Mystical explanations!

Mystical explanations are thought to be deep;
The truth is that they are not even shallow.
~ Friedrich Nietzsche

To relate to their environment and fellow man!

"I do not think the measure of a civilization is how tall its buildings of concrete are, but rather how well its people have learned to relate to their environment and fellow man."
~ Chippewa

If you end up with a boring, miserable life!

"If you end up with a boring, miserable life because you listened to your mom, your dad, your teacher, your priest, or some guy on television telling you how to do your shit, then you deserve it."
~ Frank Zappa

Because it provides you with enemies!

The biggest advantage of extremism is that it makes you feel GOOD because it provides you with enemies.

Let me explain. The great thing about having enemies is that you can pretend that all the badness in the whole world is in your enemies, and all the goodness in the whole world is in YOU. Attractive, isn't it?

So, if you have a lot of anger and resentment in you anyway and you therefore enjoy abusing people, then you can pretend that you're only doing it because these enemies of yours are such very bad persons! And if it wasn't for them, you'd actually be good natured, and courteous, and rational all the time. So, if you want to FEEL GOOD, become an extremist

You can strut around, abusing people, and telling them you could eat them for breakfast and still think of yourself as a champion of the truth. A fighter for the greater good. And not the rather sad paranoid schizoid that you really are.

—John Cleese

He hears a different drummer!

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.
~ Henry David Thoreau

The pursuit of truth and beauty!

"The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives."

Does my idiocy bother you, sire?

Does my idiocy bother you, sire?
You see world differently, through the set of thoughts you have carefully picked over the years. You keep them because they seem true to you, they serve you well, in making sense of your observations, of the world you see. No wonder when you see, read, hear someone say, write something that is not right, not true according to your thoughts, you get annoyed, feel that the world is filled with lots of idiots. You see futility in those thoughts, idiocy in those thought bearers. But what if most truths are relative, what if they are convenient stepping stones, angles from ones viewing position. What if your truths are probabilities, that you find more probable? What if other probabilities also exist, which seem more probable to others?
To me you are a person who see the other probabilities, other angles. Maybe you are right (maybe not). To me my thoughts seem more right, they are the only knowns to me, only possibilities that make more sense, my understandings, my known world. You maybe right, but at this time, according to my knowledge base, my own knowns make more sense. Therefore, I have to come out with questions, with arguments, sent out as scouts, to probe, to analyze, to test what you present. For to accept your views I have to expel one of my faithful citizen, my thought. Therefore the resistance, the reluctance, the critical look. Make me understand, clearly, give me time to think, provide material, don't force, don't judge and maybe I'll accept your position, maybe I'll reject it, or maybe I'll merge portions of your thoughts with mine, an evolution of thoughts. Let the fittest thoughts survive on their merits!

Children should be taught to question everything!

“Children should be taught to question everything. To question everything they read, everything they hear.. children should be taught to question authority. Parents never teach children to question authority. Because parents are authority figures themselves and they don’t wanna undermine their own bullshit inside the household. So they stroke the kid and the kid strokes them, and they all stroke each other and they all grow up all fucked up and then come to shows like this.”
-George Carlin (in his final tour, ‘It's Bad For Ya’, 2008)

The one who walks alone!

“The one who follows the crowd will usually go no further than the crowd. The one who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has ever been before.” -Albert Einstein

An ignorant man follows public opinion!

“A wise man makes his own decisions, an ignorant man follows public opinion” ~Chinese Proverb

Science is different to all the other systems of thought!

Science is different to all the other systems of thought...because you don't need faith in it, you can check that it works.
~ Brian Cox

Cut off fake people!

"Cut off fake people for real reasons, not real people for fake reasons."

Everything we hear is an opinion!

Everything we hear is an opinion not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective not the truth.
~ Marcus Aurelius

Perception becomes reality!

“Thoughts become perception, perception becomes reality. Alter your thoughts, alter your reality.” 
-William James

I hope everybody could get rich and famous!

I hope everybody could get rich and famous and will have everything they ever dreamed of, so they will know that it's not the answer.
~ Jim Carrey

Happiness is your nature!

“Happiness is your nature. It is not wrong to desire it. What is wrong is seeking it outside when it is inside.” -Ramana Maharishi

....to go insane!

It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane.

Philip K. Dick

Two possibilities exist!

Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.

Arthur C. Clarke

Whoever is perfect belongs in a museum!

"Life did not intend to make us perfect. Whoever is perfect belongs in a museum. " — Erich Maria Remarque

Read everything!

"Read, read, read. Read everything -- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window." — William Faulkner

Mental slavery!

“Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery; None but ourselves can free our minds.”
~ Bob Marley

Human speech is like a cracked kettle!

Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.

Gustave Flaubert

Which is more important, to love or be loved?

"I once asked an old man: which is more important, to love or be loved?

He replied: Which is more important to a bird, the left wing or the right wing?"

If a man is proud of his wealth....!

If a man is proud of his wealth, he should not be praised until it is known how he employs it.
Socrates

Wise man and insults!

A wise man is superior to any insults which can be put upon him, and the best reply to unseemly behavior is patience and moderation.
~ Moliere

You and Drama!

"Drama does not just walk into your life. You either create it, invite it, or you associate with people who love to bring it into your life."

A life of constant amusement!

"Because of his imperfection man is not able to engage in serious and fruitful activities without interruption.  He needs relaxation and play, or amusement. Because the necessities of life frequently force man to work beyond the limit within which working is pleasant, the illusion arises that a life of constant amusement would be the most pleasant and joyful. In reality nothing is more tedious."

Democracy and trial of Socrates!

"Though Socrates had survived unharmed through the regime of the Thirty – partly because it did not last long, partly because he was supported by some close relatives of their leader Critias – it was under the restored democracy that he was accused of impiety and of corrupting the youth and finally condemned to death, largely also in consequence of his intransigent attitude during the trial."

Anaxagoras's Universe!

"Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, a 5th-century pluralist, believed that because nothing can really come into being, everything must be contained in everything, but in the form  of infinitely small parts. In the beginning all of these particles had been mixed in an even mixture, in which nothing could be distinguished, much like the indefinite apeiron of Anaximander. But then nous, or intelligence, began at one point to set these particles into a whirling motion, foreseeing that in this way they would become separated from one another and then recombine in the most various ways so as to produce gradually the world in which men live.  In contrast to the forces assumed by Empedocles, the nous of Anaxagoras is not blind but foresees and intends the production of the cosmos, including living and intelligent beings; but it does not interfere with the process after having started the whirling motion. This is a strange combination of a mechanical and a nonmechanical explanation of the world."

Empedocles and evolution!

"Parmenides had an enormous influence on the further development of philosophy. Most of the philosophers of the following two generations tried to find a way to reconcile his thesis that nothing comes into being nor passes away with the evidence presented to men by their senses. Empedocles of Acragas (mid-5th century) declared that  there are four material elements (he called them roots of everything) and two forces, love and hate, that did not come into being and would never pass away or increase or diminish. But the elements are constantly mixed with one another by love and again separated by hate. Thus, through mixture and decomposition composite things come into being and pass away. Because he conceived of love and hate as blind forces, Empedocles had to explain how through random motion living beings could emerge. This he achieved by means of  a somewhat crude anticipation of the theory of the survival of the fittest. In the process of mixture and decomposition the limbs and parts of various animals would be formed by chance. But they could not survive. Only when by chance they had come together in such a way that they were able to support and reproduce themselves would they survive. It was  in this way that the various species were produced and continued to exist."

Radical honesty!

"Some people think I say inappropriate things....
I prefer to think of it as, radical honesty."

If you are neutral in situations of injustice...!

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.” -Desmond Tutu

Then it all evaporated and fell apart!

“Nothing was ever in tune. People just blindly grabbed at whatever there was: communism, health foods, zen, surfing, ballet, hypnotism, group encounters, orgies, biking, herbs, Catholicism, weight-lifting, travel, withdrawal, vegetarianism, India, painting, writing, sculpting, composing, conducting, backpacking, yoga, copulating, gambling, drinking, hanging around, frozen yogurt, Beethoven, Back, Buddha, Christ, TM, H, carrot juice, suicide, handmade suits, jet travel, New York City, and then it all evaporated and fell apart. People had to find things to do while waiting to die. I guess it was nice to have a choice.”
- Charles Bukowski

The economic and social classes!

"You know how I define the economic and social classes in this country? The upper class keeps all of the money, pays none of the taxes. The middle class pays all of the taxes, does all of the work. The poor are there just to scare the shit out of the middle class. Keep 'em showing up at those jobs.
~ George Carlin

In the center of my heart!

In the waters of purity, I melted like salt
Neither blasphemy, nor faith, nor conviction, nor doubt remained.
In the center of my heart a star has appeared
And all the seven heavens have become lost in it.

~ Rumi

The difference between my darkness and your darkness!

“The difference between my darkness and your darkness is that I can look at my own badness in the face and accept its existence while you are busy covering your mirror with a white linen sheet. The difference between my sins and your sins is that when I sin I know I'm sinning while you have actually fallen prey to your own fabricated illusions. I am a siren, a mermaid; I know that I am beautiful while basking on the ocean's waves and I know that I can eat flesh and bones at the bottom of the sea. You are a white witch, a wizard; your spells are manipulations and your cauldron from hell yet you wrap yourself in white and wear a silver wig.”
- C. JoyBell C.

Individuality

"You laugh at me because I'm different, I laugh at you because you're all the same!"

Freedom!

"Freedom isn't something that comes to you comfortably without any struggle or cost. In fact freedom is one of the outstandingly expensive and precious commodities. For Freedom doesn't lie in the outside world, it lies within you. And to attain actual freedom you have to fight with yourself and all the falsehood, deceit and fraud you have been spoon fed since your birth. You have to rediscover your self and your true identity in the world through reason, rational thinking and objective inquiry. Only then you are able to unlock yourself from the prison of your own heart and mind.

Once you are free your life becomes pleasant and easy. You no longer need to suffer unnecessarily and bear pain to absolve yourself. Once your heart is free you become something larger than life, encompassing everything within this world and all the universe. You love everyone and everything and there is no restraint for you !!"

Normal living?

Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car you are still paying for - in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so that you can afford to live in it.
~ Ellen Goodman

Living with wrong answers!

It's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong.
~ Richard Feynman

Most people are never going to die because....

“We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.”

Philosophical systems are never definitively proved false!

"Philosophical systems are never definitively proved false; they are simply discarded or put aside for future use. And this means that the history of philosophy consists not simply of dead museum pieces but of ever-living classics – comprising a permanent repository of ideas, doctrines, and arguments and a continuing source of philosophical inspiration and suggestiveness to those who philosophize in any succeeding age. It is for this reason that any attempt to separate philosophizing from the history of philosophy is both a provincial act and an unnecessary impoverishment of its rich natural resources."

Books are not absolutely dead things!

For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them.

John Milton

A philosophical system is a vision of the world subjectively assembled!

"philosophy seems less like science than like art and the philosopher more like an artist than a scientist, for his philosophical solutions bear the stamp of his own personality, and his choice of arguments reveals as much about himself as his chosen problem. As a work of art is a portion of the world seen through a temperament, so a philosophical system is a vision of the world subjectively assembled."

The bamboozle!

"One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we've been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back."
~ Carl sagen

The you, the I!

You, yes you! What is you (and its inward directed converse, the “I”)? You is not the body, not the legs, not the DNA, not the blood cells, not the immune system. You is a product of a limited part of a body, you is associated with. You is the product of brain, a subset of brain produces you, you the awareness. You are not aware of much that goes on in your body. You are not aware of the process, the mental process, through which you is produced, comes into existence. You is not aware of the process that takes place inside eye, as photons hits retinal cells, the generation of nerve impulse, which is encoded information, its processing and progression inside visual centers of brain. We only become aware of the final processed image, or rather series of images.

You is a product of certain configuration of matter, the brain. Amazing isn’t it that matter thinks about itself, about other matter; contemplating the why’s and how’s of this universe where it, the configuration that can think, finds itself. And then there are the neuroscientists, who want to know how their minds are produced by the underlying brain matter. Matter desirous of knowing its own why’s, its own reasons, its own working, not aware of solutions to those questions itself. Mind doesn’t know how it is itself produced, projected, how it works, what is its connection with the brain? How amazing, it thinks? You is a child, playing with toys, brain being one. Then going even deeper, thinking about the particles making the brain, and deeper and wider and narrower. The collective mind branching, its roots trying to conquer, to penetrate, farther and deeper. Strange creature this aspect of matter is, the mind!

Infectious ideas!

Thoughts are like parasites! They are produced, with certain characteristics, strengths. They infect new hosts, some hosts are completely taken over, some hosts fight back, eliminate the attempts of establishment. Some hosts are carriers, not affected themselves; just pass the parasitic ideas on to other potential hosts. As they pass from host to host, they mutate, change, acquire and discard, giving rise to offshoots and branches, some even compete as new organism. Natural selection comes into play, they evolve. No one is immune to them; we all carry some, are immune to others and actively fight others.

Some are very tenacious, take over the whole organism, makes the taken over organism live for them, even fight for them, even at the cost of the organism’s life itself. They think a few sacrifices would help in their mass infection. Dangerous creatures these types are, very scary. Nearly impossible to control, once they break out in strength. These are like storms, floods, tsunamis, tornadoes, hurricanes, carrying with them whoever comes in their path, leaving an altered landscape in their wake.

So which ones are you carrying?

Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but...!

"Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts." ~ Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1927-2003) US Senator, honorary doctor of laws

Those people who tell me that I'm going to hell...!

Those people who tell me that I'm going to hell while they are going to heaven, somehow make me very glad that we're going to separate destinations.
~ Martin Terman

All things are subject to interpretation!

All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.
Friedrich Nietzsche

The more it will hate those....!

The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those that speak it.
~ George Orwell

I don't know if god exists!

I don't know if god exists but it would be better for his reputation if he didn't.
~ Jules Renard

Look at your thoughts today!

If you want to see what your body will look like tomorrow, look at your thoughts today.
~ Navajo Proverb

Forgiveness is a lovely idea!

Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive.
~ C. S. Lewis

Fundamental loneliness of man in a godless world!

"We can see here that the problem of the true and the false rationalisms [Utopianism] is part of a larger problem. Ultimately it is the problem of a sane attitude towards our own existence and its limitations–that very problem of which so much is made now by those who call themselves ‘Existentialists’, the expounders of a new theology without God. There is, I believe, a neurotic and even an hysterical element in this exaggerated emphasis upon the fundamental loneliness of man in a godless world, and upon the resulting tension between the self and the world. I have little doubt that this hysteria is closely akin to Utopian romanticism, and also to the ethic of hero-worship, to an ethic that can comprehend life only in terms of ‘dominate or prostrate yourself’. And I do not doubt that this hysteria is the secret of its strong appeal." - Karl Popper in Chapter 18 ‘Utopia and Violence’, of Conjectures and Refutations,

Best teachers!

The best teachers are those who show you where to look, but don't tell you what to see.
~ Alexandra K. Trenfor

The inauthentic present!

"The inauthentic present is marked by hallowness. No sense of you is implicated in what you do. Your actions don’t implicate your sense of mission in life or your sense of self-determination. You don’t bring to the present a way of structuring what’s possible that’s individual to you. Your actions don’t highlight your past and future. Instead, they express the chatter of the every-day world. To the person lost in the inauthentic present, death is an abstract subject, and the past has no impact on what’s being done now."

Joy of life!

"So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more dangerous to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun."

What makes you happy or unhappy?

It isn't what you have or who you are or where you are or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about it. Dale Carnegie

Life is is not divided up into genres!

My experience of life is that it is not divided up into genres; it’s a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you're lucky. Alan Moore

To never forget your own insignificance!

To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget. Arundhati Roy

Beauty of forgotten joy or unremembered peace!

Whatever may be the tensions and the stresses of a particular day, there is always lurking close at hand the trailing beauty of forgotten joy or unremembered peace. Howard Thurman

After a good dinner......

After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one's own relations. Oscar Wilde

Life is a shipwreck!

Life is a shipwreck, but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats. Voltaire

The pursuit of truth!

The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives. - Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

Could following culture mean a no-brainer way of living?

Everything pre-cooked, pre-thought out. Listen to what your local culture dictates, wear what majority is following, read what's popular. Is culture an excuse for thinking, peering deep, poking life with penetrating thoughts. Is the purpose of culture to prevent the revolt of the self, self scrutiny. Is it to avoid the question, why live this way? Is culture there to keep us in half awake state, is it a lullaby to prevent rigorous self analysis?

“They” are artificial!

"But how do you actually carry that out? What should you resolutely do? The anxiety that facing death brings doesn’t tell you. It simply forces you to realize that it’s your life to live and your death that you need to face up to. Of course, “They” have ways that they’d like you to deal with death (which means to avoid it!). And “They” have ways that they’d like you to live. But in anxiety, “They” don’t appeal to you; “They” have no persuasive force, and you can’t get over the fact that “They” are artificial."

One day closer to death!

"Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day, You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way. Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town, Waiting for someone or something to show you the way. Tired of lying in the sunshine, staying home to watch the rain, You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today. And then one day you find ten years have got behind you. No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but it’s sinking And racing around to come up behind you again. The sun is the same in the relative way, but you’re older. Shorter of breath and one day closer to death." Pink Floyd - “Time”

How does an infinite life makes living boring?

Theoretical/imagined infinite life, that is. But you wouldn’t value the moments. You’d forever put things off. Really! Would you? You would be born and then your tissue would start multiplying. You would grow to your full stature, growth would stop. Everything would be same except senescence. Cells, tissue and organs would not show signs of aging and deterioration. Body would replace cells constantly, young cells. You still would have to eat, drink, pay bills and taxes. You could still die of natural causes. You would still have a body made of organic matter and bones that could still break and shatter if they encounter violent forces. You would still have needs that need to be met. You would have to work or no money. Infinite natural life would not mean an infinite money and resources to live off. You would still get sick, viruses, bacteria and such stuff still being around. Your cells and tissue would not age. You would still need sleep, still get tired, stressed, depressed. You would still live 1 minute, 1 hour, 1 day at a time, as you do now.

...to conceal his thoughts!

Words were not given to man in order to conceal his thoughts José Saramago

“All sales are final.”

"The moral of the story is clear: When you live with death, as part of the very way in which you approach life, you take your life more seriously. The embrace of death invigorates life. You invest each moment with seriousness. You ask real questions about why you should live in this way as opposed to that way. Each moment matters. After all, you realize that you aren’t going to get a mulligan or a do-over at any point. When you make choices in life, it’s like the sign in the store window: “All sales are final.”"

What to do with ones life?

Knowing that one day I am going to die does make life more valuable, even precious. But the question is, what am I to do with this precious cargo? Its already running out, this fuel of living and its been depleting since my birth. The burden of figuring out the answer is too big a responsibility. No one knows the answer, no one. Everyone has a vague opinion, but that doesn't help. Your answer is not my solution. It doesn't fit me. It may have something that would provide food for thinking, but that's all it is. Heidegger, Kierkegaard, Sartre, no one helps! They only make you more aware of the problem, makes you aware that the rabbit hole goes much deeper!

That’s all, folks!

"Can you do that, honestly, and not in a halfhearted manner? Can you embrace your finitude? Really embrace the fact that Porky Pig could rip through the screen of your life now and say, “That’s all, folks!” Can you keep it up in a way that incorporates it into the way you live?"

Embracing death, your death!

"Essentially, Heidegger wants you to see that you shouldn’t treat death as an event that’s coming closer to you with every passing moment, like a train slowly approaching from the distance. Thinking this way has the effect of putting distance between you and your death, making it something foreign and external to you and to what it means to live your life now, for you to exist. It’s inauthentic because: It makes death an external event instead of an internal way of being. It makes death a passive happening as opposed to an active way in which you can actually live. Authentically embracing death doesn’t mean waiting for the event to occur; it means running toward it. Only by taking the bull by the horns and taking an active stance on death can you live a life that’s truly yours. Odd as it may sound, you have to learn to make death into a way to live."

Opening Pandora’s box

"In the story of Pandora’s box, Pandora receives a box that the gods tell her not to open under any circumstances. Curiosity and the lure of the forbidden are too much for Pandora, and she eventually opens the box, which releases all the ills and troubles of the world. At the bottom of the box, however, is hope. As often interpreted, hope is the one consolation allowed to humans for the host of troubles facing them — the one consolation we have to help us through life. In a sense, when existentialists announced the death of God, they opened a Pandora’s box, out of which flew the troubles of meaninglessness, anguish, and forlornness. But at bottom, what the existentialists offer is hope — hope that by opening the box and facing these hardships that, after all, were sitting there waiting all along, we can find a way of coping with them. For Sartre in particular, the hope at the bottom of the box is freedom."

Your own inevitable engagement in life!

"Facing the reality of your own mortality is, for Sartre and the existentialists, an awakening experience. If you respond to it properly, if you don’t run from it, it heightens your awareness of your own inevitable engagement in life: the degree to which your life is a choice and the degree to which that choice is yours."

“Intellectual tourists”

"The fact that perusing this information requires no risk, no commitment, and no time investment invites people to become what Kierkegaard calls You dabble here, you dabble there; no degree of superficiality is low enough to stop a person from becoming an expert in everything. Don’t like what an expert said about X? Type it into a search engine, and in 10 seconds you can play at being a serious devotee to that question. On some sites, anyone can be a contributor, no expertise needed. You can act just like an expert in no time without actually getting involved. Sure, you don’t really understand the issues, but armed with your informational sound bites, you look like you do."

All people are eventually assimilated into “the public.”

"The media demand that you have more and more opinions about more and more topics. They seek to divide your attention until it’s so thin that you can spend only minutes on each topic, essentially making your connection to the issues superficial. Of course, another reason the media are so dangerous is that they give the crowd an ever greater appearance of strength, scope, and objectivity. Eventually, the temptations of the media are too great for many to resist. Eventually, as the Borg says in Star Trek: The Next Generation, resistance is futile. The omnipresent temptations of the media eventually assure that all people are eventually assimilated into “the public.”"

The crowd is cowardice!

"As Kierkegaard puts it, in the crowd each individual “contributes his share of cowardice to ‘the cowardice’ which is the crowd.” Of course, although the crowd is cowardice, within it people quickly acquire a false feeling of courage. No wonder: Within the crowd, people become willing to carry out actions that they otherwise may not. Think of a crowd riot. Although it’s possible that no one person has the courage to riot, you can hide behind your anonymity as a crowd dweller and avoid the consequences of your actions. In your hidden form, you’ve become unaccountable. You draw a false strength from your invisibility and from the sheer numbers around you."

Individual existence requires great courage!

"Individual existence requires great courage. You have to stand on your own two feet and face up to the mysteries and risk involved in making your own decisions about living. After you’re safely hidden within the group, your choices can’t be risky, because everyone understands and approves them. Best of all, if your choices don’t work out, everyone is at fault, and all can share the blame."

Crowd-dwelling!

"crowd-dwelling requires a detachment from your own life. The crowd-dweller avoids (mostly due to fear) grappling with how to respond to the very concrete and particular situations he lives through. The crowd-dweller doesn’t want to take on the risk of embracing an individual path. Instead, he detaches from his own existence and seeks to express what’s common to everyone’s experiences, losing touch with his own particular life. What he does and his motivation for pursuing it aren’t his own."

You must face existence alone!

"Kierkegaard suggests that living authentically, or living in truth, can occur only to an individual. Passionately living life to the fullest can’t occur for a person as a member of a group because in the crowd, you aren’t an individual. As a result, “the prize” must be claimed outside the hands of the crowd. To win it, you must face existence alone."

The approximate route to truth is a dead end!

"Kierkegaard insists that the approximate route to truth is a dead end when it comes to dealing with the personal questions central to your existence. This conclusion shouldn’t surprise you. When you turn to approximation to deal with personal questions about life and about existence, it’s clear that you don’t want to be deeply involved in the issue of your ideal’s truth. That would be too risky and would put too much responsibility on you. Turning to approximation shows a lack of courage. You don’t want risk or mystery. You want assurance from the outside that your choices are the right ones. You want life to make sense. You want your existence to yield to reason."

No one wants to pursue a nonexistent fiction!

"Living in the truth, however, requires an interesting mix of states internal to the person in question. For one, to be passionate about an ideal means wanting that ideal to correspond to something in reality. If you believe in God, you want God to actually exist. Passionate people don’t dismiss such concerns; they take them very seriously. This intense gravity and seriousness that attach to life choices cause them to spark anxiety in you. After all, you want there to be a real aspect to what you devote your life to, don’t you? No one wants to pursue a nonexistent fiction!"

Mind-reading scan locates site of meaning in the brain

Mind-reading scan locates site of meaning in the brain - health - 16 November 2012 - New Scientist

"This type of pattern recognition approach is a very exciting scientific tool for investigating how and where knowledge is represented in the brain," says Zoe Woodhead at University College London, who wasn't involved in the study. "Words that mean the same thing in different languages activate the same set of neurons encoding that concept, regardless of the fact that the two words look and sound completely different."

However, the brain patterns that Correia identified were unique to each person. Brains are like faces - the eyes, nose and mouth are all in the same place, but the details can be different, says Davis. "The meanings might be stored in the same area, but the actual neurons would be idiosyncratic." To read someone's mind, a machine would first need to learn that individual's unique representation of each word. "You would have to scan a person as they thought their way through a dictionary," says Davis.

Don’t think of life as a problem that needs to be solved!

"As 20th-century existentialist Gabriel Marcel once put it, don’t think of life as a problem that needs to be solved. That’s not what it means to be in a relationship with life. Instead, it’s what it means to be in a confrontation with life. It’s hostility! How to live life isn’t a puzzle that you try to conquer. Instead, life is something you need to strive to be — to get involved with. Face it — your relationship with life is the most intense bond you’ll ever have. Figure out how to cultivate that relationship in just the right way. Treat life with the respect that it deserves."

Mystery and risk are what give life that weight!

"David Hume, a famous 18th-century philosopher, once said about life that “The whole is a riddle, an enigma, an inexplicable mystery.” Camus feels strongly that “doctrines that explain everything to me also debilitate me at the same time.” Camus’s great point captures what we’re saying: He feels offended by the desire to explain everything about life, because such explanations would “relieve” him, as he put it, of the “weight of my own life.” Mystery and risk are what give life that weight; they’re the fuel from which the fire of passion burns."

Talking nonsense!

Talking nonsense is the sole privilege mankind possesses over the other organisms. It's by talking nonsense that one gets to the truth! I talk nonsense, therefore I'm human Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Things are true or false in themselves.

"All the martyrs in the history of the world are not sufficient to establish the correctness of an opinion. Martyrdom, as a rule, establishes the sincerity of the martyr, — never the correctness of his thought. Things are true or false in themselves. Truth cannot be affected by opinions; it cannot be changed, established, or affected by martyrdom. An error cannot be believed sincerely enough to make it a truth." ~ Robert Green Ingersoll – The Great Infidels (1881)

If a human disagrees with you, let him live.

Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another. Carl Sagan

Never apologise for being correct!

"Many people, especially ignorant people, want to punish you for speaking the truth, for being correct, for being you. Never apologise for being correct, or for being years ahead of your time. If you're right and you know it, speak your mind. Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is still the truth" -- Gandhi

Many of life's failures are people who.....

When I got home that night as my wife served dinner, I held her hand and said, I've got something to tell you. She sat down and ate quietly. Again I observed the hurt in her eyes. Suddenly I didn't know how to open my mouth. But I had to let her know what I was thinking. I want a divorce. I raised the topic calmly. She didn't seem to be annoyed by my words, instead she asked me softly, why? I avoided her question. This made her angry. She threw away the chopsticks and shouted at me, you are not a man! That night, we didn't talk to each other. She was weeping. I knew she wanted to find out what had happened to our marriage. But I could hardly give her a satisfactory answer; she had lost my heart to Jane. I didn't love her anymore. I just pitied her! With a deep sense of guilt, I drafted a divorce agreement which stated that she could own our house, our car, and 30% stake of my company. She glanced at it and then tore it into pieces. The woman who had spent ten years of her life with me had become a stranger. I felt sorry for her wasted time, resources and energy but I could not take back what I had said for I loved Jane so dearly. Finally she cried loudly in front of me, which was what I had expected to see. To me her cry was actually a kind of release. The idea of divorce which had obsessed me for several weeks seemed to be firmer and clearer now. The next day, I came back home very late and found her writing something at the table. I didn't have supper but went straight to sleep and fell asleep very fast because I was tired after an eventful day with Jane. When I woke up, she was still there at the table writing. I just did not care so I turned over and was asleep again. In the morning she presented her divorce conditions: she didn't want anything from me, but needed a month's notice before the divorce. She requested that in that one month we both struggle to live as normal a life as possible. Her reasons were simple: our son had his exams in a month's time and she didn't want to disrupt him with our broken marriage. This was agreeable to me. But she had something more, she asked me to recall how I had carried her into out bridal room on our wedding day. She requested that every day for the month's duration I carry her out of our bedroom to the front door every morning. I thought she was going crazy. Just to make our last days together bearable I accepted her odd request. I told Jane about my wife's divorce conditions. . She laughed loudly and thought it was absurd. No matter what tricks she applies, she has to face the divorce, she said scornfully. My wife and I hadn't had any body contact since my divorce intention was explicitly expressed. So when I carried her out on the first day, we both appeared clumsy. Our son clapped behind us, daddy is holding mommy in his arms. His words brought me a sense of pain. From the bedroom to the sitting room, then to the door, I walked over ten meters with her in my arms. She closed her eyes and said softly; don't tell our son about the divorce. I nodded, feeling somewhat upset. I put her down outside the door. She went to wait for the bus to work. I drove alone to the office. On the second day, both of us acted much more easily. She leaned on my chest. I could smell the fragrance of her blouse. I realized that I hadn't looked at this woman carefully for a long time. I realized she was not young any more. There were fine wrinkles on her face, her hair was graying! Our marriage had taken its toll on her. For a minute I wondered what I had done to her. On the fourth day, when I lifted her up, I felt a sense of intimacy returning. This was the woman who had given ten years of her life to me. On the fifth and sixth day, I realized that our sense of intimacy was growing again. I didn't tell Jane about this. It became easier to carry her as the month slipped by. Perhaps the everyday workout made me stronger. She was choosing what to wear one morning. She tried on quite a few dresses but could not find a suitable one. Then she sighed, all my dresses have grown bigger. I suddenly realized that she had grown so thin, that was the reason why I could carry her more easily. Suddenly it hit me... she had buried so much pain and bitterness in her heart. Subconsciously I reached out and touched her head. Our son came in at the moment and said, Dad, it's time to carry mom out. To him, seeing his father carrying his mother out had become an essential part of his life. My wife gestured to our son to come closer and hugged him tightly. I turned my face away because I was afraid I might change my mind at this last minute. I then held her in my arms, walking from the bedroom, through the sitting room, to the hallway. Her hand surrounded my neck softly and naturally. I held her body tightly; it was just like our wedding day. But her much lighter weight made me sad. On the last day, when I held her in my arms I could hardly move a step. Our son had gone to school. I held her tightly and said, I hadn't noticed that our life lacked intimacy. I drove to office.... jumped out of the car swiftly without locking the door. I was afraid any delay would make me change my mind...I walked upstairs. Jane opened the door and I said to her, Sorry, Jane, I do not want the divorce anymore. She looked at me, astonished, and then touched my forehead. Do you have a fever? She said. I moved her hand off my head. Sorry, Jane, I said, I won't divorce. My marriage life was boring probably because she and I didn't value the details of our lives, not because we didn't love each other anymore. Now I realize that since I carried her into my home on our wedding day I am supposed to hold her until death do us apart. Jane seemed to suddenly wake up. She gave me a loud slap and then slammed the door and burst into tears. I walked downstairs and drove away. At the floral shop on the way, I ordered a bouquet of flowers for my wife. The salesgirl asked me what to write on the card. I smiled and wrote, I'll carry you out every morning until death do us apart. That evening I arrived home, flowers in my hands, a smile on my face, I run up stairs, only to find my wife in the bed - dead. My wife had been fighting CANCER for months and I was so busy with Jane to even notice. She knew that she would die soon and she wanted to save me from the whatever negative reaction from our son, in case we push through with the divorce.-- At least, in the eyes of our son--- I'm a loving husband.... The small details of your lives are what really matter in a relationship. It is not the mansion, the car, property, the money in the bank. These create an environment conducive for happiness but cannot give happiness in themselves. So find time to be your spouse's friend and do those little things for each other that build intimacy. Do have a real happy marriage! If you don't share this, nothing will happen to you. If you do, you just might save a marriage. Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.

A passionate life!

"A life of engaged passion reveals at least two qualities. A passionate life emphasizes how you go about living and not what you end up actually doing. Living passionately means cultivating a bond with your own life that doesn’t approach it as a problem to be solved, but as a relationship that you need to involve yourself in and remain open to."

You get entangled in your concern with the world

"When you’re a being-in-the-midst-of-the-world, you obscure your mine-ness. You start to think of what you are as being simply defined by the projects that you undertake and how they’re structured by the public, by others, or by society at large. You think of yourself entirely in terms of how “They” dictate that things are. As a result, you don’t take responsibility for deciding the direction of your own life. Heidegger says you get entangled in your concern with the world."

In the everyday, you’re not an “I-Self” — you’re a “They-Self.”

" It’s important to grasp Heidegger’s main point. He isn’t saying that what’s most basic to your existence is a you that then gets overrun by the “They.” Instead, the most basic aspect of your existence is the “They.” In the everyday, you’re not an “I-Self” — you’re a “They-Self.” Your most basic mode of being is a kind of robotic conformity. Still, if you want to be an individual, this is where you must start; your individual self must emerge from your life in the everyday. Without an everyday self to function as the backdrop, your own individuality isn’t really possible."

Dialogue anticipates truth

"....the dialogical structure of language itself anticipates ideals of truth, freedom, justice, and happiness.... Dialogue anticipates truth, insofar as interlocutors are oriented toward reaching a final consensus on what is or should be; it anticipates freedom, insofar as they remain open to each other's truth claims, unconstrained by prejudice; it anticipates justice, insofar as they question one another as equals; and it anticipates happiness, insofar as they seek reconciliation with the self and other in fulfilling community." --Ingram, on Habermas

You become that faceless mass!

"In your everyday existence, you’re a bit of a robot. That’s right. In your everyday mode of life, you’re plugged in to the world of the general public in a way that you become that faceless mass. That means that the “They” isn’t something foreign to you. It is you. When you’re within the “They,” doing what “They” do, as “They” do it, an odd kind of concern overtakes you, one that guides your way of inter-acting. It’s called distantiality. Within the “They,” you’re concerned not to stand out in any way. You seek to mirror the norms and behaviors of others, and you don’t focus on cultivating differences of any kind."

Being-among-one-another

“The they, which supplies the answer to the who of everyday Dasein, is the nobody to whom every Dasein has always already surrendered itself, in its being-among-one-another.” Heidegger

Who are you, in the everyday of your life?

"When you use those tools or take on those roles, in the everyday sense, you do so as anyone. As a result, Heidegger’s answer to the question “Who are you, in the everyday of your life?” is interesting. He says, “Everyone is the other, and no one is himself.”"

Appeal to ignorance

"A lot of people might say, "Well, you can't prove metaphysical idealism is false, can you?". (These are the sort of people who think The Matrix has deep philosophical significance.) Arguments like that are pretty lame, though; they commit the fallacy of appeal to ignorance. You appeal to ignorance when your only premise in support of a claim is that you or your opponent can't show the claim is false, i.e., you are ignorant of any evidence that would disprove it. But that kind of ignorance doesn't prove anything. Think about it: I can't prove the universe didn't come into existence five minutes ago, complete with "historical" records and "memories," but the fact that I can't prove it's false doesn't make it true, or even plausible. I can't prove there isn't an invisible elephant (with no odor or any sensible properties) in my backyard. But if I seriously concluded on the basis of my ignorance of reasons for disproof that there were such an elephant, you would not say "Ms. LaFave, you are such a deep thinker"; you would say "Ms. LaFave, you are out of your mind". "

Viruses are capable of outmanoeuvring the ability of bacteria to commit 'suicide,' new research shows

Viruses are capable of outmanoeuvring the ability of bacteria to commit 'suicide,' new research shows

In an extraordinary example of altruistic behaviour, bacteria are capable of giving up their lives rather than allowing a viral infection to spread through their population. Now, new research has shown that viruses have evolved a mechanism that blocks bacteria from killing themselves.

These rare mutants produce an antitoxin made of the genetic material RNA. Because the antitoxin is similar to an antitoxin normally manufactured by the bacteria, it prevents the toxin from completing its lethal function, and the virus can continue replicating without becoming a victim of the host's defensive system.

I hate everyone

I am free of all prejudice. I hate everyone equally. W.C. Fields

Preparing themselves for dying and death

Ordinary people seem not to realize that those who really apply themselves in the right way to philosophy are directly and of their own accord preparing themselves for dying and death. If this is true, and they have actually been looking forward to death all their lives, it would of course be absurd to be troubled when the thing comes for which they have so long been preparing and looking forward. —SOCRATES, PHAEDO

In a short while I will cease to exist!

"Here I am, a highly organized pattern of mass and energy, one of seven billion, insignificant in any objective accounting of the world. And in a short while I will cease to exist. What am I to the universe? Practically nothing. Yet the certainty of my death makes my life more significant. My joy in life, in my children, my love of dogs, running and climbing, books and music, the cobalt blue sky, are meaningful because I will come to an end. And that is as it should be. I do not know what will come afterward, if there is an afterward in the usual sense of the word, but whatever it is, I know in my bones that everything is for the best."

Nobody is immune from self-deception and self-delusion!

"Nobody is immune from self-deception and self-delusion. We all have intricate, subliminal defense mechanisms that allow us to retain beliefs that are dear to us, despite contravening facts. September 11, the Iraq debacle, and the Lehman Brothers' bankruptcy vividly demonstrate that the "elite" suffer from these failures of common sense as much as anybody else. A Caltech colleague, the physicist Richard Feynman, said "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool." Our pathological propensity for interpreting any event in the light of what we want to believe is exactly why double-blind experimental protocols are so essential in science and medicine. They root out the experimentalist's hidden biases, which otherwise contaminate the results."

Growing up is unsettling to many people!

"If we honestly seek a single, rational, and intellectually consistent view of the cosmos and everything in it, we must abandon the classical view of the immortal soul. It is a view that is deeply embedded in our culture; it suffuses our songs, novels, movies, great buildings, public discourse, and our myths. Science has brought us to the end of our childhood. Growing up is unsettling to many people, and unbearable to a few, but we must learn to see the world as it is and not as we want it to be. Once we free ourselves of magical thinking we have a chance of comprehending how we fit into this unfolding universe."

If the soul is ineffable....

"Two recent defenders of dualism, the philosopher Karl Popper and the neurophysiologist and Nobel laureate John Eccles, made an appearance in chapter 7. Let me repeat a point I made there when discussing their views on Libertarian free will. The dualism they advocate, in which the mind forces the brain to do its bidding, is unsatisfactory for the reason that the 25-year-old Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia had already pointed out to Descartes three centuries earlier-by what means does the immaterial soul direct the physical brain to accomplish its aim? If the soul is ineffable, how can it manipulate actual stuff such as synapses? It is easy to see causality flowing from the brain to the mind, but the reverse is difficult. Any mind-to-brain communication has to be compatible with natural laws, in particular with the principle of energy conservation. Making the brain do things, like messing with synapses, takes work that the soul would have to perform and that has to be accounted for."

The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me!

When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and after, the little space which I fill, and even can see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces of which I am ignorant, and which know me not, I am frightened, and am astonished at being here rather than there; for there is no reason why here rather than there, why now rather than then. Who has put me here? By whose order and direction have this place and time been allotted to me? . . . The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me. -Blaise Pascal, Pensees (1670)

Don't be taken in by philosophical grandstanding and proclamations!

"For now, I ignore niggling debates about the exact definition of consciousness, whether it is an epiphenomenon, helpless to influence the world, or whether my gut is conscious but not telling me so. These issues will eventually all need to be addressed, but worrying about them today will only impede progress. Don't be taken in by philosophical grandstanding and proclamations that the Hard Problem of consciousness will always remain with us. Philosophers deal in belief systems, simple logic, and opinions, not in natural laws and facts. They ask interesting questions and pose charming and challenging dilemmas, but they have a mediocre historical record of prognostication. Consider the chapter quote by the French philosopher August Comte, father of positivism*. A few decades after his confident pronouncement that we would never understand stellar matter, their chemical composition was deduced by spectral analysis of their light, which led directly to the discovery of the gas helium. Listen instead to Francis Crick, a scholar with a far better track record of prediction: "It is very rash to say that things are beyond the scope of science." There is no reason why we should not ultimately understand how the phenomenal mind fits into the physical world." *On the subject of stars, all investigations which are not ultimately reducible to simple visual observations are . . . necessarily denied to us. . . . We shall never be able by any means to study their chemical composition. -August Comte, Cours de Philosophie Positive (1830-1842)

How the water of matter turns into the wine of consciousness?

"Is consciousness a fundamental, irreducible aspect of reality? Or does it emerge from organized matter, as most scientists and philosophers believe? I want to know before I die; so I can't afford to wait forever. Eristic philosophical debates are enjoyable and can even be helpful but they don't resolve the fundamental issues. The best way to discover how the water of matter turns into the wine of consciousness is by experimentation combined with the development of a theory."

Outside and above the biosphere there is the noosphere

"A glow ripples outward from the first spark of conscious reflection. The point of ignition grows larger. The fire spreads in ever widening circles till finally the whole planet is covered with incandescence. It is really a new layer, the thinking layer, which . . . has spread over and above the world of plants and animals. In other words, outside and above the biosphere there is the noosphere."

....and the cause of gods and demons

Number is the ruler of forms and ideas and the cause of gods and demons. Pythagoras

Out on the edge you see....!

I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center. Kurt Vonnegut

The fear of failing!

"The fear of failing at tasks would perhaps not be so great were it not for an awareness of how often failure tends to be harshly viewed and interpreted by others. Fear of the material consequences of failure is compounded by fear of the unsympathetic attitude of the world towards failure, of its haunting proclivity to refer to those who have failed as losers' - a word callously signifying both that people have lost and that they have at the same time forfeited any right to sympathy for having done so."

A human animal who is partly dead to the world!

"On the one hand, we see a human animal who is partly dead to the world, who is most "dignified" when he shows a certain obliviousness to his fate, when he allows himself to be driven through life; who is most"free" when he lives in secure dependency on powers around him, when he is least in possession of himself. On the other hand, we get an image of a human animal who is overly sensitive to the world, who cannot shut it out, who is thrown back on his own meagre powers, and who seems least free to move and act, least in possession of himself, and most undignified."

Make measurable what is not so

"Measure what is measurable, and make measurable what is not so." Galileo

Consciousness is an emergent property of the brain

"Based on such reasoning, scholars argue that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain. This sentiment is widely shared among biologists. What exactly is meant by that? An emergent property is something expressed by the whole but not necessarily by its individual parts. The system possesses properties that are not manifest in its parts."

Everybody has a secret world inside of them!

Everybody has a secret world inside of them. I mean everybody. All of the people in the whole world, I mean everybody — no matter how dull and boring they are on the outside. Inside them they've all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds... Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands, maybe. Neil Gaiman

Rebellion is a perpetual conflict

"Restraint is not the contrary of revolt. Revolt carries with it the very idea of restraint, and "moderation, born of rebellion, can only live by rebellion. It is a perpetual conflict, continually created and mastered by the intelligence. . . . Whatever we may do, excess will always keep its place in the heart of man, in the place where solitude is found. We all carry within us our places of exile, our crimes and our ravages. But our task is not to unleash them on the world; it is to fight them in ourselves and in others. "

If we decide to live....

"If we decide to live, it must be because we have decided that our personal existence has some positive value; if we decide to rebel, it must be because we have decided that a human society has some positive value. But in each case the values are not "given" —that is the illusionist trick played by religion or by philosophy. They have to be deduced from the conditions of living, and are to be accepted along with the suffering entailed by the limits of the possible. Social values are rules of conduct implicit in a tragic fate; and they offer a hope of creation."

To the man who only has a hammer...

To the man who only has a hammer, everything he encounters begins to look like a nail. Abraham Maslow

Real generosity towards the future!

Real generosity towards the future lies in giving all to the present. Albert Camus

It is written in the language of mathematics

Philosophy is written in this grand book-the universe I say-that is wide open in front of our eyes. But the book cannot be understood unless we first learn to understand the language, and know the characters, in which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics. -Galileo Galilei, The Assayer (1623)

Physics does not permit such ghostly interactions!

"The strong, Cartesian version of free will-the belief that if you were placed in exactly the same circumstances again, including the identical brain state as previously, you could have willed yourself to act otherwise-cannot be reconciled with natural laws. There is no way the conscious mind, the refuge of the soul, could influence the brain without leaving telltale signs. Physics does not permit such ghostly interactions. Anything in the world happens for one or more reasons that are also part of the world; the universe is causally closed."

Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it Omar Khayyam

Lift not thy hands to It for help!

And that inverted Bowl we call the Sky, Whereunder crawling coop't we live and die, Lift not thy hands to It for help-for It Rolls impotently on as Thou or I. Rubaiyat - Omar Khayyam

The effect of its past and the cause of its future!

We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its past and the cause of its future. An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed, and if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes. Pierre Simon de Laplace

Denial of unconscious!

"You may object to the importance of the unconscious for two reasons. First, because accepting it implies loss of control. If you're not making the decisions around here, then who is? Your parents? The media, whose products you consume so avidly? Your friends and peers? Second, because you are unaware of unconscious biases (by definition), you don't know you have them. You won't recall an instance in which you clandestinely judged somebody based on their skin color, gender, or age. When somebody points out such a case, you will come up with many vaguely plausible reasons for why you judged the person the way you did-but the thought that you discriminated against the person won't occur to you. It's uncanny, but that's how the mind works."

The certainty of death!

"The certainty of death has remained with me, making me wiser but no happier."

What does man actually know about himself?

What does man actually know about himself? Is he, indeed, ever able to perceive himself completely, as if laid out in a lighted display case? Does nature not conceal most things from him-even concerning his own body-in order to confine and lock him within a proud,deceptive consciousness, aloof from the coils of the bowels, the rapid flow of the bloodstream, and the intricate quivering of the fibers! She threw away the key. -Friedrich Nietzsche, On Truth and Lying in an Extramoral Sense (1873)

You can't will yourself to see the world in shades of gray!

"The patient can quite deliberately and very selectively turn the volume on her medial temporal lobe neurons up and down. But many regions of the brain will be immune from this influence. For instance, you can't will yourself to see the world in shades of gray. This most likely means that you can't consciously downregulate color neurons in your visual cortex. And much as you may sometimes want to, you can't turn off the pain centers in your brain."