"Man really attains the state of complete humanity when he produces, without being forced by physical need to sell himself as a commodity."
- Che Guevara

It is unfortunate that even for the well-off, so many things people do are because of physical needs (for food, shelter, etc). Even though we take 'civilized' jobs and aren't forced to work in the fields, what we do is just glorified labor. Society still has us by the short and curlies - most people would choke if they missed two or three paychecks. We sell ourselves to employers as we convey how we could add value to their company/organization, how we could be a valuable commodity. How many of us can really do what we want in life without there being a necessity for steady/substantial income?

If love or passion was the root of all our decisions, how many of us would end up as bankers or garbagemen? What would this world look like? If you shut out all elements other than your passions, if you put aside need for income, social desirability, need for power/status/recognition, family/societal pressures, etc, etc... what would you want to do? Is this a reasonable question to ask, or am I just young and idealistic? It seems that many people don't answer this question and are quick to get herded like sheep down one path or another.

"Che was the most complete human being of our age."
- Jean-Paul Sartre

Canadian researchers have found that loud, fast music cuts your reaction time when driving by up to 20 percent. Examples of songs that are particularly bad are "Firestarter" by The Prodigy, and "Red Alert" by Basement Jaxx.

"Artists, indeed, are lifted by the ideality of their pursuits a little way off the earth, and are therefore able to catch the evanescent fragrance that floats in the atmosphere of life above the heads of the ordinary crowd. Even if they seem endowed with little imagination individually, yet there is a property, a gift, a talisman, common to their class, entitling them to partake somewhat more bountifully than other people in the thin delights of moonshine and romance."

- from The Marble Faun by Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1859

Has anyone done anything for purely selfless reasons? This is a question we can't answer, since we can always find egoistic reasons to explain behavior.

It'd be good to be indestructible.

Life is like a rainbow:
You need both the sun and the rain
To make its colors appear.
- A. Ramaiya

"Rappers aren't sexist! Who else would employ so many women to shake their ass in music videos?"

- (can't remember where I heard/read this from)

"Turn off TV, turn on life"
- a sign on a TV set that was thrown out and is lying on my street

How much can people really learn from the past? The maxim goes, "Those who ignore the past are condemned to relive it," but how seriously should we believe this? Hindsight is 20-20. It's difficult to ignore knowledge of an actual outcome and make unbiased inferences about what should or could have happened. Lessons of history aren't clear since they are biased with hindsight. We are beings trapped in the present. Participants in historical events do not know the full importance of the events they are involved in. The things we should be learning from the past are indeterminate. The better maxim might be, "While the past entertains, enobles, and expands quite readily, it enlightens only with delicate coaxing" (B. Fischhoff, 1980).

"We do not know what we want and yet we are responsible for what we are - that is the fact."
- Jean-Paul Sartre

Question asked to me: "Are you indecisive?"
My answer: "Ehhh, I don't know." (which, actually, is the only true way to say yes to this question)

I'm too used to holding multiple views/perspectives on things. There's always a different way to look at an issue. How can you be sure that the side you take is right or the best? There are no real answers out there and things are always evolving.

You know how over the years countries have disarmed and there's been deescalation of many intractable conflicts... that's exactly what the TV industry needs to do with their shows. They need to cool down. It's come to a point where it's just too crazy. People are dehumanized. I think I'm crazy for watching a show about someone's plastic surgery (I watched for about 10 minutes). What is actually being conveyed? There is no story. There's only a fraction of a glimpse into someone's life. And a very biased one too. I think I'm a better person for not watching TV. There are much better things to do.

Calm like a bomb.

What does success mean for you? Everyone should answer this. I can't right now, I'm just groping in the dark. I can't find or see what I'm looking for. I need to find a light switch first. And, until I do, I have to tread carefully or else risk breaking something, or hurting myself (or someone else…). Things will be better when the light is on, once the initial discomfort of the brightness is over. Then everything can be seen. And even though I am in the same room and nothing, physically, has changed… I will just know where everything is. I can breathe a sigh of relief, not worry about accidents, and locate what it is I am looking for.

"America is therefore the land of the future, where, in the ages that lie before us, the burden of the World's History shall reveal itself."
- Georg W. Hegel (1770 - 1831)

I agree, he was really onto something. This country is such a melting pot, and dialogue is always fostered and encouraged. I can't wait to hear of the discoveries yet to come. I hear 'multiculturalism' is a thing of the past and 'transculturalism' is the new wave of thinking. I'm not so sure what I think of that yet. Perhaps it'll help me make sense of something I experienced last week: an Asian male, born in this country, vehemently claimed that he does not identify himself as Asian-American. People are growing ever more complex, particularly as people become less and less connected to traditions and cognitions of their ancestors.

Air travellers catch four times more colds than non air-travellers, according to Runners World, a health/fitness magazine.

Happiness can come in the form of an omelette. Or is the omelette just a front for something else, something deeper?

I want to eat marigolds. I want to feel the petals with my tongue and the sensations of biting through them, chewing them. I read that they taste like celery.

"In the confrontation between the stream and the rock, the stream always wins. Not through strength but by perseverance."
- H. Jackson Brown

"No roots, no tree, no family, no me."
- chorus in "No roots" by Faithless

Today is the 2-year birthday/anniversary of my blog. I wouldn't have remembered, except I was going through a few of the archive pages the other day and saw my very first posts. I feel it's appropriate to write something about the blog today.

I recall some of Friedrich Schiller's ideas (German dramatist and poet, who wrote some essays on aesthetics) and see how they can be applied to this blog. Schiller wrote about the play impulse ('spieltrieb'), about how it's not in response to material or moral necessity. Only when we play are we really free - it is the highest form of human aspiration (and yet children do it so readily). Play is voluntary, not instrumental, requires no preparation, isn't preparatory for anything else, has no natural occasion, is a suspension of our everyday world, has no prescribed outcome or result, and isn't progressive. In these ways blogging has, for me, been like playing. I think that, importantly, playing and blogging are great because they are gloriously futile.

"Why not go out on a limb? Isn't that where the fruit is?"
- Frank Scully

Even if it cracks and you fall, the fear of failure or of negative consequences does more damage to us than the consequences themselves. Having an overly cautious orientation won't allow you to get everything you can out of life. We shouldn't cripple ourselves to keep us from maiming ourselves. We should take risks and experiment and be exposed to the possibility of pain/discomfort/suffering. If we protect ourselves all the time, we'll never learn. Telling ourselves that ALL of our decisions will affect our life and not exposing ourselves to the possibility of failure is injurious to experimentation.

A person is a complex ecosystem, a multilayered network. The self has masses of non-linear systems - there is little direct cause and effect. To really change something you have to effect multiple dynamics simultaneously. If you only interfere with one variable in a complex system, there can be many unintended consequences. With any complexity you have to challenge the way you view things and deal with constellations of variables.

I was walking past a bookstore and saw Donald Trump's new book through the window. Actually, I saw about 50 of them. It was called something like "How to Get Rich". His picture was on the front and he had a ridiculously big smile. Was this smile genuine? Does his money make him happy? If that's the case I think he's very shallow. I believe that money doesn't make people happy, but a lack of money has the power to make us unhappy. I think Trump's book (or the image I got of it) is illusory propaganda. Money is labelled as the thing which will make us happy. Money is the tangible scapegoat for the real uncertainty about what we should attain in our existence. People keep avoiding confrontations with the empty core of existence - that is what's true and what we need to individually confront in our lives. Society and institutions propose things as fake targets/aspirations for us. Our current age is one of dismissing dogma and received belief. When will people learn that we shouldn't aspire to be rich, as that won't do anything for us. We should just find what we like to do and then do it - and the money should follow. Too often people who are pursuing riches get caught in "golden handcuffs" - they are earning a lot, their job is nice, but they aren't happy or content.