A Letter to Mary

Mary!

Writing an answer to You is a challenge!

On the other hand, I'm terrible with all of my commitments, not just with answering my correspondence on time. Long story short, I stumble across life in a chaotic and (not just) seemingly silly manner. So, I just might be practicing eloquence, but I’m still sorely lacking in many other aspects of what would constitute a socially adept person one usually enjoys spending any time communicating with. And your warm words, too, actually serve as a double-edged sword: I am very happy that you happen to find my writing enjoyable, but at the same time it makes me more conscious about all the ways in which it is lacking and in which it could be even more – or less – refined and fun to read, and inevitably thus the whole process of writing is severely prolonged.

While I am at it, I confess I am pleased a lot that you find my photos to be worthy of protecting. (Though I’m not sure if I’m right to take “not trivial” as a compliment, am I?) As I purposefully avoided any and all education about the proper ways of the art of photography, at least some of them are sure to be plain wrong bordering with barbaric, to a trained eye, I imagine. I love some of your photos, too. They seem sincere. It is also good to see you with friends, smiling, and all.

Now, why do I remember you studied psychology, not law? Have you ever studied psychology and switched? Or is my brain that much defunct? Have I smoked enough of weed already for it to start eating away on my memories? And software copyrights?? Seems to me almost like the opposite of dealing with human experience, which would undoubtedly be the case if you went for a carrier in psychology, which I thought fitted you well. I mean this in a good way, because if I, again, stand accused of training my eloquence to any extent, without hesitation I accuse you of being amicable on a whole another scale and practicing it ever further (and I am perversely looking forward to the day I will be proved otherwise)!

In any case, you are a rockstar for getting to almost finish a law degree, that’s a hard one. The remainder is just that, a little something that won’t be a problem for someone like you to conquer, alike all that was in your way before, I’m quite sure of that. I barely finished my Bc. degree, a fact that makes me thoroughly proud and ashamed at the same time. There is a story to be told about my studies, but let’s leave that for the uncertain future, for now.

By the way... both Cambridge and Oxford online dictionaries state that “by the way” is “Used to introduce a new subject . . .”, so if I’m not reading your message wrong, you’re in the wrong now and before that – you were right. What a plot twist, eh?

So, by the way (ha), I have not read Kafka's In the Penal Colony, as the only one – the rest of his work is staying with me. Especially The Castle popped something, and here I can all too well understand what you mean by inanity of our tryings, of our struggle within our lives, destined to stumble from wall to wall of our own poor understanding of just about everything. I moved on to reading philosophy of sorts alike Nietzsche (not the best idea for an amateur who's barely bachelor, in unrelated fields) and Foucault (bad in itself), Frankl (easy and good, 10/10), etc. Lately, I also moved to listening podcasts about history, comedy, science, new books, and „intellectual“ conversations in general. Are you familiar with Sam Harris or Jordan B. Peterson perhaps? I also learned to love the first-half-of-20th-century classics like Hemingway, H. Hesse and Exupéry. The next step for me is to start listening to actual audio books, too, instead of only listening to conversations about them. Have you tried any of that, audio books or podcasts? Also, do you have a Goodreads.com account by any chance? I would love to see your reading list.

Just now I am reading The Elephant in the Brain by R. Hanson, a new book, a sort of a thesis about how humans behave, and it is a dark one, too, and I hope I don’t butcher it too much but the main idea goes something like this:

First, humans are selfish creatures and many good aspects of our nature are only supposed to be signaling our good intentions to the society we live in, rather than to genuinely do good – the real amount of help we provide is secondary to the signal of “I am helping, I am on your team”. Picture your average charity with 90+ percent of donations swallowed by operating expenses for illustration. The outrage culture penetrating academia, media and politics in the west for a while now, when viewed through these lenses, also makes a lot of sense.

Second, human minds’ purpose is to deceive us about these real motives and to come up with the most altruistic rationalizations possible, because humans are very social animals, and on average we are really good at detecting sincerity and good intensions (or its opposite rather) – and so our minds deceive us, to deceive others, to get the best for us. He elaborates this point hundred times again on various patterns of human behavior, on how our institutions work, etc., even on other apes’ behavior. Quite dark and cynic interpretation of human society, but at least the part about always having a subconscious motive, about how mislead all humans are was said so many times by so many people, it might as well be true. What do you think about that?

Lastly, I should explain why you are reading this private letter on this site, in public. The reasoning is as follows. As I was writing my answer down on mobile, it was getting longer and longer, and soon it was longer than what I would deem bearable for (a series of) IG DMs. Shortening it wouldn't do because I aimed to give you proper dose of the masochistic, pleasurable experience you say you get from reading my messages). Once I established that, next decision was to go the other way and probe your psyche a bit in process – does the publicity of this letter make it more of a thrill, or less so, or are you indifferent? If it bothers you to any extent, just remember, there still is high probability that this message will be as private as all that I wrote before, since I don't really expect of anyone (sans You) to be bothered enough to read past the first few lines.

The fun explanation aside, there is still one other reason to post it public, or rather to Steemit specifically: There’s a major software innovation going on behind this site – the platform is supported by STEEM cryptocurrency, with which you can reward authors of articles you enjoy (and get rewarded for posting worthy content). Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to make money off our conversation, but I have wanted to try it for a longer time now, so I thought, why shouldn’t I try it this way, and show it to you at the same time.

Do you know a thing or two about cryptocurrencies? I am asking because, and I have this on good authority, there is a shortage of lawyers knowledgeable about cryptocurrencies, and they are being paid in gold – and there almost certainly are copyright issues to be handled in the crypto-sphere. Lots of new cryptocurrency/blockchain/DLT projects are being developed by Russians, too. Which brings me to my final, most serious point of them all. Politics. I remember you were fond of Russian president Putin, so, congratulations on the clean victory for yet another presidential term. I trust my memory is better about this one than it was about the field of your study. I'd be very happy to talk politics with you again, or books. Or anything, for that matter – In a slow and dramatic, yet serious tempo.

Anyway, I hope that I provided with a coherent, if not easily readable letter, that brings more smiles than headaches.

Yours,
V.

P.S. Answer on your own terms, please, I don’t want you to feel pressured into writing letters just because I flown off the handle and wrote one instead of answering like a normal, civilized person of 21st century with access to instant messaging, with few short on-topic sentences. (Also look at me adding a postscript to electronic message to make it seem even more like an actual letter.)