Theory #5: Out There in the Great Big World

My boss took me out for drinks after work today. I have had a tough month. Luckily, he wanted to support me and let me know that he felt I had been unlucky. He is worried I might be frustrated. I know this because he asked me “Are you getting frustrated”.

It is a difficult question to answer when the person asking has such a limited view of the full picture. Life is bigger than work. As with any employee, he doesn’t actually know the half of it.

In reality (which is an ironic way to start this paragraph), my fantasy baseball team is redefining the word ‘frustrating’. I turned on the TV last night to see my only good pitcher had given up 5 runs in the first inning, and my shortstop was lying on the ground writhing in pain. It might be a nerd hobby to you, but I am using both halves of my ass trying to win this thing.

My air conditioner is not up to the challenge of summer, and my new front-loading washing machine seems to hate my clothes more than girls do. My Internet connection is an enigma, and not the good kind of enigma.

I will resist the temptation to dwell on the fact that the last year has been some strange combination of disease and divorce.

You know what else?

I have doubled my Internet bankroll in poker in the last month. “Why”, you ask? Brilliant play? Not really. Every card has been coming up Mark. People have been swearing and cursing as every little situation goes in my favour. I’ll probably have enough excess bankroll to pay for a trip to Vegas for the 2nd year in a row. One person in the great big universe, who thought I sucked but probably didn't understand pot odds, actually commented that I was the luckiest person in the world.

Me.

The luckiest in the world.

Good for me.

I brought my great ping pong nemesis to his knees yesterday, winning an unheard of 9 straight games and sending him spiraling to a world of sad and embarrassing excuses. He stopped by my office today to say “It turns out I ate something at lunch yesterday that made me ill. . .”. Freakin’ beautiful.

I spent last weekend at my cottage in perfect weather, as I did my best to groove Theory #4 to my advantage. I have a very long weekend scheduled this week and I will be right back up at my favourite place in the world. Except for Vegas.

I have met some interesting people that I really like lately.

England keeps winning at the World Cup.

But they are also playing like crap.

My hockey team pulled off two upsets in a row to finish the season.

To finish fifth.

Am I frustrated?

Well, as best as I can tell:

Yes, Yes, Yes, No, No. No, No, Yes/No ,Yes/No.

On average, this works out to pretty much the same as every other week.

The truth is I have all kinds of dumb little things that I love. My little world is a fortress built to my own ridiculous specifications. Barring any major emergency involving health, loved ones, or alcohol shortages, no one thing has much control over my mood.

Which brings me to the simple but important Theory #5 in the Book of Mark:

It is a great big world. If you aren’t putting yourself out there, all over the place, you are leaving your mood to chance. Why would anybody do that?

So what did I say when my boss asked if I was frustrated?

I was honest as I could be. I told him it was too close to call. It pretty much depended on if he was buying.

And he was.

So life is good.

Theory #4: Simultaneous Organ Collapse Theory

A lot of people have made a point of highlighting how tragic it is that so many people willingly choose to smoke when science has proven that smoking cigarettes takes 12 years, on average, off the smokers’ lives.

While I won’t argue that, I think it is even more tragic to bear the thought that some of those smokers probably don’t drink. There are few things more depressing than the failed logic of the tea-totaling smoker. If you know any such lost soul, please introduce him/her to my highly controversial and largely overrated “simultaneous organ collapse theory”.

One day many lifetimes ago, while trying to rationalize my own personal life choices, I scribbled the following notes:

“Simultaneous Organ Collapse Theory

Premise

1) Life kills you. Once your body stops growing, all of your organs gradually start to deteriorate. Eventually, barring external factors like a car accident or an axe murder, one part of your body just deteriorates enough that you die.

2) Often, the things that you find most enjoyable are the ones that are killing you the fastest. Drugs, alcohol, sex, food with flavour, etc. There is usually an inverse relationship between whether something is good for you and whether you actually want it.

3) Different pleasures attack different parts of your body. Smoking kills the lungs, alcohol predominantly focuses on the liver, salty food or being a Cubs fan hits your blood pressure and
your heart, etc.

4) If you smoke a lot but avoid alcohol and salty foods, your lungs will likely give out leaving you with a relatively healthier liver and lots of other healthy (or less sick) organs that smoking doesn’t affect (or affects less). You have stopped using your organs without getting all of the enjoyment out of them that you could have. You have wasted a part of your ‘life enjoyment potential’ ©.

5) When external factors do kill you, like a skydiving accident or a bullfight gone horribly wrong, you can’t avoid having wasted some of your ‘life enjoyment potential’ ©. You can only hope that, although life was short, you got as much enjoyment out of it as you could in the time that you had.”

Note: I edited these for the purpose of making them better

And so I give you Theory #4 in the Book of Mark:

In order for a person to optimize their enjoyment in life, that person should get maximum use out of all of their organs. In fact, the ideal scenario would involve living a wonderful life, getting every last ounce of good health out of all of your organs, then having all them collapse simultaneously, not having wasted a second of any of them.

Obviously it is impossible to time something like this, and you can kill yourself faster by trying to do it. The theory itself isn’t meant to encourage you to smoke or drink (unless you already smoke or drink enough that it wouldn’t make a difference). In reality, smoking actually causes about 20 different things that kill you. (Note: I looked it up and it was a good guess – see here).

It’s also impossible to measure enjoyment from life. Every time you speed up in your car you are taking a risk, every time you cut through the alley, or every time you trust someone that you don’t know all that well. We all have to draw our own lines, and you can use it to justify any lifestyle you want, provided you are being consistent in your approach towards life. The way you can go wrong is being inconsistent. If you want to prolong life through great discipline and a healthy lifestyle, don’t revolt from your own choices and take stupid chances. If you want to take stupid chances, accept the consequences of your choice.

You are mortal, and each breath you take or decision in life compounds that point. My body isn’t a temple; it’s a wondrous coupon book that doesn’t tell me the expiry date. The trick is to maximize value of your coupons and waste as little enjoyment as possible.

Just don’t forget, when one coupon expires, they all do.

I should also point out that a lot of people think smoking is also really bad for your liver. That is just another reason why I quit a while back and now I only do it when I am really, really drunk.

Intermission

There will be no Theory of Life today. I most definitely should have lucky gotten last night. All indications are that I most definitely didn’t. As we all know, theories of life are for closers. I’ll be back soon enough with the usual bullshit.

In the meantime, I am going to show the same courage that virtually every other blogger does and actually reveal a little bit about myself. My theories will soon become a bit more controversial so, if any people are actually reading this, they deserve a little context.

Here are four things about me that are significant for this site:

1) I am separated and will eventually be divorced. While the experience itself isn’t especially pleasant, I can definitely say that the process has done a great deal to speed up my own long journey of self awareness. Sometimes unpleasantness makes us better people, and this explains in part why I finally got off my ass and started this site.

2) I play a lot of poker. Many people think this is a terrible habit (see #1 above) but poker, like divorce, has been an excellent source of self improvement. The number one reason why I have grown to love poker is that it has a very direct way of being honest with you about your own shortcomings. We don’t always listen, but over the long run, the game speaks the undeniable truth. Like unpleasantness, sometimes vices make us better people.

3) The actual reason I have created the Book of Mark is unforgivably arrogant and self indulgent, which is why I won’t be hurt if nobody reads it. I have really and truly, over many years, developed my own life philosophy that I plan to unveil. I am going to pull back the curtain, come out say something substantive about what I believe the meaning of life is and why I live my life the way I do. This web site is nothing more than a handbook for how to live my life and why. I’d like to make it sound nobler, or even interesting, but it is what it is. All of these theories are actually tied together, and they are all meant to play a key role when my philosophy of life is unveiled. I like the idea that when I die I will have left this behind. I am not even concerned anymore about whether it makes me look like a complete idiot. I may well be an idiot, but at least I will have given it a shot.

4) I got drunk last night. Last night was on of those times where I decided to “live in the moment”. Sometimes, in order to live for today, you make decisions which will compromise how much you will be able to enjoy tomorrow. Yesterday I lived for today, and now today has become tomorrow, and I clearly remember sacrificing tomorrow some time yesterday. In other words, I am hung over, and this afternoon I will watch soccer and eat soup. I’ll get off my couch in time for tonight, but right now I am enjoying an intermission.

Theory #3: Freedom from "Freedom from"

Dear four readers,

Today I will try to show how society needs to let me play as much poker, drink as much alcohol, smoke as much marijuana, and download as much pornography as my heart may or may not theoretically desire.

Let’s be clear. I am not saying this because of any peripheral enjoyment I might inadvertently abstract from such small endeavors. Quite the opposite, I am fighting for the good of society.

Stick with me while I try to tie this to poker.

As someone who lives here pointed out last month, people are getting better at playing poker on the Internet. The change has been gradual, but you just don’t see as many of those awful players who call every hand and try and win every pot by raising with bad hands.

As a group, we have all gradually improved. Good for us.

Cue the governments.

That’s right, just when we all stop playing like idiots and start getting good at poker, governments step in to protect us from our own stupidity. Western Civilization is all about freedom, and we clearly need to be freed from the things in life that lead us to making dumb decisions.

I remember being introduced to the “freedom from” argument in university. People who believe government should play a role in limiting our own choices argue they are protecting our freedom rather impeding it. They say we need freedom from bad things in order to be in a position to use our freedom to make good decisions.

This is mostly semantics and comes right down to an age old question of how much that government should govern over our own liberties. This is a great big debate that giant brains have been going at for centuries. You can go here, here, here, or even here if you want more coverage. A web site based on two sentence philosophies can only go so far.

My 2 cents (Canadian) is simple. I believe that people and, in turn, societies evolve. I believe that happens as a result of all of us exercising our freedom. We all make decisions and, ever so slowly, we learn from them.

Many people like to roll their eyes at societies that are based on freedom. North America and Western Europe have more than their share of shameful stories to tell. However, if you compare our society to all of the other societies in history, rather than just to what you picture society should be, I think you have to conclude that we are getting better and better.

If we could ask people from the crusades, medieval times, Roman times, the Dark Ages, the so-called Enlightenment, etc, I have to think they would be pretty impressed with what we have going on here. Ever so gradually base issues like racism show gradual improvement. Think back 20 years to apartheid in South Africa. Think back 40 years to the US. Think back to 2004 when we all sucked at poker. We still have all kinds of problems, in no small part because we have been picking fights with backward governments that don't let their people have a lot of freedom. One day long after we’re dead we might just get there.

Even Hobbes (referenced above) would have to conclude that today’s “state of nature” would be at least 30% less nasty, 45% less brutish, and we already know that today’s life is nowhere near as short. It may even be too damn long.

When people are free to make choices, they make all kinds of different ones, and we gradually learn from them together. When people aren’t free to make choices, nobody learns anything, because the whole idea is to protect that status quo. Screw the status quo.

I am not saying we will all make good decisions. A lot of us will make horrible decisions. That’s kind of the point.

And so therein lies Theory # 3 of the Book of Mark: People, including me, should be free to make their own really stupid decisions.

The truth is, playing poker, drinking profusely, smoking up and downloading porn may not be good for me, but it is still good for society to let me do it. Don’t worry about me, I’m a team player. I don’t mind doing my part.

Just try and learn from my stupidity, will ya?

Theory #2: The Invisible Tangled Web. Part B: The Broken Honesty Chain

You can find Part A of this theory below. Part B begins with a story about poker.

If you have ever played poker online, you are painfully aware of how many really annoying people there are in the world. You have probably also noticed that the annoying people like to do much of the talking.

I was playing in a low limit hold’em game a couple of weeks ago when a player lost a big hand because someone playing 10-4 offsuit had caught a card at the end. In this case, the winner, likely a beginner, got lucky. I don’t care to criticize the beginner, as he can play any way he wants. We were all beginners at one point.

The person who took the loss, who I will thusly call “The Loser”, couldn’t let his misfortune go without some harsh commentary. The Loser began unleashing a barrage of criticism and anger. He actually said :

“Players like you who those play crappy hands should all be shot. They shouldn’t be allowed at poker tables.”

Any poker player who thinks he will profit from killing off all the worst players needs to seriously consider the expression “Be careful what you wish for”, lest he wake up and find himself dead.

The table, led by The Loser, than got involved in a ‘holier than thou’ discussion about the “correct” way to play poker. It was more of a sermon than a conversation, and plenty of it was what I would call “questionable” advice.

I am not a great poker player by any stretch, but I have played a fair amount and read a lot on the subject. I may not be good enough to give advice, but I am good enough to recognize bad advice. It astounds me how much misinformation and poor ideas are tossed around poker tables on a regular basis. People with a poor understanding of complicated concepts have no problem voicing their opinions very strongly. Bad advice is listened to and passed on. Misinformation flies through the universe because people are not being honest with themselves about how strong their understanding of the game is. They are more concerned with projecting themselves as good players than actually doing the work to become good players. As I discussed in Part A of this theory, people believe they are telling the truth, because they have already lied to themselves before they got into the conversation. They aren’t admitting to themselves that they might not know what they are talking about. They can’t bear to consider that truth, even though it is inside them.

(My example in Part A tells me that I am not above trying to project myself as something more than I am. Come to think of it, where in the hell do I get off talking on a Poker Podcast anyway?)

What frightens me is the impact that all of this has. Poker is one of the very few things that I am well read on, and most of the things people say in casual conversation are what I would call suspect. Is this true of everything else? Is the world full of people who don’t know what they’re talking about: about poker, about life, about their relationships, priorities, careers, political beliefs, personal philosophies? One person’s misinformation gets tangled with another’s, and the situation just gets worse and worse?

If you picture the game of broken telephone, information is passed on in a chain over and over again, and the information gets distorted as time goes on. My concern is that the information is often dead wrong to start with. The chain started with bad information. If not intentional dishonesty, then at the very least flawed or broken honesty. These chains of broken honesty get passed on, interact with similar chains, and all the misinformation get tangled up with itself.

Here is what I think happens as a result.

Remember Sir Walter Scott’s expression “What a tangled web we weave when we practice to deceive”? I love that line. You get trapped by your own lies, and you get stuck making choices that you would not otherwise make in order to protect your lies.

If most deception is not based on overt lies, but rather on subconscious lies, the tangled web of deceit takes on a whole new, and more frightening, meaning.

I believe that all of us get tangled and trapped in webs of deceit that we don’t even know exist. We are forced to make decisions we would not otherwise make because we are fooling ourselves about our own motivations and priorities. Trapped in a tangled web of lies that we are telling ourselves, we have no wiggle room, no flexibility for being open-minded about new ideas or major life changes, and all the people around us are affected. We commit to decisions, relationships and careers that are not right for us. Different people’s webs are all tangled together. The end result: Bad friendships; Bad marriages; Bad careers; and, in the worst instances, Bad Lives.

There is an expression in the IT database world for this: "Garbage in, garbage out". If you start with bad data, no matter what you do to try and fix things or build a perfect system, you end up with bad data. And we end up eating each other's garbage.

I want to get untangled. I want a life of flexibility. I want to leave myself room to maneuver, and to grow. And so, after all this repetitive chatter, I give you Theory #2:

“Don’t get tangled in an invisible web of your own self-deception.”

And be naturally skeptical of what others tell you.

All any one person can do is to is try to be completely honest with him/herself. I want to try and understand my own motivations, my own insecurities, and all of the strange and wacky things that really make me tick. (Most of which I will never talk about here.) I want to start these so-called chains of communication, whether with myself or others, with real honesty instead of what I have called “broken honesty”.

I guess I could have summed this up just by saying “Be true to thine own self.” I clearly just like the sound of my own keyboard. Also, sometimes I need to go on my own long self indulgent train of thought just to see the wisdom in things that have already been said.

So much for being original.

Theory #2: The Invisible Tangled Web: Part A - The Perils of ACTUAL actualization

Well, almost a week has gone by since my first post and I am pleased to report that the estate of Immanuel Kant has not yet tried to contact me about a law suit.

This is a good sign, especially because I plan to rip off John Stuart Mill in Theory # 3 “Freedom from “Freedom From””. Coincidentally I will also be borrowing from his father James somewhere around Theory #10, tentatively titled “Practical Applications of Utilitarianism when an Alien Threatens to Kill You”. Believe it or not, I am actually dead serious about all this, though I’ll admit that that title still needs work.

Tree-huggers often say “You can’t own a tree, man.” I say “You can’t own a thought, man”. I believe that so much I may even carve it into one of my trees.

In any event, today I plan to give you something a little more original – “The Invisible Tangled Web”, wherein I attempt to prove that we are all eating each other’s garbage, metaphorically speaking.

Our story begins with a brief discussion about poker.

I occasionally speak on a popular and, dare I say, groundbreaking poker podcast. There I was, chatting about my belief that Dan Harrington’s book, though the most important work on the subject, was quickly losing relevance when it comes to late tournament play. Too many are people going all in when a certain calculation clicks. Too predictable. Time to buck the trend. But I digress . .

The host of the show asked me for a specific example of when I applied my beliefs. I mentioned a 1000 person tournament. He asked where I finished. I responded something to the effect of “I think like 15th”

Two very important things occurred to me as I muttered these words.

The first is that, much like everyone else in the world between the age of 10 and 40, I can not stop inserting the word “like” in every sentence. It is a grammatical epidemic of “y’all” proportions.

Second, and more importantly, I had lied. I knew exactly where I finished. I finished 25th. 25th isn’t bad. 15th is a little better, but 25th is better than, say, 650th. A lot better.

Why had I lied? What listener could possibly care whether I finished 15th or 25th? I had willfully exaggerated to make myself seem like a better poker player. This is something I did all the time in 2003 (when I had more sex), but 33 year-old, honest, no sex Mark is supposed to be passed this. (Or is it past this?) I had surprised myself with a manifestation of my own insecurity. I am dealing with that now by telling you about it (safe in the assumption that “you” is a number very small number of people.)

For a while now, I, like many bloggers, have been working on my own self-actualization. Trying to get to know the real me. Trying to be more honest with myself about my own motivations, insecurities and imperfections. I have made a lot of personal changes as a result.

Clearly I am not done. Even if I had finished 15th in the tournament I wouldn’t be done. Being completely honest with yourself is very difficult; some would say even more difficult than being honest with others around you.

The problem is, anyone who would say it is MORE difficult to be honest with yourself has committed a very serious flaw in reasoning. How is it even possible to be honest with others if you aren’t being honest with yourself? How can I tell you the truth if I don’t know it?

Forget about basic everyday lies where you knowingly say something that isn’t true. What about all of those hidden lies, where you believe you are telling the truth but don’t realize that you have already lied to yourself before you even started the conversation.

Things like . . .

“I worked as hard as I could on this sir”
or
“If it had been me I would have done this”
or
“I will love you for the rest of my life”
or
“I can change”

There is no way to know how many lies are out there. All we really know is that it is very difficult for each of us to be totally honest with ourselves, and that almost everyone likes to talk as much as possible.

I believe this is a scary proposition that has a profound impact on society. I will explain further in Part B of Theory 2, “The Broken Honesty Chain.”