Data Structures and Systems Theory: a Short Memoir.

Josh is a good young man. His autism does not define him except insofar as it is both a blessing and a curse to him. A graduate from the University of California at Irvine, as well as an aspiring cartoonist with an ingenious imagination, he has trouble shaking surprise from others when they learn the identity of his alma mater. When he took Professor Stegman’s Data Structures class at Palomar College, he probably did not expect to make many friends. Ordinarily, he tends towards shyness and reports recurrent social rejection by his peers. Nonetheless, an exceptionally creative mind such as his, all ready having accomplished much academically, did not either expect that he would be facing expulsion under false auspices. Yet this was precisely what happened, as I bore personal witness to, towards the end of the Spring semester of 2018. Josh, having failed once more to make friends in class that might lend him a helping hand, referred instead to his own research, via the Internet, in finishing one of five or six laboratory assignments that would each determine nine per cent of his grade. Unfortunately, he was not alone. Several other students who shared the class with him, UNBEKNOWNST TO JOSH HIMSELF, had the same idea, so they all ended up referring to the same source. I know not whether or not these students were likewise charged with plagiarism. Professor Stegman refused to tell Josh who they were. This is puzzling, because it puts Josh in a situation where, were he guilty, he would all ready have known their identities from conspiracy with them. Conversely, if he is innocent, then he will have no knowledge of their identities, and as such he will have no means of proving his innocence to his instructor. The only sensible reason for Professor Stegman’s privacy is, therefore, that Stegman believes that Josh might prove his own guilt definitively by referring to their identities, which ostensibly only a guilty, uninformed Josh might have had access to. This creates a sort of schizophrenic double-bind; if Josh should happen to discover their identities, he will prove himself guilty, but if he fails to do so, he is guilty by default. Not only has the principle of “innocent until proven guilty” been reversed; he cannot even prove his own innocence, nor shake the guilty verdict by any means whatsoever!!

I decided to investigate this Data Structures class for myself. As per usual, employment obligations have set me behind drastically, and I found myself, enflamed by morbid curiosity, reviewing the lengthy Syllabus for the course. Enclosed within the text file is this chilling paragraph:

“Although you are allowed to help other students, you are never under any obligation to do so. If you feel uncomfortable answering a student’s question for any reason, please do not attempt to answer the question. Instead, suggest that the student see the instructor.”

In the absence of an available instructor of sound mind, a number of students referred to an other monarch, one that had served them to excess previously: the Internet. Of course, Stegman’s philosophy (read “dogma”) of helpfulness in the academic environment and project is the very summary of Ignorance, whether by a Buddhist standard or one from the West. There is obviously a moral obligation for all of us to share the knowledge that we’ve acquired if it was never intended exclusively for us. Furthermore, discomfort in the abject sense does not assuage this matter, but it aggravates it. The principal substitute for ethical behavior is of course emotivism, the tendency to simply “inform” one’s decisions by affect alone.

Stegman’s philosophy reminded me of my most recent visit to the Open Lab. I was disappointed not only by the absence of my favourite tutors but by the presence of a congested crowd. Plenty of young, ambitious students were working on their various codes. Some of them were even in my class, and I had good reason to believe that they were working on the same Lab Assignment that I am about to fail right now. (Most probably regardless of whether or not I keep writing this desperate plaint.) A great deal of them were working in teams. The most bizarre aspect of the situation was this, however: that not one of the people that I even tried to speak with who were part of these teams showed any sign of willingness to talk to me. They dismissed me based on prejudice, an observation I can state for a fact because of the simply fact that I had no prejudice in approaching them. It may be true that the female programmers I tried to speak with I came to first, since they reminded me of my favourite tutor Rachel, whose intuitive sensitivity to others’ styles of learning and needs to learn made her extremely popular as a teacher. That notwithstanding, I was open and direct in both my questions and my declarations. Yet the program would not run; they were not having it. So instead I got help from my only friend in that Data Structures class: Michael Hermes, a brilliant, level-headed whiz-kid who had Asperger’s Syndrome. Why do I feel the need to point that last part out? Put plainly: it’s ironic that under the monarchy of ablism and rugged individualism the one helping hand that I could grasp came from the Disabled Class. So to speak, of course.

I explained to Michael’s Nurse Celia that I was distracted by the crowd and hence found concentration difficult to muster. She understood; she is empathic. When everyone in the classroom forms an exclusive clique, all of their conversations serve the obverse of a social purpose for the Outsider. Interestingly enough, it was this same tendency that helped me to understand the Java programming language, if only insofar as I could comprehend how private and public classes interact. Michael’s smiled at the analogy, which was really a connection I made between Data Structures and that ancient Medieval Principle of Systems Theory. Michael said rolled with the metaphor, comparing private classes to introverts and public classes to extraverts. I reversed the analogy, insisting upon an irony I’d observed time and time again: that extraverted people tend to be more private because they define themselves so much by the exclusive groups that they’re a part of. Michael smiled in tacit agreement. An introvert would be able to read his silence as concession, though I still remember the shock of hearing my old Debate Professor comparing this simple observation, the very essence of any kind of love, Platonic onwards, between human beings, to assault. To this day, I am haunted by the fear that others have of silent consent, only because it means that extraverted thinking has become so monarchical that it has robbed life of Life.

The Fisher believes in Contemporary Systems Theory, at least insofar as she will praise Malcolm Gladwell for his observations. Whilst I have enough Debater left in me to tear the Outliers to shreds, I rest assured that all is well, for she is not apparently fanatical of temperament. It’s ironic: the same philosophy that suggests that we would all get by with a little help from our friends is what makes it so difficult to make friends. I found a friend in Michael, as I had in Josh, because we were all clinical loners who did not possess the SKILL to discriminate between people who were so kind as to reach out to us, whether to help or for help, and most often both. Conversely, I’ve found all too many ladder-climbing chimpanzees who want to keep to their own academic tribes and to perpetuate the In-Group/Out-Group conflict. It is quite redundant, though I rest assured they won’t get far. It hurts me to observe them from this height, however, not just out of pity for their lowly ways, but all so out of bitter recollections of the times they shook me down. Nobody likes a lofty outlier. Not even Malcolm Gladwell.

[({Dm.A.A.)}]

T!LAP!A:

I am NOT unattractive. I speak two languages, going on three. I write in more than that. I can play about a dozen musical instruments. I have known a nationally renowned professor (incidentally a woman!!) to tell others that I was the smartest person she had ever MET. Professional musicians (childhood heroes to many) have praised my work, and a professional programmer has commended my code. Just the fact that I can WRITE Music, and everyone listens to that, and that I can WRITE Code, since everyone uses computers, should make me a prime catch in this World. I make it a point to learn something new everyday, and about everything, not limited to my own fields, but neither to their detriment.

And I WORK HARD. I am not too arrogant to be a dishwasher, putting in ninety hours or so every two weeks, burning the midnight oil only to go to college first thing in the morning. What money I lose spending on my monthly gym membership (for which I have no time remaining) I make up for in the raw APPLICATION of physical strength in service to my company of friends. Yet muscular health is of absolutely no consequence in choosing a mate, any way. I don’t expect it of you, and if you were to be as thin as I have been my entire life I would not hold it against you, though much less would I hold you to it. (And don’t think that if I do not hold you to it it’s because I’d frown upon it!!) You’re eager to level with me, accusing me of essentializing you, all because you’ve objectified me and rejected me. But *I* have not rejected YOU, and I’ve only objectified you to that same extent that I ADMIRED you, and I fell in love with you PRIOR TO my having noticed any PART of you, some parts of which were brought to my attention by those ingrates who deserve your company much less than I do.

This is NOT bad form of me to sing my own praises, because you KNOW, as well as I do, that the values that I live by are objective. Working harder will not solve the problem. Some of my fellows might spend three hours at the gym, perhaps a week, perhaps a day, but what does that show of their work ethic, since their jobs require often LESS exertion than does mine, and any man who finds that kind of TIME to “build his body” is not scrubbing dirt from grates at five in the morning? What would it matter to you, any way? We are not being trained for battle in some Coliseum, so why would you treat love as though it were some sort of Stadium? What business of YOURS is it how I appear? Can’t you see past that to my SOUL? Because here is the thing: in spite of all I’ve been through, and perhaps because of it, I LOVE PEOPLE. I don’t approve of all they do, but I forgive them. I forgive you, too.

So cut the crap. I am a ten, whether you say so or not. Even if I had the vice of gazing on you as an object, it would not excuse you doing so to me and with disgust which I’ve not found towards you. And I don’t!! I see you as a person capable of seeing me as one, and what is sex if not the dissolution of all boundaries between us?

What are they if not illusions? So what if I have a fast metabolism, so the time I spend exerting myself does not show? Who the fuck cares? So what if I only make enough cash to get by, and I still live at home and splurge on games and music? It’s not like I won’t give BACK for what I took, and if you want to see the evidence for that right now, you can.

You tell me love is not entitlement, but rather a function of what you put into it. I put IN more than a lot of other “men”, and I am NOT rewarded in full. You know why? Because I AM a man. Because I’m not some boy amused with his own figure in the mirror, taking more time to refine it than he spends admiring yours. You love the body? I would spend a day just painting yours. Would he?

You see: this is the thing about love, and it’s both the reason you can never give TOO much, as I have been accused of doing, nor do I expect reward for it. The fact is: it has NOTHING TO DO with how hard you work or how GOOD, in the truest sense, you are. It has nothing to do with past experience or personal accountability. It’s Unconditional, and THAT is why we’re here.

If I were “rich and handsome”, and I will be some day, unless God wills otherwise, you would still be intimidated by my gaze, and you would rationalize that you are a lesbian or something just because you can’t handle the love of MAN.

I am a man. I am my own man. I don’t need to impress you. But FOR YOUR SAKE, and the Love of God. Learn some compassion. See beyond your own projections onto me. And love me. Not ONLY because it’s TRUE that I deserve it, though I’ll love you unconditionally at whatever rate it takes for you to notice that, but because the status of your OWN Heart in the Eyes of God, or Love, if you prefer that term, for they are interchangeable, depends upon it.

Yes: I do deserve your love, if only because all the pain of loving you, without a choice, regardless how you treat me, is too much for one man to deserve, though he might handle it with Grace. If that is not attractive, YOU know not what true attraction is. I will not be made to feel inferior to those who try less and towards lesser goals. It never will be easy for you. But why would you let your Soul decay within a mire of ease?

Dm.A.A.

The Rules of the Game:

Playing Chess is an exercise in empathy. The most skilled players can see the board from the perspective of their opponents. They can project what the rational Other will do at any moment, at least as a set of possibilities. Because the player, however, is not in possession of his opponent’s will or temperament, there are limits to his knowledge, and in accordance with those limits his own power over the board itself is restricted, and the game is rewarding for its novelty. This reward ceases to be the case when either player is so hopelessly dominated by the aggressive will to dominate that the game becomes controlled and predictable. At that point, even that player’s claims – that it is in fact his opponent who wishes to dominate – become mute, for they can be fairly regarded as sheer strategy, and they might be dismissed as cheating for their deceptive quality. The unwritten rule in Chess is this: that in enjoying the impersonal beauty of the board, one made impersonal by the extent to which even a loss can be perceived as beautiful by the loser, one must remain focused upon the goal of using one’s own power to bring about an end that is in accordance with the virtues of a true competitor who persists in an attempt to win. Yet Life cannot be reduced to the competition, even if it were all expressed as a game, for were it entirely competitive then all ready the will to win would have become the will to dominate and kill the game itself, reducing its impersonal beauty to personal depravity, simply because any attempt to compete with those who are unwilling to compete, but who seek only to participate, would as such bar participation to those people. It follows that to disadvantage another for one’s own gain and against that person’s consent can only be done in the spirit of reserving one’s right to participate, and so long as one has all ready been included one can no longer accuse the disadvantaged party of pettiness under the auspices of a competition that that party had not consented to or by reference to one’s own will to win coming into conflict with that of the opponent. Such plaints will obviously fall on deaf ears when the public is aware that what had become a competition was supposed to have been an entirely different sort of game to begin with: a cooperative friendship.

Dm.A.A.