Stop thinking binary

Most of my readers were born in a digital age.  Even older farts like me, though born into an analog world, were schooled in a digital world and grew up and worked in one.  So it's natural that we think binary things.  All these damned 101011100010 things, you know.

For those who know/remember BASIC programming, here's something for you:

For N = 1 + I
Print "I AM RIGHT"
I = I + 1
Next N

What happens with that?  It's what we call an infinite loop.  And sadly, that's how the world is.  An infinite loop of shit.  I blame binary.

See, there is NO SUCH THING as an objective reality.  There is not one truth (which usually means MY truth, not anyone else's), but the world as we know it is simply a social construction.  It is what we make of it.  And each of us is different.  So we have different perceptions and interpretations.  But the binary thinking in each of us has attuned us to look at things as either or.  That, however, is not necessarily productive.

Those of you who know me, consider this.  Am I an asshole or a decent person?  Not really that easy to render a conclusion, is it?  Now consider yourself.  If you think you're a saint, fine. But do you think that you are consistently saintly, and that no one can possibly construe your persona as anything less than holy at any point?  You get my drift?

Someone once said to me, when he found out I was reading The Merchant of Venice, "isn't that a racist and anti-semitic play?"  Is it?  Was Shakespeare a racist?  Was he anti-semitic?  I think that's a very difficult question.  Of course, he wouldn't even know what anti-semitisim means, since that term didn't exist in his days.  Now consider the play, if you know it, is Shylock actually the tragic hero (in which case it can't be a racist play), or is he a simple villain (in which case the play could potentially be racist).  That, however, is subject to one's interpretation.  And one's interpretation could say a lot about how one sees the world oneself.  In other words, perhaps calling the play racist is more a projection than a thoughtful analysis.  Just saying.

Getting a bit philosophical these days, since I talk mainly to myself and only myself.  It gets rather weird, truth be told.  It kind of makes me relate to how the character played by Heston must have felt in The Omega Man.  Your mind churns over things, and if you don't exercise some degree of self-control, it wanders into very dangerous territories.

I am very grateful that I went to Schulich for my PhD.  For although I ended up doing a quantitative dissertation, since that was the path of least resistance and thus easier, my education was quite informed by the interpretive paradigm (i.e. reality is as we interpret it).  This has served me well, especially these days when this kind of interpretivism helps me negotiate my "reality" of being "stranded" in Ottawa for the summer.  And all the concomitant trials and tribulations.  It's how I keep my sanity, though at times I could feel it slipping away.

Even so, I resolve not to get into an infinite loop of self-pitying or self-righteousness.  Life is complicated.  The world is complex.  Reality is ephemeral.  Maybe the world would be an easier place to navigate if we abide by what e e cummings once wrote:

I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance

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Sorry about that bit of meandering.  Anyway, as you know I've been walking all over Ottawa since the virus thing hit.  And Ottawa is only so big.  So essentially I've walked everywhere that's remotely interesting and do-able (after all, if I don't want to walk any more than 10-12 miles a way, then I am stuck with a 5-6 mile radius, no?).  After a while, it gets repetitive.  Today, to change things up a bit, I decided to walk to the other university in the city (there are actually three, but the third one is really small and its focus is as a religious-based social justice warrior institution, so not my cup of tea).  It was a bit of a hike, but I made it there earlier today.

The university is called Carleton University, and it has a rather large campus.  I must confess I don't know much about it, other than I turned down their offer to do a MA there when I first came to Ottawa.  It's a relatively young university as well, being founded in 1942 and became a university ten years later.  So it's not a hell lot older than me, haha.

Well, I walked there, and since I hardly know the campus, I didn't manage to take a lot of pictures.  But I took these:

I think I must have walked into the residence part of the university, for I have a feeling that these were residence halls.  The second one has a sign that says residence commons or something, so I am guessing it's some social gathering spot?  Looks quite nice though, eh?  Carleton seems to have a lot of residence hall buildings, a lot more than UOttawa does.  Maybe because it's a little bit more remote, but in any case certainly because it's bigger (it has 30,000-ish students versus 52,000+ at UOttawa).

I could have walked further into the depths of the campus, but by that time I was quite tired, so I turned around and came home.  One of my oldest friends went there for engineering, so I gather it's a decent school for that.  I also have a "friend" who teaches business there, so I gather its business school probably sucks, haha!

It's been a long post today.  Sorry about all that philosophizing at the beginning.  Just one of those days.  I hope you all are doing well and staying safe.

Remember, think alternative thoughts when things don't seem great.  As George Bernard Shaw once wrote (Robert Kennedy was just quoting Shaw):

"Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were and ask why not."