What makes a human a human? Reproductive universal solvency.

    One common challenge of writing Sci-fi or fantasy is the addition of the multitude of humanoids. Elves, dwarves, gnomes, halflings, orcs, vampires, werewolves, gods, grays, space elves, space orcs (some of whom are spelled with a K), shape changers, clones, sasquaches, warrior teddy bears, and a thousand other humanoids start filling your worlds quickly. It soon becomes hard to find a definable trait that makes the humans human. Elves are long lived, gracefull, wise, magical versions of humans.  Orcs are big, strong, brutal versions of humans. Grays are little super intelligent versions of humans. Gods are super powered humans.

    Often this isn't much of a problem because the humanoids are either rare or divided away from the humans, but eventually there comes the question, If all of these humanoids are unique, what is the human uniqueness?Compared to the elves it is often our vitality and intensity that is pointed to. Compared to orcs it is our stability and rationality that sets us apart. Compared to robots we are shown to be flexible and compassionate. Compared to a bestial species we are intelligent but weak. Each description of humans is just the description of the other race in inverse, which is natural since we are the baseline from which they are described. In games humans are often the best generalists. We aren't the best at anything in that setup, but we are rather good at everything. Other settings make us the most varied and versatile. I guess that works, but it kind of feels like a cheap answer to me.

    One tendency of humans, in myth as well as fiction, I have noticed is that we are portrayed as a genetic universal solvent. We are shown as being able to mix with anything. This is even being found in real world anthropology. It was long assumed that whenever homo-sapiens entered an area with other hominids, such as neanderthals, that the hominids were killed off. We now are finding that we just interbred with them and assimilated their genes. To use the phrase from the Star Trek Borg, "Resistance is futile."

    No matter how much enmity there is between two groups of humans, if it is at all possible for them to genetically intermix, they will. It takes incredible social and religious pressures to convince people not to go sleeping on the other side of the tracks, and often those pressures just make it more tempting to do so. If you think your heritage is entirely just one race, it is possible you may be right; but it is much more likely you just don't know your family tree as well as you think. Myths are full of heroes, monsters, gods, and goddesses who sprung from something more or less than human joining with a human. The best known Vulcan from Star Trek was half human. Aragon from Lord of the Rings was part elf. In folklore vampires that impregnate a living woman result in a dhampyr. Hercules and Perseus were half god. The Spartans considered themselves the descendants of Hercules. Countless rulers claimed to be direct descendants of one god or another. Those who believe they have been abducted by aliens often say they were impregnated and gave birth while on the ship. Even men who claim to be abducted sometimes say they carried a child, and, on the whole, we tend to primarily discount the notion of their abduction and seem almost accepting of the idea that if there were near humans out there, even a lack of a womb couldn't stop us from having their babies.

    Biology of whether humans and humanoids could actually reproduce aside, as it seems millennia of audiences take the possibility as a given, there is also the factor that humans would at least try to reproduce with anything. Any one individual human might not be tempted by any given creature, but somewhere out there is someone who will do anything to be with them in a reproductive way. If you have any doubts as to what some people can find attractive, you haven't spent much time on the parts of the internet where they don't block the icky stuff. Some people's ideal romantic partner isn't even humanoid; or plausible under our understanding of physics. If we ever make first contact or discover the entrance to Tyr Na Nog; whatever shape those we meet take, someone of our species will be chomping at the bit to welcome their genes into our pool.

    Really, if you think about it though, that isn't too bad of a trait for a species. Being able to pull the genes of other humanoids into our collective would be likely to have innumerable positive results as time went on. I think it would be cool for my descendants to have super cool magic powers or alien abilities. Also, hidden world fantasy becomes much more plausible under the assumption that long ago all the supernatural people interbred with us. Colonization of distant worlds becomes much more interesting if we integrate with the natives instead of fighting them.

Make love, not war.

(Repost from a prior blog, written and posted by this author, under a different name, on 12/6/2011)

Three Weeks After One Week to Live (fiction)

Three weeks ago, I was told I had one week to live. I had dropped fifty pounds in under a month, and I was having trouble sleeping, so I had gone to have my doctor check it out. He performed one test, then another, then another. There appeared to be tumors all over my body. With how widespread the tumors were, and how many different systems they were sitting in, I was told that there was no viable course of treatment, and that I needed to start saying my goodbyes.

The first week came and went. I spent some time with family, I spent some time with friends. I still couldn’t sleep, so I stopped trying. I still haven’t slept since I was told my prognosis, and I’m not in the least bit tired. I lost another thirty pounds over that week, and I was looking pretty good for a dying man. I was looking better than I could remember ever having looked. For the first time in my life, I had a six pack of abs. I began wondering if maybe I should ask if the mortician could put me in my casket in my swim trunks instead of a suit.

My digestion was getting a bit weird, but I chalked that up as my body shutting down. Thirty three years was a good deal less time than I had hoped for, but I supposed that, through most of human history, that was about the average people had been able to expect. I was angry for a large part of that first week, but I also was grudgingly that I wasn’t feeling physical pain. In fact, I was feeling great.

I had never really been one for exercise, but in the middle of the night, while everyone else was sleeping, I started going running. I was so frustrated, and so full of energy, and I guess some part of me felt that if I ran hard and fast enough that I could get away from this doom that was chasing me. Running was exhilarating. I’d been staying at my parent’s place, to be close to family as I was supposed to be fading away; there was a park three miles away, and I was able to make it there in eighteen minutes with energy to spare.

My glasses started making my vision all fuzzy, and it actually reached a point where I could see better with them off than I could see with them on. It wasn’t worth going to have my prescription changed though; I wouldn’t be wearing the new glasses long enough to offset the cost.

I went in to see some specialists at the end of that week, and they wanted to run more tests. It wasn’t that they thought they would suddenly discover a way to help me, it was so they could try to find out how my case had happened, so that they could prevent or treat it in others, later. They were especially interested in taking more living tissue samples from the tumors, because they didn’t fit the mold of any similar cases. They were careful not to say anything to get my hopes up when they asked me to come back in, but they did tell me that my case might be something other than cancer.

My vitals were taken, I was weighed, measured, questioned, x-rayed, scanned, poked, prodded, poked again, and then asked more questions. Every time I talked to the doctors, they seemed more befuddled and flustered. The apparent tumors had not grown or increased in number, so that was good. In every other way though, I appeared to be incredibly healthy. I told them about my late night runs, my lack of sleep, and energy level. It was decided that I needed to take some physical fitness and stress tests to get a baseline for where my abilities were currently, so that any additional short term increases, and then the decline of these abilities, could be tracked. For good measure, if they were gathering metrics on every other area of my condition’s progression, it was also decided that my memory and cognitive functions should be assessed as well.

My blood-work came back with anomalies in more areas than I knew blood tests could measure. This, plus all of the other unusual aspects of my condition, led to the specialists on my case (who were growing in number and areas of expertise) deciding that I needed to be kept in the hospital for the rest of the course of my illness, to both increase the amount of research that could be performed, and to control any possible spread if it were found that any aspect of my disease were contagious.

Over the second week, I started gaining weight back, but all of the weight gain was muscle and bone density. I stopped having bowel movements entirely, but there was no buildup of fecal matter in my large intestine. Instead, my digestive system was breaking down and absorbing one-hundred-percent of what I ate, and any waste was being excreted entirely through my urine. My physical fitness kept increasing in every way simultaneously, and my memory and cognitive functions were also increasing.

I think I should have been terrified by what was happening to me, but after mostly accepting that I was going to die, I was mostly just curious about what was going to happen next to me. I still assumed that I was going to die, but at least the process was being painless and interesting. I was spending what time I was not having some test or another performed in a hospital room with not much to do, so I spent my time going to the internet and learning more about how all of the processes that were being upended in my body were supposed to work. I had not really been that much into biology before, and it may just be the very emotive personal interest that I now had in this information, but almost everything I was reading about was fascinating and made sense with little effort on my part.

Mental pursuits had rarely held much difficulty for me, but the rate that I was beginning to absorb and connect various areas of knowledge was truly invigorating. Each new facet of knowledge led into a dozen other areas to explore, and while my research still orbited around the details of my condition, the orbit did continue to widen into a growing sphere of subjects. The metrics the people researching my were using began to show a leveling off on my increase in memory and cognitive functions, but they admitted that this may very well be because I had risen above the point where the tests they had available were truly accurate.

 At the end of the second week, I also began to be more and more certain that I could feel the wireless signals put off by certain devices in and around the hospital. Of course, both I and my physicians assumed that this was just me finally showing signs of mental decline. The tumors were starting to grow slightly, as well as becoming much denser. My blood stream was becoming more and more contaminated by unusual proteins, and a few of these proteins looked like they might be some kind of, previously unknown, incredibly complex, virus.

The possibility that some kind of virus was changing my genetic structure began being seriously considered. Needles had began bending when used to inject or draw blood from me more frequently than could be dismissed. My muscle cells, taken as tissue samples and viewed under a microscope, had begun restructuring to have a multi-filament structure that was not just an aberration from a normal human muscle cell, but was unlike any studied animal muscle cell. This seemed to account for the fact that, while my muscle mass had been increasing at an uncanny rate, that my increase in functional strength notably exceeded what would be expected for the level of mass gain I was presenting.

Full quarantine began to be put in place around me, as the risk of whatever was happening to me being contagious became much more real. The feeling that I could feel the wireless signals around me also was strengthening, to the point that there was some amount of pain from it. Then, wireless devices started malfunctioning in my presence. The more upset I became, the more marked the effect was. Once it was positively determined that I was actually sending out some form of electromagnetic signal from my body, my situation changed drastically.

An attempt was made to tranquilize me for transport, and, while I complied, my body did not. Each time they tried to tranquilize me, I metabolized the drugs in only a few minutes. I don't know where they brought me, but I believe I am a notable distance underground. The room I'm in seems to block wireless signals, which is a relief, as they were not being at all comfortable by the time I arrived here.

I have began to see colors I have no name for, that I believe to be quite a ways into the infrared and ultraviolet ends of the light spectrum. I can smell with a precision and breadth of scope that I can only assume means that either my nose is now tuned to detect elements and compounds far beyond the senses I was born with, or that I am now experiencing hallucinatory delusions. I suppose those options are not mutually exclusive. Several of the machines in the room I am held in have components that smell delicious, and I am developing cravings to taste them. The fact that cravings usually result from some nutrient that one has a deficiency of is not lost on me. Neither is the knowledge that eating electronic components would be undeniably toxic to a human being. Which then brings me back to the question: am I a human being any longer?

My access to the limitless knowledge of the internet has been cut off, I am mostly left alone with my thoughts and perceptions now. I sit, and run through various thoughts, scenarios, theories, postulates, and questions. With my universe, that consists of this one room, containing myself and a few boring objects, combined with the fact that sleep is no longer a part of my condition, my attention towards self-evaluation has been nearly undivided. I have developed other skills that I will not record here, and you will certainly see some of them practiced soon, when I take my leave of this place.

I will be leaving soon, because I know that soon you all will realize that you cannot contain me any longer. I appreciate the curiosity that you all have exhibited towards my condition, partially because I share in the desire to know, but even more because it has resulted in you keeping me alive far longer than was safe. I leave this record of my perception of the changes I have undergone up until this point. It will be valuable if I choose to not allow myself to ever be found again, and perhaps be even more valuable if, once my development has gone even further, I return to benevolently guide you lesser beings into a new golden era.

I would recommend not trying to stop me leaving, but, not only would you not listen, but by the time you read this, I will already be gone. Instead, I will recommend that you not come after me once I have left. The things I will have done as I escape will provide a sampling of what would face those who would try to contain me again. I will not have to use all of the tools at my disposal to leave here,
and there is every reason to expect that my abilities will continue to develop as time passes. Time is on my side, not yours.

There will be a concern, I understand, that my condition may be passed on to others. However, I really must pose a question to any who might raise such a concern: Would it be such a terrible plague for all of mankind to ascend to a higher state?

- Note found in room of terminal brain tumor patient shortly after he tore off the monitors and IVs, stood up, ran out of his room to the stairwell, and dove headfirst down the stairs to his death. DO NOT DISCARD.

An author with dyspraxia dysgraphia, isn't that kind of like a tone-deaf songwriter?

    There will be many little confessions down the way, but this is the first one I want to get out there. I'm a bit cross-wired in the head. I suffer from dyspraxia and the related dysgraphia. No, dyspraxia is not related to dyslexia. The word looks the same, and can have some similar results (including its own form of dysgraphia) but what is known about how it works is quite different. The best, though not technically accurate, description of the difference is that dyslexia is problems with getting info in, while dyspraxia is problems with getting it out. Dyspraxia roughly means uncoordinated. Dysgraphia means I have poor handwriting. As I am typing my writing, it would seem that this should not be a problem. However, the causes of the poor coordination and bad handwriting are still a problem.

    My writing is still heavily affected by these, because the way dyspraxia and dysgraphia manifest in my cross-wired brain affects the way I process many aspects of language, and heavily affects my organizational abilities. My dyspraxia doesn't make it impossible for me to do anything. It just makes quite a few things way harder than they should be or take way longer than they should take. It makes me take longer to write or type, it makes me have to pause longer to think on correct spellings or grammar, and it makes it take more effort and energy than normal for these tasks. This all taking longer and more effort leads to it being more frustrating and easy for me to be distracted. Also, more time to finish can mean more time to be tempted to change plot or setting details. This often spirals into total rewrites. It takes longer to jot down ideas and notes.

    I have still chosen to try my hand at professional writing because, disabled or not, I love telling stories. I love teaching. I love opening minds to new wonders, ideas, and possibilities. I am heavily inspired in this by a professor who took me under his wing some years ago. He suffered from mathematical dyslexia, but he loved mathematics so much anyways that he had risen to being the head of a university math department. He is an incredibly gifted man in many areas; however, his passions drove him not just to excel at what was easiest for him, but to specialize in what he loved that was hardest for him. In school, English was my favorite and most despised subject. I loved the stories, the images, the characters, the themes, and the worlds. I hated the spelling, the grammar, the punctuation, and the handwriting. I loved to write long, complex essays and stories on a multitude of subjects. I hated how I would never have enough time to finish, and the bloody gashes ripped in it by the teacher's red pen. I don't know if there is a much more eloquent way to tell a child to not bother trying to learn than symbolically massacring their work with crimson ink. Then again, if some other color were the standard for correction, I might feel the same about it.

    There isn't really that much known about these disabilities. They aren't exactly the kind of thing that gets nationwide fundraisers for research. I work with kids and teens with many of the more extreme disabilities and disorders, and I have to agree that they need the help first. Mine is a disadvantage and an aggravation. As far as I can tell, the current thought on the dyspraxia related disorders is that they have something to do with the way short term memory functions, and that it is disruptive to my muscle memory learning things. It also is disruptive of other organizational connections in the mind. I am not an expert on these disorders in general. Really, with how varied it seems they can be, it seems not many people are. I just know what experts have told me and what I have observed from my own experiences.

    I will probably go into more depth about this later if it seems there is an interest. Right now though, I'm starting putting my writing out there. I feel it is important, especially since I am writing under a pen name, to have a place where anyone who enjoys my writing can learn about where it comes from.

    For years I have nurtured stories, worlds, and characters in my mind. I can't just keep them contained any longer. I've started a few times, but kept becoming discouraged or distracted by the way my life kept falling apart. With this post, I'm not trying to claim I shouldn't be accountable for flaws in my work. Point them out, please, if you see them. I'm merely asking for patience. I really am writing as quickly and correctly as I can.

(Re-posted from a prior blog, written and posted by the same writer, on 12/03/2011)

A Passion for Continuous Improvement as a Whole Person

One of the pursuits that I am most passionate about is continuous improvement as a whole person. I have always had a passion for learning and helping teach others, but I remember when I finally had the epiphany that leveling up wasn’t just for characters in games, and that there was no good reason why I could not constantly improve on every axis. I find hope and inspiration in looking at my flaws, weaknesses, and even my strengths, then comparing all of those to a vision of my ideal self. From this comparison, I can plot a character progression by which I, in real life, seek to constantly draw closer to becoming my ideal self.

I do not just study one subject, I bounce between subjects so that, as one begins to feel like work, I bounce to another that is fun and new, and will come back to the prior subject once it is invigorating again. I have found that the more diverse my studies are, the better context I have for any individual subject. Studying history helps with understanding philosophy, which both help with understanding sociology, which helps with studying belief systems, which in turn helps me understand the reasons events happened in history and the beliefs that shaped philosophies. Understanding the physics of metallurgy and the chemistry of leather tanning informs the study of tactics of warfare in ancient civilizations, as it relates to supplying armies and a thousand other factors. I have found that almost every subject leans upon others, and that my understanding of them all increases with educating myself on any of them.

I don’t just train my mind, but my body as well. I’m in my mid-thirties; I am healthier, stronger, and in less pain than I was in my mid-twenties. Through studying advances in diet, exercise science, and physical therapy methods, not only am I able to improve my strength and heart rate, but every other area as well. In my twenties, my body and joints were in constant pain. Now, my body only hurts when it is sore, or when something is wrong. My joints have improved to a point of almost having no problems, and they have improved this way at the time of life when my joints are supposed to have started rolling down an inevitable path to failure. There is no good reason not to, at least, walk every day. With an inexpensive gym membership, I have access to low-impact cardio equipment and resistance machines to build up the strength and injury resistance of every part of my body.

Trying to stay the same, and never change, is a battle that can’t be won. If you fight just to not lose ground, sooner or later, you will have to take a step backwards. Then, sooner or later, you will fall back again. Trying to maintain youth or just keep your existing skills and knowledge sharp is a battle that you will lose.

The secret is to not seek to remain who you have been, and always seek to become some form of better than you were with every action and every day. If you are always marching forward, then a lack of progress, or even a step backwards, is not a major loss, because you can regain the ground lost and even take steps forward tomorrow. If you just stay good at what you are already skilled at, what will you do if that skill is no longer needed, or requires other skills to stay relevant?

To continuously seek improvement means to embrace change, especially change within yourself. If you truly are improving, then tomorrow you will not be the person you were yesterday. Improving yourself cannot happen if you only expose yourself to tasks and ideas that are comfortable with. If you are comfortable, then you are not growing. If you truly want to grow, you cannot just expose yourself to harder versions of tasks you have already mastered or higher levels of ideas you already are strong in. Growing as a whole person requires giving as much effort, and preferably more, to tasks and subjects that you find hard. The areas where you are weak are where you can improve the most.

Continuous self-improvement also means questioning and exploring your beliefs. Read, listen to, and talk to people who you disagree with. There is no better way to better understand what you believe than to honestly explore perspectives that wholeheartedly are opposed to your beliefs. Sometimes, you may even discover that some part of what you believed, or thought you believed, is wrong. This doesn’t mean that you have to throw the whole system of belief out, but it does mean you may have to look through your beliefs and find how this revelation applies across the whole system. You may even decide that core aspects of your worldview have to change, and if that conclusion is honestly arrived at, that is a good thing. It is far better to have to change how you relate to the world earlier than later. There are few things worse than, far too late, realizing you have been wrong your whole life, and the only thing that can be done about it anymore is to regret all you have ever done. Then again, it is perfectly likely that your beliefs will survive mostly or fully intact. If so then you will have gained greater understanding of what you believe, and why. Either way, challenge your beliefs often and vigorously, so that you may stand strong in your ideals, or change them before you have lived life in a way you cannot undo.

Continuously improving as a whole person also means questioning who you are and who you want to be. Caring for a growing plant does not just involve guiding the branches, feeding, and watering it. Sometimes, it involves cutting toxic or maladaptive parts off. Growth may be an additive process, but improvement can also be subtractive. Addictive, toxic, or otherwise maladaptive traits may be part of who you are now, and who you have always been. That does not mean, in any way, that those traits need to be a part of who you are tomorrow, nor do they have to be part of your ideal self. Growing hurts, but trying to change some aspect of self that is already there, especially the closer it is to the core of your sense of self, can be agony. It is terrifying to have an image of who you are and try to make real changes to be more like you want to be, because you can never have a fully reliable picture of who you will be without it. Trying to cut off the parts of you that are holding you back is frightening. It is painful. There is no fear or pain that I have ever faced that was more worthwhile than shearing off the parts of myself that made who I was my own greatest enemy. Finding peace within your own skin is an experience that is priceless.

Disasters happen, be they natural, purposeful, or just life events. Your home may be destroyed. Any of your family and friends may be taken away. There is no object you possess that cannot be lost to you. You will always be with yourself, every second, minute, hour, day, month, and year of your life. Even if you want to, you can never escape from yourself. There is no better investment in your time and effort that will improve your life than making sure that you are someone that you enjoy being around and can rely on in any situation. As a wonderful side effect, others may even rely on and enjoy being around you too.