Author: Josh

Anarchy, Definitions, and Parallels to Continuous Delivery

Anarchy, Definitions, and Parallels to Continuous Delivery

We’ve talked about Anarchy before, in part how it’s an incomplete “plan” for a political system. Twitter is sort of a hub of conversation regarding Anarchism and Libertarianism, and there have been some increasingly interesting arguments there lately, with people making some of those same points and arguing about what Anarchists actually want as an ideal state.

You can see one example in this thread:

https://twitter.com/Wesley_Gest/status/1386402544591724547?s=20

The argument can mostly be summarized like this:

Nice little farm - 9GAG
L: Except I don’t want chickens, because I’m allergic to feathers…

The general perception of Anarchists is that they want cities to burn, that they just want to do damage for the sake of doing damage. Anarchists say, over and over, “no, will you just listen” but a lot of people seem to be terrified of a lack of control. And when Anarchists show up and say they don’t want to be controlled and they don’t think that control is the right answer, it’s massively triggering for those people. When people are terrified, they don’t really listen so good…

Ace is one of our favorites on Twitter.

We thought this was great, and important, (and Ace is really good with words in general), but…incomplete. It covers the interaction pieces, or what it looks like to behave as an Anarchist, but we think it’s important to talk about the fact that it starts with accepting something about yourself, and what that acceptance means for the world around you.

Anarchism, to us, is a consistency of feeling and related action:

  1. You do not agree that you yourself need to be controlled, and/or you do not accept others’ control of you.
  2. You have no desire to control others, finding that repugnant and morally wrong. As such, you do not use any kind of coercion (including manipulation) to dominate others to your will.
  3. You resist and speak out against systems of control applied to people by other people.

That’s…it. No fire-throwing, no building-looting, no Molotov-cocktail wielding manifestos. Anarchism is, instead, the confluence of “I don’t deserve to be controlled” and the Golden Rule.

Anarchism is the confluence of “I don’t deserve to be controlled” and the Golden Rule.

We think people who want to steal and burn and smash just like to hide behind “Anarchy” instead of admitting that they are hateful, or really angry, and want to break stuff. Which we get, really, but could you process your feels before acting please?

What An Anarchist Utopia Looks Like by kickassia - Meme Center

If there was no government law against rioting, would you go out and burn down your neighbor’s buildings and businesses? If there were no government laws against doing heroin, would you go out and do heroin? No? Neither would we. Anarchists are mostly against the government’s tremendously violent history, and we just want to make moral laws consistent with state laws: states shouldn’t have the power to harm, jail, and murder people “legally”. We find that to be immoral. Unfortunately, a sober viewing of history shows that that is what all states do.

This is why we are Anarchists.

Continuous Delivery

We talked about how Libertarianism has a lot of overlap, conceptually, with DevOps (link). While talking about this post, we made an additional connection between Anarchism and Continuous Delivery.

One of the things we discuss in our talks is that Continuous Delivery can just…happen when you get enough barriers, bumps, and blockades out of the way of software delivery. Basically, if you remove enough pain points and things in the way, continuous delivery will just happen because developers want to write code/solve problems/deliver on technical business objectives.

Comparatively, to Anarchist good – focus on the fact that someone controlling you is fundamentally wrong, and…if you’re consistent there, you will treat others the same way.

If you focus on the fact that someone controlling you is fundamentally wrong, and you behave consistently with that conclusion, you will treat others the same way.

Remove control and fear about software delivery -> Continuous Delivery.

Remove control and fear in personal interactions -> Anarchy.

Anarchist Jokes

 

God Words, and Love

We’ll leave you with this, that Josh posted:

We Love Tattoos! (Part 2: Josh’s journey from simple and impactful to complicated and colorful)

We Love Tattoos! (Part 2: Josh’s journey from simple and impactful to complicated and colorful)

Pikapika
Not one of Josh’s tattoos, but still pretty funny. Maybe a future plan…

Welcome back to our We Love Tattoos series! Check out the link to see part one, and to see part 3 and 4 in the future (hiiii future!). In this part, if you couldn’t tell from the (sub)title, Josh is going to talk about his tattoos!

Tattoo #1: Hammer (August 2017)

Artist: Michela Dilernia, currently at My Little Needle Tattoos in Plymouth, MI

We both really love impact: showing up, making things better. We tend to get bored if nothing’s happening and there’s nothing for us to do.

In the past, we’ve done what are called “Core Values Exercises” to help people and teams figure out how to describe themselves in a few words that represent their core defining characteristics. “Impact” is one of Josh’s, and the symbol for him for that is a big ol’ hammer, so…that was his first tattoo.

With blurry picture of Josh’s happy kid.

I loved the whole experience, it didn’t hurt too bad, and I loved how it turned out. Big patches of black, straight lines, my artist was great. Some touch-up inside the black was needed after the first session, but I loved it.

Tattoos #2 and #3: Armband and Sans (October 2020)

Artist: Shaun Friday, at Ministry Ink in Lansing, MI

My first plan was to only have black and grey tattoos because I really like the look of old tattoos – black tattoos settle almost immediately into a less intense black, and they look more like an intrinsic part of a person’s body. “Venerable” is also a core value…

I really liked armbands (I blame the hot arms of CS:GO players), and I knew I wanted one. I also very much wanted a tattoo of Sans from the game Undertale. Sans, as it turns out, is a real nice guy – unless you push him too far, and then he surprisingly and skillfully murders you to death.

Taking an armband tattoo break: check out that band (and my shaved arm!)

Here are the completed tattoos: Sans winking, the armband from the inside, which has a geometric slanted opening. Also, us smiling goofily, and Laine with her Harley Quinn hair!

I decided to get both of these tattoos at the same time because I had a backlog of tattoos that I wanted, and since they were both small, Shaun was cool with doing both in one sitting.

Tattoo #5 (yes, we know it skips numbers, more on that in a minute!): V is for Vendetta (January 2021)

Artist: Adam at Psychotic Ink in Clearwater Beach, FL

We went to Florida and found a tattoo shop near the beach, and decided to roll the dice and see how it went. Laine got a beautiful tattoo, and I decided to get a tattoo on one of my favorite ideas (and movies). It might be my most beautiful tattoo, and it was also the most colorful up to that point. Thus completed my swap to “whoa, colorful tattoos are amazing.”

Ideas are Bulletproof

Tattoo #6: Sans – Bad Time (January 2021)

Artist: Shaun Friday again!

Sans on the wrist was really cool, happy, and represented me well – but I really liked the idea of Bad Time Sans, which is the aforementioned “skillfully murdering you to death” Sans (here’s a link to a playthrough in the game after you’ve chosen to play as a super awful person, several times in a row – lots of Undertale spoilers there). Both iterations of Sans really reflect how I see myself, so, I got this Sans tattoo as well. I had to think harder than the previous tattoos about where I wanted it, but ultimately I’m really glad I chose this position (which is on my chest). It shows up when my shirt moves sometimes, and I’m really happy with that.

(This is what a tattoo looks like fresh: pretty inflamed, a little swollen. It heals up nicely later.)

Tattoos: Mechs!

I really really love Battletech. So much. I played as a kid, and I loved so much about it. I now have 3 tattoos of the various mechs from Battletech.

Tattoo #4: Battlemaster (December 2020)

I love the Battlemaster (“venerable” again) the most, and I got this as a half blueprint/half full color:

Artist: Kayla Grosso, also at Ministry Ink in Lansing, MI (this tattoo made it onto Kayla’s Instagram page!)

Tattoo #7: Atlas (February and March 2021)

Then, I wanted an Atlas, and decided (after much debate with the artist) that my ribs was a good place for it, because…lots of free real estate. The ribs are widely considered to be the MOST painful place to get a tattoo, and while we talked about other places, less painful places, I really wanted this to be a tattoo large enough to have the right amount of details. More room for more detail means a better looking tattoo.

Artist: Adam Crane, also at Ministry Ink (and the owner!) in Lansing, MI

This is Atlas, as artwork!

One of the cool things about an artist is they can take original art and turn it into an awesome tattoo, blending elements that you love to make something altogether original. They also fit it to your body, which means moving pieces around, changing orientation, and making sure it wraps the body properly.

This was how Atlas looked at the end of sitting #1.

This was a super painful tattoo. The first session, lines, shading, and some color, and I was really hurting. I have a pretty good pain tolerance, and in fact Adam told me that I might have been his best rib tattoo client ever because I dealt with it so well – but this hurt worse than any physical hurt I remember, including breaking a leg. I love Bactine: the fancy pain-numbing stuff that tattoo artists can put on tattoos, it helps so much, at least temporarily.

The second session was fill-in color, and really illustrated one of the cool things about tattoos: they are a million different pieces of art, continually being added to while the artist works. Line work is great. Greys and shading are great. Color is great. As a human canvas, we get to see it all done.

Well…we get to see it all done assuming you can see the tattoo while it’s being done. We’ve both found that watching the tattoo being done helps with pain tolerance, because it’s fascinating and distracting and easier to mentally prep for it to hurt in a particular place. We learned with Bad Time Sans that not being able to see makes it hurt a lot worse, so for the rib tattoo we tried putting up/holding a mirror – but it hurt so much that Josh actually couldn’t watch for a while.

That day I learned, doing anything to distract yourself, including counting, breathing exercises, and distracting myself with different textures, all measurably help with the pain. More pro tips on that when we do that post!

All done! After the second session.

I do plan to get more added to this tattoo, like a background, but…recovery first.

Soundwave Tattoos - Home | Facebook

Tattoo #8: Headhunter (March 2021)

Artist: Shaun Friday, one more time!

When I was a kid, I had fun making custom mechs in the Battletech game. One of my favorites was a modified Axman with a heavier body (60 tons), carrying a mace with triple strength myomer. It carried some lasers too, for range and to warm up the myomers, but basically it was a close-in melee brawler. I called it the Headhunter and with the right pilot it could smash the top off of a mech a whole weight class above it.

After Laine’s great tattoo of Shaun’s original art (spoiler alert!), I had the idea to have Shawn draw up this mech in his style, and the result is awesome:

Up Next?

I have no idea what my next tattoo will be. I have a good mech theme going, and I’m considering wrapping the Atlas scene around my torso (ow), but for now, my plan is to recover and think deep thoughts about life, what parts of my soul I want to share with the world, and what feelings I may need to process next.

The Case for Christian Libertarianism and Anarchy

The Case for Christian Libertarianism and Anarchy

We first had the idea for this blog a while ago, when Laine was trying to find the right words to describe her political leanings. Libertarian isn’t quite right. Anarchist is more accurate, but Anarchy as a whole seems like…a description of the problem more than a fully fleshed out societal plan. The fact is, what we both believe takes pieces from Libertarianism and Anarchy – but mostly, it coincides with the core tenet of Christianity. Since we first thought of doing this blog, we’ve learned thanks to our Libertarian community that actually…the overlap of Christians and Anarchists (and presumably Libertarians) is a common pattern.

Some Definitions, because Context

Libertarianism (see also the other posts we’ve written on the topic):

Libertarianism (from French: libertaire, “libertarian”; from Latin: libertas, “freedom”) is a political philosophy and movement that upholds liberty as a core principle. Libertarians seek to maximize autonomy and political freedom, emphasizing free association, freedom of choice, individualism and voluntary association. (Wikipedia)

Libertarians also typically believe that the only time force against another person is warranted is if that person is violating the Non-Aggression Principle (or the “NAP”).

The non-aggression principle (NAP), also called the non-aggression axiom, is a concept in which “aggression”, defined as initiating or threatening any forceful interference with either an individual or their property, is inherently wrong.

Anarchy:

Anarchy is the state of a society being freely constituted without authorities or a governing body. It may also refer to a society or group of people that entirely rejects a set hierarchy. (Wikipedia)

The Core Tenet of Christianity

We’ve talked about The Jesus Cheat before, but the very very condensed arc of the Bible, Christianity’s origin story if you will, goes something like:

  1. God gave people a lot of rules they had to follow in order to be in a relationship with him…
  2. …they were terrible at it.
  3. God got pissed, because is it really that hard to keep your commitments, you guys?
  4. He tried again, with different people…
  5. …they were also terrible at it.
  6. Eventually, he sent Jesus, who was both 100% human and also 100% God (Yeah, that math tho…) to live as a person, among people, and be a sort of…proxy for all of the ways that people screw up and are broken and hide from each other and also God. Jesus was a proxy for this pain (or, if you will, sin) for all people, past present and future, because…God magic, basically? (there’s a reason we very lovingly call it a cheat…)
  7. Jesus died under the weight of all of that pain, including the worst pain of all which is complete separation from God. This served to allow God to (we think) freely give remaining in relationship with people even if they screwed up over and over and over. It also broke, or forgave, any obligation that people had to God and made the relationship purely choice-based.

Basically, God saved people from their own broken, and found a way to stay by pre-forgiving them forever. We get this pre-forgiveness and utter acceptance from God as long as we do one thing (instead of a long list of things) – and that one thing is, depending on who you ask, believing in the Jesus Cheat or just…trying to have a relationship with God – making the relationship “purely choice-based.” Said differently, the only requirement to be fully accepted by God is to choose to be in a relationship with him. Human choice was the only checkbox that God maintained, which would indicate that human choice matters a lot. To God.

…there are nuances of course, and several lifetimes of study and understanding possible regarding Christianity. Maybe in a month or a year or a decade, we’ll be like, no, that was dumb, it’s actually this other thing. But for now, that’s the best understanding we’ve got, and it’s done a LOT to inform our political beliefs.

Libertarianism and Anarchy and Christianity, oh my!

So, we’ve got…

  • Libertarianism: people deserve to be free
  • Anarchy: no human system is the boss of me
  • Christianity: God is the only boss of me, and he appears to have actively preserved my right to choose

As you can see, there’s overlap there… God thinks we deserve to be free to choose, and if we choose a relationship with him, that relationship trumps all other relationships such that we are not subject to the “rule” of…anyone. That means that people do not deserve, or even need, to be controlled, because God’s got this even if sometimes people do awful things. As Josh is fond of saying, karma always comes. If God doesn’t want to control us, then people definitely don’t get to.

Radical Choice-ist

If God worked that hard to preserve human choice, then…so should we. If we don’t try to control other people, and we don’t accept that we deserve to be controlled, then all of our interactions become rife with choice and personal freedom. As long as we aren’t violating the NAP, we have the inherent right to live our lives as we see fit.

LP and Chill: It’ll Be Just Fine – the Short Version

LP and Chill: It’ll Be Just Fine – the Short Version

Sometimes we see a pattern, and we try to explain it, and…we end up looking like this crazy conspiracy theory guy. Not because what we’re saying is far-fetched, more because it’s so interconnected and there are so many examples and we care about it so so much that it’s hard to be clear about the points we’re trying to make. More than once, this has pointed us at toward the full explanation of the pattern ending up a longer-form piece of content – like a talk, or “maybe some day a book,” or…we don’t really know. Just..some stuff is too long or too complex for a blog, despite that being where we usually start when we want to talk about something outside of the context of “work stuff.”

Sometimes, though, we find that we can do a summary, or a short(er?) version, of the explanation of the pattern. We’ve been seeing, and writing, more about politics lately, especially the Libertarian Party (LP), because the crazy of the world has led us both to open our eyes about it. And…there are reasons that we think politics might be part of the overall answer, and that is the pattern we want to talk about.

There is a Culture War

Are you happy with the United States political system? This question is not, are you happy in relation to what came before, or are you happy ish, but are you really, truly happy about the people in charge of making, enforcing, and talking about the policies that affect your personal freedoms every day?

If you’re not happy with it, do you feel comfortable talking about that? Do you think that your friends and loved ones and coworkers and various other tribes will still accept you if you’re honest about the problems you see and how those problems make you sad, or hopeless, or angry? Because…we aren’t happy with the current system. And our comfort with talking about that varies, but…most of the people Laine at least interacts with on a daily basis just seem really happy that Not Trump is president.

The fact that the current state is depressing, and frustrating, and that we can’t talk about that without alienating ourselves, is a sign of a large-scale, many-factioned culture war. The Corpo State/Cathedral, the Woke, the Karens, the Conservative Christians, the Antifa’ers, the BLM’ers, the Thin Blue Liners… this isn’t even all of the factions, but all of these groups seem to exist primarily to tell people that saying or feeling something that the group doesn’t approve of makes that person a terrible human being who deserves to be dehumanized and disregarded.

[The factions] seem to exist primarily to tell people that saying or feeling something the group doesn’t approve of makes that person a terrible human being who deserves to be dehumanized and disregarded.

COVID has been a mess, and has added the Masker, Vaxxer, Anti-Vaxxer, Lockdowner, and Anti-Lockdowner factions. What is irrefutable is that the lockdowns that were supposed to keep us all safe have caused mental health crises, increased suicides, increased incidences of abuse, and business closures, with no end in sight because we have no coherent metrics for when it will be “safe enough” to go back, or forward, to some semblance of normal.

It Sucks

The culture war, that is. It sucks to be hopeless, and to be too afraid to talk about it. And with that many factions constantly sniping at each other, sometimes the hopelessness and the fear seem…legit.

It Leads to Actual Life-Threatening Conflict/War

In addition to leading people to live in fear, this culture war leads to actual war, if we use the “life-threatening conflict” definition of war. The government is willing to use force and violence to enforce whatever it thinks is important, mostly in the form of the police, although sometimes with agencies like the ATF. There are historical events, like Waco, and also current events, like insurrection and riots in Minnesota and on the west coast just this week. People think that the police are the bad guys for all the damage they do, and while an argument could be made that they’re choosing to enforce laws that are non-sensical and damaging, it definitely seems true that they’ve been handed an impossible task that will see them also getting hurt in the process.

People think that police are the bad guys for all the damage they do…but it seems true that they’ve been handed an impossible task that will see them also getting hurt in the process.

Some People Love the Culture War…

On the other hand, this culture war is great for some people. It distracts most of the American public from noticing that their freedoms are being slowly leeched away in the name of “safety.” It also helps people in positions of authority further cement those positions because they can position themselves as the saviors of humanity – or, they can use fear and intimidation to get compliance if not support.

The culture war also gives the people who are happily part of those factions a way to convince themselves that they’re right – they can simply be louder, and look around to see the people who are nodding in agreement, and then temporarily feel safety in numbers. The people nodding in agreement, even if they aren’t quite sure, can also find some feeling of safety because they aren’t currently being rejected by the people around them.

…because Control and “Safety”

All of these reasons to love the culture war are about control, and “safety.” People in positions of authority are trying to control everyone else into either being safe or making them feel safe, if they get some personal value out of being “in charge.” The loudest members of the factions are trying to control the people around them into making them feel like their opinions are right, and that those opinions will keep that group safe even if everyone else is screwed. And the people nodding in agreement are hiding – trying to control the people around them into not rejecting them, or kicking them out of the tribe.

But…we know, because of a lot of science, that control doesn’t work. Not at all, and definitely not long term. The problem is that people are terrified of the potential consequences of both not controlling and not being controlled.

But…You Have a Choice

The thing is…you don’t have to control other people. And you don’t have to accept being controlled. You have a choice. It may not be an easy choice, and it may lead to some of your relationships altering, or ending. But actually, you can just…process the fear of the potential consequences without changing anything. Processing the fear allows you to see reality more clearly, and to see that trying to control other people is never okay – which means that it isn’t okay for someone to try to control you, either.

You can just choose to process the fear instead of grabbing for control.

If, once you process your fear, you want to change something, then…comes the hard part. Learning how to give up control isn’t easy, and it’s scary, and it requires trust in something outside of yourself.

People

You actually can have some amount of faith in people, or in humanity as a whole. People do wonderful, beautiful things, and their capacity for good is often staggering. We said at the beginning on this post, “there are reasons that we think politics might be part of the overall answer, and that is the pattern we want to talk about.” The Libertarian party has seen an upswing this past year, for…reasons that may at this point be kind of obvious. And it’s not perfect, and actually we’re both more Anarchist than Libertarian by the strictest definition – but the Libertarian party has several voices who are saying, loudly and clearly and well, that personal freedom matters. That people matter. More than the government, more than rules, more than checkboxes and false safety. And they’re building communities and actively trying to make change to reflect that people matter at all levels.

God

…but faith in people alone isn’t enough. Both Josh and Laine genuinely have no idea how people learn to give up control without faith in something outside of themselves and outside of other people. We can very clearly see that all of this weirdness, and all of this unrest, and even the culture war itself, is God doin’ stuff. We have no idea what he’s doing, but if he’s doing stuff, he has a plan, and if he has a plan, it’s going to be awesome

There are no end states in life, which means that while things can never be completely safe, they also can never be completely broken and hopeless. And while the culture war sucks, it’s actually…okay. It’s growing pains, toward the next thing.

We Love Tattoos! (Part 1! Tattoos are Super Cool!)

We Love Tattoos! (Part 1! Tattoos are Super Cool!)

It’s time to start a new series, apparently! We both really love tattoos. Laine has been getting them off and on since she was 14, and while Josh only started a few years ago, but regardless of number of tattoos or time spent getting them, it’s one of the best ways to get either or both of us babbling about the things we know and love about them. We plan to write about our favorite of our tattoos, and our recommendations for getting a tattoo (PRO TIPS! NUMBER FIVE WILL BLOW YOUR MIND!!!!!….actually not, just what we’ve learned as we’ve gone along).

So…the series as we have it roughly sketched out right now will go something like this:

1. Tattoos are super cool, here’s what we know about how they work and some of our fav artists (this post!)
2. The stories behind Laine’s tattoos
3. The stories behind Josh’s tattoos
4. Tattoo pro tips

Why Tattoos?

As you know, we love souls and the power they have, and we hate hiding them.

We believe everyone has a unique awesome to them, a shard of some great holy essence, a supernatural Meaning. So…hiding that shit is stupid. But not hiding it is kind of scary, for the reasons that we’ve talked about before and will continue to talk about that basically boil down to being afraid of being alone – well and truly alone – because of not hiding your soul well enough.

Tattoos have an interesting sort of cost/benefit when it comes to souls. They require physical pain, and sometimes emotional pain, to design them and to get them, and then they themselves serve as a monument to that pain. You would think that physical and emotional pain could not possibly be beautiful, and that it wouldn’t be something a person would want a permanent reminder of – but the pain existed regardless of it can be seen, and tattoos are beautiful. As a result, we’ve found that tattoos are a great way to show your soul, and intermingle your soul and what it loves and knows and means with a super talented artist. The mingle results in something beautiful and permanent and uniquely you, that goes where you go and helps tell your story.

How Tattoos Work

Tattoos are permanent body art that comes to be via stabbing someone repeatedly with a motorized cluster of tiny needles with ink coating them.  (Josh: I didn’t know this, I thought the ink flowed from inside the needles. This week I learned.) This article explains it well, although its advice for aftercare is old. Basically, skin has multiple layers and is a lot thicker than it seems, and tattoos deposit ink into the dermis/middle layer. The machine that does the tattooing is shaped a bit like a gun, but most tattoo artists prefer to call it what it is – a “machine.”

The palette of inks available is staggering, and you can get a tattoo in any of those colors that exist or any color that your artist mixes FROM those existing colors. The outline of tattoos is typically done in black, although not always, and the whole tattoo can be black and white and gray, or it can be all of those plus full color. Tattoos last a long time, but because you’re an alive person, and your skin is also alive, tattoos tend to fade and blur over long periods of time. There are a few factors that influence how fast this happens, or even if it happens in a way that’s noticeable. We’ll talk about those later, in the pro tips post!

You can see some interesting slow-mo video of how tattooing works here:

Do Tattoos Hurt?

Ribs: free real estate

…yes. Tattoos hurt. Sometimes they hurt a lot, because…you’re literally being stabbed, thousands of times.  How much they hurt varies depending on the person, and on the location of the tattoo. For us, it’s ranged from feeling like a light scratch to feeling like being cut open. In the later posts where we talk about our tattoos, you’ll learn that Josh has a massive rib tattoo – and I (Josh) can say clearly that ribs are not a fun place to get tattooed. But they are huge real estate, and sometimes that matters because bigger areas to tattoo mean…well, that you can have a bigger tattoo. And bigger tattoos mean that you have more space, or canvas, for beautiful detail and color and shading. Big tattoos can be really pretty, and that might mean getting a tattoo in a painful place.

In our experience, we both have a high pain tolerance (per our favorite tattoo artists, anyway!), so… we aren’t afraid of pain, especially physical pain. It’s worth it, and at times it can even be quite cathartic.

How Much Do Tattoos Cost?

Tattooing is not prohibitively expensive, although the cost can require some planning. Neither of us are what you’d call artists in any drawn medium, which means that we typically need a tattoo artist to do some design work for us on top of the tattoos themselves. Some artists will charge for this design work, and some assume it’s an included cost of doing business. For the tattoo itself, most artists charge somewhere between $100 and $200 an hour, and tipping is both accepted and welcome in our experience.

As a rough example, a well-done tattoo about the size of your hand could take between 90 minutes and 4 hours, which would translate to somewhere between $150 and $800, plus tip. The bigger the tattoo, the more detailed the tattoo, or the more painful the tattoo, the more sessions it might take to complete – which would mean one trip to the tattoo shop, then time to heal plus time for the artist to be available again (artists can be booked months in advance), then another trip to the tattoo shop…repeat as needed.

But…don’t forget, you get to keep the art forever. And it serves as a reminder to yourself, a memento of your history, a thought that brings you joy, or just something beautiful that you have as a permanent decoration on yourself. If you amortize the cost over your lifetime…they become relatively cheap.

We also tend to build relationships with people who do something as intimate as tattooing us, which means that we spend time and money to obtain something important to us, and we also get to hang out with friends. It’s a great way to spend a few hours and a few hundred bucks.

Favorite Local Artists, and How to Find a Good One

We’ve both had a significant amount of work done by the folks at Ministry Ink. Between us, we’ve had 3 tattoos from Adam Crane, who is also the owner of the shop, 3 tattoos from Kayla Grosso, and 4 tattoos from Shaun Friday.

Laine also got 3 tattoos in 2017/2018, all very different styles, from Trish, who owns My Little Needle Tattoos. We also both got a tattoo from (a different) Adam at Psychotic Ink in Clearwater, FL.

…which brings us to the “how to find a good artist” portion of the blog! There are two ways to find a good artist or shop – 1) recommendations from people you trust, usually people who already have tattoos that are not ugly, and 2) looking at artists’ work online and falling in love with their style. Ministry Ink, and Adam and Kayla in particular, were recommended to Laine by tattooed friends, when she was trying to find someone who would do two custom pieces. Instagram is great to see an overview of an artist’s style, which is why we’ve linked to artists’ Instagram accounts where we can.

You can research what makes a good tattoo/what a good tattoo looks like – Josh learned a lot recently by watching Ink Master, while Laine learned a lot 20+ years ago by scouring tattoo magazines. You should also meet with/consult with your artist before getting a tattoo and find out if you’re comfortable with them, if that matters to you. It matters a lot to both of us, because this person will see you at what could be close to your weakest, and…vulnerability + a jerk with a tattoo machine does not make for the best possible experience.

Next Up…

Part 2! The stories behind either Josh or Laine’s tattoos, depending on which one gets done first!

Stuff We Love: Kilts #2 – Winter and Spring Update

Stuff We Love: Kilts #2 – Winter and Spring Update

There are a lot of updates to our first kilt post. That post was written mostly on our experience before winter, and with a soft cotton kilt. Since then, I’ve gotten some new kilts, gotten some accessories, and dealt with the cold – but I still love kilts!

Are Kilts a Good Idea?

We get variants of this question a lot:

  • “Isn’t it breezy?”
  • “Aren’t you cold?”
  • “Why don’t you wear pants?”
  • “Heyyy, are you Scottish?”
  • A lot of, “nice kilt bro,” which seems like it pre-answers the question… spoiler alert.

Yes, yes it is – breezy, that is. But I really love not wearing pants. I love the fit, and the roominess.

My answer to if kilts are a good idea, after wearing them longer and going through a winter with them, is still yes – I am really happy with them, pants are stupid, and I don’t want to go back. I did wear some very comfy underpants when it was really cold (or riding my motorcycle), but normal pants and normal underpants, no good.

Also, no – I’m not Scottish, I am more of a blend. A blend who loves being comfy.

Denim Durability

Following the adventures with the softer, lighter weight, cotton kilt, I picked up a couple of these style: Smithy by DNKE.

They are a heavier, more durable fabric, and that means they block wind a bit better than the cotton kilt, which I’ve noticed the most when the wind is really blowing. Fun fact, that’s actually when wearing a kilt is the coldest, when the wind blows, so the heavier fabric is nice.

We talked in the last post about how it’s worth it to spend some additional money and buy a kilt that’s good quality. The cotton kilt has held up nicely, and I think these heavier denim kilts will also last a nice long time due to being heavyweight, very durable material. They’re even slightly heavier than normal jeans.

I especially like all of the attachments and hardware on the kilt – in particular, the key hook attachment is great. I’ve switched to keeping my keys on that key hook with an elastic pullstring. I really like that setup.

Where the denim of jeans can thin or wear through over time, I haven’t noticed any of that kind of abrasion wearing on these kilts. They’re also quite comfortable, as I wear one now to type this.

Now with MORE Pockets!

I really, really like the comfort and the number of pockets. I also got a sporran from DNKE that I’m really pleased with. Now I have tons of pockets for all of the 15 pounds of stuff I carry around.

No. Seriously.

Fifteen pounds.

We weighed everything one time.

Denim kilt! AND sporran! TADA!

The Cold and Wind

It’s cold in Michigan. This cold, in Michigan, is really not a lot of fun. Michigan Cold plus wind is extra no fun. Breezy wind on your parts is maybe the least amount of fun.

I never thought I’d be talking about my parts in public, but…here we are.
– Josh just now

Like I said above, the more heavyweight kilts help with this, quite a bit. High quality underpants help too, if it’s really cold.

But actually…it’s not that bad. I’ve shoveled, walked, and worked outside in a kilt, and was quite comfortable, even at this winter’s coldest. Kilts were made for Scotland. It’s cold there. So…it makes sense that these do a good job of keeping everything pretty warm.

One thing I will say, is that a sporran helps with the wind. I nearly had a few Marilyn Monroe Wind Moments that the sporran helped with.

Behind-the-Scenes of Marilyn Monroe's Iconic Flying Skirt (PHOTOS) - Biography
Josh, in the wind, without a sporran.

Tall Socks

Another winter-time concession with kilts are tall socks – usually wool, unless you happen to be unlucky enough to be allergic, Laine mutters in Itchy. In addition to helping keep your legs warm, they also help when you need to wear boots. I gotta’ say, the tall socks + motorcycle boots look is one that both feels and looks great.

In Conclusion…

Kilts are amazing. They can be cold in the winter, but actually…it mostly works. They do tend to draw more attention to you, and sometimes need to deal with some perplexing or oddly personal questions, but they’re so comfortable, and they spark great conversation and help you meet awesome people.

DevOps = Libertarianism = DevOps = …

DevOps = Libertarianism = DevOps = …

We are both very interested in DevOps and good development culture, and more recently, freedom and Libertarian principles.

We found some interesting similarities between the two. Both focus on individual responsibility and accountability, both have been compared to “self-organizing anarchy” or “chaos that works.” Both favor empowered, informed distributed decision-making over centralized decision-making – essentially, both advocate for moving the authority to make decisions as close to the data, as close to the situation, as possible.

An Introduction to DevOps

There is no perfect definition of DevOps, and there are a lot of debates about what is and what is not DevOps. However, here’s a definition that covers the major elements and purposes:

“DevOps is the combination of cultural philosophies, practices, and tools that increases an organization’s ability to deliver applications and services at high velocity: evolving and improving products at a faster pace than organizations using traditional software development and infrastructure management processes.” – AWS

DevOps is a reaction to what came before it. [needs a connection to:] In Big Design Up Front software development, every requirement and element of software was designed, then it was all built, then it was all tested, then someone else had to run it, in a one-way process that was brittle, slow, and had massive lacks in communication – and led to a lot of software failure. There were a lot of fingers being pointed. Central planners created plans, others had to live with them, even if they made no sense. Everybody had good intentions (mostly?), but they weren’t a team, they didn’t communicate, and they all worked towards their own goals that were not always the same.

In a DevOps model, there is shared understanding and two-way communication in a community of people tasked with the fruition of a shared goal: building working software. They each have some amount of the responsibility to design, create, validate, secure, and run that software.

DevOps seeks to maximize the ability of the team to execute on their goals in the way they see fit.

DevOps incorporates manufacturing cultural and process revolutions that occurred in the 1980s: a focus on products being produced that deliver value, rather than making individual steps in the journey efficient. Instead of localized success, the focus was shared, whole-team success, with success being defined as delivering a valuable product.

The end result is the removal of huge pain points in the software delivery process, leading to a massive improvement in software delivery efficiency. Many companies that build software are attempting to convert their processes and teams to DevOps, with some big successes, and also many lessons learned along the way.

“Culture change is hard.”
– everyone who’s ever done it, or lived through it

There are a lot of tools, technology, and architecture that make all of this easier to do now as compared to 20 years ago when we started doing software development. However, Josh’s first software project way back in the day was made out of 4 people who were empowered to make their own implementation decisions, and they had shared responsibility from design to running the software – so software development was really fast and efficient. This model pre-dates the technology innovations that have helped DevOps explode, but it worked even then.

An Introduction to Libertarianism

There are many definitions of Libertarianism (the first of many similarities to DevOps…), but here’s one that’s pretty solid:

“As Libertarians, we seek a world of liberty: a world in which all individuals are sovereign over their own lives and are not forced to sacrifice their values for the benefit of others.

We believe that respect for individual rights is the essential precondition for a free and prosperous world, that force and fraud must be banished from human relationships, and that only through freedom can peace and prosperity be realized.

Consequently, we defend each person’s right to engage in any activity that is peaceful and honest, and welcome the diversity that freedom brings. The world we seek to build is one where individuals are free to follow their own dreams in their own ways, without interference from government or any authoritarian power.”

Libertarian Party

Libertarianism has a lot of deep roots. The US Libertarian Party is pretty new as US political parties go, created only in 1971. It was created as people reacted to the government increasing its control over peoples lives, and the desire to remove that control. Libertarians are opposed to legal restrictions on marriage, legal restrictions on who can associate, legal restrictions on drug usage, and legal restrictions on individual property.

A tongue-in-cheek-but-not-really summary of Libertarianism is, “my political philosophy can be summarized thusly: I want gay married couples to be able to protect their marijuana plants with machine guns they bought with Bitcoin.” This is another, funny variation:
Is that too much to ask for? : Anarcho_Capitalism

The basic idea is that individuals are better at deciding about their lives than the government – that centralized control is not the optimal way to decide how people should behave, and, given this, the government causes more problems than it solves.

Examples of this include legalized slavery, legally requiring racist or discriminatory behavior, prohibitions on moral behavior such as drug use or usage of restricted medicines, wars of imperialism, police brutality, and putting businesses and their staff out of business with taxation. Generally, the government gets in peoples lives and makes a mess of things.

Said differently, Libertarians believe that governmental control backed by the threat of violence is fundamentally immoral. If you don’t pay your taxes or avoid smoking the wrong plant, the government will attempt to take you away from your family, life, and friends, and throw you in jail. If you resist going to jail, they can and may well shoot you. This is morally repugnant.

Libertarians believe that governmental control backed by the threat of violence is fundamentally immoral.

Libertarianism values individual consent over societal control.

Wouldn’t it be nice not to have to pay all of the taxes that fund foreign wars? To choose NOT to give the money that you earn for something that you don’t believe in? Think about what you could do with all that money. Wouldn’t it be nice not to fund corporate bailouts? That’s also a whole lot of money. And…that’s just the taxes you pay from your paycheck. Imagine if there were fewer restrictions (created by bureaucrats and lawyers) on every single product you buy – how many legal loopholes have to be navigated to set up those restrictions, and to maintain them. Guess who pays for all of that navigation? Spoiler alert, it’s you. Have you ever looked up what the price of a bottle of fine scotch as if there were no taxes? Talk about depressing…

There is no perfect Libertarian system in place, but Libertarians have been working for years to legalize drugs, improve property rights, reduce government control, and reduce policing policies that harm individuals.

Similarities

Both philosophies believe that there is no perfect environment, and there is no control structure perfect and wise and knowledgable enough to control things from afar. For a removed human control structure to be work, people in control have to consistently and constantly behave selflessly and efficiently on behalf of everyone they represent, which…isn’t a thing humans are capable of. The expectation of that sets even the best people up for failure. There is no perfect world, but both systems believe that the right answer comes from individuals with the ability to choose for themselves, and communities who voluntarily agree to move towards a shared purpose.

Both systems believe that control should be pushed down to the individual.

Both systems arose from a struggle with the people in control, who want to tell people what to do and how to do it in ways that don’t make a lot of sense. Both systems struggle with the fight to separate from those control structures, and to give people the freedom to make choices.

Both systems struggle with getting people to trust that their model works, because it requires trust, and it also seems impossible.

However, the old systems don’t work, and both movements are growing as more people see that and yearn for something different.

Both systems have realized that while rules and laws don’t actually control behavior, clarity and freedom does help them make good decisions.

DevOps is the acknowledgement that centralized planning and control removes the agility and freedom to make good decisions as situations change, and that centralized control slows things down and gets in the way.

Libertarianism is the acknowledgement that centralized (government) control removes the flexibility and freedom of the individual to live their life and find their own joy and happiness, and that centralized government is a cure worse than the disease.

Differences

There are some critical differences between these two cultural phenomena. Government typically is more overbearing and uses fear much more than practitioners of Big Design Up Front software design. The government will tell you that you need them to be safe, that you need to be controlled because you can’t possibly control yourself – much like an awful, abusive, codependent ex. Government will tell you that they need to drop bombs on people in foreign countries, because violence to others…somehow, keeps you safe. Government will tell you that only they can keep you safe, and if you take measures to defend yourself, you’ll only hurt yourself – but if the government threatens or does violence to you, it’s for your own protection.

…JKLOL, it’s just more similarity.

Culture change is hard.

With DevOps, you affect how people do their jobs. You give responsibility to some people, and take it from others, moving it in general towards the people who are most affected, who are most directly involved in the subject at hand. Some people don’t like having less responsibility, not realizing that the end goal of any leader (and we all should be leaders) is to make yourself redundant, and then take up more valuable pursuits.

With Libertarianism, you affect how people live their lives. You give responsibility to people for how they live their individual lives, by giving them freedom to live as they see fit. You take responsibility away from centralized planners and government agents, who…again, generally, really don’t like having their power taken away.

So, basically, Libertarianism is DevOps writ large, with similar benefits and efficiencies, and similar challenges to overcome. Only…with higher stakes.

A Culture Change Example: Security

DevOps

One of the major concerns about DevOps involves security. If everyone is doing DevOps and design, development, testing, and running is flowing fast and efficiently, then the next bottleneck is often IT Security teams. No one told them the software would be built and delivered 100x faster, and that technology would move at about that rate as well, and that all of their security tests and processes would have to keep up.

However, some teams figured out that if they apply DevOps principles and processes to security, then delivered software can be even more secure, even while moving 100x faster. This revolution, adding security into the DevOps processes or maybe DevOps’ing security, is called “DevSecOps.” It involves even more culture change and even more trust, because security is not something to mess around with. But, for those that could navigate the cultural, process, and tool changes to get there, software was delivered faster, with less effort, and changes were released faster, while finding and fixing security problems equivalently fast. Turns out, doing things this way made security easier and more effective too.

Libertarianism

One of the major concerns about Libertarianism is, “if my abusive ex the government doesn’t protect me, who will?” This matters way more than IT security, because if someone steals your credit card number from a website, you can sort that out – but if you expect the police to come when someone’s robbing you, and they don’t, you could experience serious harm to property and self/family.

An unfortunate reality is that in most situations, the police merely arrive to take a report and perhaps do some investigating after the fact. They have no obligation or duty to protect you.

On the other hand, the criminals that people typically worry about the government keeping them safe from aren’t even in the same ballpark as the governments who kill their own people. For some ballpark numbers, approximately 20,000 people are murdered by individual criminals in the US per year, roughly. Author R.J. Rummel asserted in a 1997 book that government murdered 169,202,000 people in the 20th century – or an average of 169,202 people per year. Lest you say, “yeah but some of those people died as a result of war, ” that number excludes wars. That’s just governments murdering their own people. From R.J. Rummel’s book, “this democide murdered 6 times more people than died in combat in all the foreign and internal wars of the century. Finally, given popular estimates of the dead in a major nuclear war, this total democide is as though such a war did occur, but with its dead spread over a century.”

We would also like to point out that most of this governmental murder occurred in states where the government had a massive monopoly on violence: heavily armed police vs. disarmed citizens. Somethin’ to think about as the current US government massively up-arms its police and passes laws to disarm its citizens.

Also check out The Monopoly on Violence, a fantastic documentary on this subject and also Libertarianism as a whole.

A wonderful thing about personal responsibility is if you have the freedom to defend yourself, you are always on the scene when you need defending. The cops may be ten minutes away, but you are always right there.

Security really matters. It can be kind of scary. But pretending that false security is real security, and choosing to abdicate all of your responsibility for your own security, is not the right answer – and it can be shattered when reality arrives.

Toward a more perfect culture

There is no perfect culture. There is only the path by which we pursue perfection, built on personal choice and continually striving to learn and implement better.

There is no perfect DevOps implementation, only people attempting to work together in a clearer, more transparent, agile way, with responsibility for success and decision making pushed to the same shoulders. Or…said another way…there is only the path by which we pursue perfection, built on personal choice and continually striving to learn and implement betterTADA!

There has not been a perfectly Libertarian society, once we realized that tribes could conquer each other. However, the cultural change that made DevOps successful can be applied to the larger culture: reduce centralized planning and control (and the expense thereof), eliminate centralized controls and monopolies on things societies need, and push freedom and responsibility onto the people who can accept it. Reducing laws that restrict important freedoms, such as decriminalizing drug use, and removing restrictions on marriages between consenting adults are examples of baby steps.

Conclusion

Both systems are “self-organized anarchy” and “chaos that works.” Both systems emphasize that the “best decisions are made on the ground,” and therefore we should “move the decision closest to the data.” Both systems emphasize freedom, and individual and community responsibility. We know freedom leads to massive innovation and adaptability and success, and we know centralized control leads to brittle, slow-changing, miserable culture.

There are no perfect systems of software development, or government. We know what doesn’t work (centralized control that requires perfect wisdom and selflessness), and we have some ideas about what does work. We know that the ability of people to choose their own adventure is hugely important, and that it seems to align with the things we’ve learned while trying to understand how to be a person, and a Christian. Seeing patterns like this, especially seeing the model seem to work on a smaller but still important scale, gives us hope that maybe it can work on a larger scale too.

We will continue to consider how these cultural movements compare, and attempt to apply lessons from one system to the other. We’ll keep you posted.

Please Just Fight with Me

Please Just Fight with Me

We talk so much here about choice, and fear, and commitment. And hope, and struggle, and how to be a person, and how to be yourself in a world that seems to really wants you to be…different. Quieter, less sure, more afraid. Mostly, we tend to talk about how to be yourself in a world that seems to want you to fight less for the right to do exactly that.

We’ve talked recently about how we each got divorced last year. We both came from marriages with Forbidden Topics. Or at least… This is Going to Be an Exhausting Unproductive Fight Topics. Topics that we felt like we couldn’t really genuinely talk about, ways that we couldn’t stand up for ourselves or what we wanted or needed. Conversations that would lead to us taking damage in some way. The beginning death rattle of any relationship is probably being simply…too tired to keep fighting. And usually, it’s the Forbidden Topics that start that trend.

The Problem Statement

We’re going to pause and define what we mean by “fighting,” because it’s one of those overloaded words that means many different, sometimes scary, things to many people.

fight (v): to engage in conflict with someone, seeing that conflict through until genuine resolution

Note the part of the definition that says, “seeing that conflict through until genuine resolution.” Fighting, using this definition, is vital. Rather than letting baggage pile up and overwhelm a relationship, fighting in this way allows baggage and rubble to transform into…foundation. Shared, strong foundation that allows a relationship to thrive.

But…everyone has scars. Scars from how they grew up, scars from past similar relationships, scars from…trying to be a person. And fighting with people you care about, getting to that resolution point where both people feel heard and loved and accepted and like they understand each other better, is one of the fastest, most effective, most painful ways that those scars are sometimes triggered. It’s terrifying to lay your soul out, and show what you’re afraid of, and put the relationship at risk by just…being yourself. We’ve said before that the one fear that everyone seems to share at their core is the fear of being alone because of who you really are – well, fighting with someone where you’re both actively working to navigate your scars lays all of that on the line.

Because it’s so hard, there are a few ways this can go.

1. I Won’t Fight

This is the hardest, and the most painful. This is the…well, as we said above, this is the death rattle noise that relationships make when they’re falling apart. This is someone saying that fake resolution, that quiet, matters more than your soul. It’s someone deciding that hiding from you is more important than sharing their soul. Everyone gets to choose if they engage in fighting – they get to choose if they will show their soul, and if the risk to them or the relationship is worth it. Unfortunately, it seems like a lot of the time, people will choose that it’s not. People will instead choose to try to keep some version of the “relationship” where both parties agree to hide from each other in a slightly different, memorized way in the future.

2. I Can’t Fight

On the other hand…fighting is exhausting. And terrifying. Don’t think that we’re saying that fighting is not exhausting and terrifying, because that would be stuuuupid.

And sometimes in a fight, you just… can’t anymore. If no one is choosing that they won’t fight, then whoever has run out of resources will get back to it when they’ve recovered some of those resources. But the old adage of “never go to sleep angry” is…not always wise, or a good idea. Sometimes stepping away has to occur, and if you can trust each other and be clear and still love each other even during a fight, then…this is okay. It’s good, even, despite it sometimes seeming even more scary.

3. The Good Fight

As a reminder…

fight (v): to engage in conflict with someone, seeing that conflict through until genuine resolution

A Good Fight is…well, when this happens. When both parties feel like they understand each other better, and when misunderstandings get cleared up. This does not mean that they agree. Relationships, and love, and true acceptance, don’t need agreement in order to exist, they just need…understanding, and reaffirmed choices not to hide from each other. They need, “I love actual you, and now I understand who that is a bit better than I did before, and also I still love actual you.”

A Good Fight results in the strengthened, shared foundation that can make some relationships staggeringly good.

Please Just Fight

Be you and have fun.

We give this advice constantly, to anyone who will listen and probably some people who won’t listen. We say it because it’s the best TL;DR we’ve figured out so far about how to live your life with joy. We constantly remind each other about it – because it isn’t easy. Being yourself often seems like exactly the way to end up completely alone.

However.

If you can find people who want to know you so much that they’re willing to risk your acceptance of them, people who will fight you with Good Fights, then you get the immense joy and relief and peace of existing with people who love actual you. Everyone deserves the space to be themselves, and everyone deserves people who will fight them, and fight with them, in order to have that.

Two Kinds of Assholes

Two Kinds of Assholes

We’re going to use the word “asshole” a lot in this post. We both actually really love to swear, but if it offends you, feel free to skip. Sometimes that’s the most accurate word, though.

We work in a lot of different cultures with a lot of different strong-willed people. We are also both, as you may have noticed, extremely strong-willed.

Within these different cultures, we have individually and also together been accused of being arrogant and overbearing. We’ve found that in order to make change, it takes being willing to ignore people telling you to stop making change, and that often leads to this conclusion of arrogance or overbearingness. We’ve talked before about the ways that people try to stop you from doing what you think is right, about the ways they attempt to control. Some additional are, they’ll say you’re going to fail, or that you’re wasting your time, or that change is impossible. They’ll say it’s more complicated than you think, and unless you check and double-check all of the boxes and track down a million threads and make sure we’re all safe oh no panic eyes, you’re doomed to failure.

We have made a career out of transforming culture and bringing new perspectives by ignoring doubters, pushing forward, and taking risks that other people said were stupid. We ignored them after we tried to figure out if they were right, but often when we’d ask why they said what they said, they weren’t even sure themselves. So… we paid attention and we considered, but in general, we’ve had to learn how to ignore…a lot. At great personal and professional cost, although it always worked out really well over time.

The people we ignored, in addition to saying that we were arrogant and overbearing, also said that we were self-centered, and cruel. Based on their summaries of our actions, it might be fair to say that we are, both of us, assholes. Based on that, we came up with the following definition in an attempt to understand what people would say about us, and people like us:

Asshole: (n) a person who cares less about you and what you think than you would like.

But that definition was incomplete, and, honestly, kind of perplexing to both of us. As is often the case, the concept behind “asshole” seemed to mean (at least) two very different things – and one of them was accurate about us, and one of them very much was not.

Hot Take of the Day: There are Really Two Kinds of Assholes

As far as we’ve been able to puzzle out, there are (at least) two primary kinds of assholes – or two categories of people who are called assholes.

Type 1: A person who doesn’t care about anyone other than themselves

This is the worst kind of asshole. There are a lot of other names for this kind of person, but one of the most accurate is “selfish” – they use people. They think that people owe them…something, and they get angry and mean when the world, and the people within, don’t deliver on that …something. They hurt people, and abuse them, and ignore them. They’re controlling, and manipulative, and unkind. They often ignore feedback, and they proceed, blind and numb, toward their own end goals.

They may be good people, and they may have objectively good motives for what they do. But they also generally are quick to dismiss people as people – they do not see other people as inherently worthy of some amount of consideration and humanization.

Treating people as somehow less than human is awful, and it’s been the source of immeasurable amounts of damage from people with some kind of power over the people they see as “less human.”

Type 2: A person who does what they believe to be right, despite what other people think about them

I’m tired and angry, but somebody should be.
– Halsey, Nightmare

This is the kind of person who believes that there are more important things that people’s opinions of them.

They are often confused with Type 1 Assholes, but the key difference is how they actually feel about other people. They care about other people, deeply, and they see inherent value in literally everyone. However, they have bigger concerns than other people’s approval. Typically, this kind of asshole is actually a reformed, scarred former people-pleaser.

people-pleaser: (n) a person who has an emotional need to please others often at the expense of his or her own needs or desires

This kind of asshole has probably spent time trying really hard to take care of, or make happy, someone else – maybe multiple someone elses – and has had a series of events happen to them that broke their ability to do it. Probably they too suffered personal or professional losses when the ability to try to make everyone else happy fell down. Somewhere along the way, they learned that being themselves, and doing what they think is right, is more important than the (conditional) approval of other people.

With all of the resources they get back from actually taking care of themselves, these people also tend to have causes. Things that they care deeply about, a Big Important Purpose, probably related to the battles they won along the way to being free.  that they care about more than Type 1s: they care about people, and aren’t selfish – they are just concerned about more than other people’s approval. Things like, Solving World Hunger, or Actual Digital Transformation, or Helping People Who Have Big Sad Scars. Or Soul Repair.

These people often get their approval from something other than the people around them – they have to, because they know that that doesn’t last. They aren’t success- or fame- or money-driven, and maybe they just…rest in the Jesus Cheat and God’s love, and they know and work to accept that they were made Just Right and for an important reason.

This one is us.

Maybe “Asshole” isn’t All Bad…

In conclusion

Don’t be a Type 1 Asshole. Care about people. Figure out your hurt and your strife enough to be able to see the people around you, and know that they are not responsible for making you happy.

But also…maybe don’t try so hard not to be a Type 2 Asshole. Don’t worry about being perceived as “nice,” or about modifying your soul to fit what might make other people happy. Care about people, and love them deeply, but care more about you and what you bring to the world and what you know is right. People, the right people who love actual you, will show up in your life when you are self-consistent (and you let them).

Our Favorite Villains: Joker (from The Dark Knight)

Our Favorite Villains: Joker (from The Dark Knight)

We have continued to talk between the two of us about how much we love “villains” of pop culture. We wrote a post about why Thanos is the best Avenger a long time ago, and decided to start a series. We recently watched The Dark Knight again (…again again, it’s a classic for a reason..) and we enjoyed Heath Ledger’s Joker so much that he got the kick-off spot for the series.

It’s an amazing movie, and ultimately it centers around the conflict between two moral codes: The Joker as an agent, or engine, of chaos, and Christian Bale’s Batman, who fights for justice, fairness, order, and self-sacrifice.

… at least it appears that way at first.

There are going to be spoilers for The Dark Knight in this post, but given that it’s about 13 years old, we figured that was probably fine…

Ledger won an Oscar posthumously for his work, and to be honest the character was a spectacular piece of acting. If you haven’t seen it recently enough that it’s fresh in your memory, stop reading this blog and just go enjoy it. Or, if you want just a vignette, watch this scene:

It sums up the character nicely.

So here’s the thing – a lot of people really loved the character of The Joker in this film. It’s one of the most iconic villain characters ever, and was arguably the best portrayal of The Joker until Joaquin Phoenix gave it a go (whose version of The Joker we will likely talk about in another Our Favorite Villains post). But…why? What’s so interesting and appealing about this character who could be described as a madman and a terrorist? What about The Joker in general – why is he an iconic villain, and a foil for Batman? What makes the Batman universe such a good fit for this kind of character?

Things We Love About The Dark Knight’s Joker

“Plans, everybody has plans.”

The Joker says some interesting things about planning, strategy, and execution – all reasons that we loved Thanos as much as we did. It’s clear from the opening scene of the movie (below!) that he’s thought out this heist step by step.

The arc of the movie follows his strategy to take over the finances of the mob, and use the control that having their money affords him to seize the reins of the battle between Batman and the criminal element of Gotham City. Interestingly, while the strategy is sound and he executes it well, the plan to manipulate and control is not one of our favorite pieces.

One key piece of this arc, and probably our very favorite scene, is The Joker trying to build a relationship with Batman in the jail scene. Basically, just like The Joker in The Lego Batman movie, this Joker needs Batman in order to be a supervillain. In a world without Batman, the Joker is just…bored.

Our conclusion from this is that despite The Joker saying he doesn’t make any plans to Two-Face, he does in fact make and execute plans. He outsmarts everyone, with plans that flex and build until the real end of the movie (more on that later).

The Joker stays committed to his stated goal: to bring clarity to people about who and what they are.

He’s playing a game, the real game, by real rules, when everyone else is playing a false game with made-up rules.

He’s clear – and clarity is success.

A lot of people in this movie hide who they really are. Bruce Wayne pretends to be Batman – or maybe more accurately, Batman pretends to be a playboy billionaire named Bruce Wayne. Batman also pretends to be an agent of law and order, when actually he’s an agent of chaos and his vision of justice, which is by definition outside of the law. The mob pretends to be invincible, but are actually paper tigers. The mayor pretends to be brave, but actually is full of fear. Gordon pretends to be dead, breaking his family’s hopes and hearts. Batman also pretends to be a guy who doesn’t do murder – but it’s a little hard to believe that all of the violence he does doesn’t kill anybody. Shooting high caliber autocannon rounds off the batbike in an urban environment is, we’re sure, totally safe. (</sarcasm>)

There’s also a whole subplot about who the real Batman is – in fact, it’s part of The Joker’s plan to force Batman to “come out,” as Bruce tries to wrestle with his default stance of hiding.

Contrast all that with The Joker. He shows up, he lays his cards on the table (…pun absolutely intended), and he tells everyone from the get-go that he’s here to bring clarity to the world. He’s here to show people that the rules they think they live by are moral forgeries. He also habitually lies about how he got his scars, which is a fascinating element of hiding in his personality. Generally, though, he is clear and he deals with the people around him in transparent, if off-putting, ways.

He’s committed.

Image result for joker not about the money

Commitment was one of the things that we loved about Thanos, in the previous post that we mentioned. That theme holds true here, too. A climax of the “Joker controls the mob” subplot of the movie is when we see that The Joker has “recovered” all of the mob’s money. He had previously negotiated with them that if he could recover their funds, he’d get half – and when we see him with the literal pile of money, he proceeds to light it on fire.

“Some men just want to watch the world burn.”
– Alfred, trying to explain The Joker to Bruce

The Joker is committed to his plan, which is, again, clarity. He enjoys bringing clarity to the world. He doesn’t care about the same things other people care about – in this case, money – and that causes confusion and fear in its wake. The Joker pretty much only cares about the joy of being himself and helping others see clearly.

He’s crazy, but…not wrong.

There’s an interesting question here, underlying The Joker as a character – is he completely insane, or…is he just living by different rules than everyone else?

At first glance, it definitely appears that he is erratic or just crazy. But we think there’s a deeper truth, that he is in fact just living by different rules than everyone else. This makes a person appear crazy, but it’s actually something more like a strong cultural difference. To him, not living in a fake world is more important than obeying laws, or being seen as a “nice person.”

That’s an interesting lesson, because laws, and perception of “niceness,” are not morality. Also, what is moral is not always what is legal, or what is nice. Slavery was legal. Racism was enforced by law. Many victimless crimes are currently illegal, such as growing particular species of plants.

As always, we love Reality quite a lot, and it was refreshing to see people have to think hard about what they really believe as the result of a chaotic person’s actions. Not that we’d know anything about that…

The RULES, and “all it takes is a little push…”

One key piece of this arc, and probably our very favorite scene, is The Joker trying to build a relationship with Batman in the jail scene…
– us, earlier in this post

In particular, we love this part of the jail scene:

The Joker: …their morals, their code… it’s a bad joke. Dropped at the first sign of trouble. They’re only as good as the world allows them to be. I’ll show you, when the chips are down, these… these “civilized people?” They’ll eat each other. See? I’m not a monster, I’m just…ahead of the curve.

Batman : [grabs Joker] Where’s Dent?

The Joker : You have all these rules and you think they’ll save you!

Lt. James Gordon : [as Batman slams Joker into the wall] He’s in control.

Batman : I have one rule.

The Joker : Oh, then that’s the rule you’ll have to break to know the truth.

Batman : [getting impatient] Which is?

The Joker : The only sensible way to live in this world is without rules.

Generally speaking, we are not fans of rules, which is probably why this appealed to both of us. We’ve also both been the targets of people who valued the rules over us, or over other people, which…hasn’t changed our opinions about rules in general. What The Joker says here is not entirely correct, and…he knows it. The Joker doesn’t follow their rules, but he does follow his own. He’s…consistent. But he points out a legitimate thing – it makes sense, it should make sense, to look at the rules that one follows and ask oneself…okay, but why?

What is my motivation for following the rules? Do I even understand that I’m choosing to follow the rules? What happens if I stop?

The Joker pushes the Batman, the mob, the police, and society as a whole, to stop doing what they’ve always done. He pushes them to look at the world in a new light, where old motivations (money, power) are challenged and the old rules of safety and control are broken.

Batman, as a counterpoint, spends the whole movie trying to control things into being safe. He tries beating everyone up. He tries giving up his identity. In the end, he even sacrifices the ideology and the very idea of Batman as a force of good, in an effort to control the perceptions of the people in the city.

The Joker pokes at peoples’ rules, points out the sheer ridiculousness of them, and then…lets them choose. He’s happy with whatever they go with, he just wants to put people in situations in which they can see the world in a new light. That, and he really wants to burn down what they perceive as their safety.

The Joker and the End of the Movie

The last time we watched the movie, we kicked around the real motivation of the movie. This is a Christopher Nolan movie – this is the same director who did Inception, and Memento, and Tenet. He is not what you’d call a traditional thinker. Up until a certain point in the movie, the movie itself is wildly consistent:

This movie is a love story to chaos, and a warning against (and biting satire of) the patterns of institutional and personal control and fear.

And then…that stops. The Joker suddenly cares about a particular outcome, not, as we said above, simply showing people that they aren’t actually bound by their rules. The Joker targets two ferryboats’ worth of people – one boat of prisoners, and one boat of Average Citizens. He tells the boats that they will both be blown up as of a time, unless one boat blows up another. The prisoners decide not to blow up the Average Citizens’ boat. The Average Citizens take a vote, which lands on “yes, blow up the prisoners,” and then ultimately can’t do it. During this time, The Joker and Batman are fighting and The Joker insists that one boat will definitely blow up the other. When that doesn’t happen, The Joker tries to blow up both boats anyway, despite it not being quite the time limit yet.

If The Joker were consistent with himself as per the rest of the movie, he would have accepted that people are not as broken and twisted as he thought, and adapted. Or, at a minimum, he would have waited until the time limit was up to blow up both boats.

The Joker and Purpose, Clarity, and Commitment

As always, we love Reality quite a lot, and it was refreshing to see people have to think hard about what they really believe as the result of a chaotic person’s actions. Not that we’d know anything about that… 
– us, again from earlier in this post…

When we have strong emotional reactions to things, we try to figure out why. Why did it resonate? What does it teach me about myself, or about God, or about other people?

We are both what could be described as chaotic – if you use the D&D alignment definition, chaotic means valuing “freedom, adaptability, and flexibility. On the downside, chaos can include recklessness, resentment toward legitimate authority, arbitrary actions, and irresponsibility. Those who promote chaotic behavior say that only unfettered personal freedom allows people to express themselves fully and lets society benefit from the potential that its individuals have within them.”

We firmly believe that God makes people exactly as he needs them to be. Neither of us tries to be chaotic, or to see the world in different ways than…it seems like most other people. In fact, thanks to the soul scars of trying to live this way, we’ve both tried various things not to be chaotic. This version of The Joker exists, for us, as a form of representation – we aren’t criminals, but we are wildly committed to the things we think are right. We’re good at making and executing plans. And we definitely think that clarity is success, and that people follow rules for reasons that are mostly fears of how they will be hurt if they don’t.

That representation, and the reminder of how God makes people, mattered to us because living your life in a way that’s consistent with who you actually are, how God made you, helps you find and execute your purpose. Also, it’s just…fun. It’s how you find joy in your life, and how you find people who feel joy in the same things, and in you.