I’m a programmer. I’ve spent my life programming computers, in a dozen different languages, on all kinds of computers, from Atari game machines to IBM 360s. I’m like those guys who have spent their lives playing guitar, or being machinists, or cabinet makers. If you play guitar all your life, and master your instrument, you see the world that way. You see the world as a giant guitar that you have to learn how to play. I have spent my life constructing complex logical patterns. That is how I see the world. This is both useful and frustrating.
Useful because logic is an unexcelled way of analyzing factual situations. Frustrating because human behaviour is not logical. Love, politics, war, economics, art, religion. These are disciplines that defy and transcend logic. I, like all humans, live my life within them, in spite of their alogicality. But I am brought back again and again to the view with which I am embued: logic. I am offended by illogic, in any sphere. I recognize that logic is not all there is. Nevertheless, I can’t subscribe to any notion that does not include it, at some level. It is an inevitable concomitant of my profession. Here are some things which I find to be illogical:
1. POLITICS: In all of the mainstream media, George Bush is charged with saying that Iraq was an “imminent” threat, when in fact he never said that, and, in fact, stated, on numerous occasions, in one way or another, that, in the age of assymmetric warfare, we must deal with threats BEFORE they become imminent. The media are doing this kind of thing on purpose. They have an agenda. This is just one tiny example. It offends me, regardless of my own political bias.
2. WAR: In all of our (The U.S., for those that don’t automatically identify with their country) wars, there has been flawed intelligence, bad military decisions, and terrible battlefield and behind the lines, incidents. These are all NOW seen, unlike in past wwars, as reasons to withdraw from this war we are in, for, dare I say it, our survival. This is not logical unless you are an absolute pacifist, in which case, you eschew logic altogether.
3. ECONOMICS: I am amazed at those of all political persuasons who fail to recognize a few simple principles, to wit: If you don’t have to work, you won’t. If you can get away with crime, you will. If you can monopolize a market, you will. If a government bureacracy is established, it will use all of its power to continue its existence.
4. ART: I am married to an artist. Artists are the implacable enemies of logic. Artists don’t put away their tools. Artists are messy. Artists bring into being that which has never been heretofore imagined.
5. RELIGION: I am very religious, just ask my horrified mother, a life-time, uncompromising atheist. But I don’t go to church. I love Jesus. He is the most intelligent, eloquent, ruthless, spiritual teacher I have ever come across, except for Buddha, and I have come across a few, living and dead. But I can’t find any bible passage where He said that I was supposed to let somebody else tell me what He really meant by the cryptic stories He told during His unfortunately brief sojourn on this earth. The way I see it, anyone who slavishly lives his or her life according to a book written 1, 2, or 3 thousand years ago by who knows who, is insane.
6. LOVE: Love goes where it wants to go. It has nothing to do with logic. It has nothing to do with compatibility, or marriage. It has nothing to do with the furtherance of the economic, political, artistic, or spiritual ambitions of the parties involved. It is a perilous, irrational, uncontrollable force that makes the world go round.
That’s just a few.