Thoughts on "self-preservation": Many human "goals" can be stretched, expounded on, then compressed back to the concept called 'self-preservation'. Is this extremely simple yet powerful instinctive sense an integral part of most everything we do? Jayson provides a few excellent examples, though I shall not elaborate exquisitely upon them. Simply: the avoidance of large, hairy beasts with sharp claws and pointed teeth. I suppose this may be a purer, unadulterated... or better yet, non-camouflaged instance ...
I eagerly grasp at my intention to slip from productive pursuits to lethargy with hands that mean to strangle... I'm grappling with my will to get back to writing from the more alluring computer work that has filled my day. I sit pretentiously in Linear Algebra class filling this page with rhetorical dribble. I'll pass an integral form of my psyche onto my surroundings just right after my left armpit develops the ability to, at will, create a different recipe for tapioka pudding thrice an hour. At least I h...
A few thoughts on "meaning". Inspired by GEB. There seem to be three levels in the search for meaning in any particular object: - the realization that there is, in fact, meaning there to be found. - the ideas, conceptions, thoughts and notions that allow the actual decoding of the message inherent to the object. - the actual message. These three "levels" are found in all types of "decipherings" throughout life, whether one realizes it or not. Suppose a steel box violently crashes through the roof of you...
Carrying on in the previous vein: I just tangled in conversation with this idea, so I shall write it, no matter its relative wackiness. Say knowledge, in a way, is passed genetically, but not the knowledge itself, but only, as i mentioned on the last page, the ability to learn types of knowledge. Use types in the way a common university uses the word to divide knowledge: Chemistry, Physics, English, Photography, etc. A single mutation that slightly alters a few atoms gives or takes the ability (or increase...
Thought for the day: "If anyone thinks that God will not give victory to His apostle in this world and in the world to come, let him tie a rope to the ceiling of his house and hang himself. Then let him ponder if his cunning has done away with that which has enraged him." --The Holy Qur'an 22:15 **Is metaphor, allegory creation in itself or just very carefully disguised plagiarism?** ### NEXT UNRELATED IDEA, PLEASE! Egads! I have come upon an interesting notion that i shall attempt to distill into a (mo...
A theme from "The Shawshank Redemption" that I found especially alluring was the concept of a person becoming "institutionalized." The sense in which this word was initially used was this: A man is convicted of a crime at a rather young age (young being between twenty and thirty), and imprisoned. He spends fifty years of his life inside a world that is controlled in a perfectly measured way, giving him no way of knowing how to act if he is suddenly shoved into "reality" - reality being the world outside of...
