Jumping on the bandwagon long after most people have gone to their destinations...

[jducoeur]

So Mr. Perpetually-Behind is only now wading through this particular meme. But late or not, it's one of the more interesting ones I've seen lately, so I'll jump in.

The problem with LJ: we all think we are so close, but there is a lot we don't actually know. So I want you to ask me something you think you should know about me. Something that should be obvious, but you have no idea about. Ask away.

Comments

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

When you graduated from high school, what sort of career were you interested in?

[jducoeur]

Theater, actually. My high school had a very strong drama program, and I'd always enjoyed that. But college slapped me quickly with two realities:

1) While I'm not a terrible actor, I'm not *nearly* as good as a lot of the people who are seriously into it.

2) Making real money as an actor was problematic.

By contrast, it was already pretty clear that I was about as good a programmer as a college freshman could be, and it was going to be a lucrative career. So it was a pretty easy decision to face reality and go for the major that I had been much better trained for...

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

How'd you get involved with your funny-hat society?

[jducoeur]

Of course, pretty much all of my clubs involve funny hats at least some of the time. But I'm going to assume you mean the top hat.

Like many people, I really got intrigued by Masonry through conspiracy theories -- probably originally from Illuminatus, but memory fades. And I realized fairly early that Baron Steffan was a Freemason (I think I first found out during my sophomore year of college).

So there came a very complicated conversation with Steffan, about two years after I graduated. He startled the heck out of me by asking, out of the blue, if I was interested in becoming his Esquire. And then I startled him just as much by asking to join the Masons. This began a habit of freely mixing conversations about the two clubs, which persists to this day. (Our standing joke is that we always talk about the SCA at Lodge meetings, and always talk about Lodge at events.)

Anyway, I joined, and almost instantly got sucked into line. Masonry has a concept of "line officers": a chain of up to eight officers, theoretically advancing one seat a year until you land in the Master's chair. I actually got skipped directly to the fourth chair (the lower three are mostly for people who are timid about ritual, while they get used to the idea), and have been an officer ever since. I did my term in the East (the Master), decided it wasn't my cup of tea (while there's a lot of cool ritual, the job is *mostly* Cruise Director), and established that I would thereafter pinch-hit in whatever seat they needed from then on...

[roozle.livejournal.com]

Just a wave. It was nice to talk to you at Arisia.

[dreda.livejournal.com]

How would you describe your spiritual worldview?

[jducoeur]

The literal answer? "At great length." It's not a simple question, especially because it's been mutating steadily over the past ten years. Let's see if I can summarize in a few paragraphs.

Summary: the nearest thing to an established religion that matches me seems to be Minbari. That's not a matter of geekitude -- I just find it unusually consonant with my views.

Basic premises: at an instinctive level, I believe that there exist powers higher than our own, and in some sort of existence beyond normal life. At the intellectual level, I demand that my spiritual beliefs be at least not contradictory with what I know of the world. (That is, science trumps faith for me.) Rectifying these two aspects is probably a lifelong project.

I don't believe in God in the classic Christian Highfather model, tending to all the details of the world; I can't rectify it against the world I see. Insofar as I believe in a demiurge, I tend to think of it as being well beyond our comprehension. I vary on whether I actually believe such a being exists at all. (Not a small problem for me, since it's one of the few mandatory dogmas of Freemasonry.)

Increasingly, I've come to think of the problem sort of in terms of quantum mechanics. I'm drifting towards a rather mystical philosophy, suspecting that the world exists simply because it *can* -- explaining that is a project unto itself, to be posted one of these days. In that model, essentially everything that *can* be *is* -- all the varied possibilities existing side-by-side in a constantly bifurcating universe.

As for life-after-death (always one of the big spiritual questions), I'm coming to suspect that it's usually phrased incorrectly. I certainly don't believe in continuance of the ego -- indeed, I don't think it's even accurate to say that I am quite the same person I was ten years ago. But I do *hope* for a sort of outside-time meta-view -- that the demiurge exists outside the simple concepts of "before" and "after", and consists of the collected experiences of everything and everyone in the universe. Hence, the result isn't so much continuance as a sort of omnipresent connectedness.

Hmm. Describing mysticism is hard. One of these days, I'm going to have to put in enough time to really spell this out more clearly.

Oh, one last detail: the other thing I love about Minbari is the trappings. I don't believe in ritual magic at the *literal* level, but I feel that it's terribly important at the *symbolic* level. That is, I don't think it affects the rest of the universe, but it does affect the participants profoundly. That's most of what keeps me in Masonry -- while the performance quality of the ritual isn't often as good as I like, it still provides a real spiritual hit...

[dreda.livejournal.com]

Describing mysticism has always been hard - much ink has been spilled - but you're in good company. And recognizing that it's not a simple question tells me, at a bare minimum, that you're grappling with it to a degree that suits the question. Sometimes, I think that's the best answer I can ask for.

[hfcougar.livejournal.com]

I thought about asking the obvious question, but that's probably better suited for off-of-LJ...

[jducoeur]

Okay, now I'm curious. Make sure you ask me...

[hfcougar.livejournal.com]

The almost certainly predictable "Why do you want me to be your protege?", possibly with a side of "What would you expect of me" or "What would you have me do?"

A conversation, really, which we've put off for months (and is still better suited for off of LJ)...