Me, the Butterfly, and Miley Cyrus

The other night I dreamt that I was a young girl. I was about 10 years old, give or take a year or two – old enough to be pretty, but too young to be sexy to all but the most prurient interests. And I was pretty.

This reminded me of a famous anecdote from the Daoist philosopher Zhuangzi. I’ll quote it in whole here, since I don’t think Burton Watson (82 years old!) will be harmed at this point. For the sake of consistency I’ll take the liberty of using the pinyin spelling of Zhuangzi’s name.

Once Zhuang Zhou dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn’t know he was Zhuang Zhou. Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Zhuang Zhou. But he didn’t know if he was Zhuang Zhou who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Zhuang Zhou. Between Zhuang Zhou and a butterfly there must be some distinction! This is called the Transformation of Things.

What separates my experience from Zhuangzi’s is that when I was the little girl I had full recognition of myself as Jason. What I mean is that my mind was put in this little girl’s body, with all of my knowledge and experiences and none of hers. But I knew what I was and I knew what others perceived me as and acted accordingly. It was quite thrilling to behave in a way so contrary to my typical nature and demeanor, I must admit. I enjoyed being the girl.

But this has troubling implications for me. Whereas Zhuangzi was questioning the nature of experience and reality and a whole host of other things, my butterfly retained my identity. So I am either a little pixie who has quite psychotic fantasies of living 22 years as a lonely schlub, or I’m a 22 year old man less than 2 weeks away from graduating college who dreams of being a little girl. I am not sure which would be worse.

I’m going to segue here into a totally different, less interesting topic. But maybe it won’t seem totally different to you, I don’t know. I had the idea for this section the night of my dream, before I fell asleep. Interpret my own connection of them as you will.

Paranoia, House, and Rogue

A few different thoughts:

First off, I’ve been feeling a little unhinged lately, and I’ve been reading a lot of Philip K. Dick on top of that, so the other night I turned my thoughts towards paranoia. What is paranoia? I posit that it is an extreme form of narcissism. It is a feeling that everyone, or most everyone, is against you. Why would they be against you? You must be special. Some knowledge, or some characteristic or mutation or difference or whatever. The paranoiac ultimately feels that they are in some way different from everyone else.. a worldview that centers on one’s self. Narcissism. Contrary to belief, narcissism is not just self-love. For examples of this, just look at any conspiracy writings. The theorist is paranoid because he believes he has some sort of knowledge no one else has.

Secondly, a little on music: I’ve been listening to a lot of house again the past few days, and it is again stirring my blood to want to actually go out and dance. I’m a withdrawn person; I don’t feel comfortable at parties or in crowds. But I feel like with the right music I would enjoy going out and dancing. And therein lies the problem.. this is something I couldn’t do alone, even if the opportunity were available. I would feel extremely uncomfortable and inhibited, even if I did have clothes that wouldn’t make me stick out like a sore thumb at a club. But maybe this is just another vain wish to be capable of being social in some way.

And finally, a completely different topic.. roguelike games. I’ve noticed a problem with the stealth skill. I’m primarily referring to Angband variants here, because that’s mainly what I’ve played, but it seems to be present in Crawl and a couple others as well. Stealth helps you avoid being noticed. But once you are noticed, it’s useless. Enemies can track you through walls and anywhere throughout the level, so long as you remain close enough to them. But shouldn’t a higher stealth skill help you escape for notice after you’ve aroused it? Shouldn’t you be able to sneak back up on the enemy, after some time has passed? I’m thinking about something like Metal Gear Solid here. I know nothing of coding, but it would be nice to see a reimplementation of stealth. Maybe it’s already been done, and I’m just not aware of the roguelike; if that’s the case, I’d like you to tell me.