Here are some questions from Chuck Klosterman IV, a collection of his articles and musing. Some interesting things to think about over the upcoming holiday. Please post your answers if you feel so obliged.
1. Think about your life. Think about the greatest thing you have ever done, and think about the worst thing you have ever done. Try to remember what motivated you to do the former, and try to remember what motivated you to do the latter… How similar are these two motives?
2. Think of someone who is your friend (do not select your best friend, but make sure the person is someone you would classify as “considerably more then an acquaintance”). This friend is going to be attacked by a grizzly bear. Now this person will survive the attack; that is guaranteed. There is a 100 percent chance that your friend will live. However, the extent of his injuries is unknown; he might receive nothing but a few superficial scratches, but he also might lose a limb (or multiple limbs). He might recover completely in twenty-four hours with nothing but a great story, or he might spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair. Somehow you have the ability to stop this attack from happening. You can magically save your friend from the bear. But his (or her) salvation will come at a peculiar price: if you choose to stop the bear, it will always rain. For the rest of your life, wherever you go, it will be raining. Sometimes it will pour and sometimes it will drizzle-but it will never not be raining. But it won’t rain over the totality of the earth, nor will the hydrological cycle de disrupted; these storm clouds will be isolated, and they will focus entirely on your specific where-abouts. You will also never see the sun again. Do you stop the bear, accepting the lifetime of rain?
3. Assume everything about your musical tastes was reversed overnight. Everything you loved, you now hate; everything you once hated, you now love. If your favorite band has always been REM, they will suddenly sound awful to you, they will become the band you dislike the most. Everything will become it’s opposite, but everything will remain in balance (and the rest of your personality will remain unchanged). So-in all likelihood-you won’t love music any less (or any more) then you do right now. There will still be artists you love and who make you happy; they will merely be the artists you currently find unlistenable. Now, I concede that this transformation would make you unhappy. But explain why.
4. At the age of thirty, you suffer a blow to the skull. The head trauma leave you with a rare form of partial amnesia-though otherwise fine, you’re completely missing five years from your life. You have no memory of anything that happened between the ages of twenty-three and twenty-eight. That period of your life is completely gone; you have no recollection of anything that occurred during that five year gap.
You are told by friends and family that-when you were 25-you (supposedly) became close friends with someone you met on the street. You possess numerous photos of you and this person, and everyone in your life insists that you and this individual were best friends for over two years. You were (allegedly) inseparable. In face, you find several old letters and e-mails from this person that vaguely indicate you may have even shared a brief romantic relationship. But something happened between you and this individual when you were 27, and the friendship abruptly ended (and apparently-you never told anyone what caused this schism, so it remains a mystery to all). The friend moved away soon after the incident, wholly disappearing from your day-to-day life. But you have no memory of any of this. Within the context of your own mind, this person never existed. There is tangible proof that you deeply loved this friend, but-whenever you look at their photograph-all you see is a stranger.
Six weeks after your accident, you are informed this person suddenly died.
How sad do you feel?
5. You work in an office performing a job that you find satisfying (and which compensates you adequately). The company that employs you is suddenly purchased by an eccentric millionaire who plans to immediately raise each person’s salary by 5% and extend an extra week of vacation to all full-time employees.
However, this new owner intends to enforce a somehwat radical dress code: every day men will have to wear tuxedos, tails and top hats (during the summer months, men wil be allowed to wear three piece grey suits on “casual Fridays”). Women must exclusively work in formal wear, preferably ball gowns or prom dresses. Each employee will be given an annual $500 stipend to purchase necessary garments, but that money can only be spent on work related clothing.
The new regime starts in 3 months.
Do you seek employment elsewhere?
