14th Post

I have recently become interested in a few different TV shows, Mystery Science Theatre 3000 and Avatar: the Last Airbender.

MST3K is an interesting premise, the show is entirely based on making fun of B-rate movies; every episode has a bad movie for the three main character to roast for its bad effects, writing, and acting. The interesting thing is, the effects MST3K uses are also B-rate. The very existence of the show is almost a commentary on hypocrisy and self-appointed authority, and I find that kind of funny, and I find it kind of sad... but if I comment on my death-dreams I might have to turn myself in for plagiarism... so no mention on how they are the best I've ever had. It is a mad world however...

No deep thoughts on the Airbender, but I also recommend the show, I like epic tales, and have a fascination for worlds created using the four classical elements (or the five oriental elements, really I just like the small-number/rock-paper-scissors effects), and I like the fact that there are no evil characters. I don't mean everyone is good (like Pokemon or Barney or whatever) but the people on either side of the war are people, fully developed characters who are not merely trying to wipe out the other side. I picture the officers of the Fire Nation to be like the officers of the USSR or Nazi Germany, sure, some of them were really bad people, but many of them were being patriotic, or believed their cause correct, and were not necessarily evil people.

Now on another subject, I have realized that even though I consider myself to sufficiently think out my faith and take everything with a grain of doubt, I think that I have an advantage when i comes to having strong faith in my religion. I realize that many people can argue that the majority of Mormons are both complacent and unquestioning in their faith, but I feel that some Mormons try to overcompensate for this. Some people think that they need to be freethinkers, that they need to have more proof than that they grew up in the Church, or that a few missionaries were all that was necessary to sway them. I compare these people to those who wield the sword of truth, and desire their sword to be sharp. There is nothing wrong with this, in fact we are commanded to personally verify revelations for ourselves, but some people need to continue sharpening, they are not satisfied with what they know and they feel they need to be able to refute the doubts which they may encounter. These people are the ones who continue to sharpen their swords, whether to satiated their own insecurity or for their vanity, these people grind their swords to nothing and fall away from the Church when they no longer believe more than doubt, or cannot find a refutation for their current problem. I find it sad, usually they have a "logical" argument to present why they are correct, they do not realise that logic can only prove statements that are contained in the axiom set for the system, and they usually start with a set which does not allow for the Church to be correct, which forces the argument from the beginning. I realized when I was very young that there is no way to prove that this is the true church; I discovered this when my mother told me about the Catholic church that was next door to my ward's building. I asked my mother what the building was, and she said it was a church building, so I asked when it was our ward's turn to use it, and she said that it wasn't an LDS meetinghouse, and then I found out that there are different religions. I assumed that anyone who would go to church in the first place would want to go to God's church, and that not all of the churches out there could be evil, no if there were people who wanted to deliberately lead people away it would be a small number, so it must be that it is hard to prove which one is right, in fact in must not be possible, because once it had been done none of the other religions would exist, and they do exist. Then I heard that God wants us to have faith, and faith is believing in him without having to see him, so God set up the world so it is impossible to prove what our purpose is.
This is where my advantage is in my faith, I do not need God to tell me that this Church is his, because God won't tell us, he isn't going to give us a sign so we can believe, we have to find our faith first, and then we can see miracles, and by understanding this I find strength in my testimony, and other people still need a logical reason.
I am sorry, that was a prideful way to end that thought, but I guess that pride has always been my particular sin, and erasing and rewriting that is merely erasing in my memory the fact that I still have to work in that, and I need reminding, so I won't edit this post.
It is now 3am PST so I should probably say goodbye to this post.

12th Post

I started rebuilding the code that I came up with in 9th grade, I used to be able to write in it nearly as fast as I could write, this is somewhat a depressing set of sentances, but they were the ones that came to me when I wrote this

23801 20820 05401 19801 05000
02090 00091 00880 00050 00000
50090 10025 00049 51250 00000
90200 00122 50004 22013 00000

What? You thought I would tell you the message? Think again.

13th Post

So I figured that it would be a good thing if I moved a few of my posts to an archive. I few friends of mine were doing it, and I caved in to the peer presure, indirect though it might have been.

11th Post

I find it interesting, I think that I have classified the two personality traits that I really don't like. They are both kinds of disrespect, one is elitist in nature and the other is a disestablishmentarianistic attitude. Most bad qualities seem to fall under these titles.

On elitism, or top-down disrespect, it is interesting to me how one can justify treating another person with distain on the grounds of "I am older/more experienced/more skilled at ___" or any variation of these, for the axioms that they are accepting on bad faith are any or all of the following:

(1) the value of the person is based on that skill or trait
(2) that this relationship is static
(3) that to feel good about self/talent/trait one has to have people of lesser quality (both quality[value] and quality[ability])

These assumptions are inherently flawed, as they propetuate a societal pecking order and cause stagnation.


On disestablishmentarianism, or grassroots disrespect, we find a mentality of "The bad things in life come from those who try to control us" These people assume any or all of the following:

(1) structure is unescessary, or counterproductive
(2) people who support structure are either misinformed or corrupt
(3) the emotional benefits of sucess in the system do not outweigh the cost of conforming, or the act of conforming is inherently detrimental to the conformee

Other reasons and the refutations of these are left as an excercise for the reader, as a true mathematician would leave them to be primogenitors to other questions.