With apologies but after the crazy events of the last 3 days I can't help be reconsider... Don't get me wrong I have often felt the song If it weren't for bad luck I wouldn't have any luck at all was written for me but I did have some luck this week.
In a recap after leaving my computer on the Long Island Bus I was pretty bummed as I realized how much I actually depend on it.
For the recap please read http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2011/09/i-am-so-dependent-on-my-computer.html
I mean I need it for my radio show, to write this blog; if it weren't for Twitter I wouldn't have met Bob Abston or Turbo Kitty and wouldn't have the show. I did manage to keep churning out posts during the two mornings I didn't have it by using the library computer. But as they have a time limit of 2 hours I had to really hustle and was able to churn out 3 in 2 hours both days. That's important to me as I believe that I owe it to the readers here at Diary of a Republican Hater to keep up with regular posts. If I write twice a month interested readers won't stay interested very long.
Of people I spoke to, I could see that many were pessimistic that I would ever see it again. I honestly didn't share their pessimism. I guess the feeling is that everyone steals and will steal if they can get away with it. Yet I thought there was a good chance I would get it back for the following reasons(to be sure though I thought I had a decent chance that doesn't mean I didn't worry, I didn't know for sure and being without it gave me some deep withdrawals!)
Why was I (relatively) optimistic? A few reasons. One is I think people always exaggerate in their own minds the moral perfidy of others. Doing so is, I think, part of the human condition. People are less maliciously out to get you as indifferent to you as they are as involved in their own thoughts and problems as you are with yours. It's not that people hate you but they just don't care about you. Cheery though I know!
People are not necessarily as dishonest as we would intuitively assume either. If someone comes across something that doesn't belong to them but has some value there are a few ways they can go with it. They could snatch it and say Christmas has come early! But on the other hand it may actually give them another kind of gift, the gift of a Zizekean feeling of Symbolic satisfaction if they turn it in and obey The Golden Rule. (If you haven't read Zizek I recommend it). Basically it gives someone a chance to feel a kind of ethical prestige in front the Big Other-the Symbolic ethical order. They get to feel pride at the thought that they would never take something that doesn't belong to them and that they are good, helpful, Christian people.
I'm not saying how many people would keep it or turn it in-an experiment of this would be interesting. I'm just suggesting that there are other motivations than the pleasure of ill gotten gains that motivate people and not only will different people choose differently but maybe even the same person would react differently on different days in a different frame of mind.
Having said all this I don't know how it happened. Someone may have seen it and immediately handed it to the bus driver. Or maybe no one saw it. That was what I was hoping before I finally got the news yesterday afternoon that they had found it: that as it was not a crowded bus at least while I was on it that maybe no one would sit in the seat and notice. Because at the end of a route the bus driver always has to inspect the bus. I thought this had a decent chance of being what happened. The other scenario we just discussed, that another passenger found it, I admit I saw as less "optimum" but not hopeless.
I'll never know which way it happened but I owe whoever it was big! And either way I owe that bus driver clearly as he did the right thing.
When I told people I got it back many couldn't believe it. One (very pessimistic) friend exclaimed "that's amazing" to which I wanted to answer yeah, cause you have no faith. I should in this regard mention Diary of a Republican's own Shelly-aka wildthing-who thought postive thoughts for me during this and said "sometimes you have to have faith." Exactly.
During the 2 days-which though again I had some hope-I was in purgatory. I had to marvel that if I had lost my computer for good it would happen this way. Because when I'm here at the library I often leave my computer unattended for as much as 20 minutes, once by close to an hour and the women at the reference desk are always chiding me that I'm gonna lose it. Yet I always ignore them and it never gets stolen. Why do I do this? Well I have no car and it would be impratical every time I go to the bathroom to unplug it, turn it off, put it in the bag, and carry it.
My reasoning is that while it is in theory possible that someone could steal it, unlikely. For one thing people are not all that observant. For another thing most assume they could never get away with it, that they would get caught, especially in a place like a library. Many people in a library are uncomfortable anyway they feel anxious they don't do something wrong, act inappropriate-they fear symbolic-social loss of faith, of embarassing themselves. I mean to return to Zizek, certain assumptions people have about the symbolic order make it unlikely that most adults are going to steal someone's computer in the library if they do notice which they probably wont. Many people I notice even now are very clumsy around computers-like it still kind of scares them as if it's some kind of devil machine. They will probably fumble so much trying to unplug it, pick it up, etc. Then what are they gonna do suddenly rush out the room carrying it open? What about their stuff sitting on the table? They wouldn't even trust themselves to concoct such a plan.
What Zizek shows us and what must be kept in mind in all that I have spoken of here about people and their motivations is social vanity and social anxiety are very powerful impulses. For many they are the main drivers of their actions.
See I see all this as proof that this computer was meant for me. Will you believe me if I tell you that this morning I did the same thing again and left it at the train station?! Half way down the block from the station I realized and ran faster than I ever had in my life. When I finally got to the waiting room you wouldn't believe the noises I was making were human I was breathing so hard from running that fast. The room was empty and it was sitting there. Yeah I am star-crossed! Somebody up there likes me!
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