Update on Theory 15

I will be doing some traveling starting at the crack of dawn tomorrow and lasting until mid-January. It is a reasonably well earned vacation and I hope it will serve to add some context to my future theories.

In any event, Theory 15 is called “Live each day like it is someone else’s last.” It is one of the last in my “How to start thinking more about the Big Picture” bag of tricks. I had hoped to complete it before leaving but I couldn’t.

I hope you have all had a happy and safe holiday, and I’ll resume this conversation in mid-to-late January.

Book of Mark Christmas Special - The True Spirit of Christmas (Specials)

I had a weak moment on Saturday night. I was full of disruptive chemicals and mutinous thoughts as I meandered through some back-Toronto alleys on my way home to my condo. It was about 2:30 in the morning and I decided, having fought off the urge to bum a cigarette from anyone during the evening, that I would stop in and buy a pack for the sake of enjoying just one smoke. (As someone with Crohn’s Disease, this is even more stupid then it would be for most people.)

This was not meant to signal any plans of re-emerging as a full time smoker; I just felt like it. Nonetheless, here in Canada where insane taxes lift the price of smokes to $10 per pack, this was still a rather remarkable impulse buy.

The next evening, about to retire and remembering that I was flush with cigarettes, I figured I’d head down for final a breath of poisoned-treated fresh air and then do the right thing and give the smokes away.

A couple of homeless people were nearby so I figured I’d give the nearly full pack to them. They thanked me and I walked back to the front of my building to finish my cigarette.

Now, if you have any experience watching horrible television you should already be way ahead of me here. Cheesy scenes involving homeless people and “the gang” learning a valuable lesson about “giving” are a key part of the network TV Xmas special formula.

Before I headed back in, I looked over and, to my surprise, the two homeless people had grown into a group of homeless people. Word had spread on the street about the tobacco mother-lode, and it turned out that these homeless people had no problem with sharing.

As you can imagine, this made me realize something truly important: I live by a lot of homeless people. No wonder I got such a good deal on the condo.

I looked over back at them with the obligatory amount of sympathy, and then my mind started to wander as I pictured their hard lives and imagined what impact street life must have on their respective life expectancies. I even wondered whether it was really such a nice gesture to give them, or anyone else, cigarettes. You certainly aren’t helping anyone’s plight, and you are only enabling unhealthy behaviours. (Canadian spelling)

It was only then that the full picture of that had happened truly dawned on me, and I understood the true spirit of a Book of Mark Christmas: I uncovered a twisted line of reasoning that made me feel a little better without actually having to do anything.

Check my math here:

1) Cigarettes are bad for you. It was dumb of me to buy them.
2) I, and many others, still clearly enjoy cigarettes on some level.
3) Homeless people have it tough, so much so that I would assume their life expectancy suffers.
4) I would further assume that homeless people are less likely to die or become seriously ill from smoking. They share the same risks as the rest of us, but other risks such as hunger, cold, lack of nutrients, unsafe surroundings, possibly more serious drug addictions etc. likely combine to pose a greater threat.
5) In fact, one could probably go far as to suggest that smoking, statistically speaking, has less of an impact on the health of homeless people as it does on others.

Do you see where I am going here? I had hit on a hidden efficiency. The pleasure of smoking, which someone like me can not afford to engage in, is less harmful to the homeless. It is a luxury that they can better afford than I can. By giving them cigarettes, I had turned a negative into a positive. Rather than hurting myself, I was enhancing their life, also hurting them, but in a way that was less likely to matter. They got to enjoy the benefit, and, to use a football analogy, the penalty would likely be declined

I waved goodnight to them and went upstairs to my room with a new vision for the future:

I hereby declare TODAY (whatever day it is that you are reading this) the first ever “International Give a Homeless Person a Cigarette Day”.

Hey, we can all do more, and most of us probably won’t, but this is something even the laziest of us can do (provided that you are a smoker). If you are not a smoker, but you happen to be a real do-gooder, go into a variety store and experience the joy of buying your first pack of smokes, then turn around and give them away.

To sum up

a) I found a way to discuss the plight of the homeless and made a very token attempt at improving their lives while still doing nothing to address the problem itself.
b) I made a bunch of assumptions without backing them up in any way, and then used those assumptions to support my point.
c) I spoke in a smug manner and acted as though I was superior while offering no reason for anyone to accept this.

That, my friends, is how you make a Christmas Special. Now get out there and give away some smokes.

Theory 14: Judging A History Book By Its Blown Cover

Have you noticed how often my recent theories involve stepping out of your own conscious persona and focusing on some other version? It seems I am always encouraging you to think with your 12 year old self, or your 19 year old self, your mind with auto-pilot switched off, or your mind with immediate feedback underemphasized, or your mind with a specific focus on your emotional side, or on your rational side, etc. etc.

Now that I think about it, I recall one commenter specifically complained about this several theories ago and asked when I would finally start to focus on my actual current conscious thoughts.

Well we all know I am not about to go and do that. That’s clearly what everyone else is doing. I am trying to be original in the manner that I go about stealing other people’s ideas. Instead, this week I will encourage you to set aside your own mind entirely, and focus instead on minds that don’t even exist yet. How would they judge our decisions?

Many of my stranger memories involve sitting in history class in Grades 9 and 10. For some reason I have very vivid memories of European history, even though I still don’t know my own license plate and I have a lifelong problem of confusing the names of old and current girlfriends. (This is an especially tragic concept for those of you who can estimate how few girlfriends I am actually talking about). My first theory about this selective memory was simple – Grade 10 was when I first started drinking, so it makes sense that I remember things up to that time but not after. However, it later occurred to me that I don’t remember anything from any other class during that time period. For some reason, unbeknownst to me, I subconsciously enjoyed history (14 year-old Mark would be a little bit surprised to hear this).

One of the best things about history is that it makes you feel superior when you learn how stupid everyone was in the past. I especially liked doing that. I would sit in class and take great pleasure in absorbing how stupid society was then as compared to now. Let’s face facts; many of the ancient Greeks like Plato who form the cornerstone of modern philosophy never quite reasoned that pedophilia might be a bad thing. Many of the architects of the very “liberty” that provided the cornerstone for the US Constitution had slaves. These people were, relative to their time, moral people and intellectual giants. They are the very best that history has to offer. It’s just that, in this day and age, even a regular guy like me can apply simple hindsight and cry foul. As time goes on, we all get a little smarter and grow a little less tolerant of screwing little kids and enslaving people. We evolve. (As a whole anyway - there is clearly a bottom element still guilty of these crimes. I am pretty sure I have already discussed this.)

Of course, the scary thing about this is when you flip it around: The evidence suggests that in the future, people will learn about us (bear in mind, we will be history at this point), and they will likely shake their heads and wonder.

There are all kinds of things going on that we can imagine history might want to put a bit more emphasis on: the fact that the world is getting hotter, that fish in the ocean are so full of mercury that they can make us sick, that all kinds of Naziesque atrocities go on uninterrupted in the “less important” parts of the world. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean to be up on a pedestal here (not yet anyway) and I am not trying to make this a political discussion. I am stating the obvious. No matter what our political beliefs, we all know these problems exist and we live with them. Looking over last year’s itinerary I can find very little that I have done to make any of these problems go away.

I also don’t think for one minute that blaming politicians that we (for the most part) elect is any kind of solution.

I do think, however, that we would all be in better shape if we spent more time looking at how history will perceive us whenever we make a choice. I am not just talking about big moral decisions. I think many people think more broadly when faced with greater issues.
This kind of crap is easy when you speak things like violence and intolerance. We all know we are not a perfect species. For today, I am really talking about how the little parts of day to day life might be met with ridicule in the future.

That was where the ancient Greeks and early Americans got into trouble. Nobody could touch them on the bigger issues, but they failed to see how some of the simple things they took for granted ended up making them look very bad.

And so I give you Theory 14: Every now and then, stop what you’re doing, in the middle of any daily task or activity that doesn’t appear to be significant, and look at how it will be judged when we are part of history.

Here is a list of things I see every day, still accepted as norms in modern society, that I think our generations, including the royal we, will be judged harshly for in the future:

1) Uncomfortable shoes. Seriously ladies, what in the hell are you thinking? I know I am extreme in that I have never noticed a woman’s shoes once in my life, and I am not tall to begin with, but shoes are designed to help protect our feet and make movement more comfortable. How insecure to we have to be that we deny those two most important features just to try and make legs look longer?

2) Bottled water – In any city with adequate tap water, bottled water is 100 times more expensive, less healthy (either by contamination percentages or the flourise debate), tested much less frequently, and unbelievably unnecessary assault on the environment. All because of brilliant marketing. Look it up.

3) Same sex marriage – Don’t they deserve the same shot at unhappiness as the rest of us? Pro-gay or anti-gay, what are we straight people really giving up?


4) Pure-bred dogs: It is thought that dogs evolved to become domesticated because those that were the tamest and friendliest had the best access to the human cornucopia of waste, and were treated better. Over time, the dogs that behaved best, either through being the friendliest or the most useful, continued to mate with other superstar dogs. Eventually, you have the ultimate in friendly pets. Nowadays, we place on emphasis on direct bloodline so we can better control what the dog will look like. I recently came to understand that this means that the finest and most expensive dogs are inbred with direct family members to control results. Of course, this also causes all kinds pf problems and horrible birth defects as recessive genes are given a clear path to the end zone. We want our dogs to be prettier so we make them genetically inferior. Even the past can make fun of us for this one.

5) Fashion. My understanding of fashion is that we are all supposed to accept blindly that whatever we wore five years ago was horrible and whatever we wear now is objectively superior. Until things become retro, in which case we repeat the cycle as necessary. The goal is some paradox of trying to make yourself “stand out” by looking just like other people that “stand out”. Fashion industry execs are some of the smartest people in the world.

6) Drug laws: Don’t get me started.

7) The pursuit of accumulation – How many people work ridiculous hours so they can buy objects that add no value to their overall happiness. I am all for capitalism, but why is it some people use life just to enjoy having things instead of the other way around?

Now I am on a pedestal. What can I say? Every now and then I think about this kind of thing while driving my SUV to the cottage, munching on a veal sandwich and waving to the recreational hunters.