Early August 2017, and burgers

Something happened to me yesterday.

It is not the first time I have been treated like I'm defective, but it is the first time in a long time, and it is the first time in a professional environment.  It was like being slapped in the face.  I was both dismayed and astonished.

For what it is worth, I don't think they thought about what they said.  If they had the chance to see what it meant they might not have said it.  It still hurt.

I felt angry and ashamed at the same time.  I felt like they were saying I was fundamentally contemptable.  I can't ever be better.  This thing that is part of nature is somehow less and defective.  I'm never going to get it, but they get it now.  They are right, and I am wrong, and my only possible correct response is to convert my economy to theirs.

When I was six years old (1981-ish) I saw a movie that made me ask myself: what if the entire world is peopled by robots and I am the only human, but none of them know it.  I knew enough about the world that I knew they would kill me.  It wasn't that robots fundamentally kill non-robots, but it was a measure of humans.  Humans kill.  Not all humans, but some.

How do you resist the crushingness of some of these soul crushing things?

There are two things that you must know and hold against what you heard.  How do you measure "good"?  Who do you listen to?  There are going to be some messages that you need to not hear.  You need to know who you are.  You need to know you are good.  You need to not hear when words of those not capable or qualified speak against the truth of your identity.  It is how you stand against a body-blow.  If you don't have a strong identity, a strong idea of what is good/bad or right/wrong then they will cut you with a word, and it will not only cut your heart, it will cut the legs out from under you.  If you know who you are, if you have a solid root in identity then it will be like wind in the branches, but not the storm.  You will see it for its non-being and brace against it, and it will lose all of its substance and strength.  If you don't have a strong hold on the truth of your integrity and a courage behind your stand for your identity, then it will wash over you like the ocean and drown you.

Don't be drowned. 

So the dumb say "there is no wrong, and no right".  They will hear me say "know what is right and stand in it, and it will give you strength" and they will oppose what they call "your idea of right".  They will say "what gives your right any absolute correctness" and try to invalidate your ground.  The universal truth of the existence of right and wrong is wired into the race and the fundaments of mind.  for them to hate it, there must be a concept of it in their mind to hate, and therefore it can't not exist.  There absolutely and unilaterally is wrong and right, girlie girls.  Every culture has laws and, like I have said before, these exist because there is both crime and evil.  Know what is good, truly deeply and universally good, and do not depart from it.  Stand your ground.  Do not do what those lose and ignorant people do in their claim.  Do right. This will give you strength.

...

Work calls.  Homework calls.  You will soon be home from Pennsic.  I look forward to seeing you.

-mathdad