I’ve been so busy with work that I don’t have much time to read and write. Luckily, I took a few weeks off in the hopes that I get to plan some future projects where I might revive a few old posts on German philosophy from 2019. But unfortunately, I will be spending a chunk of my time laying low because I haven’t been feeling very well lately. I got sick and my dog recently passed away. Watching them go to sleep forever is really depressing.

This will likely be my last post of 2022. I am aware that some of you read the first version of this post that I deleted a couple days after I published it (near the end of October; I remember I got a like or two). The reason I deleted it was because I wanted to think over some of the sections again. As a result, I took some out and added new ones  in. To make up for the changes, I added new thoughts on French feminism, essentialism, post-humanism, along with more insights on psychoanalytic topics such as depression, anxiety, and jealousy. I will also show you some of the influences of deconstruction in fields like feminism.

You might notice how some of these sections builds off of my previous posts. This is because my writings can sometimes get too long where I take paragraphs out and throw them into a future post. For example, the section on German philosophy from my last post (#3) was actually written before I wrote about the Korean-German philosopher Byun-Chul Han from #2.

As usual, these can be read in any order at your own pace. 🙂

See you in 2023,
B.

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A friendly reminder

“To be harmful with what is best in us. —At times, our strengths propel us so far forward that we can no longer endure our weaknesses and perish from them. We may even foresee this outcome without wishing to have it otherwise. Thus, we become hard against everything in us that desires consideration, and our greatness is also our lack of compassion.

Such an experience, for which we must pay in the end with our lives, is a parable for the whole effect of great human beings on others and on their age: precisely with what is best in them, with what only they can do, they destroy many who are weak, unsure, still in the process of becoming, of striving; and thus they are harmful. It can even happen that, everything considered they are only harmful because what is best in them is accepted and absorbed by those alone whom it affects like a drink that is too strong: they lose their understanding and their selfishness and become so intoxicated that they are bound to break their limbs on all the false paths on which their intoxication leads them astray.

—Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Aph. 28

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When you don’t try…

A long time ago, a friend of mine told me that I was way more attractive when I don’t try. Thinking about it now, I think she was right. When I try, I tend to try too hard because I think too hard. But when I don’t try, my natural confidence kicks in which often attracts other people to me.

I remember I once gave a presentation in front of a class of 30 or more people. When I was giving the lecture, I looked at her every once awhile where I saw her looking at me with these really big shiny eyes as she kept smiling to herself. I asked her what that was about afterwards and she was like, “Your confidence is really hot”. We were just friends, but it was pretty funny LOL. I think she eventually ended up liking me—or maybe she liked me all along. I wouldn’t know back then. I wasn’t very good at these things. I’m still not very good at it now.

I have quite a few of these stories from back in my early 20s where I was friends with some girl only for me to discover that they liked me years down the road when it was way too late. It’s really stupid. There was one girl who got really mad at me for not asking her out because I literally thought we were just friends. I remember I got her contact info from helping her at an art show. I wasn’t actually trying to hit on her or anything. I was trying to be nice because she was having trouble setting up her art where I just thought we could be friends. After a few months of talking, she ended up indirectly ranting about me on her Facebook statuses and eventually removed me as friends. I even wondered who she was ranting about and why she removed me. And it wasn’t until two years later where I found out she was ranting about me LOL whoops. It was totally not funny for her. She definitely thought I was an asshole, which I was honestly. But here is the thing: if she opened up, I would’ve dated her.

Back then, I was too focused on my intellectual endeavors to think about girls which ironically attracted a lot of them to me. It was funny because some people thought I was gay because they could tell girls liked me where I seem to take no interest in them and only treated them as friends. While I got much better at picking up these signals with age, I still suffer from these problems in a different way. If people don’t tell me, I will almost always figure it out way too late.

While it is nice when someone is honest and up front with their feelings, I also understand that I often don’t give them the proper space, assurances, and build enough trust and comfort for them to open up (I’m working on it as a person). I have laser beam focus where I often miss these signals from people because I am too focused on other things (I live in my head who can be really forgetful). At times, I can be so focused on my work that people would be talking to me and I won’t hear a thing from them.

So what we can conclude is this: when I don’t try, I literally don’t care whether or not someone likes me because I am too focused on other things (and it doesn’t matter how attractive they are; or who they are). But when I put my mind to it, I become an overthinker where I would endlessly ruminate about them and try too hard. So it’s a matter of balance to try, but not try too hard; and learn to give people space and focus on your own things so to let things happen naturally. Yes, yes—that is what I learned over the years. 🙂

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The most common logical fallacies

The most common logical fallacies are probably confirmation bias or strawman. Basically, confirmation bias is sort of like when you meet someone new where you don’t like them without any real reason. So everything they do will confirm your bias that you don’t like them. Simply put, you are confirming your own bias through false evidence where you are selectively seeing what you only want to see. Whereas strawman argument is when you twist someone’s argument and make it seem like it is the argument that the other person is making, even when it isn’t. Then you go on to make a counter-argument against this new distorted argument that you just made up. These two fallacies are so common that not many people pick up on it when they make it.

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Psychoanalysis, Depression, and Anxiety

There are three basic psychoanalytic structures: neurosis, psychosis and perversion. Neurosis consists of obsessional and hysteria (and fetishism?). Psychosis consists of paranoia, schizophrenia and melancholia (or manic-depressive psychosis). In psychoanalysis, depression can be associated with any of these clinical structures and is often related to anxiety—something that everyone experiences in all sorts of ways.

This is particularly true for Jacques Lacan, who was well known as the master of anxiety, and for his clinical ability in reducing anxiety in his patients. Unlike Freud who saw that external circumstances in the world would induce anxiety into individuals. Lacan saw how, anxiety is actually embedded into the heart of human consciousness and split subjectivity through the way they experience language and meaning (Symbolic). While your everyday individual’s desire is caused by lack through a object (a) that is unconsciously missing, a depressed individual is when this lack is sometimes lacking. Anxiety is produced when the subject is caught within this lack of the lack who encounters the horrors of the Real where no symbolic language can represent.

As mentioned in my other posts, another way anxiety is produced is when the subject gets too close to object a. It’s kind of like running into someone you really like where they make your heart race as your face turns red and your mind goes blank (or what people refer as “butterflies”). Sometimes, this happens to the point where one may go into denial so to avoid such anxiety. They may counter this anxiety by denying these feelings and using unhealthy methods such as aggression, ignoring them, etc. (note: denial is not always conscious by the person who is doing it). So the bottom line is that, anxiety occurs when we get too close to object a (object cause of desire); or when the Real is laid bare where there is a lack of object a.

Often times, the symptoms of a depressed person consists of persistent sadness, loss of appetite, loss of interests in the things that they used to enjoy (desire), and suicidal thoughts. In short, a depressed person is someone who no longer properly desires (the subject’s relationship with object a has been lost). In other instances, it could be where certain individuals are caught into a downward spiral of the desire for negative thought patterns. This is why in some modern treatments of depression, one of the ways to stop this is learning to identify these negative patterns. These techniques are often found in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. In psychoanalysis, this idea is often associated with masochism and sadism where the depressed individual unconsciously enjoys repeatedly inflicting pain on themselves, leading them to self destruction (Freud believed that this tendency for self-destruction is caused by the death drive). There are many ways the split subject can experience depression through anxiety via different clinical structures. No one is the same.

I sometimes like to use the analogy of a river to introduce people to psychoanalysis, where the water in the river represents our desires and drive for enjoyment. When the big Other imposes too many laws onto this river, such as building too many walls (dams) and blocking off the flow of water, the river will flood and overflow, causing all sorts of mental illnesses. Psychoanalysis is about clearing up these obstacles that blocks the flow of water (your unconscious desires). This is another reason why the analyst sits behind you during a session because no one is watching, imposing laws and judging you! The analyst attempts to give the analysand the needed space to produce their own desires through sublimation, either by removing some of these obstacles or give them an opportunity to find a new way to desire around these obstacles. Their job is to help them desire in a healthy way again.

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INTJ or INFJ?

I sometimes think I am an INFJ and not INTJ. But when I think more about it, I fall closer to an INTJ. Regardless, I am definitely an Ni-dom. I have an intense type of focus that people can observe through the way I look at them or at other things. Friends in the past had told me that they see my intensity as a form of passion which I find much more comforting. Being mindful of it is still something that I am working on. My nephew used to be scared of me as well. But we’re pretty chill now where we sometimes play video games together because I am secretly 10 years old.

This reminds me of my post on the INTJ (here). Keep in mind that it was written in third person perspective which tried to include other INTJs. People vary and no one is the same (AKA don’t put everyone in a box). Some of the stuff I wrote on there is not always true for others—even for myself (unless I pointed out that it was true for me). I am probably one of the more stereotype defying INTJs out there. While I dislike MBTI stereotypes, there are some that are true for a lot of INTJs, such as minimal facial expressions, hard to read, experts at dispensing abstract knowledge, sarcastic, insightful, smart, honest, and efficient. They are independent thinkers who won’t easily fall into herd mentalities. Also, they are usually one of the types who are least active on social media. INTJs are basically a human cat who likes to be left alone, but really appreciates attention from their loved ones every once awhile.

I think both INTJ and INFJs are some of the most misunderstood types in MBTI. Many of them also tends to struggle in a sensor dominated world because they value all the things that most people don’t care about. Both types often feel like they don’t belong which may induce the feeling of loneliness. They have what some people refer as an “onion personality” with many layers to them that may endlessly fascinate others (they are usually really deep). I always found it weird how some people wants to be an INTJ or INFJ. Trust me, you don’t want to. Being misunderstood by people you care about is one of the worst feelings on the planet.

Personally, I am used to people misunderstanding me since I was born. On the surface, I tell others that I don’t really care and even make jokes about it. Yet deep down, I want people who I value to understand me. As I got older, I realized that all I really ever wanted in my life was for someone to get me. Making assumptions about me is the biggest mistake most people make when they are trying to know me because 90% of them are usually wrong.

INxJs are hard people to find. They require a lot of patience to understand. This is why it is better to go slow with these types and not jump to any conclusions, since they tend to be unpredictable walking paradoxes. Romantically, meeting the “right” INxJ is more rare than what most people think because it is difficult for any type to run into an INxJ that fits their books. For example, while the odds of running into a male INTJ is around 1 in 60 (give or take). Once you factor in other qualities like mutual attractions, language barrier, age difference, and other things, the odds of running into the right INTJ will quickly jump to something stupid like 1 in 20 000. Double this if you are looking for female INTJs which makes up 0.5% of the world. INFJ men are also somewhere along this percentage.

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One thing I learned growing up

Most people are not as smart as they think they are. Myself included. This is why it is best to always assume that you are wrong and give benefit of doubt. If you think about it, there is so much we don’t know about everything that there is always something we can learn from everyone. Thus, never settle for a conclusion until you are absolutely certain that it is correct and have sufficient reason and knowledge to believe so. As I said before, jumping to conclusions is the culprit of humanity—just like those who jumps to conclusions about me from reading this blog.

Ciao.

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What happens when you ask a stupid person for advice?

Everyone is good at certain things and stupid at others. The problem happens when people give advice on things that they are incompetent in answering—precisely because they think they know best, even when they know nothing. Other times, people genuinely give good advice where the other person doesn’t listen. So you just have to watch them learn things the hard way.

Personally, I don’t give advice. But I can tell you what I think is true—if you ask nicely. 🙂

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The Best BBQ Experience

My friends and I did an outdoor BBQ for the first time at a local park in the city. We don’t have much experience on how to heat up charcoal grill (my friends planned it). Eventually, we ran out of wood to start a fire and started looking for leaves and small twigs on the ground to burn. We failed to start a fire to heat the charcoal and ended up eating pre-cooked sausages that we bought from the grocery store. We laughed so hard going like, “Okay, nobody needs to know about this” LOLLL.

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Human as Machine; Human as Human

One way we can look at the differences between modern psychology and psychoanalysis is how the former often involves studying people as if they are like a biological machine. This includes how scientists and doctors studies the underlying causalities on how human behavior reacts to their environments which triggers various hormonal responses in their bodies. The idea that humans are becoming increasingly like machines and should be seen as a machine is subject for debate.

This idea takes us to disciplines like post-humanism where people argue how human animal and machines should become as one. Donna Haraway is your woman in this department—particularly her famous essay called “A Cyborg Manifesto”. Although I don’t completely agree with her positions on how Western dualisms are placed against each other (i.e. self vs. other; man vs. woman, etc.), I think it’s a really interesting essay. Honestly, the last time I read this piece was almost 10 years ago, so I don’t remember that much from it.

Meanwhile, Jacques Lacan mostly rejected scientific approaches to modern psychiatry where scientists studies humans as a biological machine. Unlike your post-humanist thinkers where they attempt to conceive of humans as cyborgs and machines, Lacan thought that psychoanalysis could become a discipline that represents humanism. He sought to develop a psychoanalytic framework that acknowledges the importance of the dialectical relationships between conscious and unconscious mind where things like madness and insanity are part of human intelligence. This theme of madness is not far off from Lacan himself, who was quite a weirdo in real life. Lacan was a man who never liked naming any of his works. I think there was a TV series on him back then where it was simply called “Television”. His one and only book published with all his essays on psychoanalysis is called “Ecrits” which means “Writings” in English (Lacan speaks croissant).

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Detective

Last year, a detective called me about some homicide that happened in my neighbour community. I missed the call, but he texted me and told me to call him back. So I called him and apparently, some dude got shot on their own driveway, but it wasn’t anyone I knew (I don’t know any shady people lol). So I said to him, “You got the wrong number, but I think I found your suspect”. I wonder what happened after LOL. I think it was a mistake.

One of my uncle was a detective in Hong Kong who used to tell me all these creepy stories of crimes that they couldn’t solve. There was one case I remember vaguely about a man who hung himself in a skyscraper that was still under construction. The police received a call from a man of unknown identity who reported the discovery the dead person in the building. After initial autopsy, the police discovered that the man died something like 13 years ago. They contacted the victim’s family who said he went missing a long time ago. At the time, there was still one piece of puzzle missing where the police could not find the man who reported the discovery of the body. The popo let the family members listen to the phone recording where they got spooked out saying that the man who reported the dead body sounds like the man who hung himself. Apparently, my uncle said a lot of people who were involved in that case had to go see psychologists, thinking that maybe they heard wrong (it might be someone else who sounded like the man who hung himself). At the end, the mysteries of the case were never solved and the man who called the police was never found. Spoooooooky.

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Academic Journals

Critical Inquiry from the University of Chicago is probably one of the most well known and prestigious journals on contemporary theory. They basically only publish ground breaking ideas. Many well known scholars had their works published on there before. There is an interdisciplinary journal from Johns Hopkins University that is also really good, but I forget the name. In general, I think journals that are dedicated to certain influential thinkers are usually pretty good. For example, there is the International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, and the International Journal of Zizek Studies. There is also Derrida Today from University of Edinburgh which is peer reviewed by a lot of renown Derridean scholars like Catherine Malabou, Michael Naas, Leonard Lawlor, John D. Caputo, and Christopher Norris (most journals are reviewed by experts in their field). Unfortunately, most of the works from them are also locked behind paywalls, which sucks.

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The Other’s Desire

An interesting example on how our desire is the Other’s desire is when you notice how some people rely too much on the opinions of their friends and family when they like someone. The question becomes: is it your friends and family dating them, or you? In a psychoanalytic context, this makes a lot of sense because our desires is the Other’s desire. So for example, if all of your friends hates your crush due their erroneous judgements (or they are being manipulative), then there is a good chance that you might end up hating your crush as well. This sounds stupid, but it happens quite often where the person will end up repressing or deny these desires for the other person. Unexpressed emotions and desires will always return to haunt us in our lives, causing all sorts of new symptoms. While I am oversimplifying here, what we can learn from this is simple: it is important we learn how to think for ourselves.

You see something similar with advertisements where companies make you desire to buy something because your desire is the Other’s desire (the advertisement). And this is why big companies spends so much money on marketing because it works. Apple is a good example of this.

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On Jealousy

Sometimes, you see people play games by trying to make the person they like jealous. And if they get jealous, said person will think they love them. This is false—it’s really just their ego speaking. Jealousy is not love. Not to mention that this is a risky tactic because the last thing you want to do when you like someone is to make them think you don’t like them (pretty much the definition of self-sabotage Lol; but it is also situational).

In psychoanalysis, jealousy is often considered pathological and is sometimes confused with envy (the former is derived from the latter). While it is normal to feel jealous at times, certain forms of jealousy is actually a protruding symptom of paranoia which is occasionally associated with schizophrenia (both of these are often diagnosed as a structure of psychosis). For example, consider a couple who divorced because of the husband’s jealousy who keeps making him think that his wife is cheating on him. Regardless of whether or not this is true, after their divorce, the man’s symptom of jealousy remains intact where he continues to be suspicious of others and their intentions (other times, paranoia will manifest as the consistent feeling that someone is watching, stalking, or following you). In some cases, the underlying cause of this is not due to their symptom of being jealous—even if he may consciously perceive it as such during his psychotherapy sessions. His jealousy is unconsciously structured by something else—namely, the structure of psychotic paranoia. This is why a person’s symptoms may not be what they consciously perceive. Hence, it is best to not diagnose yourself. Psychoanalytic diagnosis can be really tricky and difficult, even for skilled clinical analysts.

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Future Emergencies

On my way home one evening, I drove by a construction road sign with the word “emergency” written on it. Out of boredom, I asked myself: what is an emergency? What does it mean to emerge? The word “emergency” is derived from the Latin term “emergo”, which means “to come out” or “rise”. To emerge is to come out or rise from an unexpected event in the future; it is to merge or collide with a certain form of danger or injury. An emergency is thus, a wound; it is an open invitation to a risk unforeseeable and incalculable by the human eye. It can even be said that, to emerge is to be surprised by a future that demands for our utmost attention, love, care, and hospitality. What does it mean to care for the emergencies that erupts from the future? What does it mean for humans to emerge with the future as they traverse from life to death? Is the possibility of our future death an invitation for us to reflect about our lives and the natures of humanity—and of love and knowledge?

I often think that the future is predictable because human nature is predictable. But I would rather have a future that is radically anterior, unknown, and unpredictable. I would rather have a future that is always to come—always to emerge, that invites us to collide with the greatest passions known to the human soul. I would prefer a future that constantly surprises me—just like that of love. Just like forgiveness.

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On Debates, Feminism and Essentialism

The other day when I was having dinner with the family and my sister’s boyfriend brought up Jordan Peterson on how awesome he is at speaking up against feminism. He spoke about how a lot of men does all the hard labour types of jobs and yet feminists want equality. So does this mean that all the women wants to equally lay bricks like men do as well? I mean yeah, if they want to lay bricks, they could and I won’t judge them at all. But this is an oversimplification of the problem and it is not what equality is really about—at least not from an economical, lawful, and critical-sociological standpoint (i.e. woman should have the right to vote, have control over their bodies, fair wages, etc.; which are things that I support). It is also probably one of the most short sighted and strawman argument I’ve heard anyone make against equality.

I think this makes for a good case to talk a little about essentialism. Such idea has a long history that stems from Platonic metaphysics on how every object consists of an essential and immutable form or idea about it that are necessary to making up that object. While this might strike us as true in various contexts such as science, where every object has essential aspects to them that constitutes them (molecules, etc.), it is not always true in other discourses and contexts. The best everyday example in our case is gender essentialism. Consider the statement that, all men likes to lay bricks and play sports while all women likes to cook and watch TV (in everyday language, we refer these things as discrimination, sexism, stereotypes and gender roles, etc.). On the surface, these statements may reveal an essential aspect of the identity for all men and women that are unchangeable—even when they are hardly essential to both of them (because this argument is naïve, weak, and lacks critical depth). While this is an over simplification, many of us can already see the problems of this statement because it is simply not true. Yet, Mr. boyfriend makes an assumption that these essentialisms are true and measures it against “equality”. While in some cases, essentialism can be seen as a valid position, there are many instances where people will argue against it in all sorts of ways, where essentialism becomes a paradox for a non-essentialist position. Let me quickly show you some of them.

In a way, one can say that Jacques Derrida was an anti-essentialist or non-essentialist thinker. Within the structure of language and interpretation, there are no essential meanings that constitutes a word’s specific meaning as such (there is no fundamental “essence” in the meaning of a word other than alternative meanings that constitutes its perceived meaning). This is due to the influences in our experiences of spacetime, difference, play on words, contexts, and mental states; where meaning and intentionality can change due to these constant shifting conditions. Yet paradoxically, Derrida’s deconstruction sets up a sort of non-essentialist-essentialist position where he shows us how it is precisely these essential conditions which produces the fundamental building blocks for essentialisms that are always inherently unstable and non-essential. In other words, the essential essences and definitions that determines a man and woman are unstable. Therefore, not every man likes to play hockey and lay bricks; and not every woman likes to cook and watch television. While I am oversimplifying here, this is what makes deconstruction incredibly influential in gender theory and feminism. In many ways, deconstruction allowed feminists to see how society is actually built upon privileging these essentialisms of man and woman, where it would define them and unconsciously control them so that every man who grows up within said society would only like to play hockey and lay bricks; and every woman would only like to cook and watch television. By doing so, society would endlessly reinforce and perpetuate these essentialisms as a form of social control (this goes back to my last post where I spoke about Foucault, who was also really influential among feminists; hyperlinked here). As we can see, this is one way feminist scholars will utilize deconstruction so to deconstruct gender essentialisms. Yet little do some of these feminists understand that deconstruction is not a method or a political tool. Deconstruction cannot be essentialized as a stable method because deconstruction deconstructs itself 💀.

Something similar can be found in Alain Badiou’s ontology, where he uses Georg Cantor’s set theory to talk about how the multiplicity of truths are born into existence through events that are produced through pure chance (set theory is a mathematical theory that tries to explain the concept of infinity and how each set of integer/number or objects have an infinite amount of sets within it). Chance becomes this non-essential, yet essential condition in producing truths in our world. It is just like the chance that an apple fell on Isaac Newton’s head which allowed him to discover gravity; or the encounter of the love of your life where two people produces a new truth together (this opposes to say, the simulations of chance found in dating apps; even when there is nothing left to chance in date matching algorithms). You can also see this type of position in Slavoj Zizek’s interpretation of Lacanian psychoanalysis on how gender differences lies at the heart of the Real where gender identities are produced to cover up the traumatic experiences of the Real. In this context, psychoanalysis becomes the essential building block for gender theories in a non-essential type of way. For it is either there is sexual difference, or there is no sex at all.

Finally, we see this non-essentialist stance in Lacan when he infamously pointed out that “Woman does not exist”. Contrary to people thinking that Lacan was a misogynist trying to erase woman from history, he was provocatively pointing out how woman cannot be essentialized by the symbolic dimensions that are defined by patriarchy (and that above all, women can take position as the symbolic and redefine woman in ways never imagined). In other words, the essential definition of woman does not exist and cannot be defined in a masculine dominated society. According to Elisabeth Roudinesco, a leading French historian of Lacan and a practicing psychoanalyst, this infamous and controversial saying was Lacan’s belated response to the renown feminist existentialist Simone de Beauvoir, who once asked Lacan for advice on her book called, The Second Sex before it got published in 1949. While Lacan never responded on time, this ground breaking book would later become the driving force behind third wave feminism in the 90s. In it, de Beauvoir famously said, “one is not born a woman, but becomes one”. And if you think about it, such phrase really echoes to Lacan’s infamous “woman does not exist”, since no one is born a woman.

Anyways, after Mr. boyfriend told me about Peterson, I smiled and told him how I think Peterson is a bad reader of Derrida and Nietzsche. Then he was like, “I don’t know who they are, *continues talking*”; and I was thinking to myself, “Well you really should Lol”. The funniest part was that the other day, he sent me a video of the famous speech by Ricky Gervais at the Golden Globe where Gervais spoke up against actors who likes to give their acceptance speeches about politics while they have less education than Greta Thunberg. Honestly, I’m beginning to think he was using the video to talk about himself. But I don’t blame him for not knowing because he never studied these things the way I did (and I think he has a good heart; it’s just that he is a bit misguided and lack critical judgement and insight).

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind people disagreeing with any ideas. What I sometimes have a problem with are people who disagrees with something by nitpicking arguments, make erroneous assumptions and think they are right. This shows me that they can’t even properly understand the fundamentals of other people’s arguments before making a counter-argument (at least try). You can’t disagree with something that you never studied or don’t understand.

If I spoke up during dinner about his arguments, it might’ve escalated very quickly into a debate. The older I get, the more I don’t like to debate people because it can put me at a disadvantage in interpersonal relationships (it depends on who, but it is usually not good for me in the long run). I’m also too lazy because it sometimes ends up with me talking too much about ideas that they never considered or thought about. And by that point, people will start to think I am patronizing them which is never my intention. If people are interested and I genuinely like you, I am willing to explain and talk for hours about topics that I’ve spent years studying in an open minded and nice way—even if you disagree with me. It really depends on the person. But more often than not, I’d rather save my energy. I just learn to choose my battles and when I should keep one eye closed. It is much better to have discussions rather than pointless debates that goes no where. Other times, it is nice to turn your brain off and have fun.

Nowadays, I just live and let live.

…

✌