Brainwaves- A Study on Friendship

Have you ever had one of those moments where you and a friend or family member of yours have said the exact same thing at the same time? I've had several of these myself, and they have influenced my thinking on how humans make friends.

See, you know about brainwaves, they're just a natural rhythm that is formed by the electric current running around in your head.

I like to think of them as radio frequencies.

I imagine that relatives are simply born within a close range of frequencies, like a mother is set at 97.4FM and her child is like a 97.6FM- close but not quite the same. Depending on the location, one frequency can get a blip of another nearby "station."

This is how we make friends. Statistically, someone is bound to have the same/a very similar frequency as you- regardless of how complete unrelated you might be. Someone who broadcasts on the same frequency has similar thought processes and interests because everything pings at the same speed.

And that's why I think we're all basically just radios picking up on other radio stations.

Celebrity Crushes

After Bobbie and my brilliant sociological breakthrough "Chutes and Ladders," we tried to find some actual applications for this. That's how we ended up analyzing ourselves- particularly our affinity for celebrity crushes.

America is kind of obsessed with celebrities. No, really. We are. And...honestly? It doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

Sure, they're attractive.

We get to watch them do things the average person would never even dream of doing (you know, like getting married while sky-diving and other such nonsense).
And we get to be voyeurs into their lives.

We love being involved in other peoples shit because we don't want to deal with our own.

But, in general, they will never love/care about us back.

So, we decided that celebrity crushes are a glorious mix between chutes and ladders. You take an initial chute (i.e. Misha Collins is f***ing amazing, or Chris Colfer is adorable), and then no matter how many ladders you might try and take...there's no hope. That chute is forever going to influence every ladder you take.

Sure, you might be able to learn more things...but they're just going to enforce it! The chute is like that damn red sock tinting all your white undies and socks a horrendous shade of pink. And you just take it. Because all it's doing is adding to your insane love of a person you've never met.

And if you have met them, [insert deity of choice here] help you! They could probably pee on your face and you would find it amusing...possibly even like it.

In conclusion, celebrity crushes defy all rationale and are probably going to be the downfall of the human race.

Chutes and Ladders

My roommate (Bobbie) and I often end up staying up late when we're supposed to be writing papers. Generally, 2am is when my genius is at its highest.

One time in particular, we came up with a theory for stereotyping: Chutes and Ladders.

It's a classic childhood game, where you either advance by going up ladders or fail miserably by sliding down chutes. (Let's ignore that, in real life, going down the slide is more fun than climbing up.)

Like in the game, you can either take the gradual steps necessary to truly learn who someone is; or you can plummet quickly into a preconceived notion.

The chutes are stereotypes- when someone takes some facet of another person and groups them together. They take this immediate one-way slide and they're probably going to give up because the ladder is four goddamn spaces away and there are already two people one ladder away from the top.

Then there are the ladders.

We tried really hard to define how ladders work...we ended up using a computer analogy. There's a drive, then directories, then your folders, and folders within folders, and that unfortunate zipped folder that's labeled something like "Profit Margins 1996" but is actually porn, and then the files.

You start by defining them by gender, then maybe their clothing/accessories, then their physical qualities, their major, their minor, their job, and so on until, finally, you reach what is ultimately that person.

So often, we're willing to stop at even that second or third level- all the superficial crap.

We see a girl with glasses and assume she's a nerd who likes to read.
Maybe there's a boy wearing purple or pink- of course one assumes he's gay.
Hot blonde chicks wearing tight clothes are cheerleaders.
Fat boy with acne works at McDonald's and plays D&D three nights a week and World of Warcraft the other four.

The list is endless...but none of it is necessarily true. Sure, some of the time it might fit. But none of that really tells you anything about that person All it tells you is one, maybe two more levels into who that person is.

The great part about all this? It means that we can overcome stereotypes. We just need to move those four spaces and hop on the ladder again. It's not the Game of Life where reaching the end fastest is the only way to win. It's Real Life, where reaching the end is all that matters.

One of my favorite quotes "It's gotta be the goin' there, not the gettin' there that's good." (Harry Chapin, "Greyhound") really applies to this. It's not about "knowing" someone quickly; it has to be about getting to know someone and how you go about doing that.

The Human Brain as a Computer (Or, Why Humans are Doomed to Fail)

Chaos. Nature likes it. It might not sound right, but it's true.

Nature also favors limitations. Every species has something that it's just not meant to be able to do.

Humans? We clearly don't get these concepts!

We have populated more of the planet than we're actually physically capable of living in, by sheer determination and willpower. We use resources to heat and cool and create ridiculous outfits to help us survive.

Good job!

Except that my real point is about the first fact- nature favors chaos.

So, we have all kinds of things today that are intended to maintain stability. Organizers, schedules, federal institutions like...laws and schools and other things that I've kind of ignored the last 16 or so years of my life.

Even our brain, a veritable squished lump of tissue, has found a highly organized comparison- to a computer.

(Side note- have you ever held a human brain? It's ridiculously heavy and squishy and kind of looks like someone tried to tie-dye a shirt and it went horribly wrong. Seriously. They're kind of gross.)

Regardless of it's misshapen awkwardness, the brain is compared to, arguably, the most important human creation since the wheel. It makes sense- our brains are electrically-based and keep different types of information in their designated areas.

Got a memory? Put it in "My Videos."
Got a reminder? Put it on a post-it note.
Got a picture? We have a "My Pictures" folder preloaded and ready to go!

We're obsessed with organization and levels. We feel a compulsion to break everything down to its most basic component.

As if the concept of things existing was too easy, it became a composition of elements; elements are atoms. And thank what you will that atoms can be divided even further! Life needed to know that protons existed- really.

This has extended to all of society! We use Platonic forms (you know, that handy general idea of what something should be like) to code everything.

I think the fact that humans go against these basic principles shows how badly we're doomed to fail as a species. Up to this point we've done pretty well for ourselves...but nature will always find a way to kick our asses back to that fine line between stability and chaos.

And we're so far from that line right now that we will probably, literally, be thrown back into the stone ages.