"yesterday is gone and tomorrow doesn't exist," so I love you today for no reason at all.
We're slaves to our ideas, even my idea that we are slaves to our ideas. Why is freedom such a big deal?
The boat that always sails in calm waters doesn't get to learn about storms, and can't help other ships when storms come. The boat that always looks for storms doesn't always find them, but is able to help others find them. The boat that sails and welcomes both calm waters and storms helps both itself as well as all the other ships in the sea.
I feel like my youth was the first boat, calm waters, never questioning beliefs, enjoying myself, free from suffering (a farce), sheltered that didn't expose me to this "real world" that we "live in". Over the past few years I've looked for storms and I've helped other people find them. I've learned a lot about us, some reasons as to why we think, why we do the things we do, what motivates us, what makes us free, what controls us. The answer always comes full circle: us.
We have everything we want and everything we don't want, we are who we were, who we want to become, and who we hate. We live in all the beautiful and ugly places in the world, we're alone when we're with people, we're happy that we're sad, we like things to be easy by making them difficult. We don't understand understanding, but we know how to understand it. We fear fear and we also fear not being afraid. We know we know something even if that something is nothing. We blame others for our feelings, we are self-important. We have beautiful bodies, minds, hearts, beings, but we are ashamed of them. We have fun, we are happy, and we love. We don't know why and for some of us we don't need to know. But we have to know that we don't need to. We believe in belief, in truth, even if the truth is that there is no truth, it still in fact is true and therefore does not negate the presence of itself. We have light and dark, day and night, right and wrong, god and the devil, dualities that exist at the same time in the same space, all of which we create from the collections of ideas. We can't separate ourself from our idea, so we make them smaller, classify them, give them names, give them words. Write them down, remember them, use them, forget them. Sometimes we come back, sometimes we're so close; they're always there. We know everything by knowing nothing, we're sure of uncertainties, we are all artists, and we're serious when we want to be. We're everything we want and don't want, and we realize this everyday. We're all enlightened, perfect, evil, good. We're whatever we want to be and we are whether or not we want to be it.
I'm not trying to say anything, but words come to mean something (but not by themselves). The thirst to understand, the need. What did he say? What does he mean? Keeps our minds at bay. How do you control thought? Give people something to think about. And that is what I'm doing. Why continue to read? Reading, knowledge, collections. Something when written down does not depend on time, but still on space.
We don’t read blank pages. Why not? We never give them the chance. They’re empty, meaningless, but they don’t have to be. This need to need, to have, a want, a possibility, tricks our brains into thinking it’s real. And then we’re stuck, forever, because we never stop to read the blank pages, to see what they say, and to learn from them. Isn't nothing our only motivation?
I was listening to a history of science lecture and still can't spell etymology. Science comes from the Latin scientia, meaning knowledge. Science today refers more to the belief of empiricism, that all knowledge comes from experience (so there's nothing we come up with from scratch, everything is linked and pushed and pulled by other things, the same thing). Philosophy comes from the greek φιλοσοφία (philosophia), meaning the love of wisdom. The term scientist wasn't coined until 1833, and we've been floating around thinking for a lot longer than that. Science invokes reputability, the natural world, how things really are. Philosophy on the other hand is bullshit, and bullshit is hilarious (just ask George Carlin). What interested me was finding out that before "scientist" men of science were called just that (going back to science meaning knowledge): natural philosophers. Natural philosophers studied and still study the natural world. The world, if you will. But we have split up the world into many parts, many professions, jobs needed to keep a capitalistic system afloat. Philosophy is one of those disciplines, science is another. I never used to put them together, what was I thinking?
I'm taken aback by a comment by egyptology teacher told us when we were studying egyptian grammar. We had come across a verb a few days earlier that meant "to think." This day we came across another word, different, that simply meant "to think." And she said. "All lasting languages have synonyms, more than one way to say something." And that struck me, which is why I can write a different email every week and say the same thing over and over again. Different words have different meanings, even if those meanings are the same. Our brains trick themselves, it's all so hilarious!
For the past few days it's been bothering me how we can blame other people for our emotions. Is it easier to push them aside for another day, never knowing, understanding ourselves. Aren’t we taught to classify, to think the way the public thinks. How can happiness be so antagonizing? How can it make others so damn mad? Jealousy? We are responsible for all of our problems. The only person that makes us feel anything is ourselves but why is it difficult to realize that? Internalize good externalize bad. We can’t separate ourself from our idea. Individuals are collections, reality is fear. Do we not provide for inconvenience?
Convenience, what a term. Easaliy-the right to not think. I like it. We're going somewhere with this one. Except, if someone betrays our idea we find a way to make them wrong. Let's talk about questioning our beliefs, better yet questioning our values, our reasons for living (assuming that there are some).
I'm in Italy. I'm not in the united states. These are both two ideas that don't have to be true. So I'm not in Italy and I'm not in the united states. Or I am in Italy and in the united states. Or there is no Italy, there is no united states, so I'm everywhere. I'm on earth, so I'm nowhere in space. A pale blue dot, a speck of sand: nothing. I don't want to say that I am right, but I do want to say that I don't have to be in Italy because Italy is an idea, an idea that needs to be accepted (even if it's forced to be accepted). If I want to be in Italy I can be there, it's an idea, but if I don't want to be in Italy then I'm not in Italy, which is also an idea.
It's funny how counter arguments to everything we’ve ever thought use the exact same logic that we use to make sure that they are still true. The smiles escape me.
I need to be wrong; I need to question my beliefs. Won't we please help each other?
-Anthony
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
hollow earth theory
“Thank you government for protecting me from the terrorists that you create.”
I think I caught my subconscious trying to kill truth the other day. Come to think of it, it seems as if he (I assume my subconscious is an old tan Italian man with a big belly in his mid 50’s who wears a tight stained white t-shirt (sweat around the armpits), dark khaki slacks, smokes a cigar constantly has black rings around his eyes with big Las Vegas sunglasses, who walks around my mind picking and choosing how to exploit thoughts that come in and out of my brain for various reasons) has kept truth drugged up in a bathtub the past few months, and for the most part truth put up a fight, never giving in to his desires nor intentions.
It seems, however, that now truth is finally close to death. The water is cold, and he’s (I also assume truth is a man not in the physical nor sexual sense, so I guess I don’t assume he’s a man and just felt like I needed to use the masculine impersonal pronoun for a thing) starting to feel the pain. My subconscious has almost broke him down completely and all he is waiting for now is to die.
Truth: the beginning and end, the alpha and the omega. Wait. Isn’t that the same definition that the catholic church gives for Jesus? Interesting.
God, Jesus, Truth better yet god, jesus, truth (I never understood those superficial hierarchies where the bigger the letter the more powerful the meaning, or maybe you did it out of respect, but respect for what? and why the respect? for fear of being scared?) all seem to have similar characteristics: they are all excuses.
earlier today at my internship i was helping a lady write an email in english talking about how italians use hyphens. apparently in the word “rispondere” (to respond) one mustn’t write ris-pondere but rather ri-spondere. i tried to explain to her that i understood what she was saying, about the rules of language and the need for organization, but i kept asking her if it really mattered, if it changed the word or its meaning, and if she would be unable to decipher it if there was a letter on the wrong side of the dash. she however was convinced that i didn’t understand since i wasn’t agreeing with the need for there to be that rule. the word didn’t change, what did the rule have to do with our capacity to understand or to figure it out? another colleague walked in and again it was declared that i couldn’t understand the simple workings of a hyphen, and i told her once again that i understood what the rule was trying to do but that i again didn’t see the need. it didn’t have to be important. a long sigh followed.
And it got me thinking about rules, control, etc., how we aren’t dumb, but we can be. We don’t have to think critically if we don’t want to, since there will always be something that can guide us. Like truth. But on the walk home I also was thinking about Horowitz, existence, and movies.
I was looking up 2001: A Space Odyssey (and I finally figured out how to spell the word without word getting embarrassed and turning all red) since it’s being played for free this week at a movie theater near Piazza Signoria in the very center of Florence. At first I was stoked to go, but then the image of a dark room in the middle of the day made my body shriek with disaster and my mind bubble with ooze. Sometimes it’s better to let analogies talk for themselves. It’s not like we just come up with them on the spot, more that they somehow find their way from our heads to our mouth. What a great excuse!
Horowitz was on one last night, performing in New York back in the 1970s. Youtube broadcasted the recorded video live, and we watched it at the Italian family’s house. Rachmaninoff’s piano concerto number 2. We were talking about how he had to be mad, the way his face was moving, body churning and exploding with every note. At one point after another flawless set he pumped his fist to the sky in joy of his accomplishment. We agreed that he had to be somewhere else, that he wasn’t all there. He was in another place, but where is that place and why can’t it be here? For some reason here can’t be there, but here is there, depending on the angle. Where would one go to escape the world? Would he still be in this world just at another part that isn’t as occupied nor busy, a part that we can only go to mentally? It seems that he was there temporarily. And sometimes I feel a little bit of this too, walking, getting “lost” but in a sense more keen and aware then ever. Playing the piano and forgetting where I am, what I’m doing, and once I “come to” I realize that I have progressed further in the song that I had imagined. Where was I? What was I doing? I don’t know the answers to any of these questions, but I do know that when I “go” to wherever I “go”, that is to say, during this “process” that I am experiencing, I know that I’m flawless. I can’t miss a note because I’m not paying attention anymore.
Still on this walk these ideas were swimming around in my brain just about at that moment one jumped from the top of the diving board. Existence. Maybe, during that time, we’re enlightened, or better yet we cease to exist. We leave not this earth, we leave everything. Everything we ever thought of, we ever dreamed, we ever wanted. We stop believing in it all, including existence itself. Because, c’mon, it doesn’t HAVE to exist. And that made me feel a little better about walking home. To stop existing, just for a while, to see how it feels when nothing matters, freedom. From everything, including freedom. I guess that’s the only way. But again, freedom being used as an excuse to do something.
Just about all thoughts have assumptions attached to them, things we have to assume to be true, we have to make true, in order for a thought process to work. There has to be a beginning, better yet a justification of what we are doing, where we are going, and all those other famous philosophical questions that we keep trying to answer as the years pass us by. I don’t want to be a philosopher because I don’t want to fall into that trap. Going on and on about truth, freedom, defining it, arguing it, writing books about what I know (and therefore what I don’t know). I don’t know what I want, but wanting to not want has gotten old. It’s dying right beside truth.
This is an excerpt from my notes a few days ago when I discovered something grand. I have changed the expletive to “Yeti” to keep the intensity and get rid of the obscenity. Hopefully the latter will still find its place amongst the rest:
“Dude hollow earth theory, a theory that states the earth is hollow, a star in the middle that gives life, regulating gravity because it’s the center of gravity. Isn’t that great? Scientists conventional ones don’t accept it, calling it pseudo-science, which begs the question..what the Yeti are we holding on to? What the Yeti are we afraid of losing? What the Yeti are we trying to preserve? What the Yuck? We are our problems, we are who we want to be and who we don’t want to be at the same time, and we keep making one right and one wrong. Why can’t we just enjoy ourselves and be happy, live good lives, relax, what the Yeti is stopping us? What the Yeti is our problem? WHAT THE YETI”
So we hold on to truth, oneness, abstraction, freedom, as well as any other deeply developed theory or thought and then apply it to some sort of function, a way to justify it, to make it work. We create the need, a use, and then we apply it. But for some reason we can’t let it all go, like truth. It was Plocratotle’s excuse for philosophy, and from what I can conjure up in these contemporary seconds is that truth split to science and religion, both having their own reasons to progress the idea, better yet to keep it alive, to keep feeding it as it’s trapped in the bathtub, drugged to do our wills.
Walking around the city I have been pondering, trying to figure out why my subconscious has been hard at work, what he is actually doing, and why he is doing it. I’m simply just applying global theories to one more current and then making my own justifications, ensuring that it exists, not being able to let things go. In another sense I feel that writing helps me to let things go, to get the thoughts down on paper, not necessarily trying to analyze or break them down, just continue the process, making room for more. But I know they don’t have to exist. Do they?
-Anthony
I think I caught my subconscious trying to kill truth the other day. Come to think of it, it seems as if he (I assume my subconscious is an old tan Italian man with a big belly in his mid 50’s who wears a tight stained white t-shirt (sweat around the armpits), dark khaki slacks, smokes a cigar constantly has black rings around his eyes with big Las Vegas sunglasses, who walks around my mind picking and choosing how to exploit thoughts that come in and out of my brain for various reasons) has kept truth drugged up in a bathtub the past few months, and for the most part truth put up a fight, never giving in to his desires nor intentions.
It seems, however, that now truth is finally close to death. The water is cold, and he’s (I also assume truth is a man not in the physical nor sexual sense, so I guess I don’t assume he’s a man and just felt like I needed to use the masculine impersonal pronoun for a thing) starting to feel the pain. My subconscious has almost broke him down completely and all he is waiting for now is to die.
Truth: the beginning and end, the alpha and the omega. Wait. Isn’t that the same definition that the catholic church gives for Jesus? Interesting.
God, Jesus, Truth better yet god, jesus, truth (I never understood those superficial hierarchies where the bigger the letter the more powerful the meaning, or maybe you did it out of respect, but respect for what? and why the respect? for fear of being scared?) all seem to have similar characteristics: they are all excuses.
earlier today at my internship i was helping a lady write an email in english talking about how italians use hyphens. apparently in the word “rispondere” (to respond) one mustn’t write ris-pondere but rather ri-spondere. i tried to explain to her that i understood what she was saying, about the rules of language and the need for organization, but i kept asking her if it really mattered, if it changed the word or its meaning, and if she would be unable to decipher it if there was a letter on the wrong side of the dash. she however was convinced that i didn’t understand since i wasn’t agreeing with the need for there to be that rule. the word didn’t change, what did the rule have to do with our capacity to understand or to figure it out? another colleague walked in and again it was declared that i couldn’t understand the simple workings of a hyphen, and i told her once again that i understood what the rule was trying to do but that i again didn’t see the need. it didn’t have to be important. a long sigh followed.
And it got me thinking about rules, control, etc., how we aren’t dumb, but we can be. We don’t have to think critically if we don’t want to, since there will always be something that can guide us. Like truth. But on the walk home I also was thinking about Horowitz, existence, and movies.
I was looking up 2001: A Space Odyssey (and I finally figured out how to spell the word without word getting embarrassed and turning all red) since it’s being played for free this week at a movie theater near Piazza Signoria in the very center of Florence. At first I was stoked to go, but then the image of a dark room in the middle of the day made my body shriek with disaster and my mind bubble with ooze. Sometimes it’s better to let analogies talk for themselves. It’s not like we just come up with them on the spot, more that they somehow find their way from our heads to our mouth. What a great excuse!
Horowitz was on one last night, performing in New York back in the 1970s. Youtube broadcasted the recorded video live, and we watched it at the Italian family’s house. Rachmaninoff’s piano concerto number 2. We were talking about how he had to be mad, the way his face was moving, body churning and exploding with every note. At one point after another flawless set he pumped his fist to the sky in joy of his accomplishment. We agreed that he had to be somewhere else, that he wasn’t all there. He was in another place, but where is that place and why can’t it be here? For some reason here can’t be there, but here is there, depending on the angle. Where would one go to escape the world? Would he still be in this world just at another part that isn’t as occupied nor busy, a part that we can only go to mentally? It seems that he was there temporarily. And sometimes I feel a little bit of this too, walking, getting “lost” but in a sense more keen and aware then ever. Playing the piano and forgetting where I am, what I’m doing, and once I “come to” I realize that I have progressed further in the song that I had imagined. Where was I? What was I doing? I don’t know the answers to any of these questions, but I do know that when I “go” to wherever I “go”, that is to say, during this “process” that I am experiencing, I know that I’m flawless. I can’t miss a note because I’m not paying attention anymore.
Still on this walk these ideas were swimming around in my brain just about at that moment one jumped from the top of the diving board. Existence. Maybe, during that time, we’re enlightened, or better yet we cease to exist. We leave not this earth, we leave everything. Everything we ever thought of, we ever dreamed, we ever wanted. We stop believing in it all, including existence itself. Because, c’mon, it doesn’t HAVE to exist. And that made me feel a little better about walking home. To stop existing, just for a while, to see how it feels when nothing matters, freedom. From everything, including freedom. I guess that’s the only way. But again, freedom being used as an excuse to do something.
Just about all thoughts have assumptions attached to them, things we have to assume to be true, we have to make true, in order for a thought process to work. There has to be a beginning, better yet a justification of what we are doing, where we are going, and all those other famous philosophical questions that we keep trying to answer as the years pass us by. I don’t want to be a philosopher because I don’t want to fall into that trap. Going on and on about truth, freedom, defining it, arguing it, writing books about what I know (and therefore what I don’t know). I don’t know what I want, but wanting to not want has gotten old. It’s dying right beside truth.
This is an excerpt from my notes a few days ago when I discovered something grand. I have changed the expletive to “Yeti” to keep the intensity and get rid of the obscenity. Hopefully the latter will still find its place amongst the rest:
“Dude hollow earth theory, a theory that states the earth is hollow, a star in the middle that gives life, regulating gravity because it’s the center of gravity. Isn’t that great? Scientists conventional ones don’t accept it, calling it pseudo-science, which begs the question..what the Yeti are we holding on to? What the Yeti are we afraid of losing? What the Yeti are we trying to preserve? What the Yuck? We are our problems, we are who we want to be and who we don’t want to be at the same time, and we keep making one right and one wrong. Why can’t we just enjoy ourselves and be happy, live good lives, relax, what the Yeti is stopping us? What the Yeti is our problem? WHAT THE YETI”
So we hold on to truth, oneness, abstraction, freedom, as well as any other deeply developed theory or thought and then apply it to some sort of function, a way to justify it, to make it work. We create the need, a use, and then we apply it. But for some reason we can’t let it all go, like truth. It was Plocratotle’s excuse for philosophy, and from what I can conjure up in these contemporary seconds is that truth split to science and religion, both having their own reasons to progress the idea, better yet to keep it alive, to keep feeding it as it’s trapped in the bathtub, drugged to do our wills.
Walking around the city I have been pondering, trying to figure out why my subconscious has been hard at work, what he is actually doing, and why he is doing it. I’m simply just applying global theories to one more current and then making my own justifications, ensuring that it exists, not being able to let things go. In another sense I feel that writing helps me to let things go, to get the thoughts down on paper, not necessarily trying to analyze or break them down, just continue the process, making room for more. But I know they don’t have to exist. Do they?
-Anthony
Monday, May 4, 2009
"pale blue dot"
What is the meaning of life. We answer the question by asking it. Maybe it's just my need to find a start and a finish, a beginning and end, the need to secularize, to classify, to break down, understand, and perceive. For me many a philological breakdown can be made by this one statement, and this is what I thought about walking home from my internship at Via di Novoli a few weeks ago.
Firstly, we assume that we are all alive, that this life exists, and that we are all a part of it, intertwined in its web, slaves to its definition, wanting only to understand what it is that we are.
Secondly, that there is a meaning, that a meaning is out there, somewhere, like a fixed point in a cosmos, the truth, the meaning, it's here, it's there, wherever it is, it still IS. It exists, it makes sense, logically, if we are taught how to think.
Thirdly, that we have the power, the will, maybe even the need to figure out exactly what it is. So we create, and we try to understand. We dedicate our lives to answering that question, or at least we start there. I would say most never finish, which would be hypocritical. There are ways around it, saying there is none, or there is but one, that we will never know, that we will never know that we know, etc.
So I say that what is the meaning. That it lies in questions, a topic to think about: the question. A science, not a form of dogma, but the understanding that knowledge changes over time, that nothing is permanent, even if we write it in stone.
I'm reading these articles for a presentation in my Roman Imperial history class and the words identity, culture, and power keep coming about. A title if you please.
Identity: anything that makes us similar or different from anything else, including ourselves. Sex, height, weight, nationality, culture, age, race, etc. Anything that can be made up and used to describe and define ourselves. We have multiple identities and different ones are more intense depending on the culture where one lives.
Culture: shared meanings, shared ideas, shared something. The ability to think similarly, to make the same things valuable, important, worth it.
Power: control over environment. To alter, to change, to create. To be able to do these things, means one has power. Power in turn to create and then maintain. Maintaining by controlling, by creating identities and cultures and then ensuring that they live on, that they are believed in, and so they exist, just like the meaning of life.
I think Carl Sagan said it best in this excerpt from "Pale Blue Dot," written in 1994. The whole article can be found here
"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.
-- Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994"
Firstly, we assume that we are all alive, that this life exists, and that we are all a part of it, intertwined in its web, slaves to its definition, wanting only to understand what it is that we are.
Secondly, that there is a meaning, that a meaning is out there, somewhere, like a fixed point in a cosmos, the truth, the meaning, it's here, it's there, wherever it is, it still IS. It exists, it makes sense, logically, if we are taught how to think.
Thirdly, that we have the power, the will, maybe even the need to figure out exactly what it is. So we create, and we try to understand. We dedicate our lives to answering that question, or at least we start there. I would say most never finish, which would be hypocritical. There are ways around it, saying there is none, or there is but one, that we will never know, that we will never know that we know, etc.
So I say that what is the meaning. That it lies in questions, a topic to think about: the question. A science, not a form of dogma, but the understanding that knowledge changes over time, that nothing is permanent, even if we write it in stone.
I'm reading these articles for a presentation in my Roman Imperial history class and the words identity, culture, and power keep coming about. A title if you please.
Identity: anything that makes us similar or different from anything else, including ourselves. Sex, height, weight, nationality, culture, age, race, etc. Anything that can be made up and used to describe and define ourselves. We have multiple identities and different ones are more intense depending on the culture where one lives.
Culture: shared meanings, shared ideas, shared something. The ability to think similarly, to make the same things valuable, important, worth it.
Power: control over environment. To alter, to change, to create. To be able to do these things, means one has power. Power in turn to create and then maintain. Maintaining by controlling, by creating identities and cultures and then ensuring that they live on, that they are believed in, and so they exist, just like the meaning of life.
I think Carl Sagan said it best in this excerpt from "Pale Blue Dot," written in 1994. The whole article can be found here
"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.
-- Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994"
Saturday, April 25, 2009
half-stream of consciousness
Why can’t being alive by my motivation for living?
I was walking down the street, had just passed a piazza, on my way to school, remnants of the beautiful day still playing in the sky, a man was approaching the same space that I was. Bikes were crowded on either side and instead of stopping we both squeezed our shoulders in, allowing each other to pass, including his little dog. And at that moment (as with all moments) an idea surfaced from my subconscious and muddled around in my conscious for a little while, testing the waters. The more I make them wait the more frustrated and bored they get, and if I can’t pull them from my brain through my mouth they usually go back home, waiting another day to poke their heads out and say hello.
I’ve been referred to as a sea otter, and I like it a lot. I remember one time at the beach, at the aquarium, and a faint memory comes back to me. I don’t know who I was with, but the walls were dark green, black, but green if there was light. Or maybe from the water, the reflections that are just as much a part of the walls then the material itself. Just a second, a young boy, wearing black, turning a corner into another room straight ahead, and it’s blurry. The substance is there but the classifications aren’t, maybe that’s why I can’t let it go: I can’t understand it.
Am I uncomfortable not knowing something? Is that why I walk around thinking, pondering, trying to learn? Walking on that same strip, at the same time when the same man was walking with his same dog. The same bikes, the same space, the same time, the same idea, just a different permutation. A different form, but the same purpose, the same aim, the same function. Whatever that is, if there has to be one, I don’t know.
The first idea was that we move, we change shape in order for others to move and change shape. We work together even if we don’t want to talk about it, even if we don’t know each other nor ourselves. We do it, what, to survive? Surviving infers many things; animalistic, another classification albeit closer than human. War, fear, aggression, and then the individual was born. I think survival is about as independent to human thought as gravity is to the universe. Two ideas, made, created, their creations implying a continuous need for them to exist.
The second idea: I don’t know anything, and that makes me happy. No expectations, no assumptions, no bullshit. Not even ignorance, because knowing how to not know goes away as well. Empty? Free? Both? Letting things go, letting everything go, even the idea of letting go, but again, another “philosophy” that is born by the death of another idea. Why do I keep trying to murder ideas? What’s my problem? Am I in love?
My motivation to learn, to know, I want that to be my knowing of nothing. But nothing, the same, the different, who are they? Nothing, everything, to define it as such has to invoke a relationship. A relationship, things are starting to make more sense, this isn’t “good” this isn’t “right.” Dualities at the same time, the need for one another, squeezing their shoulders inside themselves to let others pass by more easily.
Good, function, the end result. Why is it that we have to destroy the universe with knowledge? We build it back up again, the way we want it, but still being a part of it, hypocrisy. Circles, constant circles, finding the relationship and then escaping it, letting it escape, go away, float somewhere else, not having to hold on to it: letting it go, letting it grow.
Identity, something that makes something the same or different. Classifications, hierarchies, putting things in their place, locking them up, throwing away the key. Intellectual humility? The art of being a scholar means to learn how to be a student, learn how to be a slave to the mind, accepting without question, questioning within limits, learning, getting smarter, and then finally, finally being able to rebel. Why not rebel during the process? Why not rebel in the beginning? Why not never start something that we have to rebel against? A society needs an enemy? We create societies, we create enemies, we create the needs, we control. Power.
I was reading La Politica (Politics) the other night. Aristotle was talking about education, saying how Plocrotes thought it meant to help others find truth, giving people the tools, teaching people how to think. Aristotle saw it more as the continued betterment and improvement of institutions, that is the goal of education. Both, for me, punch this sense of followship, a path lined out, all we have to do it start walking. Don’t mind the things around the path, the hard questions have already been figured out, the hard work is done, just follow me, and I will show you things you already know…
I don’t know what education is, but I know what I would like it to be. I lied. I don’t even know that. Ideas, education, learning, knowledge. We’ve destroyed learning and knowledge with themselves, time to find other words to fill their gaps-NO! Building a house requires it to be built on something else, a replacement, a change of the same, making it still the same because it is different. Opposites, language games. English has about 500,000 words, more than double Spanish and 5 times more than French. Easier to bullshit with more words? Easier to say the same thing again and again? Yes. The same thing again and again, isn’t that what we all keep doing? Vocabulary is important because it is then harder to hear the bullshit, it covers it up, it makes it taste good, and we eat it. We eat it all up, because we’re hungry. We want to think, we want to be happy, so we believe. I don’t want to believe anymore.
Nihilism, the belief that nothing matters. Bohemian Rhapsody, a connection, a relationship. Identity, being something, but why the need to break things down? We are going in circles, moksha. The idea of finally being able to be liberated from the recurring reincarnation cycle and go to the worldly paradise. Right now I’m trying to find the relationships, make the circles as big as I can, and then let them go. You see how linear time is almost un-escapable?
Is it the only way we can understand? I want to expand myself, I want to cover the earth with my hands by using my mind and body. I need to keep traveling, but if all places are the same place? I’m always traveling.
Intellectual humility, I was talking with a teacher about the genius path towards enlightenment. It bothered-bothers me, the path set up for all of us. We just have to walk, the way is labeled. We can walk slow, easily, walk on by, go through the motions. We can run, work hard, become geniuses. We can do both, we can do neither. Why is it that if we stop walking, if we leave the path, that we are either lazy or crazy? Can they be the same thing?
A question about history, I was obscure because I tried to tell the truth. “This could be for anything.” EXACTLY, as I am trying to find the molds and not the copies. I assume them to be there, fallacious? The templates, fundamental ideas, not ones that we keep replacing. The reasons, a different kind of knowledge, and I see it in school. To exploit those that exploit us, keep the relationship even, keep it equal, keep it the same. Keep it identifiable, classifiable, keep the need.
I’m all over the place and I’ve never been so lost. Words pouring out of my hands like drugs, do my ideas not like where they live, are they trying to escape? Or could it be my body trying to get rid of the ideas that it does not like. Can we live together? Are they really leaving? I’m trying to grow, not to get taller nor bigger, nor smarter nor more intelligent. I don’t know what it means, and I think sometimes it’s better that way.
Intellectual humility: holding your breath, accepting truth to be true, going through the motions. After the first phase is over then can we open up, the path becomes wider, the same one, however. Why does genius have to be academic? Why can’t I know nothing? Why can’t I be happy to be alive? What’s keeping me from all these dreams?
Myself. My identity.
Time to get un-known.
-Anthony
I was walking down the street, had just passed a piazza, on my way to school, remnants of the beautiful day still playing in the sky, a man was approaching the same space that I was. Bikes were crowded on either side and instead of stopping we both squeezed our shoulders in, allowing each other to pass, including his little dog. And at that moment (as with all moments) an idea surfaced from my subconscious and muddled around in my conscious for a little while, testing the waters. The more I make them wait the more frustrated and bored they get, and if I can’t pull them from my brain through my mouth they usually go back home, waiting another day to poke their heads out and say hello.
I’ve been referred to as a sea otter, and I like it a lot. I remember one time at the beach, at the aquarium, and a faint memory comes back to me. I don’t know who I was with, but the walls were dark green, black, but green if there was light. Or maybe from the water, the reflections that are just as much a part of the walls then the material itself. Just a second, a young boy, wearing black, turning a corner into another room straight ahead, and it’s blurry. The substance is there but the classifications aren’t, maybe that’s why I can’t let it go: I can’t understand it.
Am I uncomfortable not knowing something? Is that why I walk around thinking, pondering, trying to learn? Walking on that same strip, at the same time when the same man was walking with his same dog. The same bikes, the same space, the same time, the same idea, just a different permutation. A different form, but the same purpose, the same aim, the same function. Whatever that is, if there has to be one, I don’t know.
The first idea was that we move, we change shape in order for others to move and change shape. We work together even if we don’t want to talk about it, even if we don’t know each other nor ourselves. We do it, what, to survive? Surviving infers many things; animalistic, another classification albeit closer than human. War, fear, aggression, and then the individual was born. I think survival is about as independent to human thought as gravity is to the universe. Two ideas, made, created, their creations implying a continuous need for them to exist.
The second idea: I don’t know anything, and that makes me happy. No expectations, no assumptions, no bullshit. Not even ignorance, because knowing how to not know goes away as well. Empty? Free? Both? Letting things go, letting everything go, even the idea of letting go, but again, another “philosophy” that is born by the death of another idea. Why do I keep trying to murder ideas? What’s my problem? Am I in love?
My motivation to learn, to know, I want that to be my knowing of nothing. But nothing, the same, the different, who are they? Nothing, everything, to define it as such has to invoke a relationship. A relationship, things are starting to make more sense, this isn’t “good” this isn’t “right.” Dualities at the same time, the need for one another, squeezing their shoulders inside themselves to let others pass by more easily.
Good, function, the end result. Why is it that we have to destroy the universe with knowledge? We build it back up again, the way we want it, but still being a part of it, hypocrisy. Circles, constant circles, finding the relationship and then escaping it, letting it escape, go away, float somewhere else, not having to hold on to it: letting it go, letting it grow.
Identity, something that makes something the same or different. Classifications, hierarchies, putting things in their place, locking them up, throwing away the key. Intellectual humility? The art of being a scholar means to learn how to be a student, learn how to be a slave to the mind, accepting without question, questioning within limits, learning, getting smarter, and then finally, finally being able to rebel. Why not rebel during the process? Why not rebel in the beginning? Why not never start something that we have to rebel against? A society needs an enemy? We create societies, we create enemies, we create the needs, we control. Power.
I was reading La Politica (Politics) the other night. Aristotle was talking about education, saying how Plocrotes thought it meant to help others find truth, giving people the tools, teaching people how to think. Aristotle saw it more as the continued betterment and improvement of institutions, that is the goal of education. Both, for me, punch this sense of followship, a path lined out, all we have to do it start walking. Don’t mind the things around the path, the hard questions have already been figured out, the hard work is done, just follow me, and I will show you things you already know…
I don’t know what education is, but I know what I would like it to be. I lied. I don’t even know that. Ideas, education, learning, knowledge. We’ve destroyed learning and knowledge with themselves, time to find other words to fill their gaps-NO! Building a house requires it to be built on something else, a replacement, a change of the same, making it still the same because it is different. Opposites, language games. English has about 500,000 words, more than double Spanish and 5 times more than French. Easier to bullshit with more words? Easier to say the same thing again and again? Yes. The same thing again and again, isn’t that what we all keep doing? Vocabulary is important because it is then harder to hear the bullshit, it covers it up, it makes it taste good, and we eat it. We eat it all up, because we’re hungry. We want to think, we want to be happy, so we believe. I don’t want to believe anymore.
Nihilism, the belief that nothing matters. Bohemian Rhapsody, a connection, a relationship. Identity, being something, but why the need to break things down? We are going in circles, moksha. The idea of finally being able to be liberated from the recurring reincarnation cycle and go to the worldly paradise. Right now I’m trying to find the relationships, make the circles as big as I can, and then let them go. You see how linear time is almost un-escapable?
Is it the only way we can understand? I want to expand myself, I want to cover the earth with my hands by using my mind and body. I need to keep traveling, but if all places are the same place? I’m always traveling.
Intellectual humility, I was talking with a teacher about the genius path towards enlightenment. It bothered-bothers me, the path set up for all of us. We just have to walk, the way is labeled. We can walk slow, easily, walk on by, go through the motions. We can run, work hard, become geniuses. We can do both, we can do neither. Why is it that if we stop walking, if we leave the path, that we are either lazy or crazy? Can they be the same thing?
A question about history, I was obscure because I tried to tell the truth. “This could be for anything.” EXACTLY, as I am trying to find the molds and not the copies. I assume them to be there, fallacious? The templates, fundamental ideas, not ones that we keep replacing. The reasons, a different kind of knowledge, and I see it in school. To exploit those that exploit us, keep the relationship even, keep it equal, keep it the same. Keep it identifiable, classifiable, keep the need.
I’m all over the place and I’ve never been so lost. Words pouring out of my hands like drugs, do my ideas not like where they live, are they trying to escape? Or could it be my body trying to get rid of the ideas that it does not like. Can we live together? Are they really leaving? I’m trying to grow, not to get taller nor bigger, nor smarter nor more intelligent. I don’t know what it means, and I think sometimes it’s better that way.
Intellectual humility: holding your breath, accepting truth to be true, going through the motions. After the first phase is over then can we open up, the path becomes wider, the same one, however. Why does genius have to be academic? Why can’t I know nothing? Why can’t I be happy to be alive? What’s keeping me from all these dreams?
Myself. My identity.
Time to get un-known.
-Anthony
Friday, April 17, 2009
happiness, an answer to the riddle
You ask my definition of reality? Well, in that case...
...Reality is everything that we are afraid to question.
I've gotten some great responses and questions to continue our conversation, but first would like to try to talk about my adventures in the Cinque Terre and Viareggio, with a little deja vu and a Senegalese friend I never knew I had (but should've).
So before going off and camping in the Cinque Terre I went to the grandmother's house of one of the Italian families. Easter lunch was on the menu: tortellini in broth as well as a salted bread, both Tuscan traditions, artichokes, lamb, salad, and chocolate. Before this however we were introducing ourselves while entering the beautiful apartment on the east side of the city. Hand shakes, hugs, "nice to meet you"s, the like. All real but none more than when I met Semi.
Just an ordinary man from Senegal, 23 like me, but there was an instant friendship between the two of us, something that was there, or maybe it was that we understood each other instantly. He spoke very few Italian words, and my French isn't up to par, so he mostly said "americano" and I mostly said "si". One of the most humblest people I've ever met, and I only met him for a few hours. What was even better was the hand shake as I left, as if we had known each other for years, had practiced for days, it all flowed, it all made sense. The look in his eyes, pure friendship before we knew each others names.
I don't really know how else to explain it, the whole lunch was spectacular, hanging out with a family and feeling a part of it, the language barrier almost non-existent.
In the afternoon I took a train to meet some friends in Portovenere near La Spezia in Liguria (yahoo maps will help). The first night I had to hike to them, as they had found a spot off of a dirt road to camp. Walking in the dark is scary, and walking uphill with a backpack full of rice is equally as challenging. But the stars helped, and the darkness was relatively soft and subtle, except every so often rock shadows appear to be panthers.
The next two days we camped wherever we ended up when the sun was close to setting. 26 kilometers by the time we left, with Monterosso and the beach our welcoming party. We took the train back to Florence, gather all of our stuff, and went home for the night.
The following day would have been lost if it wasn't for another friend in Viareggio. Last minute decisions meant back on the train to go back to a place we had been before. More lounging on the beach, taking in the sun, living the dream. But the train was strange. After only a half hour I got the feeling that we were still camping, that we hadn't gone back and slept in a real bed, the days turning into one, time coming together. Someone else, this time in the form of anxiety. Kept looking at the sign, at the door, trying to find our way, where we are, where we were, what was happening in that train car. "We've been here before!" And I echoed the thought with my own voice, as I turned around to see the same graffiti on the same advertisement. There had to be hundreds, but the graffiti was exact. "And there's Tony's water bottle!"
Sitting on top where bags are held, I had thought that I had brought it with me back home and had left it there, but it rested with still water in it, and that was when we all stared losing our minds.
We had to run to the train, a different track, a different day, a different time, a different space. We entered and then walked through 2-3 cars in order to find 3 seats, and when we did we sat down, paying attention to nothing. It just so happened that we were on the exact same car in the exact same seats as we were the day before, coming back from Cinque Terre, as we were now going to Viareggio. A coincidence? A very rare one indeed, we were caught between realities. We travelled through time and our brains and bodies knew it before we did!
I think it would now be a good time to continue with a rather dense and maybe even mystifying train of thought. But before that I wanted to reiterate what I thought about thought a few moments ago. It can be a form of mental manipulation of everything that we experience, collectively, as a group. This could also be a good definition of existence if we need that to be cut and dry. Our brains have the ability to group and cross reference loads of information at the same time, and I understand this as having the capacity to link all that we experience into something, maybe a circle, maybe this idea of one from many, the relationship that they have for each other (as they both are the master and the slave). More doors are opened then closed, but it's a nice place to pass by on any journey.
Freedom, from my understanding before I wrote my last email, was a sense of mental freedom from ourselves and what we think. A task of trying to break down the barriers that force us to control thought, classifications that take away from our ability to make things interact. And I saw what I was doing with this blog and these emails: trying to liberate myself from myself, trying to understand what it means to understand. Trying as hard as I could to stop thinking and stop acting the way I learn to through the use of language, ideas, and people. I don't want to sever myself, but I want to be able to realize the conditions and try to understand why I think and why I do, or why I think I do. To me ideas are powerful before they are powerless, but at the same time this power has to be taken from somewhere, has to be created, not from nothing, but from the mental manipulation of what we experience, that is to say, by thought.
So we have this thought that manipulates itself. That makes me want to bounce up and down, jumping for joy. What in the hell does that mean? Does it have to have a meaning? Do we have to put it in a box and label it and keep it from other boxes that don't look like it? I surely don't think so and get the strange feeling that I am repeating myself with different words at a different time in a different place, but if that is true then all these places and all these times are connected, from the way that I think, and that wouldn't make them different. This tells me that these subdivisions don't exist, at least not in my reality because I question them all the time. Maybe I don't want them to exist, but I find that I am much more susceptible to progressing my capacity to think when I argue with myself, strengthening those points that have strong foundations and changing those that don't. Most of them, if not all of them, don't stand the test of questioning. Which is why I think we can be afraid to do it. We don't want our realities to go away, we don't want what we think is true to not be true, so we hold on to our ideas as tightly as possible not realizing that we are keeping other ones from going through us, from passing into our brains and being changed by us. Not to say that this is a constant but rather continuous. My brain tells me it's the same thing. But only at the same moment, which would be all moments. And now I'm more confused as ever, and that makes me happy.
We create to understand, that's what I said. We take what we live, what we think we have, and we make something out of it. We call it nature, we say it does this and this, we continue to observe it and therefore trust both our observations as well as our capacity to observe, another duality if you will (even though it doesn't have to be that way). So we don't understand the universe. So we create subjects, a beautiful tool called language, from which stems many things. We change this language and make other subjects, subjects from subjects, ideas, from ideas, spinning our web to try to encompass this universe that we defined before we knew what it was. I am arguing that we have to define it in order to begin to understand it, discussing the object and not the subject, much like Plato's cave, much like I felt a long time ago writing an email just like this one.
We manipulate our creations in order to understand, and we do this by thinking. Simply by thinking. That's the change, that's the constant. Does it have to always be there? Are we always thinking? What is thinking? The circle continues...
We study the end result, forgetting the process (I see life as a process and not as an end result). We understand the end, not the beginning, and everything in between? Where does it go?
We can't separate ourselves from our ideas, this one we have nailed to the ground. We are our ideas, it's all we have: thought. Our thoughts aren't independent because they need an inspiration, something that happens with the cross grouping our brains to when they are thinking. Could thinking be a way for our brains to relax from trying to survive? Do we have to think to survive? Can we survive without thinking? What's survival? Surviving what? Because we don't live forever, for as much as we can define life and death. So what's the point? Becoming children again? Forgetting all we learned because we don't like it? Do I not like what I know? Is that why I'm changing it? Maybe I'm looking for happiness and I see it in chaos.
Since nothing could be independent that would mean that nothing was free, in the mental sense. We have to define freedom in order to understand it, and we understand it by throwing words at it, a strategy. But the words change, and so does the definition, and I have a hard time understanding this change, even though it's a constant, that it is static. An idea that is always in flux is never in flux with respect to the concept, as the concept of continuous change never changes. Thanks, I needed that.
I don't want to control my thoughts with abstract ones, I want to free myself from myself, I want to be happy. I want to release all the programs that I downloaded, I don't want to be a machine anymore, I want to be an animal. I want to walk I want to dream, I want to survive by thinking, by writing, by confusing myself, by making my circle as big as I can. Pi stays the same, the concept grows, and for me this means that it doesn't get bigger, but rather that it gets stronger. Stronger to be able to let things go, to be able to float, float in space. Isn't that it? Isn't that the answer to our question of the universe? Floating in space, mass, a thing. An idea in one word: universe.
-Anthony
...Reality is everything that we are afraid to question.
I've gotten some great responses and questions to continue our conversation, but first would like to try to talk about my adventures in the Cinque Terre and Viareggio, with a little deja vu and a Senegalese friend I never knew I had (but should've).
So before going off and camping in the Cinque Terre I went to the grandmother's house of one of the Italian families. Easter lunch was on the menu: tortellini in broth as well as a salted bread, both Tuscan traditions, artichokes, lamb, salad, and chocolate. Before this however we were introducing ourselves while entering the beautiful apartment on the east side of the city. Hand shakes, hugs, "nice to meet you"s, the like. All real but none more than when I met Semi.
Just an ordinary man from Senegal, 23 like me, but there was an instant friendship between the two of us, something that was there, or maybe it was that we understood each other instantly. He spoke very few Italian words, and my French isn't up to par, so he mostly said "americano" and I mostly said "si". One of the most humblest people I've ever met, and I only met him for a few hours. What was even better was the hand shake as I left, as if we had known each other for years, had practiced for days, it all flowed, it all made sense. The look in his eyes, pure friendship before we knew each others names.
I don't really know how else to explain it, the whole lunch was spectacular, hanging out with a family and feeling a part of it, the language barrier almost non-existent.
In the afternoon I took a train to meet some friends in Portovenere near La Spezia in Liguria (yahoo maps will help). The first night I had to hike to them, as they had found a spot off of a dirt road to camp. Walking in the dark is scary, and walking uphill with a backpack full of rice is equally as challenging. But the stars helped, and the darkness was relatively soft and subtle, except every so often rock shadows appear to be panthers.
The next two days we camped wherever we ended up when the sun was close to setting. 26 kilometers by the time we left, with Monterosso and the beach our welcoming party. We took the train back to Florence, gather all of our stuff, and went home for the night.
The following day would have been lost if it wasn't for another friend in Viareggio. Last minute decisions meant back on the train to go back to a place we had been before. More lounging on the beach, taking in the sun, living the dream. But the train was strange. After only a half hour I got the feeling that we were still camping, that we hadn't gone back and slept in a real bed, the days turning into one, time coming together. Someone else, this time in the form of anxiety. Kept looking at the sign, at the door, trying to find our way, where we are, where we were, what was happening in that train car. "We've been here before!" And I echoed the thought with my own voice, as I turned around to see the same graffiti on the same advertisement. There had to be hundreds, but the graffiti was exact. "And there's Tony's water bottle!"
Sitting on top where bags are held, I had thought that I had brought it with me back home and had left it there, but it rested with still water in it, and that was when we all stared losing our minds.
We had to run to the train, a different track, a different day, a different time, a different space. We entered and then walked through 2-3 cars in order to find 3 seats, and when we did we sat down, paying attention to nothing. It just so happened that we were on the exact same car in the exact same seats as we were the day before, coming back from Cinque Terre, as we were now going to Viareggio. A coincidence? A very rare one indeed, we were caught between realities. We travelled through time and our brains and bodies knew it before we did!
I think it would now be a good time to continue with a rather dense and maybe even mystifying train of thought. But before that I wanted to reiterate what I thought about thought a few moments ago. It can be a form of mental manipulation of everything that we experience, collectively, as a group. This could also be a good definition of existence if we need that to be cut and dry. Our brains have the ability to group and cross reference loads of information at the same time, and I understand this as having the capacity to link all that we experience into something, maybe a circle, maybe this idea of one from many, the relationship that they have for each other (as they both are the master and the slave). More doors are opened then closed, but it's a nice place to pass by on any journey.
Freedom, from my understanding before I wrote my last email, was a sense of mental freedom from ourselves and what we think. A task of trying to break down the barriers that force us to control thought, classifications that take away from our ability to make things interact. And I saw what I was doing with this blog and these emails: trying to liberate myself from myself, trying to understand what it means to understand. Trying as hard as I could to stop thinking and stop acting the way I learn to through the use of language, ideas, and people. I don't want to sever myself, but I want to be able to realize the conditions and try to understand why I think and why I do, or why I think I do. To me ideas are powerful before they are powerless, but at the same time this power has to be taken from somewhere, has to be created, not from nothing, but from the mental manipulation of what we experience, that is to say, by thought.
So we have this thought that manipulates itself. That makes me want to bounce up and down, jumping for joy. What in the hell does that mean? Does it have to have a meaning? Do we have to put it in a box and label it and keep it from other boxes that don't look like it? I surely don't think so and get the strange feeling that I am repeating myself with different words at a different time in a different place, but if that is true then all these places and all these times are connected, from the way that I think, and that wouldn't make them different. This tells me that these subdivisions don't exist, at least not in my reality because I question them all the time. Maybe I don't want them to exist, but I find that I am much more susceptible to progressing my capacity to think when I argue with myself, strengthening those points that have strong foundations and changing those that don't. Most of them, if not all of them, don't stand the test of questioning. Which is why I think we can be afraid to do it. We don't want our realities to go away, we don't want what we think is true to not be true, so we hold on to our ideas as tightly as possible not realizing that we are keeping other ones from going through us, from passing into our brains and being changed by us. Not to say that this is a constant but rather continuous. My brain tells me it's the same thing. But only at the same moment, which would be all moments. And now I'm more confused as ever, and that makes me happy.
We create to understand, that's what I said. We take what we live, what we think we have, and we make something out of it. We call it nature, we say it does this and this, we continue to observe it and therefore trust both our observations as well as our capacity to observe, another duality if you will (even though it doesn't have to be that way). So we don't understand the universe. So we create subjects, a beautiful tool called language, from which stems many things. We change this language and make other subjects, subjects from subjects, ideas, from ideas, spinning our web to try to encompass this universe that we defined before we knew what it was. I am arguing that we have to define it in order to begin to understand it, discussing the object and not the subject, much like Plato's cave, much like I felt a long time ago writing an email just like this one.
We manipulate our creations in order to understand, and we do this by thinking. Simply by thinking. That's the change, that's the constant. Does it have to always be there? Are we always thinking? What is thinking? The circle continues...
We study the end result, forgetting the process (I see life as a process and not as an end result). We understand the end, not the beginning, and everything in between? Where does it go?
We can't separate ourselves from our ideas, this one we have nailed to the ground. We are our ideas, it's all we have: thought. Our thoughts aren't independent because they need an inspiration, something that happens with the cross grouping our brains to when they are thinking. Could thinking be a way for our brains to relax from trying to survive? Do we have to think to survive? Can we survive without thinking? What's survival? Surviving what? Because we don't live forever, for as much as we can define life and death. So what's the point? Becoming children again? Forgetting all we learned because we don't like it? Do I not like what I know? Is that why I'm changing it? Maybe I'm looking for happiness and I see it in chaos.
Since nothing could be independent that would mean that nothing was free, in the mental sense. We have to define freedom in order to understand it, and we understand it by throwing words at it, a strategy. But the words change, and so does the definition, and I have a hard time understanding this change, even though it's a constant, that it is static. An idea that is always in flux is never in flux with respect to the concept, as the concept of continuous change never changes. Thanks, I needed that.
I don't want to control my thoughts with abstract ones, I want to free myself from myself, I want to be happy. I want to release all the programs that I downloaded, I don't want to be a machine anymore, I want to be an animal. I want to walk I want to dream, I want to survive by thinking, by writing, by confusing myself, by making my circle as big as I can. Pi stays the same, the concept grows, and for me this means that it doesn't get bigger, but rather that it gets stronger. Stronger to be able to let things go, to be able to float, float in space. Isn't that it? Isn't that the answer to our question of the universe? Floating in space, mass, a thing. An idea in one word: universe.
-Anthony
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Dinner and Pi with the Moon
I swear the moon's been following me. Or maybe I have been following it. Or maybe we've been following each other, both trying to understand.
Pi is a letter. Pi is a number. The letter pi is greek, and the number pi is unknown. I guess you could say that even the letter is unknown as it will never know itself. It can't give itself meaning and a purpose, that is where we come in. The number pi, in mathematics, represents the ratio of a circle's perimeter to it's radius. What's interesting is that the circle is not a polygon as it does not have any measurable sides. What's even more intriguing is that we don't know exactly what that number is as it just keeps computing and computing for what seems to be longer than eternity, even though we label it a mathematical constant, meaning that it will never change. Are we admitting that we will never understand it? I guess we don't have to understand all of it to figure out how it works i.e. how we can make it work with other principles and concepts.
A few weeks ago me and a good friend of mine were trying to find sine. Not trying to compute exercies with it, rather trying to refind it, rediscover the concept, create it again.
We couldn't do it. We had never learned it in math class. And I think this brings out a very interesting point. What's with all these finished products? For some reason we have all these things that are done: concepts of the various school subjects, concepts of religion, the universe, language, etc. But for some reason we never study them. We do, however, have an excuse: philosophy. Philosophy makes us feel good because we know that if we ever wanted to know that we don't know that we would have a way. But I don't think one subject, whatever that may be, will ever to be able to tell us the whole story. That's why it's the whole story: many parts, the same story nonetheless.
So this pi that we think we know is used to play with triangles. It works, it works perfectly, even if we don't understand it. In fact, we can't understand it, because if we do its purpose will cease to exist. And I think that this can be applied again to the concept of a god. Something that we make up in order to understand, an "imaginary friend for adults," and we use this idea to put an end to our thinking. We die, in a way, by giving ourselves this "new life."
But I really wanted to talk about all these ends and wonder why the means and the struggles are left in the dark. Let's take history, a great subject for debate (as well as a common one in my ramblings). We study the greeks, the romans, the egyptians, the history of art, of music, of science. Modern history, contemporary history, modern-contemporary history, contemporary-modern history, as well as contemporary-modern history of the art, music, and science of ancient greeks, romans, and egyptians. But for some reason we never really study in depth our concept of "history." We tried to define it last time, with peculiar results. Are there other ways to understand things without asking questions? And again we find that opposites have to exist at the same time in order for them to be valid i.e. life and death, universal concepts and impermanence, good and bad, relative relativity, etc. These ideas, our ideas, that we have seen, are one in the same. We take the circle and make it in to a line because it's easier to control thought that way. We don't give ourselves an out: just a range. And once we get to one extreme in our quest for knowledge and truth (just pick any -ism out there), we're forced to turn back, even though the next step (in the circle) is right in front of us. We have made that wall. Is it easier that way? I think it makes it easier for us to see it as difficult, which is why I think we feel it's a virture to be balanced, to stay in the middle of the range of the line that we took from the circle. But if we have this circle, this trust in ourselves and our ideas, then we'll always be in the middle. But I think it's important to first liberate ourselves from the line, without being self-righteous about it. Maybe that's what I mean when I say freedom.
I'm still studying hieroglyphics at the university (the egyptology class), and they are really interesting. They're not just symbols, they also represent phonetic sounds. There's a grammar and an intricate way of saying and expressing things that is both similar to what we are doing at this very moment as well as completely another way of looking at language. My mind has a field day trying to find the egyptian in me.
I guess what I really wanted to say was: we create to understand. We understand by manipulating our creations. We then study the by-products of our creations without ever studying our creations themselves. We can't seperate ourselves from our ideas; nothing is independent. Nothing, in this case, is free. Not even freedom.
Talk about a 180 (which just happens to be pi radians). That was fun. Till next time.
-Anthony
Pi is a letter. Pi is a number. The letter pi is greek, and the number pi is unknown. I guess you could say that even the letter is unknown as it will never know itself. It can't give itself meaning and a purpose, that is where we come in. The number pi, in mathematics, represents the ratio of a circle's perimeter to it's radius. What's interesting is that the circle is not a polygon as it does not have any measurable sides. What's even more intriguing is that we don't know exactly what that number is as it just keeps computing and computing for what seems to be longer than eternity, even though we label it a mathematical constant, meaning that it will never change. Are we admitting that we will never understand it? I guess we don't have to understand all of it to figure out how it works i.e. how we can make it work with other principles and concepts.
A few weeks ago me and a good friend of mine were trying to find sine. Not trying to compute exercies with it, rather trying to refind it, rediscover the concept, create it again.
We couldn't do it. We had never learned it in math class. And I think this brings out a very interesting point. What's with all these finished products? For some reason we have all these things that are done: concepts of the various school subjects, concepts of religion, the universe, language, etc. But for some reason we never study them. We do, however, have an excuse: philosophy. Philosophy makes us feel good because we know that if we ever wanted to know that we don't know that we would have a way. But I don't think one subject, whatever that may be, will ever to be able to tell us the whole story. That's why it's the whole story: many parts, the same story nonetheless.
So this pi that we think we know is used to play with triangles. It works, it works perfectly, even if we don't understand it. In fact, we can't understand it, because if we do its purpose will cease to exist. And I think that this can be applied again to the concept of a god. Something that we make up in order to understand, an "imaginary friend for adults," and we use this idea to put an end to our thinking. We die, in a way, by giving ourselves this "new life."
But I really wanted to talk about all these ends and wonder why the means and the struggles are left in the dark. Let's take history, a great subject for debate (as well as a common one in my ramblings). We study the greeks, the romans, the egyptians, the history of art, of music, of science. Modern history, contemporary history, modern-contemporary history, contemporary-modern history, as well as contemporary-modern history of the art, music, and science of ancient greeks, romans, and egyptians. But for some reason we never really study in depth our concept of "history." We tried to define it last time, with peculiar results. Are there other ways to understand things without asking questions? And again we find that opposites have to exist at the same time in order for them to be valid i.e. life and death, universal concepts and impermanence, good and bad, relative relativity, etc. These ideas, our ideas, that we have seen, are one in the same. We take the circle and make it in to a line because it's easier to control thought that way. We don't give ourselves an out: just a range. And once we get to one extreme in our quest for knowledge and truth (just pick any -ism out there), we're forced to turn back, even though the next step (in the circle) is right in front of us. We have made that wall. Is it easier that way? I think it makes it easier for us to see it as difficult, which is why I think we feel it's a virture to be balanced, to stay in the middle of the range of the line that we took from the circle. But if we have this circle, this trust in ourselves and our ideas, then we'll always be in the middle. But I think it's important to first liberate ourselves from the line, without being self-righteous about it. Maybe that's what I mean when I say freedom.
I'm still studying hieroglyphics at the university (the egyptology class), and they are really interesting. They're not just symbols, they also represent phonetic sounds. There's a grammar and an intricate way of saying and expressing things that is both similar to what we are doing at this very moment as well as completely another way of looking at language. My mind has a field day trying to find the egyptian in me.
I guess what I really wanted to say was: we create to understand. We understand by manipulating our creations. We then study the by-products of our creations without ever studying our creations themselves. We can't seperate ourselves from our ideas; nothing is independent. Nothing, in this case, is free. Not even freedom.
Talk about a 180 (which just happens to be pi radians). That was fun. Till next time.
-Anthony
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
The End of Belief
It’s amazing the sensation of liberty from thought. Earlier in the week I realized that I had stopped believing in believing, that is to stay, I no longer hold truths to be universal and ever-lasting. I see them more as a continuous thought process that manipulates and changes itself, staying the same in function and feeling but differentiating concepts and themes allowing for intellectual growth (and hopefully some sort of crazy prosperity that has nothing to do with money nor desire). It seems pretty ignorant to say that one believes one thing to be true and that that will never change. Isn’t that just another limitation on learning and development?
Last semester I was sitting in class bored out of my mind and I decided to take an average of the words the professor was blurting out. The average was 80 words per minute (and I only did a few tests so this number could be relatively high). I multiplied and found out that by the end of the semester we would have heard more than 165,000 words related to various lectures. To be even more absurd I tried to count the number of words that were required to read. Something to the effect of 100,000. I then counted the amount of words that had to be regurgitated via the mid-term, final exam, and two papers. The total came out to be 5000. That is to say, of the 265,000 words that we heard and were asked to read roughly 1.8% had to be summarized and put into paper.
This gave me a few ideas: one that I’m strange, two that in general teachers talk way too much, and three that if only 1.8% was actually going to get a grade it was better to read more. Or maybe to not read at all. It seems that instead of breaking information down in the form of thousands of words that we are asked rather to process them and put them back into concise phrases and thoughts. This would complete the process of whole to many and back to whole again and would disprove my assumption that education only exists by forcing knowledge and that knowledge only means destruction. In other words: I proved myself wrong. An idea changed in my head and I was able to build upon others. I think that’s what I mean when I say that I don’t believe in believing.
Sitting in Roman History class today it came to my attention (as it does everyday) that there is something really weird and threatening about history. Personally I don’t think it has to exist, but it is so complex. What is it? What’s its function? And the kicker: does it have to be what it is and function they way it does?
What is it?
A great question still to this day. I would be horribly misleading if I said it was the study of the past. I would also be wrong. It can’t be the study of just the past. As we have seen earlier the past is just a backward projection of the present, a concept of our invention of time used to….well, to help us understand. We have to create to understand, at least it seems that way.
So it can’t be just the study of the past but rather the study of time itself. And this makes a little more sense since time is a manifestation of our need to regulate our world by instilling the farce that time is inherent to nature and therefore dependent of us. This phrase in itself poses more and more doubts than it does reaffirmations of previous ideas. First and foremost being inherent to nature seems a little much, as we are a part of nature. Dependent of ourselves again invokes this ability to separate ourselves from our ideas which only continues the divide and conquer mentality. This time its ourselves from ourselves. I think that’s the basis of an identity crisis.
Identity, merely a name? Names don’t matter, but it seems that we are governed by them (or so thought Edward Gibbons a century or two ago). Identity, given to us by language or better yet given to us by our masters, tells us who we are, what we do, where we came from, and most likely where we are going to do. Four fundamental philosophical questions that also religion tries to answer. It seems like an easier way to contemplate the universe: give yourself a name and a religion. This, again, will make it much easier to go to school and go to work as these important and diabolical questions are answered with our beliefs that they are true. Again, I do not repeat to strengthen the point as much as I do to make more connections with it.
So we have this history that has something to do with time but not just the past. And it’s actually a little more constricted and closer I think to literature than to anything else, as history traditionally is the study of written text. Because if it isn’t written then it didn’t happen. But this pre-history exists, we don’t know how long since in this phase written language seems to be both our crutch and our cancer. We cannot live without with nor without it, both literally and figuratively.
Still in history class I pondered the idea of writing. If something isn’t written it is not true? Obviously not, as many things that we hold true don’t have to be written although it makes it a little easier to understand. Or maybe it makes it difficult to understand as we are limited with the infinite permutations of the language(s) that we are able to use. Something not written is not true? False. Something not written is not real? True. And now we fall back in the hole, the battle of truth versus reality, and in this sense it might be possible that they are not exactly the same concept albeit part of the universe. It seems that something that is written is both true and real, which have their oppositions (and strong ones at that), but by taking their negations we find that while reality takes the same stance truth becomes more evasive. It isn’t clear. Things don’t have to be written down to be true, but for some reason they have to be written down to be real?
At least this is the stance that I get when I listen to history lectures. If it ain’t on paper it didn’t happen. One of the main problems with this is that fact of human biases and ignorance, which are not crimes. Simply the truth that we don’t understand everything about everything (and if we did the universe would have to re-create itself, better yet we would have to create another universe in order to start the process again, as only desires can be channeled and used to coerce people into doing things that they might not want to do) makes it necessary to talk and broaden our own information. The problem with information? Rupert Murdock. It’s funny how most names comes with a squiggly line on word but for some reason microsoft knows exactly how it is spelled.
He owns about 60% of the world’s media comprising all of fox and its subsidiaries as well as hundreds of newspapers, internet sites, magazines and TV shows. The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal (two of the countries most popular papers) are owned by him.
We’re taught that history’s strength relies on its number and differentiation of sources, which means sources from different people at different times that help to get rid of the weaker thoughts and grab hold of those that prove to be more true. The problem with one person at the top of the ladder means that even if fox news, 100 newspapers, the internet, and magazines have similar articles it would be assumed that they are from different sources and therefore information is deemed reputable, becoming believed by us thus making it true and part of the world. This, however, is yet again another farce, the same idea is reading the History of Rome written by a Roman senator. What about the rest of the world? What does everyone else have to say? Why isn’t that as important?
I doubt we have come close to answering the first of the two questions which leads me to yet again another tangent. I think it’s more important to ask questions than to answer then. Asking takes thought, promise, the ability to think and want to mature a thought. Answering questions should in my opinion ask more, continuing and strengthening (or weakening) the subject at hand. The answers that simplify and dummy down these ideas, in actuality, serve for the better of our understanding, as most are inflated to exaggerated proportions. In other words: a long and complex story is never long nor complex, but by using language and other tools we can stretch a very simple and fundamental idea and make it seem important. We are then given these data through various ports that are deemed not only reputable but more reputable than wikipedia or the average person’s thought process. Finally, these data become fact, become, truth. But this truth is dead as it stands still. Nothing stands still, why should ideas?
The function of history, some could say that there is none dependent of our own need to understand. It is cited and used to better our understanding of ourselves, or at least we so think. For the most part it seems like a bunch of studies of people in power. Of governments, of changes of these governments and the reasons as to why these change. We begin to see that names and functions have some similarities even if they can be separated for a moment. What about the average person? Not represented, not as the bulk of the population.
Power, or force based on fear. Fear of what? Fear of nothing. This fear is used through military force, guns, death, defending the imaginary lines that politicians draw to continue to divide and conquer us.
A terrorist is someone that causes fear, using that to coerce people to do something, think a certain way, act a certain way. Power, therefore, is terrorism. And governments, being in power, are all terrorists working both against and with one another to continue domination. Masters keep masters in power as they look to better their attributes. It’s not that difficult to see which makes me wonder why we don’t see it. Too many toys to play with?
It has come to most of our attention that America in 2009 resembles more Germany or Italy before the 2nd world war than it does George Washington (an Iraqi soldier turned president). We all know what happened because history tells us. But what does it tell us and how to we know?
I feel this great detachment from things and the more I look in to history the more I realize of its convention. We don’t write down what we see, we write down what we think we see and become slaves to our own ideas. How to free ourselves?
Liberating our ideas by making them water. Always flowing, always changing, always the same. Moving, however. Our ideas need to start moving. This does not have to do with time nor space, at least it doesn’t have to. It more should deal with our own capacity to learn and understand. For some reason, however, we are told what those words mean and how to go about achieving those goals set before us.
I wanted to talk about Pi and the unit circle and the name and function of god but I guess I’ve written more than enough to get some heads turning. Thanks for all the responses so far. Hieroglyphics are awesome.
-Anthony
Last semester I was sitting in class bored out of my mind and I decided to take an average of the words the professor was blurting out. The average was 80 words per minute (and I only did a few tests so this number could be relatively high). I multiplied and found out that by the end of the semester we would have heard more than 165,000 words related to various lectures. To be even more absurd I tried to count the number of words that were required to read. Something to the effect of 100,000. I then counted the amount of words that had to be regurgitated via the mid-term, final exam, and two papers. The total came out to be 5000. That is to say, of the 265,000 words that we heard and were asked to read roughly 1.8% had to be summarized and put into paper.
This gave me a few ideas: one that I’m strange, two that in general teachers talk way too much, and three that if only 1.8% was actually going to get a grade it was better to read more. Or maybe to not read at all. It seems that instead of breaking information down in the form of thousands of words that we are asked rather to process them and put them back into concise phrases and thoughts. This would complete the process of whole to many and back to whole again and would disprove my assumption that education only exists by forcing knowledge and that knowledge only means destruction. In other words: I proved myself wrong. An idea changed in my head and I was able to build upon others. I think that’s what I mean when I say that I don’t believe in believing.
Sitting in Roman History class today it came to my attention (as it does everyday) that there is something really weird and threatening about history. Personally I don’t think it has to exist, but it is so complex. What is it? What’s its function? And the kicker: does it have to be what it is and function they way it does?
What is it?
A great question still to this day. I would be horribly misleading if I said it was the study of the past. I would also be wrong. It can’t be the study of just the past. As we have seen earlier the past is just a backward projection of the present, a concept of our invention of time used to….well, to help us understand. We have to create to understand, at least it seems that way.
So it can’t be just the study of the past but rather the study of time itself. And this makes a little more sense since time is a manifestation of our need to regulate our world by instilling the farce that time is inherent to nature and therefore dependent of us. This phrase in itself poses more and more doubts than it does reaffirmations of previous ideas. First and foremost being inherent to nature seems a little much, as we are a part of nature. Dependent of ourselves again invokes this ability to separate ourselves from our ideas which only continues the divide and conquer mentality. This time its ourselves from ourselves. I think that’s the basis of an identity crisis.
Identity, merely a name? Names don’t matter, but it seems that we are governed by them (or so thought Edward Gibbons a century or two ago). Identity, given to us by language or better yet given to us by our masters, tells us who we are, what we do, where we came from, and most likely where we are going to do. Four fundamental philosophical questions that also religion tries to answer. It seems like an easier way to contemplate the universe: give yourself a name and a religion. This, again, will make it much easier to go to school and go to work as these important and diabolical questions are answered with our beliefs that they are true. Again, I do not repeat to strengthen the point as much as I do to make more connections with it.
So we have this history that has something to do with time but not just the past. And it’s actually a little more constricted and closer I think to literature than to anything else, as history traditionally is the study of written text. Because if it isn’t written then it didn’t happen. But this pre-history exists, we don’t know how long since in this phase written language seems to be both our crutch and our cancer. We cannot live without with nor without it, both literally and figuratively.
Still in history class I pondered the idea of writing. If something isn’t written it is not true? Obviously not, as many things that we hold true don’t have to be written although it makes it a little easier to understand. Or maybe it makes it difficult to understand as we are limited with the infinite permutations of the language(s) that we are able to use. Something not written is not true? False. Something not written is not real? True. And now we fall back in the hole, the battle of truth versus reality, and in this sense it might be possible that they are not exactly the same concept albeit part of the universe. It seems that something that is written is both true and real, which have their oppositions (and strong ones at that), but by taking their negations we find that while reality takes the same stance truth becomes more evasive. It isn’t clear. Things don’t have to be written down to be true, but for some reason they have to be written down to be real?
At least this is the stance that I get when I listen to history lectures. If it ain’t on paper it didn’t happen. One of the main problems with this is that fact of human biases and ignorance, which are not crimes. Simply the truth that we don’t understand everything about everything (and if we did the universe would have to re-create itself, better yet we would have to create another universe in order to start the process again, as only desires can be channeled and used to coerce people into doing things that they might not want to do) makes it necessary to talk and broaden our own information. The problem with information? Rupert Murdock. It’s funny how most names comes with a squiggly line on word but for some reason microsoft knows exactly how it is spelled.
He owns about 60% of the world’s media comprising all of fox and its subsidiaries as well as hundreds of newspapers, internet sites, magazines and TV shows. The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal (two of the countries most popular papers) are owned by him.
We’re taught that history’s strength relies on its number and differentiation of sources, which means sources from different people at different times that help to get rid of the weaker thoughts and grab hold of those that prove to be more true. The problem with one person at the top of the ladder means that even if fox news, 100 newspapers, the internet, and magazines have similar articles it would be assumed that they are from different sources and therefore information is deemed reputable, becoming believed by us thus making it true and part of the world. This, however, is yet again another farce, the same idea is reading the History of Rome written by a Roman senator. What about the rest of the world? What does everyone else have to say? Why isn’t that as important?
I doubt we have come close to answering the first of the two questions which leads me to yet again another tangent. I think it’s more important to ask questions than to answer then. Asking takes thought, promise, the ability to think and want to mature a thought. Answering questions should in my opinion ask more, continuing and strengthening (or weakening) the subject at hand. The answers that simplify and dummy down these ideas, in actuality, serve for the better of our understanding, as most are inflated to exaggerated proportions. In other words: a long and complex story is never long nor complex, but by using language and other tools we can stretch a very simple and fundamental idea and make it seem important. We are then given these data through various ports that are deemed not only reputable but more reputable than wikipedia or the average person’s thought process. Finally, these data become fact, become, truth. But this truth is dead as it stands still. Nothing stands still, why should ideas?
The function of history, some could say that there is none dependent of our own need to understand. It is cited and used to better our understanding of ourselves, or at least we so think. For the most part it seems like a bunch of studies of people in power. Of governments, of changes of these governments and the reasons as to why these change. We begin to see that names and functions have some similarities even if they can be separated for a moment. What about the average person? Not represented, not as the bulk of the population.
Power, or force based on fear. Fear of what? Fear of nothing. This fear is used through military force, guns, death, defending the imaginary lines that politicians draw to continue to divide and conquer us.
A terrorist is someone that causes fear, using that to coerce people to do something, think a certain way, act a certain way. Power, therefore, is terrorism. And governments, being in power, are all terrorists working both against and with one another to continue domination. Masters keep masters in power as they look to better their attributes. It’s not that difficult to see which makes me wonder why we don’t see it. Too many toys to play with?
It has come to most of our attention that America in 2009 resembles more Germany or Italy before the 2nd world war than it does George Washington (an Iraqi soldier turned president). We all know what happened because history tells us. But what does it tell us and how to we know?
I feel this great detachment from things and the more I look in to history the more I realize of its convention. We don’t write down what we see, we write down what we think we see and become slaves to our own ideas. How to free ourselves?
Liberating our ideas by making them water. Always flowing, always changing, always the same. Moving, however. Our ideas need to start moving. This does not have to do with time nor space, at least it doesn’t have to. It more should deal with our own capacity to learn and understand. For some reason, however, we are told what those words mean and how to go about achieving those goals set before us.
I wanted to talk about Pi and the unit circle and the name and function of god but I guess I’ve written more than enough to get some heads turning. Thanks for all the responses so far. Hieroglyphics are awesome.
-Anthony
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