I’ve grown to dislike how we communicate with each other. Every conversation involves one person rationalizing his or her own importance over another. Adults that have graduated from college really identify with the experience. They’ll say, “So-and-so is smart, but he doesn’t have a degree!” In their world, degrees preclude true enlightenment. Developers that use one platform will deify their own system over all the others. You’ll read things like, “Java is for stupid programmers and using it will evaporate your soul!”

Recently, Joel Spolsky blogged about a developer who started his own business and failed miserably. After that, he proceeded to blast Agile Development. Why did Joel do that? Because he’s frightened of people starting competitive businesses with tools that he doesn’t use. Joel raises perfectly valid points about Rails and Agile development. Unfortunately, his criticisms were the same exact ones that Wordperfect had against using C++ in the early 1990s. They believed that the new level of abstraction was unnecessary and that everyone should continue to develop applications in assembly. Wordperfect was 100% correct because compiled applications are slower than ones written in custom assembly. As a result, it is now the fastest word processor that nobody uses.

This communication is very common on the Internet. People tend polarize theirself to one belief by endlessly reading articles that reaffirm it. Some dude sipping on a latte at Starbucks is currently writing a blog post about how his Mac is better than a PC. He vehemently believes this idea and will defend it to the core of his existence because he identifies with owning Apple products. This is what happens when people believe propaganda. This man does not understand that the commercials he watched were rhetoric delivered to increase Apple’s influence. He bought the hype because his fragile grip on reality doesn’t disregard all commercial messages as irrelevant.

Wars on the Internet are similar to the real ones. One group of people think that the way they are is way more kickass than the any other way. What? You don’t like how I am? Well, I’ll prove that I’m better than you by using violence! The entire world will then see how powerful I am by way of my own actions. Everyone is doing it. It is easy and fun!

The waking dream is to realize that everyone is telling a story. Actively avoid defining our own existence in terms of others’ thoughts. Invent your own consumer products and propaganda. Better yet, create your own philosophy and vehemently proselytize it. Philosophies are more exciting than consumer products anyway. After you’ve successfully converted everyone over to your superior philosophy, construct another. That old one was holding you back anyway.

Blanket generalizations are the last refuge of the irrelevant. Michaelangelo never scuttled around exclaiming, “If you buy a Craftsman hammer, you can chisel out a David statue ten times faster than those unenlightened Luddites using Stanley hammers!” His life was a single-minded, frenetic burst of action devoted to his own art. This is the right way to be. Then again, maybe I’m rationalizing that the way Michaelangelo lived was superior than how we are living today.