If you never say your name out loud to anyone, they can never call you by it

The other day I volunteered to be a willing victim in a grad student-run psychology experiment which, I think, was geared toward measuring how mood affects learning. Besides having to do a beyond frustrating hand/eye reaction time exercise that convinced me that if competency was judged on that skill I'd end up on the short bus, there was a quizilla.com-type questionnaire section which used cleverly subtle directives like "pick the word that appeals to you more: A) Emotion B)Logic" to determine whether I tend to make judgments with my "head" or my "heart."

Answering that type of question makes me wish I had neither. For one thing, I whole heartedly (and, I guess, whole headedly) believe that it's impossible to separate logic and emotion when making sound decisions. It's impossible to think without being affected by emotions and to feel without thinking about them. Illustratively, and according to my theory, the Scarecrow and the Tin Man should have been a single freakish TincrowScareman that, if set on fire, would probably have made a pretty satisfactory oven.

That aside, I also always wind up feeling a little uncomfortable when forced to choose between the two in a survey format. The answers that lean on the side of logic always throw in a bunch of questions that imply that the brain-oriented individuals are all the types of people who spend their time programming their calculators to humiliate the average high schooler at a game of chess. While when it comes to decision-making, I usually pick truth and rationality over pity and intuition, I'd also rather have a conversation than order numbers in sequential pairs. Judging from how these tests are written, test writers would be surprised to know that logic-oriented people manage to have friends and function in civilized society. Conversely, the emotionally-driven are implied to have never made a correct decision in their lives thanks to blind, raging hormones. The limited dual categories strike me as a misrepresentation of me and probably most other functionally living people prone to participate in psychology experiments.

I fully appreciate the need for generalizations and categorization, but I feel like valid general labels should at least apply to a significant portion, if not a majority, of the population, not a miniscule and probably seriously unbalanced minority.

You could argue that human logic is based on emotion and compassion anyway, in which case the distinction isn't even possible, let alone relevant.

Before I did the experiment, I signed a little piece of paper that told me that I could stop and leave at any time for any reason. At the time I wondered under what circumstances would someone be so offended by remembering letter combinations that they'd take advantage of that liberty, but in retrospect, it would have been kind of funny to huffily refuse to continue the survey because of a moral disagreement with the concept of differentiated logical/emotional decision-making. And when I say "funny," I mean "idiotic," but I guess the option was there.

Seasons change, but people don't

There are a lot of people I know who claim that people-watching is one of their favorite activities. I suppose there's benefit to be gained from it, if only the satisfaction of appearing to be remotely interested in sociology. There are definitely better and worse places to engage in eye stalking, though. Parks are usually pretty amusing, for example, while libraries tend to be as mind-numbingly, eye-gougingly boring as the physics textbooks the potential objects of scrutiny are pouring over.

I think, generally, people-watching is just reaffirming, in whatever manner is necessary at the time. I tend to never feel more sure of who I am than when I'm watching other people be who I'm not.

13 days 'til summer
23 days 'til Dress Barn
98 days 'till school again

Always one foot on the ground

The Golden Rule has always seemed a little stupid to me. Not because I don't believe in it, or for some admittedly valid but essentially inane argument about personal subjectivity of proper treatment, but because it seems like such a simple, basic, and natural concept that I never saw why it needed to be explicitly stated.

Usually if there is argument about the "do unto others" philosophy, it's over concern about the potential diabolical natures of people who could follow it. There's always smartassy comments about masochists and whether or not it would entitle them to hurt people, or the distinction between people who avoid conflict/drama and Cecily von Ziegesar. As if you can really argue particulars in a phrase so rooted in archaic history that it uses the word "unto."

I don't particularly think anything as drastic or improbable as justifying masochism is that much of an issue. Subjectivity considered, the point is that it's infinitely more frustrating to deal with people who don't view you as an equal than with people who always insist on fair footing. The Golden Rule is more about respect than a philosophical consistency of values.

I wonder if there's ever going to be a time when the grand majority of interpersonal problems seem like actual adult issues and not just a staged attempt at playing adulthood.