Lack of true emotional responses

Ever hear a piece of news and have a reaction to it, only to realize afterwards that your reaction was not socially proper?

Today my brother said he was being bullied in summer camp. Apparently some kid told him his face was ugly then encouraged the rest of the class to laugh at him.

My immediate reaction: HOW DARE SOME LITTLE BRAT INSULT MY BROTHER?!? I WILL HAVE A TALK WITH THIS KID'S MOTHER!

After a few split seconds I had another reaction: lol, kids these days with their idiotic insults

Then I switched back to the original reaction: LITTLE IDIOTIC BRAT DEFILES THE NAME OF HUMANKIND WITH HIS/HER LAME INSULT!

And then: Well kids are kids and they don't have the ability to come up with anything better... they'll learn

Which finally concluded to: Hey, I dealt with bullies when I was a kid, my brother'll just have to learn to do the same thing. It'll strengthen him up if he survives it.

But does this mean I will sit by calmly and allow some random kid to bully my brother? Actually yes I think I will... but at the same time I certainly don't think I would if I had not had a secondary emotional response.

Lately (some time ago) I've been reconsidering what makes a person who they are (nature/nurture). And I say it's the former (nature).

At this moment there is actually nothing I'd like better than to find the kid who told my brother his face was ugly and demand an apology for such insolence. But of course, I won't. A: it'll be pointless since screaming at little children does not look very good and B: I doubt the kid knew what (s)he was doing. So following through my multiple reactions to the news of my brother's bully I've concluded that my instinctive self is of an evil and selfish nature.

It may be cynical, but I stand by the belief that as a person, individually, all human beings are evil and selfish. The only reason we're good is because it's to our benefit to be selfless.

Consider this: You're lost and alone on an island. What do you do? You survive; killing innocent animals. If you're trying to be selfless and vegetarian, you kill innocent plants. If you choose to not kill or hurt ANYTHING, you die. Selflessness kills.

Now consider you're lost but not alone on the same island. The number of prey and resources has not increased. But in this situation it'd probably be a good idea to partner up with whoever else is with you as to increase your chances of survival. Out of selfishness for your own survival, you'd probably be willing to share food and water. If you were truly selfless you'd hunt and gather resources with the other person but eat and use nothing. This results in your death.

Now maybe the other person's a better hunter so you allow them to eat more, to increase their chances of survival since they can increase your own chances of survival. But I truly cannot think of a good reason to offer them more food otherwise. Unless you're just a nice person and would feel bad if they didn't eat more than you (in which case you're only being nice to avoid the guilt you'd feel otherwise).

I suppose in the end I feel like a functional society is the only reason we're even nice to each other at all.

Back to the case of my brother, society has deemed it unacceptable for me to yell at the bully, and... well if we didn't have other people around the whole incident wouldn't even have happened.

This is why I like it much better living on the island in my head. I can be as selfish and evil as I want and it would not impair me IRL at all.

Highway Lanes

Just went on a family road trip to the USA. I drove 1/3 of the time. We rotated between people (my parents and I) so that no one drove for more than 2 hours. I discovered some key points about highway safety. Namely the unique identity of each lane.

Firstly the difference between a highway and a normal road is that there are no red lights or stop signs on highways. That being said cars drive faster. But you knew all that.

Highways come in 3 varieties for me, the 2-lanes, 3-lanes and 4+- lanes. I shall now attempt to use my ascii skills to explain the essentials about each lane.

2-Lane Highways


These highways are usually located in rural areas or places that don't usually get a lot of traffic.

                                                                                                                    
Right-hand lane          <-- {car}      <-- [truck]  
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Left-hand lane    <--- {car}     <---- {car}               <--- {car}
                                                                                                                    


In Right-hand lane (90-115 km/h)

• Trucks: they can't drive too fast, they run on a different speed limit and it's generally more dangerous if a giant truck crashes. Momentum and what not.
• Cars getting on and off the highway
• Cars that follow the speed limit
• Cars that're are lazy and want to just cruise by
• Cars that have a hard time accelerating 

In Left-hand lane (115+ km/h)

• Cars attempting to get to their destination faster
• Cars that are trying to overtake slower cars in right-hand lane
• Extremely reckless drivers

3-Lane Highways

These highways are usually still found in rural or less crowded areas, but generally come from or are going to a major city.

                                                                                                                 

Right-hand lane         <-- [truck]          <- {car}

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Middle lane         <-- {car}               <-- {car}          <-- [truck]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Left-hand lane           <--- {car}                   <------ {car}

                                                                                                                 

Right-hand Lane (90-110 km/h)

• Trucks
• Cars getting on and off of highway
• Cars driving religious by the speed limit

Middle Lane (110-120 km/h)

• Cars just cruising by
• Some trucks
• Cars trying to over take slow vehicles in the right-hand lane

Left-hand Lane (120+ km/h)

• Cars trying to over take a relatively slow care in the middle lane 
• Insane speeding drivers

Often I find that the right-hand lane can turn into a faster lane because a lazy cruising driver in the middle lane's slowing people down and people are more wary of being in the left-hand lane where the insane speeders drive. In fact these categories are just a general thing, once the left-hand lane turned into the slowest lane for me. 

I'm not going to bother commenting on highways with more than 3 lanes because there, anything goes. And there's that added complexity of the High Occupancy Lane sometimes for major highways. 

All in all, I think this road trip was extremely educational. 

Sometimes when you think all is well...

There's a problem.

I had a blood test yesterday. I don't like blood tests. It's taken me all my life to over come my general panic at seeing needles. I over came this panic by generally not looking at the needle that's about to invade my body. I also pinch myself elsewhere while the needle is being injected to distract my mind from it's presence.

And for most vaccine shots and such it works. In fact I had another blood test a while back this year during which my panic-avoiding technique also worked. But yesterday I discovered there may be another problem I need to over come when it comes to blood tests.

So here's the full story.

We got a new family doctor and she recommended I do a blood test since I show Raynaud's Sydrome. So we went to do a blood test. It was one of those 12-hour fast blood tests so I wasn't in the best mood going in, but managed to avoid the tense panic and got a tube of blood taken out. Then I looked over and mildly thought to myself, "oh hey, that's my blood." before going to do the urine sample.

As soon as I stood up I started feeling dizzy, I contributed that to my hunger. But as I got to the washroom nausea kicked in. After hyperventilating for a moment, I went back out to find the nurse and said I was feeling light-headed. By this point the room was spinning. I recall the nurse helping me me to a room and telling me to lay down. During the walk to the room there were moments when I couldn't see and the world was so surreal that I swore I was dreaming. By the time I got to the room I blacked out completely.

Luckily I was only out for a few seconds, once I laid down I'm assuming blood managed to rush back to my brain and I was able to ask for a cup of water. It wasn't really a traumatic experience, but its implications aren't good.

Early this year I was with my mom when I tripped and got a cut on my big toe while bringing my brother to his school. At the time I didn't think much of it since I've gotten cuts before and the drive home would only be 2 minutes. But I remember as soon as I sat in the car I was already feeling nauseous, and I distinctively remember pulling the seat back so I could lay down a bit. Once we got home, after getting in the house I was feeling so light-headed that I collapsed on the floor, leaving my poor mother in panic over what the heck just happened. After a moment she brought me a drink and we band-aided the cut.

With all the evidence so far I'm pretty sure I faint at the sight of my own blood. Both times of which I fainted involved me seeing my own blood. I spoke of another blood test I had earlier this year that went well, well I didn't see my blood in a tube after the test so other than the mild pain in my arm there was no sign that I had lost any blood at all. I also tend to my brother's blood wounds without a problem.

Now the question is why I didn't notice this earlier, did puberty change my psychological responses? I don't recall fainting for previous cuts or blood tests... Either way I feel like I should get to the bottom of this issue soon.