One ship, one life, and less stuff

When all of your fictional heroes are wandering, womanless hobos who move from place to place in a modest ship they call home, a troublesome identity is born. You know the characters; the Han Solo, Malcolm Reynolds, and William Adama's of the fictional world. They're all just guys living in flying Winnebago's, living from job to job, and moving on when a place doesn't suit them anymore. 

When I started to free myself from the preposterous domestic life a couple years ago, I didn't realize the full mass of the beast I awakened. I felt as though I was tearing away the chains that I mistakenly locked myself in. What I didn't realize is that I wouldn't stop tearing away those chains. 

Today, I find myself wanting less and less. I no longer want heavy things, things with lots of bags, boxes, and subscriptions. I want simplicity, experience, and labor. I don't want additional tax paperwork and monthly costs of ownership. And I most certainly don't want baggage and expensive dinners for two. 

The thing is, some of these costs are important. It's great having a truck. But do I need a motorcycle and a car and an RV and a house, too? What if I actually only need the truck? 

It's a strange thought, but I feel like the chains started coming off and I just don't want to stop. My education completely fucked my brain to the point that the only thing I want to do is wander. I no longer want to have stuff. I want to live out my short life in creative spaces on my own terms, not instrumental spaces on someone else's terms. 

Stuff helps make memories, but there comes a point when stuff becomes such a weight that experiences take a backseat to stuff. 

I now look back and wonder how I got all this stuff? I wonder why I still have it? Then I wonder how to get rid of it? 

Strangely, all of the fictional characters I identify with aren't attached to many things, other than that which they depend on. I no longer feel the need to have stuff -- instead, I want to see, feel, experience, and think. Instead of things to take up space, I want space... just space. And the few things I need to experience and be in these spaces on my own terms. 

All I need is my one ship. And enough to keep it flying.

The Higher Education Bubble: The Reckoning

A reckoning is coming. The housing market crashed sometime in 2008, but the path to the crash was set in motion long before the actual crash happened. The overvaluation of homes, the ballooning of home loan debt, the borrowing of material things against imaginary home equity, and then the inability to pay those loans triggered the biggest depression since The Great Depression. The crash of the housing market led to negative effects on the job market, the price of gas skyrocketed, and the price of food even went up. But the housing market is back, the stock market is back, and the price of gas is under $3 per gallon. Life is good. Except that there is another bubble that has yet to burst and has yet to be realized. It soon will be.

The bubble that has yet to burst is what I call the “education bubble.” The education bubble is more pernicious than the housing bubble and more dynamic. This bubble isn’t just about student loan debt; it’s about the other problems that arise from an educated public that can’t find equivalent work. Student loan debt is a known problem – there are people getting useless humanities degrees and are leaving school with $50,000 or more in debt. That’s preposterous.

Student loan debt is certainly one major dimension of the education bubble. Not only is student loan debt a major debt source in the U.S., perhaps greater than any form of consumer credit, it is also the kind that sticks with you. Student loan debt can’t be eliminated through bankruptcy and most of us won’t have our loans paid by a trust fund or a rich uncle. The amounts that each individual is carrying in student loan debt for college is unsustainable. It is a burden that makes college not worth it. Students walking out with $20,000, $50,000, or even $100,000 for a four year degree in worthless topics, like Philosophy, English, or Environmental Studies is so wrong, it should be impossible to rack up such numbers.

It’s not that these degrees aren’t worthwhile – they make better people. But in making better people, do we really need to spend five digits to get there? Should better people be saddled with unsustainable amounts of debt? What is the purpose of making better people when they can’t get jobs that will pay enough to live in adequate housing, own an adequate car, eat food, and pay off their student debt? The average job for the non-engineer appears to be $28,000-$40,000 per year. That’s great, but at that wage, deduct almost 20% for taxes, then take another 10% for retirement and medical coverage. After student loan payments, rent, food, gas, and necessary entertainment, there's nothing left.

But the education bubble isn’t about student debt – that’s a known issue and one that will haunt my generation for many more years. The education bubble lies in the production of too many big brains and not enough places to put them. Sure, big brains are great in all positions – whether working on cars, engineering the next bridge, or even serving beer at the local pub. But for those who aren’t engineering the next bridge or technology, the jobs out there are hard to get and don’t pay well. There aren’t enough of these jobs to serve all of the English Literature, Environmental Studies, Evolutionary Biology, and Germanic Language degrees that are coming out of the institution.

Instead, we tell children and teens to “go to college so you can get a good job.” What’s a good job, anyway? Is it one where you make enough to pay back your student debt? Is it one that matches your degree and line of study? Or is it one that you could have gotten without going through all that schooling, anyway? I think a “good job” is one that matches one’s training in a degree path, or at least utilizes one’s critical thinking skills gained from a degree path. I think it’s a job that pays well enough to justify the educational investment. Which isn’t most of the jobs out there today.

The cost of education is effectively a business investment. It is the cost to buy in. And it is an opportunity cost. For $20,000, $50,000, or even $100,000, what else could be done to build better people and better lives? For those working retail jobs after college, jobs that do not require any college education, was the opportunity cost of college worthwhile? Or did it become a burden; a failed investment?

The reckoning is coming. The education bubble is upon us. There will be a backlash toward institutions and the promise of higher ed in the near future. Mark my idiotic words. The education bubble isn’t just about ballooning student loan debt; It’s about the psychological harm that comes from spending time and money on an education for the promise of a “good job,” only to find that there are too many well-educated and not enough “good jobs.” Or that the education being offered no longer fits the markets that graduates enter after school. The education bubble is the high cost and debt to potential income ratio that we all face upon graduation. And the education bubble is the over-production of big thinkers, leaders, and the lack of places to put them. It is the creation of too many queens and not enough soldiers. We need soldiers. Finally, it is the fundamentally twisted way in which we define what a “good job” is and the inequitable process it takes to get a good job – the way we determine someone’s value and earning ability by proximity, pedigree, and luck. We have created a new class; the educated poor. We are also creating entirely new forms of social justice issues in our education system that have yet to be realized.

Higher ed is headed for a reckoning. It is already here. And it is about to burst. Hold onto your butts.

Bad Advice

Everyone has advice to give. There are good decisions, bad decisions; ones we support and ones we don't. In the advice we all seem to offer, some offer advice with intensity and others with support. There is a distinct relationship between advice and support, which sometimes appears totally polarized, existing at opposite ends of some imaginary spectrum. The relationship between advice and supportiveness appears to stem from different places, but it mostly seems to come from centricities and limitations that we are all inevitably mired in. Most of all, advice carries power, impact, and plays a pivotal role in the relationship between the sender and receiver. Lately, I have had many realizations about advice, where it comes from, and the role it plays in relationships. 

One of the biggest realizations I have had about advice lately is that a lot of advice is based on someone's own fear of the world and consequences. But that fear is entirely relative. So are the consequences the person is trying to avert another person from. Those consequences are based on one person's experience, which is limited to that person and their experiences. Some of these consequences happen time and again, but sometimes they don't.

If you watch thirty people try to do the high-jump in gym class, 10 might hit the bar, 2 might not even try, 5 might clear it with ease, and another 10 might have to work really hard to just barely clear the bar. If everyone in the gym class watched the 2 who didn't even try and took their advice, the entire gym class wouldn't even attempt the high-jump. What good would that advice be in the real world?

The presence of uninformed advice is another major realization. Advice that comes before the person has asked or even tried to figure out the other person's plan is inherently uninformed. Even worse, when the adviser is not giving advice based upon the skillset of the recipient -- the advice comes from the vantage point of one's own experience and skillset only. This kind of advice doesn't account for the fact that someone may be considering other options out of necessity or skills that may allow one to pull something new and different off. Just because you couldn't or didn't choose a different path, does that really mean that nobody else can do it either? Some people can start companies and become very successful. Others are better taking safer routes.

The intensity of advice seems to be distinctly related to a person's fear and their belief that you should act in the way they want you to. I remember when I moved into the RV; I had those who thought I lost my mind and were vehemently against it and those who, instead of venturing their opinion on my sanity or rightness, chuckled and told me stories of people they knew who did that and their experiences with RV's. Whose advice was relevant here? Those who were vehemently against it and thought I lost my mind, or those who were supportive and recognized my agency in the decision?

Those who are supportive appear to recognize the agency, skill, and variability of one's path, whereas those who loudly offer advice appear to want to strip the person of their own decisions. The relationship between advice and support appears to be polarized in some cases, but not others. Support seems to come from a kind of advice that recognizes another person's agency, whereas advice given with intensity appears to ignore a person's own reasons for taking the actions they take and the plans they make. When I moved into the RV, those giving intense advice or unsupportive comments ended up being really wrong -- and they wronged me. Those who were supportive were emotionally right and left me without distrust of their judgment.

When I make decisions, I do it because I have good reason to do so. When someone blindly comes at me swinging with advice that is both unsolicited and intense, I now just wonder why that person decided that I should fit their mold for how to live and what actions to take?

I am really skeptical of giving advice anymore. I have met enough people and had enough experiences to know that everyone has a different path, even if only slightly. Some like to sit at home. Others like to go running. Some like to drink at bars and others like to not drink at all. Some like to live in houses -- others in teepees -- and yet others in RV's. Some even like to live in different places at different times of years. Some like to go camping and others hate it. Can any of these people ever offer relevant advice to the other? Do people who drink in bars also always live in teepees or live in the same place the entire year? No, because we all make slightly different choices.

Anymore, instead of giving advice or beginning any conversation with the belief that I am right, I just offer my experiences and expertise to help someone with a decision they've made. Telling someone the wrongness of their decision or the consequences they will uncertainly encounter or inserting my own fear into their life choices just... hurts my relationship with that person. If someone wants to go skydiving, I personally don't care to make that choice, but if the person has made the decision to do so, I can only say, "That sounds intense! What made you interested in skydiving? Are you going to take a helmet cam? If so, send me the video link when you're done. Oh, and be sure to skydive with an experienced teacher, okay?"

The distance between advice and supportiveness can  be lightyears apart. Advice appears to come from a place of limited personal experience, the rules we have made for the world based on our own limited experiences, and perhaps fear. Supportiveness appears to come from a place of understanding someone's agency over their own life and the intrigue that comes with seeing how other people might choose to live. I do not operate on fear anymore, so when someone tries to instill fear into me about one of my coming decisions, I now only wonder if the person believes fear is anything but a mechanism for control?

The things I have been taught to fear aren't scary. Risk isn't that scary. Living differently from others isn't that scary. And making my own choices, even if costly are really only that -- costly. But the costs come in the form of my own lessons and a respect for those who are making their own path through these costly lessons. If a lesson is learned at the hand of oneself, the lesson is their own. If a lesson is learned through the fear and command of others, it is a shelter and a loss of real wisdom and knowledge.

I am no longer scared of my decisions. But I am scared for those who believe their advice and injection of fear and doubt into the psyche of another is relevant, fair, or reasonable. If you tell a student that they are going to fall, they're probably going to fall. If you tell someone they can't, they probably can't. If you tell a friend that they shouldn't go camping because a bear might eat them, they will be fearful for their entire camping experience and will soon hate camping.

Instead... Tell the friend that bears tend to bother people who smell like food and buy them a can of bear spray and teach them how to use it. Tell the student that if they take a few extra minutes in the evening to study, that they certainly can. Tell the friend that you have never skydived, but you can't wait to hear what they thought of it. Then, consider that you may be scared, but the other person isn't. That's the difference between advice and support.

My new advice is: Live life the way you want to live. Follow the river you are unavoidably embedded in. Appreciate your own experiences and the different experiences those around you will have. Live through others to enrich yourself. People will stumble, fall, and may need help getting back up -- Instead of pushing them back down for making a decision that put them on the ground in the first place, help them back up... even if it was their "fault."

A Major Fault in My Work Ethic

I recently realized that I have a major work ethic problem. It's one that no one knows, except me, and maybe a select few nearest to my more raw thought processes. And now anyone reading this. The flaw is that my performance directly correlates with what I am getting paid. That's a major problem.

What it means is that when I get paid $15 per hour, I give you $15 per hour worth of work. It means I tailor my efforts, the skills I offer, and the percentage of my skillset that I offer as part of my work day. At $15 per hour, you get the guy who can basically write a sentence or two, will be there physically when needed, and will offer generally friendly service when prompted.

At $15 per hour, what you do not get is the guy who comes up with new ideas for new projects, researches new approaches to problems, polishes all correspondence to a professional grade, maybe seeks funding, fixes anything from computer-based problems to human interaction problems in a workplace. You don't get the photographer, the researcher, or the guy who gives a flying shit about your lackluster organization's mission. You get Me Lite.

And there's a reason I do this. I have a huge range of skills. I have nearly four college degrees, including advanced research and writing work at the master's level. I can edit, write, research, tackle technical problems, and be the polished social face of your organization. If you're going to pay me a retail wage, you just bought a Corvette, but didn't keep enough money for gas and insurance. Congratulations, the Corvette you just bought is now a garage ornament. Whoopsies. Guess you should have bought a used Corolla and put gas in it instead, huh?

My bad attitude is real. And it exists for a reason: I didn't just spend the years of my life from Preschool through a dual-master's degree and ten years of professional experience to make retail wages. 25 years of my life in school for sub-restaurant wages. Do the math.

On the bright side, when someone pays a wage compensatory with my skills and investment, I give them the keys to the tool shed. I'll be your PR face, your troubleshooter, your think-tank, AND your grant writer. I'll work for you and I will work hard. I will even work more hours than I am contracted and I will do it with a f##king smile. I'll even drink coffee and offer you turbo-mode and the guy who can plan for the future and fill in for you when you take vacation.

Am I a sell out for having this bad attitude problem? You bet. I didn't spend 25 years in school because I thought it would be a good idea to make peanut wages and offer all those skills that I just wasted all those years practicing so I could get a "good job." By the way, a "good job" is one that pays enough to own an average house and a modest, yet brand-new car. By the way squared; That's not $15 per hour. And by the way cubed; $15 per hour is not enough to live in a shitty apartment anymore.

So, the moral of the story here is that I do have a bad attitude. I am entitled. And I have a major fault in my work ethic. You can buy me for just about any price, but you're going to get a tailored skillset with varying pay levels. If you can afford the Corvette, but not the insurance or gas, you just bought a Corvette that will sit in the garage and look pretty. If you can afford the gas and insurance, too, you just got the rock star that is going to make your mission sing.

You might be wondering what I actually think I'm worth? How can I quantify that? Here's how: I spent over 6 years in college, more like 7 if you consider all the classes I took between undergrad and grad. I worked my ass off for my degrees and gained professional experience all along the way. What am I worth? I'm worth the total amount that my degrees cost as an annual income every year and I am worth an above average income as an above-average-educated individual. Sorry. It sucks, but it's just how I work. I would rather be homeless than work for some donkey dick who undervalues their employees. There can be no altruism in the work life.

So, just like software, I come in Lite, Professional, and Ultimate editions -- and you can opt for which version of me you get. Interestingly, my highest level isn't even expensive -- it's just a reasonable, middle-class wage.

The Real Cost of Grad School - $88,000

It's funny. If you go get an education and work hard, you'll make it. That's what the people on Fox News say. If it weren't for all those lazy, uneducated people just wanting hand-outs, America's economy would be in better shape and we wouldn't need welfare. I mean, the answer to solving the welfare problem in this country is education and hard work, right? Right. 

I sat down and calculated how much graduate school cost me recently. I went and got more education so I could be a better and harder worker, which I knew would come with some kind of investment cost. As a fully funded student who got paid to attend school, I thought I was doing something potentially great. I sought a dual master's degree, so I could become a rounded thinker and a more complete contributor to my field. Surely, with education and hard work, I would be worth at least as much as I was before I got my graduate degree.

When calculating how much graduate school cost me, I have to consider foregone wages for the entire duration from the day I quit my job to this day -- the day that I am employed again in my same field (I didn't switch). When I consider the amount I was making the day I left my job, I forewent just over $148,000 in wages. While in graduate school, I earned $32,000 over the entire period. In total, I forewent a net $116,400 in wages to attend graduate school. Graduate school cost me $116,400 in missed wages.

Then, I have to consider my changes in living expenses. Before going to grad school, I was spending about $18,000 per year to live in a suburban luxury townhome by my lonesome. That's a lot of money. So, I moved into an RV. In the RV, I paid rent, utilities, and for a storage unit. My living costs went from $18,000 per year to $7,700 per year. By moving from a luxury townhome to an RV, I saved roughly $10,260 per year. Over the ~2.8 year period, I saved roughly $28,700 in living costs. That feels good.

Regrettably, I also have to consider what grad school did for me in the way of market value. So far, it looks like my market value has fallen by a solid 40% from my value before I attended graduate school. Keeping in mind that I am not starting my career over and have instead built upon my worth, it sure seems fishy that I seem to now be worth 40% less than I was when I had a bachelor's degree. So, graduate school cost me 40% of my market value for an indefinite and unforeseeable period. 40% loss for more education in the same field. Yikes.

It appears that my net cost for graduate school was about $88,600 considering foregone wages and changes in living costs. But the tally doesn't stop there -- my choice to go to graduate school will now cost me 40% of every hour of every day I go to work until I rebuild my career to where it was before. Which may not be possible.

So, was graduate school worth it? I used to think so. Sometimes I think so. But when I see these numbers and my state of economy and employment, I'm afraid my answer is: Absolutely not. If I knew what I know now, I would have done things very differently. I wouldn't have attended graduate school. Instead, I would have continued with the RV plan, though perhaps my more minimal van plan, and I would have continued working my old job. I would have kept my wages, paid off my student loans that I already had, and I would have saved enough money to take off and roam for years.

It is difficult to account for all of this since hindsight is so easy to distort and see. But was graduate school worth two years of my life, $88,000 in foregone wages, and a 40% reduction of my market value? The answer is a resounding HELL NO. The myth of more education increasing market value drove me to seek more schooling and it was money poorly spent. I could have executed my van plan, paid off all my debt, and saved enough to road trip for years had I just stayed with my old job.

The analysis is preposterous, but I think it's incredibly sad to look at how much of a waste graduate school was, professionally and financially. Personally, I enjoyed it thoroughly -- it was probably one of the best experiences of my life -- but maybe there was another way to have a great experience than to go work my ass off to get more education, only to run myself bankrupt? Maybe I should have just saved my money and taken off on a multi-year road trip instead? Maybe I should have packed a backpack and headed to South America, New Zealand, and Asia instead? How much traveling and time could I have had with $88,000 worth of foregone wages? 

The answer is troubling. I could have done so much. Instead, I worked to find intellectual fulfillment through an instrumental pathway. The institution is an instrumental pathway and I wish I had chosen to travel and read books instead.

Someday, I will follow up with this. I could find a better job tomorrow. But I could also become a shoe salesman. The future is uncertain. But the past is a lesson.

A New Kind of Social Justice Issue

When I set off to earn my master's degree, my thought was that my realistic, worst-case scenario afterward would be a job like the one I had before I got my higher degree. I figured there was a distinct possibility of no advancement and the same pay (plus or minus a reasonable percentage for starting out again), but that in the long-run, the master's degree would dissolve any potential ceilings for advancement. I figured the job market would welcome me back with a great resume that spans 15 years of constant and consistent performance and a solid set of in-demand degrees.

While I have been welcomed back and have found work, I find myself severely underemployed. I have sent out resume after resume to jobs that I am qualified for at the very least, and even "overqualified" for. Not many jobs actually need a master's degree -- but it should be a benefit to an application. After sitting on an interview committee and watching the ONLY candidate with an advanced degree in the technical skills that we were seeking get flushed on count of him being "overqualified," I realized something big: Job hunting and the way the job market works creates new kinds of social justice issues.

Social justice boils down to the necessity to combat discrimination against a person for any trait or condition that creates exemptions to their potential success. A useful definition I found online includes this:

In conditions of social justice, people are "not be discriminated against, nor their welfare and well-being constrained or prejudiced on the basis of gender, sexuality, religion, political affiliations, age, race, belief, disability, location, social class, socioeconomic circumstances, or other characteristic of background or group membership" (Toowoomba Catholic Education, 2006).

(http://gjs.appstate.edu/social-justice-and-human-rights/what-social-justice)

The part of the definition that lends to my argument is the "social class, socioeconomic circumstances, or other characteristic of background or group membership." Those with higher degrees are part of every single one of those items. Social class is often a function of education, socioeconomic circumstances doesn't necessarily just mean indigent, and those with higher degrees are definitely part of a group membership. Those with higher degrees are part of a group that are well educated, yet not necessarily part of a higher economic class privilege.

After hearing so much about "overqualified" while on the job market, I came to view this word as a hidden and pervasive social justice issue. Those who are overqualified are discriminated against -- by those in power and those in the position of hiring. In workplaces dominated by those with bachelor or lower degrees, "overqualified" is a word used to create a form of discrimination that eliminates someone on count of "too much education" rather than too little.

The space where this becomes a problem is when higher degrees end up broadly excluding a person from doing positions that they are well suited for and that they can do and do well. If a person is to apply for a job that requires a bachelor's degree, yet a person with a master's degree is flushed on count of being "overqualified," we have a major problem. That problem is the discrimination against a person for having "too much education."

The strange thing about this argument is that it flips the conventions on social justice. Social justice positions are built on the idea that there is a group that cannot be discriminated against -- the wealthy, the white, and the educated.

As a person on the job market with great experience and education, after being flushed from pile after pile of jobs that require a bachelor's degree, I can say with confidence that I am getting flushed because I am "overqualified." To not even be interviewed is an indicator that I was put into a pile of a very particular kind. After seeing the interview process where the guy in the room with a bachelor's degree was vehemently against hiring a guy with a master's degree on count of him being "overqualified" and because "he would buck the group dynamic by being too good at these tasks," I suggest that the problem is systemic and discriminatory. After being on countless interview committees in my previous life where this was the reason for flushing countless candidates, the problem is here and it is real.

I am now weary of those who wield overqualification as a word used to cleave candidates from an interview pile. What this does is sets the bar high, but the bar is intended to cleave both those too far below the bar and those above the bar. Those above the bar are well-educated, polished candidates and are being cut on count of a membership that they belong to -- a social class that is now exempted from positions because of their education. When did overqualification become such a negative thing? Why are those in power by majority and status quo (bachelor's degrees) able to shed both those below their status and those above? The problem is systemic, but because of our conventional views on social justice, those above the bar of status quo are somehow exempt from discrimination protection.

I now understand those using this word to be part of the institutional structure of mediocrity and idiocy. At what point in our social development did we decide that those who work too hard or are well educated are both targets of our discrimination and exempt from complaints of discrimination? The world is broken.

The Rational Universe

One of the most important lessons I have learned over the past few years is that the rules we make about the world to navigate it are all wrong. And they're right. And there are no rules.

A belief in a rational universe is the construction of one in our mind. It's an invention that we make up with varying levels and kinds of structure to understand what's going on around us. And it's all made up in our heads. Kind of.

The rules we "discover" through our everyday ramblings are unique and based on our own experiences and our ability to map and interpret the systems that we are encountering. But the rules that we make up from these experiences are nothing more than cloudy approximations of a falsely objective system for which we invent a rule.

One thing I have noticed lately is that rule breakers are almost all of our heroes. Superheroes defy physics, Harry Potter defies the rules of magic, and Captain Kirk always wins by reinventing the rules to be in his favor.

The rules we make for ourselves based on some imaginary sense of an objective truth or reality are limited to our own experiences or anecdotal experiences of others. The rule doesn't exist, it's just a foggy approximation of how we think we should deal with all other situations that appear similar in the future.

The problem with rules arises when our rules become self-imposed limitations. When systems change, cultures change, or the foggy thug we call "reality" shifts unbenounced to us, our rules no longer apply.

Rules drive our sense of "should." I think this word is overlooked. It is a word mystically rooted in our sense of making rules and living by them. Most importantly, "should" becomes the way we exert force on those around us based on the belief in the rules that we faithfully think exist in some objective way.

"You shouldn't do that or else you will __________." That's a rule being imposed on someone else based on our own experience. It is the seed of culture.

It's a fascinating way of living -- viewing the world through a lens of rules based on our own experiences. Then believing that the rules that we form for ourselves will work for other people.

Most interestingly, the rules that we believe exist and then live by would appear to be the mechanism by which classes are formed and our social behaviors are designed. The wealthy CEO views the world through a completely different set of rules than that of the minimum wage burger flipper. If they lived in the same reality, how could they possibly end up in such different places?

My sense of "should" shifted a few years ago. My sense of rules about the world started crumbling more recently. I no longer view the world as objectively as I once did and I no longer treat experiences as a way to form new absolutes. I no longer have the same fear-based method for making rules and I am far less sold on my world view than I ever was before. The effect has been freeing.

I no longer think there's a right way to live or a good income to have or a right answer. Many will add those up and come up with an answer that appears entirely irrational. Well, the world isn't rational. It never has been. Some try to impose rational structure, but with only the self-illusion of success.

Living in an RV was supposed to be a bad idea. It's not. For me, at least. I know that most would not choose to do it and for good reason. But those reasons don't resonate with me because I have a different set of drives, skills and experiences that make it possible. Even highly enjoyable.

But that's the way every situation, lifestyle, and experience is for every living being. Hot coals are a bad idea to walk on, yet some do it anyway. Fighting a Gorn is a bad idea, but James T. Kirk does it anyway. There are no rules; only limitations that we impose on ourselves through the cloudy experience of the flawed infancy of consciousness that the human race collectively enjoys.

Live lightly. Observe the experiment. Fear nothing. Accept what is.