Wednesday, February 24, 2021

 Wednesday, February 24, 2021

 

            I heard about Tiger Wood's accident this morning. Another reason to be glad that Mike is gone. I think this would have hit him hard. My first thought was that he had tried to commit suicide. I heard that one of the Scandinavian counties counts all single-car accidents as suicides. Then I heard there were no skid marks at the site of the Wood's accident. I told Judy my thoughts. She immediately countered with tales of how well his life was doing; she believed he reached for his cell phone and was distracted. He was driving a loaner car and may not have known where all the buttons were. Any car he would have been driving must have had an in-car phone system. Either way, my God, what a tragedy. He fulfills the image of the hero in a Greek tragedy.

            I ran into a young neighbor who said she wanted to build a wall around her house to protect her family. Her father has bad PTSD because he spent his youth in a post-war country, running around in the rubble. Some of her fears are appropriate in today's world; some are made worse by the effect of the father's PSTD. How do you tell the difference? You can't just ignore the warning signals you get because there is some reality. How do you sort out the appropriate from the unnecessary?

            I was supposed to have D at 11:30. In response to the link I sent, his mom texted me that she had forgotten it was Wednesday and D was at his grandmother's.   I took a nap and then a shower. Then I went off for my haircut.

            When I came back home, I did some work on my updates. My computer flashed a full disk sign. I had no idea what this meant. I contacted Tommy, my new tech guy, immediately. He stopped off around 6: 30 to deal with the problem. I had taken some action already. I emptied my download file and the trash. That did something. I also worked on deleting duplicate files and earlier forms of files. Tommy found that my phone data was downloaded twice. When he deleted one copy, that freed up a lot of storage.

            After Tommy left, I had a quick salad and drove to Costco. A shipment had come in yesterday. I figured if there was a chance of getting vinegar, it would be now—no such luck. No vinegar. What can I tell you? It's Hawaii. I decided to go early on Saturday morning, knowing that a shipment would have come on Friday night. There is no way that it would have been emptied out that early. 

            I had the rest of my dinner when I came home. I watched something on the TV and got my charity donation receipts for my tax preparation.

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Musings:

            After all these years of thinking about selfishness, I had a new thought. Selfishness has something to do with not taking someone else into consideration. It's also assuming that you have no impact on others. Some people think I'm narcissistic because I am very aware of my possible impact on others. They think this means I think I'm someone special. That's because they can't bear the burden of thinking of themselves as having an equal impact. Regardless of what they do or don't do, I believe everyone has the same degree of impact on others. 

            I can see people pointing to a major political leader's impact versus some hermit living in a cave. The spectacular personality has the support of others. The degree of their impact depends on the degree of support they have. Donald Trump has not done what he has done alone. Not even he thinks that. He knows he is dependent on his base and has shamelessly played to them. He is where he is because he is standing on the shoulders of others. He is just a manifestation of their will. 

            Of course, after I had generated the idea that the difference between conventional ideas of selfishness has to do with taking others into consideration as we live our lives, I was reminded of my experience with the scammers. They definitely considered me; they had to get what they wanted out of me. So I'm back to square one on the definition of selfishness. 

            I have a bias against those who deny their negative impact on others. I had to deal with that with my mother, who thought nothing of using me as a whipping boy but then denied that what she did hurt me. When I told her she was, she argued I was just saying that to hurt her. She believed that she couldn't hurt me when she didn't intend to. The 'innocent' of the world drive me nuts.