removed from any of today's subjects that the connection seems tenuous at a distance, but becomes solid close up. It's about Misuko going home, to her homeworld of Abi where AI is forbidden, and "coming out" to her parents and her family, and what she discovers is the banality of prejudice: drop any of the third-generation Abians anywhere else in the known galaxy and they'd become as cosmopolitan as she, but they'd also drop back to dissing the "filthy waldos" and "machines with delusions of sophonce" the second they came home.

I also wrote another story, only about 4,000 words, that unfortunately I had to delete immediately afterward. Don't ask why. Suffice it to say that the robot character Ruse Angel will never be seeing the light of day after all.

Odd as well that FallenPegasus and I should also start back up into the gym in the same week. I've been beating myself up this week, mostly arms and chest, but also a lot of abs work. Having the iPod back really helps. The funny thing is, I was starting to feel flabby but I'm apparently in much better shape than others in my department. I went to the gym with one of my project manangers and two guys from QA, and I seem to be able to press and circuit much more than they can, despite the fact that they've been going much longer and more consistently than I have.