jay_walk

is a really really cool idea. Maybe it could be improved by also offering 3-minute or 10-minute versions, because I can't write anything (fiction) at all unless under direct pressure but I could write a lot of cool stuff given 10 minutes of it.

Here's where I write opinions that make me sound like a misanthropic arrogant jerk and expect too much of people:

So far I have written on "morals", I have written on "crush". What most people have written on "morals" disgusts me.
So given 60 seconds apparently what's in people's minds is:
- nobody has any morals anymore; society is awful and degenerate, there should be more morals
- a few odd America-centric christianity-centric variations of the above
- a sense of how useful, right, and holy morals are
- without morals= evil
- morals = idea of what's right and wrong
- different people can have different morals
- where morals do /ought to come from (parents, society, didactic stories)

I don't know, I'm surprised. It all seems awfully regurgitated and meaningless, what people are thinking. I am always shocked to see samples of what people think, or rather don't think. Yes, I take everything too seriously.
No original thinking? No completely bizarre opinions? No nihilists, skeptics, absurdists, artists, megalomaniacs, delusions, delusional despair, hopelessness, complete idealists, god-haters, religious fanatics,...? With so many different interesting things one could write, it ought to be possible for 80% of everyone to not say the normal stuff. But no. Well I knew that, that most of stuff most people have got to say is pretty much the same stuff a million times, but still, it's depressing.
I know if the task was to be deep, creative, surprising, and original in 60 seconds there's probably be more interesting thing. But still wouldn't it be cool if that kind of diversity of thought were in people's minds without specifically trying?

Not that I can do any better, I regurgitated some stuff I got from Dorian Gray probably:
"People who don't have morals are the more moral. Having morals is having defined rules. Life being short, they probably come from cultural background and assumptions. Morals are never true. Morals are all true; the less restricted, the better. "
and in sixty seconds I did not write anything that makes sense, and neither something so deliberately abstract that the lesson is that it makes no sense.

By the way, consider the difference between immoral and amoral. In The Collector, Clegg is not immoral but amoral: he doesn't defy his sense of morality, he just has no sense of morality. Amorality isn't inherently bad, if he'd just had some basic "don't infringe on other people's rights; let people make their own choices" nothing would have happened. Morals or empathy aren't necessary, just some basic leaving people their rights. (Egocentric, solipsistic, that's his problem- doesn't occur to him his plans aren't to everyone else's liking too.) Of course there's more to be said on that book, I wrote a research paper on it.

I loathe fables, for the reason that made-up stories are not proof, not a convincing argument to do anything. When someone wants to convince me to act a certain way, but gives the silliest justifications, I get frustrated. Frustrated like when I'm trying to have a debate with someone and they argue by goofing off. They apparently became popular in the era of enlightenment and independent reasoning. I laughed when I read that sentence, because letting fictional talking animals tell me what to do is exactly what independence and rationality ought to be. Well, maybe it's that at least people are thinking or reading anything at all. Or maybe I miss the point of fables completely.


On "crush", of course there's a lot of people talking about crushes in cliché ways. Boring, mind-numbing, but not that surprising. I wrote about the verb instead, it made me think of crushed ice and I still haven't thought of the word for that odd squeaking sound ice cubes make when they tear. Then there still had to be crushing in the story, so I put all the ice and snow on top of someone.
"The sound of ice cracking, tearing, sliding, sounds like in a glass of lemonade; a crushing weight of hard, sharp blocks digging into his arm, his torso, his face – suffocating - "