CAG@LOCS#12
Lesson of the day: Everything is spectral. That is, nothing is black and white. You'd thing someone of my rearing would never have had cause to think otherwise, but being around certain people for long enough can get you trying to think like them without even realizing that you're abandoning long-established and continually-reinforced ideas. (Note: the long-standingness of one's ideas should not be used to gauge their correctness or "truth" but merely their persuasiveness and endurance.)
Most people aren't like me. They don't keep an eye out for ways to make the world a better place, and i think i'm gradually realizing that i shouldn't - at least, needn't - either. There are convincing arguments that people need to be reeled out of their shells, especially when the reelers are community organizations. I no longer know where i stand on this issue. Many of my current (some long-term) ideals would only be of practical value in a world composed of me's, and i'll bet a lot of what are commonly referred to as "idiots" have merely fallen into this way of thinking: One's responsibility is to act in a way that would work if everyone adopted it, but one's responsibility does not extend to swaying others to such ways or informing them of the problems they're intended to address. It was essentially this mode of thinking that led me to be (positively and gratefully) described by a friend as a "good vegan" once: I wasn't the type to promote veganism among my acquaintances.
Maturity is an optimization problem, the acquisition of various critical points amid opposing forces in one's life - in this case, the forces being the responsibilities of being a good world "citizen" (as some say; i would prefer "inhabitant" if not for its individualistic connotations) and being a good personal acquaintance/friend. Local-vs.-global, as it always seems to come down to.
The Yellow Sofa is a good place to think: music at the optimal volume to build atmosphere without distracting conversation or pondering, and only lyrical enough to keep from getting dull. And i think my favorite coffee shop statistic so far comes from a flier by their espresso machine: "Coffee is the most heavily traded commodity in the world after petroleum." The United States' two great addictions.
Everything in the world seems to be of this description: falling into a pattern until the pattern is untenable, then a rift between tendencies to break it and to maintain it, until a new pattern is settled into. Somehow that doesn't seem sufficiently vague to be obvious, yet i can't think of a counterexample. Even theoretically closed systems (e.g. the physical universe) seem to behave this way, without external stimuli to tell them when the current pattern is approaching its limits. The only thing that doesn't seem to fall subject to this description is (of course; look whose journal you're reading) mathematics, which is, for all practical purposes (i.e. subject to observation) a fixed structure only whose descriptions and foci fall in and out of favor. Perhaps this should be a reason not to make it one's discipline of choice, but no one's ever called me savvy to my face.
I need to do some math.
Most people aren't like me. They don't keep an eye out for ways to make the world a better place, and i think i'm gradually realizing that i shouldn't - at least, needn't - either. There are convincing arguments that people need to be reeled out of their shells, especially when the reelers are community organizations. I no longer know where i stand on this issue. Many of my current (some long-term) ideals would only be of practical value in a world composed of me's, and i'll bet a lot of what are commonly referred to as "idiots" have merely fallen into this way of thinking: One's responsibility is to act in a way that would work if everyone adopted it, but one's responsibility does not extend to swaying others to such ways or informing them of the problems they're intended to address. It was essentially this mode of thinking that led me to be (positively and gratefully) described by a friend as a "good vegan" once: I wasn't the type to promote veganism among my acquaintances.
Maturity is an optimization problem, the acquisition of various critical points amid opposing forces in one's life - in this case, the forces being the responsibilities of being a good world "citizen" (as some say; i would prefer "inhabitant" if not for its individualistic connotations) and being a good personal acquaintance/friend. Local-vs.-global, as it always seems to come down to.
The Yellow Sofa is a good place to think: music at the optimal volume to build atmosphere without distracting conversation or pondering, and only lyrical enough to keep from getting dull. And i think my favorite coffee shop statistic so far comes from a flier by their espresso machine: "Coffee is the most heavily traded commodity in the world after petroleum." The United States' two great addictions.
Everything in the world seems to be of this description: falling into a pattern until the pattern is untenable, then a rift between tendencies to break it and to maintain it, until a new pattern is settled into. Somehow that doesn't seem sufficiently vague to be obvious, yet i can't think of a counterexample. Even theoretically closed systems (e.g. the physical universe) seem to behave this way, without external stimuli to tell them when the current pattern is approaching its limits. The only thing that doesn't seem to fall subject to this description is (of course; look whose journal you're reading) mathematics, which is, for all practical purposes (i.e. subject to observation) a fixed structure only whose descriptions and foci fall in and out of favor. Perhaps this should be a reason not to make it one's discipline of choice, but no one's ever called me savvy to my face.
I need to do some math.