Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny. - Frank Outlaw
A human being is a part of a whole, called by us 'universe', a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest... a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
This specialization [evolution of the consciousness] must be corrected by recovering once again a generalized apprehension which does not reject any experience - be it color or the sense of the self - whereby the organism lives. For the organism which begins to dismiss actual experiences because these disturb the simplicity of its explanations is headed for that ever-narrowing awareness which ends in presenting itself with a world in which it cannot live - a world not only without sanction but without meaning.
My passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility has always contrasted oddly with my pronounced lack of need for direct contact with other human beings and human communities. -einstein
Been pre-occupied with the non-stop pondering of what I should do next.. and it's a delicate balance between making goals and a plan, but also floating along and letting yourself be taken away on this random, spontaneous ride of life. It's as though i'm on this non-stop quest to figure out life- when in reality, there's nothing to figure out. Things just keep happening, situations arise, things occur.. and the brain just doesn't stop powering this machine with non-stop thinking about everything during it all.. about what is, isn't, could be, would be, should be.. Constantly in a battle between fact and fiction. But a lot of times i can't ever catch a single thought, because I'm not actually thinking about one single particular thing.. but instead it's kind of a feeling- combined with thinking- or imagining, or marveling about things like, how intriguing the spaces between things are.. everything being shaped by time and space.. beautiful mishaps, causality, consciousness, nothing expanding into something.. it's all so incredible! soo.. could perhaps have some truth to it, but maybe that's why so many people now have adhd.. because there's just so much happening, so complete sensory overload! humans and their brains.. adaptation.. it takes time.. and after thousands of years, we're suddenly in this technological age when we're doing 7 things at once. percieving the world through 5 senses. it's a tug of war. So as i was saying.. it's all a delicate balance. and floating.
and I think that only daring speculation can lead us further and not accumulation of facts. - Einstein
The question, then, is how it can be possible for conscious experiences to arise out of a lump of gray matter endowed with nothing but electrochemical properties?
Sometimes i sit and think, and feel my actual body mass... like how i'm just made of 75 trillion cells.... cells that were products of millions of years of evolution... and every cell contains my specific information, and works alone individually on its own accord, requiring no thought. they just all work coherently together and in the end are just what composes... a human body.. slash me. and how human thought itself is no more than a pattern of electrical signals in a matrix made from carbon rather than silicon... I love being reduced to these scientific elements that compose the earth... it just makes me think so much more broadly! ... like.. how insignificant i am... Not significant at all! and some would take that in a depressing light... but i take it in the complete opposite and see so much beauty in the idea ... that there isn't that much substance matter that differentiates me and anything else that exists, so we're just these substances all fluidly living together..
"Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you've imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler" - Henry David Thoreau
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Within 24 hours, 1 bacteria in a petri dish multiplies to 1 billion.
My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.
Laws alone can not secure freedom of expression; in order that every man present his views without penalty there must be spirit of tolerance in the entire population.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, It is the only thing that ever has.”
venice, italy! the city on water.. beautiful city. photos from my trip:
no camera tricks: the sky really was this blue. "Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving" -einstein
The trip alone was fun.. I realized how much I value the ability to entertain myself.. and i think one of the best things that you can probably learn, is to love and enjoy yourself.. because when it comes down to it... it's just me and myself living this human being life.
This is from the footage of Joseph Kittinger in 1960, who set the current world records for the highest parachute jump, the longest parachute free-fall and the fastest free-fall. He traveled the fastest speed by a human through the atmosphere and he was so high up above the earth! i envy this man the most.
It's enlightening for it to sink in that the universe is constantly in motion, and nothing stays the same, and everything is always changing... Chaos theory! The behavior of things are random, and everything is slowly moving more and more into chaos..
What's the purpose in a lot of things that we do anyway? the things that i do, the things that I say, the thoughts that I have, the things that I imagine... why do I? i suppose, all to entertain myself. We all need stimulation. We all just need to have a muse..
life. it's so unique and precious.. i love to think how animate and inanimate things are all in existence, but the unique position that the the living organisms have is that we're self-sufficient beings, transmitting and modifying energy.. we're living systems, composed of cells that contain their individual information, and work on their own accord, adding them all up and composing a being. and it's amazing to think about how we exist and reproduce ourselves...
so if... machine: any device that is not a computer that transits or modifies energy. robot: a system- which by appearance or movements, conveys a sense that it has intent or agency of its own
and.. life systems = obey physical laws = controlled by coded information = self sufficient beings = organic robot machines! let's call us that.
but.. i guess the dilemma: being programmed... O_o
i kind of want to disappear. or, fly away. or float away. it's not that i don't want to exist, but i just want to hoover above the ground so i can see things in a different perspective. mahhh hahha damn gravity for keeping me stuck on this level i love being in the clouds.. taken outside my window:
i wish i could just be a philosopher. wander around in the wilderness, just going around pondering existence. hahha can one become a self-proclaimed philosopher?
an ordinary gear in the ever-expansive clock of human interaction. Sometimes it's nice to be part of a machine, it just has to be the right one.
The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and the sense in which he has attained to liberation from the self. -Albert Einstein
i was thinking earlier that I want to have a minimalist existence. I dont want to own a lot of stuff. things. Like I dont want to know that I own an entire set of eating utensils. What am i going to do with 5 or 6 forks and spoons? Eat with them, yeah, but when I move from one place to the next, i don't want to have to lug them around. That was just a par-example, but there's just a lot of matter and extra materials that we have to own, and I don't want to. But we need to. but I don't want to. It's a never-ending cycle. Everything in our vision pulls at our attention at least a little, so clutter is like a form of visual distraction, and if i don't have a lot of things, then less clutter, less distraction, less stress.
look at yourself.. We're just physical systems too, right? We're just complex arrangements of carbon molecules. Think about how it happens. There's some electrical activity in your brain. Your neurons fire. They send a signal down into your nervous system. It passes along down into your muscle fibers. They twitch. You might, say, reach out your arm. It looks like it's a free action on your part, but every one of those - every part of that process is actually governed by physical law, chemical laws, electrical laws, and so on. -waking life.
I bought a watch today so that I can have a constant reminder of time. I feel like i've lost my perception of it. No longer restricted by time or space.
in which all people experience themselves as an intrinsic part of all that is; all feel fully appreciated and free to develop according to their own hearts' desires without harming others, all feel so fulfilled that they want to help others flourish; and the best interests of all are safeguarded by law.
I'm not so much into this remix of Radiohead's "Weird Fishez", but these kinds of creatures... amazingly ridiculous! creepy as hell.. but still amazing..
i've really been able to relate to this bright eyes song..
We are nowhere and it's now And like a ten minute dream in the passenger's seat While the world was flying by I haven't been gone very long But it feels like a life time I've been sleeping so strange at night... Side effects they don't advertise I've been sleeping so strange With a head full of pesticide I've got no plans and too much time I feel too restless to unwind I'm always lost in thought as I walk a block To my favorite neon sign