Rage and Boredom

[Arafelis]

"Exposing what is mortal and unsure to all that fortune, death and danger dare, even for an eggshell. Isn't there something in that?" he asked, looking up at Mustapha Mond. "Quite apart from God–though of course God would be a reason for it. Isn't there something in living dangerously?"
"There's a great deal in it," the Controller replied. "Men and women must have their adrenals stimulated from time to time."
"What?" questioned the Savage, uncomprehending.
"It's one of the conditions of perfect health. That's why we've made the V.P.S. treatments compulsory."
"V.P.S.?"
"Violent Passion Surrogate. Regularly once a month. We flood the whole system with adrenin. It's the complete physiological equivalent of fear and rage. All the tonic effects of murdering Desdemona and being murdered by Othello, without any of the inconveniences."
"But I like the inconveniences."
"We don't," said the Controller. "We prefer to do things comfortably."

A few years back, while I was still living with my parents, we had an antisocial german shepard.  He was pretty paranoid about people not in our family, and so we tried to keep him separated from strangers, but I never thought he'd bite someone.

As I apparently never get tired of being proven wrong, I didn't immediately shove him out when he pushed into my bedroom, where myself and the girl I'd started seeing the previous week were sitting (if it'd been more than that, he never would've made it into the room, of course).  So I'm nervous, but he seems friendly -- no barking, waving his tail and everything.  He trots over to her, and she looks at me (I'd warned her about the dog) and I comment on how well-behaved he's being.  She pats him on the nose a couple times... and with no warning at all, no change in behavior, he grabs her arm in his teeth.  Hard.

So we take her to the hospital and it's pretty bad, but it's not like torn muscle/shredded tendon bad.  She gets wrapped up, offered some medications, and told to take it easy on her arm.  I sit with her during the six or so hours we're in the ER (roughly twenty minutes of which were attended).  We pay the bill, of course.

And that's it for a while.  After that we're still seeing each other, astonishingly (the relationship lasts for about two years, all told).  After a bit, she decides to stop taking her medication and starts practicing piano again and playing Counterstrike pretty extensively, both of which put a lot of strain on her arm.  A couple weeks of this and her arm starts to twitch, ache, and generally misbehave.  She gets worried and goes to a neurologist.  He runs several rounds of tests on her, early on scaring the shit out of her by by-the-way suggesting she might have MS.

It's nothing.  She just needs to ease up on her arm and let it heal.

So!  She's got about $800 in bills from this quackery.  She can't pay it, of course; she's a college student and she's paying rent on her own place.  Her dad... lemme tell you 'bout her dad.

Have you ever been into one of those "communities" where there are three story houses on almost perfectly square plots of land, precisely lain-out streets, no kids, and absolutely no trees?  If I didn't know better, I wouldn't call those perfectly trimmed and largely unadorned plots of grass lawns, but moats.  You drive through one of those places and it's fucking eerie.  People clearly never go outside, except maybe to mow (but you're much more likely to see some landscaper's flatbed parked at the curb every week), but they've got these half-acre plots with the house centered almost perfectly on each.

There are rarely fences.  They don't need them.  Besides the cop response time and private security systems in every house, you look at those lawns and you expect landmines.  That's how creepy they are.

So, yeah.  That's where her dad lived.  Well-to-do guy, upper middle class-ish.  Not rich, but more money than I'm likely to make, unless I get my own shit together in the right way to do that.  Not a terrible guy... he even had a hobby: He watched movies.  Movie after movie.  Nights and weekends.  Sound turned up so high that the few times I was there to visit, I could barely stand to be on the same floor.  March of the Penguins sounded like Star Wars in the fucking IMAX.

Righto, back to my original anecdote.

So her dad starts insisting my family pay it.  Now, I'm not going to try to wow you with our story, but suffice to say that as of the first my parents heard of this, we'd gotten our power turned back on two weeks prior.

This drags on for a couple months, with the insurance company getting more and more agitated at my then-girlfriend.  He starts threatening legal action.  He writes letters and makes calls; guy goes fucking rabid.  You'd think my folks not paying the $800 for his daughter's unnecessary medical treatment made it like they'd sic'd the dog on her and laughed.  And through it all, I swear I started to get the sense that he was enjoying this.  He wanted to get mad.

So, if anyone was to blame for this shit, it was me.  I'd let the dog in there.  Maybe I could've even encouraged the gf to take it easier on the arm -- I was certainly the only person in the position to do so.  I sold some stock I had and ponied up the cash, about a week before the ultimatum gf-dad had set before Shit Gets Real, Yo.

I think he was disappointed.  Asshole.

So this whole experience starts me down the path to a thought:

Bored people want to get angry.

In its formative stages, the thought hardly made sense to me.  I kind of shoved it aside as a bit of snark from a bad experience.  But time goes by, and I see more and more little things that build this up in my mind.  Eventually I recollect reading that passage in Huxley's Brave New World I've got quoted at the top, plus a few nudges from Vonnegut, and I start to actually believe there's something to it.

Alright, so, you think about this hypothetical Standard Living Condition someone's got.  Survey says (also here) most people actually don't hate their job.  Yet people also are on the search for personal fulfillment, which too often they do not find there.  So you have this wide band of 'good enough,' and an enormous range of escape opportunities.  (I feel like it's outside of the scope of this particular rant, but I've seen suggestions that early exposure to electronic entertainment like TV and video games sets kids up on a path for ADHD, which, incidentally, is perfectly suited to being entertained by TV and video games.  I'm far from the only one to see a bit of The Machine in that.)

But that's boring.  Escapism doesn't actually fulfill, it distracts from the need for fulfillment.  And it doesn't take a endocrinologist to realize that you're hardly ever going to get your heart spiking on a diet of movies (even the best horror shockers lose their edge when you've seen three dozen of 'em) and the best rock of the 1970's, 80's, and 90's.

Alright.  I've said my bit on that.  If there are any more conclusions to be drawn, I'll let you draw them.  I spent almost an hour looking for a particular quote from Vonnegut to put here -- something about how people love to do what they're told at the worst possible time -- but I can't remember the full text and can't find it, and it's barely relevant anyway.  So it goes.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

A few years back, while I was still living at home

You don't still live at home?

[Arafelis]

I'll tell you when I find out if I've been evicted yet.  But point taken, editing for clarity.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I loled

Also I am such a dick.

[Honey]

Alright.  I've said my bit on that.  If there are any more conclusions to be drawn, I'll let you draw them.  I spent almost an hour looking for a particular quote from Vonnegut to put here -- something about how people love to do what they're told at the worst possible time -- but I can't remember the full text and can't find it, and it's barely relevant anyway.  So it goes.

Today I will be a Bulgarian Minister of Education. Tomorrow I will be Helen of Troy.

We do, doodley do, doodley do, doodley do,
What we must, muddily must, muddily must, muddily must;
Muddily do, muddily do, muddily do, muddily do,
Until we bust, bodily bust, bodily bust, bodily bust.

I dunno if that's the one? but there ya go.  I also really liked your story.    

Like this part: "Bored people want to get angry."

This reminds me of what I have started to call "lazy pessimism."  Wake the Fuck Up!  If you're bored - you're not payin' attention! 

H.G. Wells wrote some pretty good stories dealing with this kinda attitude or at least he acted as a thought liberator when it comes to thinking about these things.  Country of the Blind is a good one.

Cheers & 

[LMNO]

It was honorable that you eventaully paid for the bills, but I think you're off base if you consider the second visit "uneccesary".  SHit was damaged, something was wrong... it was a much better idea to consult a doctor that to "wait and see what happens". 

That kind of thinking turns a lump into a mastectomy.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I'm not really understanding the sense of entitlement involved in thinking that, because the girl's father had more money, it wasn't your family's responsibility to pay the bill for your dog injuring someone. It sounds like a pretty serious injury, too, and you're calling the medical treatment "quackery"... why?

$800 is nothing... it could have easily run into the thousands. You got off lucky, and apparently weren't even required to have the dog put down. You got off easy.

[P3nT4gR4m]

A few years back, while I was still living with my parents, we had an antisocial german shepard.  He was pretty paranoid about people not in our family, and so we tried to keep him separated from strangers, but I never thought he'd bite someone.

Right, so basically it was your fault the girl got bit. Learn to dogs!

Yeah, that's right, I have a new puppy so I am now the leading authority on canine obedience/behaviour.

Srsly tho - if your dog is antisocial and aggressive toward strangers it's your responsibility to fucking deal with correcting it's behaviour.

Protip: freaking out and keeping him away from strangers is not going to help long-term

[LMNO]

What I'm hearing is: Even if your conclusion seems sound ("Bored people want to get angry"), the premise doesn't really begin to approach the matter.

[Arafelis]

I'm not really understanding the sense of entitlement involved in thinking that, because the girl's father had more money, it wasn't your family's responsibility to pay the bill for your dog injuring someone. It sounds like a pretty serious injury, too, and you're calling the medical treatment "quackery"... why?

Because there was no treatment, only an extended diagnosis process which in fact only continued past the first visit because there was a concern about multiple sclerosis being involved.  Dog bites do not give people MS.  The entire concern in the first place was caused by not following the medical treatment plan that was given originally.

Say I'm visiting you (for some reason), and somehow you accidentally knock me over and I fall and fracture my leg.  Like any reasonable person, you take me to the hospital.  I get a soft cast and the doctor tells me to take it easy.  A couple weeks later I decide I'm bored and take up wind sprinting.

Would you really hold yourself responsible for my physical therapy there?  Or, to actually make it a bit more in-scope, say I go in for a preliminary visit (not even PT at all), and I get told that I might feel shitty because I have muscular dystrophy and I'm going to need a CAT scan for them to find out (I dunno if they do those for muscular dystrophy, but whatever).  Are you going to hold yourself responsible for that?

Protip: freaking out and keeping him away from strangers is not going to help long-term

Absolutely.  It wasn't my dog (I was young enough when we got him that the distinction mattered); for the first two or three years of his life, my mom took complete responsibility for his upbringing.

And did a shitty job, despite exactly the same thing (the isolation -> paranoia, not the biting part) having happened with a golden retriever we had years ago.  She decided at one point to take him to obedience training to socialize him and, well, train him.  After two sessions she decides he's too rambunctious and doesn't go any more.

I wish I could tell you I was a stalwart proponent of canine rights and proper instruction as a counterpoint, who was persistently ignored and mocked for his perfectly reasonable contributions, fighting tooth and nail to be allowed to see and interact with the precious creature... but honestly I didn't want the dog and didn't want responsibility for him.  So I just stood out of the way and occasionally walked him.  =/

[hooplala]

I'm not really understanding the sense of entitlement involved in thinking that, because the girl's father had more money, it wasn't your family's responsibility to pay the bill for your dog injuring someone.

Why is it not his family's responsibility?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I'm not really understanding the sense of entitlement involved in thinking that, because the girl's father had more money, it wasn't your family's responsibility to pay the bill for your dog injuring someone.

Why is it not his family's responsibility?

It IS his family's responsibility. He thinks it wasn't, because the injuries later flared up again and needed additional diagnosis because they were concerned about nerve damage.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Sorry, Skippy, but any complications and follow-up care relating to the dog bite was, indeed, your family's responsibility, including screening tests to make sure the flare-ups weren't caused by something OTHER than the dog bite.

Furthermore, her family could have sued you for pain and suffering during her healing, because she wasn't able to do the normal things she enjoyed during her healing period, like play piano. AND they could have sued to have the dog put down... or, depending on the laws in your area, they could have simply called the sheriff to go take care of it.

And you're whining because her dad wanted your family to pay the relatively minimal costs of medical care and follow-up? Are you kidding me? You sound like an entitled brat.

[Arafelis]

AND they could have sued to have the dog put down... or, depending on the laws in your area, they could have simply called the sheriff to go take care of it.

I would have been happy if they had.  She requested that it not be.

I'm glad that you're a proponent of litagory morality, though.  It's such a rarity among Discordians.  I remain pretty convinced that we would have won a court case; the reasons I did not wait for one to occur were 1) we couldn't afford it and 2) I do not reject the idea that we retained responsibility.  My point with the anecdote was not to assign blame but to explain the situation that occurred and why it led to the thought I had, and I'm bored of letting you derail that.

[hooplala]

I'm glad that you're a proponent of litagory morality, though.  It's such a rarity among Discordians.