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."

Genius hits a target no one else can see

Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see. Arthur Schopenhauer

Label of idiocy!

Is a person idiot because he/she can't understand you or are you an idiot for not making yourself understood? Or is idiot a word that needs careful thinking before justifying its use (that is, none of the parties, in the above scenario, are idiots.)?

Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn't matter to me!

Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn't matter to me. Going to bed at night saying we've done something wonderful... that's what matters to me. Steve Jobs

Seven feet smart!

If you can't be seven feet tall, be seven feet smart. Lois McMaster Bujold

The perversity of their opinions!

'We will gradually become indifferent to what goes on in the minds of other people when we acquire an adequate knowledge of the superficial and futile nature of their thoughts, of the narrowness of their views, of the paltriness of their sentiments, of the perversity of their opinions, and of the number of their errors...We shall then see that whoever attaches a lot of value to the opinions of others pays them too much honour.' Arthur Schopenhauer

That's the tradition!

"The reason for this defectiveness of opinion lies in the public's reluctance to submit its thoughts to the rigours of rational examination and its reliance on intuition, emotion and custom instead. 'One can be certain that every generally held idea, every received notion, will be an idiocy, because it has been able to appeal to a majority,'observed Chamfort, adding that what is flatteringly called common sense is usually little short of common nonsense, suffering as it does from simplification and illogicality, prejudice and shallowness: 'The most absurd customs and the most ridiculous ceremonies are everywhere excused by an appeal to the phrase, but that's the tradition. This is exactly what the Hottentots say when Europeans ask them why they eat grasshoppers and devour their body lice. That's the tradition, they explain.'"

Humans Can't Be Empathetic And Logical At The Same Time

Humans Can't Be Empathetic And Logical At The Same Time | Popular Science

Brain Scan Shows That Thinking About Math Is As Painful As A Hot Stove Burn, If You're Anxious | Popular Science

Brain Scan Shows That Thinking About Math Is As Painful As A Hot Stove Burn, If You're Anxious | Popular Science

 In the math-anxious brain, the mere thought of solving for X prompts the same neurological response as anticipation of physical pain, according to a new study. Math really does hurt--or at least anticipation of math does. Actually doing the work does not hurt nearly as badly.

"For someone who has math anxiety, the anticipation of doing math prompts a similar brain reaction as when they experience pain--say, burning one's hand on a hot stove,"

The fMRI scans showed the higher a person’s math anxiety, the more anticipation of math activated the posterior insula, an inner brain region associated with registering direct threats to the body and experiencing pain. But interestingly, there was no pain response when the people were actually doing the problems.

“This means that any observed relation between math anxiety and pain would likely be more dependent upon one’s feelings and worries about math (i.e., their psychological interpretation or anticipation of the event) than something inherent in the math task itself,” Beilock and Lyons write.

It's not my place in society...

'It's not my place in society that makes me well off, but my judgements; and these I can carry with me...These alone are my own and can't be taken way' Epictetus, Discourses (c. AD 100)

Hostile death wishes!

... the socialization processes for all children are painful and frustrating, and hence no child escapes forming hostile death wishes toward his socializers. Therefore, none escape the fear of personal death in either direct or symbolic form. Repression is usually ... immediate and effective... Wahl

We are intent on mastering death!

Therefore in normal times we move about actually without ever believing in our own death, as if we fully believed in our own corporeal immortality. We are intent on mastering death.... A man will say, of course, that he knows he will die some day, but he does not really care. He is having a good time with living, and he does not think about death and does not care to bother about it-but this is a purely intellectual, verbal admission. The affect of fear is repressed. Zilboorg

Death repression!

If this fear were as constantly conscious, we should be unable to function normally. It must be properly repressed to keep us living with any modicum of comfort. We know very well that to repress means more than to put away and to forget that which was put away and the place where we put it. It means also to maintain a constant psychological effort to keep the lid on and inwardly never relax our watchfulness. Zilboorg

Fear, fear of death!

Such constant expenditure of psychological energy on the business of preserving life would be impossible if the fear of death were not as constant. The very term "self-preservation" implies an effort against some force of disintegration; the affective aspect of this is fear, fear of death. Zilboorg

Fear of death!

For behind the sense of insecurity in the face of danger, behind the sense of discouragement and depression, there always lurks the basic fear of death, a fear which undergoes most complex elaborations and manifests itself in many indirect ways... . No one is free of the fear of death... . The anxiety neuroses, the various phobic states, even a considerable number of depressive suicidal states and many schizophrenias amply demonstrate the ever-present fear of death which becomes woven into the major conflicts of the given psychopathological conditions... .We may take for granted that the fear of death is always present in our mental functioning. Gregory Zilboorg

Man has elevated animal courage into a cult!

heroism is first and foremost a reflex of the terror of death. We admire most the courage to face death; we give such valor our highest and most constant adoration; it moves us deeply in our hearts because we have doubts about how brave we ourselves would be. When we see a man bravely facing his own extinction we rehearse the greatest victory we can imagine. And so the hero has been the center of human honor and acclaim since probably the beginning of specifically human evolution. But even before that our primate ancestors deferred to others who were extra powerful and courageous and ignored those who were cowardly. Man has elevated animal courage into a cult. Shaler

Our civilized attitude towards death!

Is it not for us to confess that in our civilized attitude towards death we are once more living psychologically beyond our means, and must reform and give truth its due? Would it not be better to give death the place in actuality and in our thoughts which properly belongs to it, and to yield a little more prominence to that unconscious attitude towards death which we have hitherto so carefully suppressed? This hardly seems indeed a greater achievement, but rather a backward step ... but it has the merit of taking somewhat more into account the true state of affairs.... -Sigmund Freud

Only to forget myself!

I drink not from were Joy in wine nor to scoff at faith-no, only to forget myself for a moment, that only do I want of intoxication, that alone. -Omar Khayyam