Good is the Default

I used to spend a lot of time explaining myself to awful people who didn't realize they're awful and therefore couldn't understand why I treated them as such. Explaining was the least I could do, because they often seemed genuinely confused and hurt. After all, everyone sees themselves as a virtuous good person.

But awful people, I decided, are inherently confused. In fact, that’s why they’re awful. 

People don't behave awfully unless their perspective is warped. The unvarnished truth is that we're in Utopia, basking in unimaginable comfort on a singular speck of color and beneficence in an otherwise cold, dark, tight, vacant universe, blessed with ample oxygen, life-giving sunlight, and quenching water. Our greatest problems include a troubling excess of food and personal possessions. Socially, things may feel a bit malevolent, but in reality, everyone's just fumbling through their day, and almost nothing they say or do truly reflects on you. In their minds, you're mostly a placeholder.

We depart from this baseline perspective on mere whim, choosing to indulge in drama — in Rich People Problems — which we eventually steep in so deeply that we forget that we paid and waited on line to ride this rollercoaster. And maladjustment begets confusion and awfulness.

So there is no Evil serving as an equal oppositional force to Good. Good is the default, though confused people may do evil things.

It's notable that the clear-headed are seldom awful (exception: psychopaths, who maintain a narrowed crystal clarity despite tectonic skew). I don't know anyone gifted with expansive wisdom and equanimity who makes a habit of being awful — though they may seem so to those expecting them to indulge posing and delusion.

I no longer explain myself to awful people. They're too lost to accept a road map. Anything said to them is received through a distorted lens, and you can't push truth so artfully that it maintains itself through a warped perspective.

But I take heart in knowing that any confused, awful person entangled in complication can, with an effortless gesture of surrender, re-moore to the simplicity of baseline goodness.


See "Flipping Your Street Smarts" for a much more down-to-earth version of this same flip of perspective.

I Forgive You For My Error

If you ever have your motives or intentions misconstrued or your words misapprehended, or if you're falsely accused, once you manage to make the other person recognize their error, your counter does not reset. You will remain on probation.

The other person, you see, has applied the faculty of forgiveness. If there's a subsequent violation, you will be afforded much less opportunity to explain.

This isn't a problem for most people, who say normal things and act in normal ways. Most people avoid being misunderstood by constraining themselves to highly-patterned, easily-construed behavior, aka conformity. Add this to the myriad reasons the world encourages us to choose and portray a canned personality type - the bearded teddy bearish dude in fuzzy sweater who says "It's all good" a lot, or the brassy husky-voiced woman full of high-spirited good fun, etc. No surprises, no friction. Social lubrication remains nicely greased.

But if you're the least bit original, or creative, or spontaneous, perils await you far beyond the expected playground-style immune response. It would require multiple leather-bound volumes to catalog the wide-ranging weirdness.

Am I being cynical? Nope. I'm being extraordinarily guileless. The notion of making someone "recognize their error" even once is ludicrously unrealistic.

There's a phrase I've heard over and over which reveals the whole ballgame. It's my rhetorical kryptonite, leaving me weak and defenseless. Upon explaining, with earnest horror, that someone has misunderstood me, I very often get back "No, I understood perfectly." Whereupon my internal organs commence to liquify.

If you can suggest a productive, non-murdery way to receive that response — "No, I understand perfectly" — I will hand over my house, my car, and my prized bagel plates.

Replacement Balloons

When I was a small child, I'd get terribly upset when a relationship with a helium balloon ended with a pop or heavenly ascent. They'd offer to replace it with an identical balloon, but somehow this made things worse. I wanted my balloon, which was obviously irreplaceable!

I recognized, even in my sorrow, how silly I was being. An identical balloon is an identical balloon! Yet the previous one felt special by virtue of — well, it was hard to explain. Time spent? Shared experience? Whatever the explanation, the popped or lost one was my balloon, whereas this was just some garish, oblivious hunk of inflated latex. The certainty was accompanied by an uncomfortable awareness of my childish caprice.

But my certainty was appropriate. At 62, I see that I was right about balloons. I only felt silly because the world has a gaping blind spot extending far beyond balloons. Even people can be viewed as interchangeable objects slotted into roles and categories, their singular essence, their essential reality, overlooked. 

We, ourselves, are often replacement balloons. It's common to approach new romantic relationships like swapping in a fresh tennis partner. And to yearn for canned family moments where relatives cosplay their respective roles. Bosses can't conceive of an employee knowing better, merely because they're The Boss. We have a devilishly hard time seeing individuality.

The world outside our heads appears as a grand glass menagerie, with everything and everyone serving as placeholders. But within this hot-swappable world, it's neither sentimental nor capricious to appreciate the unique individuality of some person or thing — even a balloon!


I am obviously continuing to examine The Empathy Asymmetry.

See also "Love Theater".

Another Empathy Asymmetry

My recent posting, "The Empathy Asymmetry", explored how the burden of empathy often falls unilaterally, and how the suspension of social disbelief can blind us to these imbalances. Here's a perfect real-world example from a few years ago:

A friend invited me to a beer festival, and, alas, brought along his bombastic, contentious wife. True to form, she immediately took strident exception to some trivial disagreement, launching into a tirade while I placidly waited out the storm. She concluded the tongue-lashing by noting that her mother had died two weeks ago, leaving her utterly uninterested in taking any shit from me during this difficult and highly vulnerable moment.

I responded, calmly, that my mother had died two weeks ago as well.

For a brief, fraught moment, she hesitated, calculating whether I was speaking truth and whether it mattered. The pause didn't last long. True or not, she'd formed her response.

"GO FUCK YOURSELF," she bellowed, dragging her spouse behind her as she strode away. 

Empathy imbalance in 21st century America can be a confusing and surreal proposition.

Processing Processing

It doesn't take much to recognize the prevalent and damaging habit of obsessing over what's missing, what didn't happen and who's not here. Reframing is effortless and instant, so effortful lingering often constitutes malingering.

"But people need to process! If we don't mentally work through such dilemmas, we'll be skewed going forward, and suppressed emotions may arise at inconvenient moments!"

Well, sure! You should certainly take a moment.

I'm no fan of suppression. I recently wrote "Watch out for Vulcans", noting that "those who fashion themselves evolved beyond emotion are actually emotionally stunted." Emotions must be given a chance to express — to avoid bottling, and also to develop equanimity. The sidestepping of grief, pain, and disappointment doesn't represent composure; it represents the operation of a perilous pressure cooker.

But most of us go way too far the other way. Pop psychotherapy has fostered the notion that processing must continue until we’re okay with it — okay with the death of a loved one, or with the fire that destroyed all our belongings. We fervently and endlessly replay the mental tape until it pops out a different, better result, or until we're okay with it.

Neither is realistic. So, in 21st century America, nearly everyone seems trapped in an infinite processing loop. This explains the widespread stress, self-absorption, and depression seen in a society of unprecedentedly safe, comfortable people — people struggling to process iotas of lingering pain and disappointment which rudely defy their sense of entitlement.

Processing is necessary, but fraught obsession won't make you okay with it. The infinite loop offers only two off-ramps: boredom (the mind tires of the looping) and self-awareness (a shocked recognition of the absurdity).

Perhaps the above felt vague. I haven't offered a crisp flow chart for handling grief, pain, and disappointment. But there is no clear line. We must figure it out — process it — as we go. "Processing" requires processing! 

However, it's not a particularly sticky wicket. Let out the steam, and let light venting suffice. The "feeling okay" part can take care of itself, over time.


See "Grief Survival Kit".

Also: reframing too smoothly/instantly/effortlessly confuses onlookers. They, too, need to process!

Creating PDF Photo Book on Mac

The PDF photo book of Bengali food I linked to in my previous posting was surprisingly difficult to create. Well, no, it's super easy to create; just hard to create in a way that actually works.

Here's the easy way (I'm a Mac/iPhone user; if you're not, sorry/not sorry!):

• Open Photos on Mac
• Select photos
• Command to Print
• Choose "Fill" in right sidebar (or whatever you want)
• Hit Print again, and choose "Save PDF". 
• Voila, a ginormous PDF with all landscape photos rotated to portrait.

Here's how to do it right:

Using an image editing app (I use GraphicConverter), set up a batch job (or go one-by-one if you're patient...it might be faster if you're not well-versed in the app) to:

1. Scale the photos to 1500 pixels long edge (ie. make the longest side 1500 pixels, so landscape and portrait photos scale equally). If you see an option, make sure it's set to scale horizontal and vertical proportionally.

2. Save as JPG. Even if they're already JPG! Because as you do this, you're offered a quality slider. Set it to 70 or 80.

3. Change Color Profile to sRGB IEC61966-2.1. In GraphicConverter, choose "Relative Colorimetric", and then, in Settings > Open > Color Profiles, set everything but greyscale to sRGB IEC61966-2.1. If you're a professional photographer or designer with terribly complicated and specific needs, you know not to do this. Otherwise, go ahead.

4. Remove Metadata

Run the conversion. Quality should be pretty close to original, at a small fraction of the file size.

Drag reduced photos into a new album in your Photos app.

Select all photos in the album, hit Print, choose "Fill" in right sidebar (or whatever you want), Hit Print again, choosing "Save PDF".

Here's the clever move. Open the PDF, and choose File > Export. In the "Quartz Filter" scroll menu, choose "Reduce File Size". Rename the file (so it doesn't overwrite the original, and save. There are other means of compressing PDFs, but they all affect photo quality. Note: Nothing in this whole workflow significantly reduces photo quality, though your PDF will be shockingly small.

Open the PDF, and choose View > Thumbnails. Scroll down, and click (in the sidebar) each landscape shot that's been forced into portrait and type Command R to rotate it back to landscape. Repeat for every such photo (go slowly, it's a clumsy process).

Save the PDF

Non-Aspirational Lunches

A few weeks ago, I confessed how I've Cruelly Deprived You of Food Porn, and linked to Facebook photo essays sharing my non-aspirational lunches in anonymous Setúbal restaurants. At the time, I caught you up with these:

October 18, 2024
October 25, 2024
November 3, 2024
November 12, 2024
November 13, 2024
December 1, 2024

Here are more recent ones:
December 6, 2024
December 14, 2024
December 22, 2024
December 28, 2024
January 5, 2025
January 10, 2025

And here is a downloadable 23mb PDF showing all the outstanding Bengali food I ate last year at Setúbal's Leiteria Montalvo in chronological order (the olives in the second shot are hilarious. She's trying hard to fit in in Portugal!).

Nearly All Leaders Have Nearly Always Been Awful

Just a periodic reminder that, until very recently, leaders were all corrupt, power mad narcissists perpetually pushing boundaries and resisting constraints. The precious few who occasionally considered the good of the people were stand-outs. Edge cases!

Yet civilization advanced from screeching gangs bashing the skulls of neighboring tribes to moon landings, iphones and lasagna under the leadership of those very same maddening shitheads.

We've lately been spoiled by a run of honorable presidents. George W Bush, who I considered an ogre at the time, seems, in retrospect, an honorable man who genuinely did his (deluded) best. Thing is, we've come to feel entitled to honorable leaders, even though we bitterly curse every one of them — exactly like how we always spit at departing years on December 31 as the world^* grows unimaginably wealthy and comfortable.

*Yes, the world, not just the First World. Prevalence of extreme poverty fell from nearly 40% to below 10% in 25 years.

Before this aberrant recent run of honorable presidents, leaders even of relatively free, bright, successful societies were nearly all sneering, corrupt, racist, sexist, profoundly shallow secretary-fondling tyrants. If their societies didn't fall into complete tyranny, it wasn't for lack of trying.

And, historically speaking, Donald Trump is far from the worst. Just as he's made George W Bush seem honorable by comparison, a few years spent under the likes of Idi Amin, Pol Pot, or the Assad or Kim families would leave us recalling Trump in a considerably warmer light.

I've despised Donald Trump since the 1980s. I believe he's a cancer on the country and a blight on the presidency. I'm not defending a damned thing he does. But one characteristic of this ditzy aristocracy we've transformed into is a tendency for all negative results - every emotional pinprick - to raise a DEFCON 1 response. A feeble wannabe authoritarian not yet in office not only makes us contemplate the very Worst that could happen, but to deem it a foregone conclusion. Sheer apocalypse seems inevitable from this doddering 78 year old fool and his posse of weirdos, skells, and grifters.

It's helpful to adopt a larger perspective, and to question one's news food supply. Remember how the Right screamed bloody murder at literally everything Clinton, Obama, and Biden ever did or said, even eminently sensible and bipartisan things? Even things the Right had pushed for? Perhaps we ought not allow ourselves to be steered, spurred, and spun into that same mode.

For example, consider this: Biden preserved most of Trump's tariffs. Yes, the ones the Dems went nuts over in his first term. The media never mentions this. And in the 2024 campaign, the Left continued to scream bloody murder about the latest tariff proposals. They insisted it was all based on fundamental ignorance of what tariffs even are.

Biden kept them! Ponder that, and consider whether we're being played by an outrage machine. Me, I keep cold water handy for periodic self-face-slapping. I aspire to oppose the bad stuff, but not reflexively reject every utterance. Even a broken clock is right twice per day!

The Empathy Asymmetry

If you visit someone in an asylum, you'll encounter people firmly grounded in non-reality. You can't deny their reality because, obviously, it feels real to them. You must find the empathy to meet them in their perspective; bridging the gap on your end. And, of course, none will return the favor and consider your perspective, much less try to "meet you" there.

The situation doesn't improve when you walk out the door and into the greater world. Still everyone locked into their respective realities, demanding to be met there, while yours seems peripheral at best. The bridging — the empathy — always falls to you. Of course it does!


As a child, my parents pressured me to send letters to my grandparents, who I barely knew. I tried to "catch them up" on my activities, though they'd never shown the slightest interest. I dutifully sent cheerful letters, and it was decades before I registered how strange it was that they never wrote back. Obviously, I was in the letter-writing position. The bridging — the empathy — fell to me.

Of course it does?

Another example

The Evil Glee of Sanctimonious Scorn

"The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior 'righteous indignation' — this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats."

- Aldous Huxley (in "Crome Yellow")

"Dark-Ego-Vehicle Principle: Social justice activism is widely regarded as driven by noble intentions, but it attracts large numbers of psychopaths, narcissists, and other dark tetrad personalities who use it to feed their sense of self-importance and to dominate others."

- Gurwinder

Actual fascism and racism can't be fought while shouting down every disagreeable utterance as fascistic and racist. Performative gesturing dulls the blade. We've mostly been commoditizing rage, stoking tribalism, and diluting morality.

The unquestionable good of racial tolerance doesn't make strident anti-racism great. Those yearning for greatness would be better served by creation than evisceration. This is not a video game where points are earned by slaying Baddies.

A useful thought experiment: deem yourself the villain and observe where it leads. This requires courage, but that's unavoidable. Screaming at transgressors on social media isn't courage. It's self-indulgence—and, per the two quotes above, counterproductively draws from our worst impulses.


I remember, with nausea, the "Moral Majority" movement of the 1980s, where an extreme faction tried to impose its narrow, rigid doctrine on a heterogeneous nation. It boggles my mind that Progressives, apparently having seen great value in that approach, became the new sanctimonious enforcers of moral rectitude.