Synaxis TV

Loud voices woke me up at 2 a.m and I spent a bunch of time in cyberspace. Blaise woke up late and we went to the co-op with this new guy Toshe from Macedonia — I finally got some rice. I spent more time in cyberspace when we got back, then in the evening Blaise and I took a really long snack walk. We walked by the Shinjuku skyscraper district, then we went west and then south until we got to the Sangubashi stop on the other side of Yoyogi park across from where we live.

• My dorm room is close to the common area, so there is a tendency to be inundated with noise. I could invest in some earplugs, but it hasn’t really been a problem so far. It also helps me wake up sometimes, since I haven’t been using an alarm clock of any sort.

Early in the morning I talked to my sister about my trials and tribulations with SuzieCF. It’s fun to tell people my secret. I spent more time in cyberspace and decided to just go ahead and stay awake. Later on Blaise and I went to Shinjuku so he could get a compass and so I could get a router. I finally got a recording of the train. After we got back I had something to eat then finally went to bed, after being awake for 26-27 hours.

It’s always hard to tell when you’re going to stumble onto something that just hits you.

I was reading an article about Camp Quest, a camp for atheists that I’ve known about since the Atheist Alliance convention I went to in Texas a long long time ago, and stumbled across a simple sentence that took my breath away and brought tears to my eyes: “giving the children of nonbelievers a sense of community.”

When I was involved with the Agnostic and Atheist Student Group at Texas A&M our biggest goal was forming some type of community. Without the AASG and the community we formed my experiences there would have been much different. I hated A&M, but I didn’t share that experience alone.

Meandering a bit, I recently told a friend that I could suprisingly see myself moving back to Dallas. I made a bunch of good friends through the North Texas Church of Freethought and I just don’t know how replicable the experience would be anywhere outside the south. Texas has tainted me in a weird way. The religious environment in the north is not as repressive as it is in the south, but that means that the atheists there are entirely different. They don’t necessasrily identify with the experiences that I went through as an atheist in the south. So, in some sense, Texas is home in a way I never expected it to be.

Identities are always fractured in some sense, but this becomes more problematic when those fractures exist across whole populations, divided by space and eventually by time. Just another hurdle in the move towards creating a community. I hope those kids at Camp Quest realize what they’ve got, and part of me thinks they do, though it’s almost worse to consider the reason why.

I woke up at a scandalous 5 p.m. C-crew went out to eat but I was super dirty and took a much needed shower instead. I spent an obscene amount of time in cyberspace throughout the night and into the next morning. I started using Craigslist, so thats where part of my time went.

Fairness is a constituent part of being human, and, contrary to basic intuition, this characteristic is not contradicted by that small percentage of the population that owns a great percentage of the capital.

The quality of fairness has been observed in our closest relatives, the chimpanzees. Thus, there is the possibility that this characteristic was present in the ancestor that we both share, or it may be a quality that co-evolved after we separated. Either way, it is not a characteristic that is solely human, but I am unable to say how many other species share this characteristic.

Fairness, as it is generally understood, results in some level of egalitarianism. But that is obviously not the current state of affairs, so how is this possible? How do these facts not contradict each other? Well, I think that that small percentage of the population who own such a large percentage of the wealth still believe in fairness, though not in the same terms that those of us at the bottom might understand this notion to operate under.

It will probably seem obvious once I state it, but I think that those with the most wealth rationalize (using this word very carefully) their situation by understanding their status to be one they have been accorded due to hard work. Thus, their belief that anyone can also reach their status with the same level of hard work allows them to continue to believe in fairness, since it is only “fair” that those who do the most work have the most wealth.

So, it appears that there are two competing orders of “fairness” — one that upholds meritocratic fairness and another that upholds equitable fairness, a “fair” distribution of wealth. I also think that this division correlates with the standard divisions between liberalism and conservativism, and Democrats and Republicans, all in accordance with the differences observed and understood by attribution theory.

The question that this generates, of course, is whether we can really say that a notion of fairness exists in humans, since it exists in multiple forms. This also possibly highlights the way in which biology is shaped by culture.

I woke up around 2 p.m. and took care of some emails. Then I went to this hyaku-en (dollar store) in Harajuku with Mark and Blaise. Mark was annoying as usual, but I finally got some slippers and some awesome jelly filled strawberry marshmallow candies. On the way home we stopped at the co-op and I had to buy some cereal. I spent a good portion of the night and next morning in cyberspace, though I did take care of some updates and paperwork. I talked to Kate about my trials and tribulations with SuzieCF. Throughout the day I watched several bad movies, like The Big Hit, The Italian Job, and The River Wild. I also watched an excellent episode of the Simpsons:

Homer: God, if you really are God, you’ll get me tickets to that game.
[doorbell rings]
Ned: Heidely-ho, neighbor. Wanna go to the game with me? I got two
tick –
Homer: [slams the door] Why do you mock me, O Lord?
Marge: Homer, that’s not God. That’s just a waffle that Bart tossed up
there.
[Marge scrapes it off into Homer's hands]
Homer: I know I shouldn’t eat thee, but — [bites] Mmm, sacrilicious.

I woke up around noon and did some online reading. A little later I went to Yoshinoya again. They called the dish I thought was oyakodon yakitori instead. Oh well. Still good. Then I got some bread with chocolate in it at Lawson. I spent the evening on the computer. Ah yes, I spent some time during the day mucking with XML to do my fieldnotes. I made a schema document (XSD) and then a transformation sheet (XSL). The XSD was to use this XML editor I found, but it wouldn’t save my changes, so I found a bunch more, but none would work on my ancient Win ME machine.

I tried to stay in bed as late as possible so I could stay up late for the goth event in the evening — Tokyo Dark Castle 12 at Deseo in Shibuya. I got to OCCUR’s office around 3:30 p.m. and helped them prepare for their monthly party. Then I observed their class and was at their party for a bit after that. I had a slight headache, so I left early, came home and took a nap, then went out to the goth event. I stayed there until 6 a.m. It was a good time. Did some dancing, saw some good live music, and talked to this guy Scout from New York who “is traveling” but has been here for two years. I tried to eavesdrop and looked around for someone to talk to, but my Japanese is still too poor for either. Oh yeah, there were two other foreign couples there too, but I didn’t talk to them.

Typical routine during the day. In the evening I went over to the B-block and hung out with Esme and Vivian for a bit, then Tanya got home. W e went to the convenience store and got wine at one point. And then we stayed up late watching anime in Neil’s room.

I woke up quite early, took care of some emails, did some reading and updates, and then took care of my daily paperwork. In the evening I went to El Torito (Elllll Torrrrito!), a Tex-Mex restaurant!, with Azza and Gary. It was pretty close to the real deal. After that we stopped by Tokyu Hands and I got Blaise some study cards he couldn’t find. Back at home I went over to B-block for a while then came back home and spent some time online. Late in the evening I had a drink with Brian here at the guest house and experienced a slight distortion in my perception of reality.

• On the way to El Torito Azza told me about her crazy interfaith experiences getting married. Her mother is Baptist and her father is Muslim, and her husband’s mother and father are Jewish and Hindu respectively. After a frantic search, Azza’s Jehovah’s Witness uncle ended up presiding over the ceremony.
• Brian is from Germany and he told me that he came here for a girl, but things didn’t work out. He’s been here for four months and he’s set to be here for another eight. Gizmo, who is Italian, came outside with us and talked about how he’ll never be one of the Japanese and how his Japanese friends will never fully open up. Somewhat relatedly, Brian said that one day when he was with his ex-girlfriend he woke up a bit upset and she told him that he should go back to his room and be alone, because she had a right to be happy and he shouldn’t make her upset too.