Archive for 2018

Kinda fascinating how all new forms of mass-communication seem to be quickly followed by the distrust of that form of communication.

Not so because we as people distrust the form of communication itself, but because we distrust the common everyday person using it.

With the invention of language came along the thought, then the saying, then the life lesson, “You can’t trust everything you hear.” You can’t trust everything you hear not because you can’t trust what you’re hearing, but because you can’t always trust who’s editing the form of communication, language, to pass along false information. You can’t trust words blindly because people can easily make-up false words with their minds.

Now with the coming of the easily-edited image and body comes along today’s culture where everyone also holds the base belief, “You can’t trust everything you see.”

Wonder which of our next senses we’ll distrust next.

My money’s on smell. It’s a very marketable sense (cologne, perfume). It’ll be cool to see what sort of world develops from everyone being able to edit any smell as easily as we do images today. Going to have to start distrusting the smell of coffee brewing in the morning and of cookies fresh out the oven when I’m old and senile because of some damn marketers.

The moment we’re born we intellectually absorb the world around us. We have no choice but to.

We learn our nation’s languages, we’re indoctrinated into our parents’ religions, we dress like our friends, think like our teachers, and go about our day like the people around us. Everything we do is derivative.

Thus the question arises, where on Earth can originality be found?

The answer’s simple – originality can be found in environments uninfluenced by ordinary thinking. And originality can be found in people who’ve been raised on ideas different from everyone else’s. Originality hinges not on what it is, but on what it’s not – it’s not like everything else. Thus once world peace is attained we have a problem.

“World peace,” on its surface, simply means that the people of the world have agreed to live together peacefully. Scratch the surface and it also means that the people of the world have a means of global communication.

By being completely globally connected, and peacefully at that, we will actually be too well connected to each other to come up with any original ideas, ever. All connected, everything will be affected by everything else. Every idea will be derivative of another, echoic of the whole, and plagiarized. It won’t have a choice but to be. Just look at the disappearance of specific genres in music.

Once we attain world peace original thinking will die out. World peace might be better though.

1. English. English is the universal language so that’s necessary.
2. The language of the people around you. Always take into account where you’re at – lots of people speak Arabic, Hindi, and Russian, but if you’re living and/or working in Rwanda and learn any of those before Kinyarwanda you’re an idiot.
3. The language of people who are never going to learn either. If you’re an English speaker it’s not useful or efficient that you learn Spanish or French like most people think, the fact is that most French and Spanish speaking people are already doing the hard work of communication for you from the other way ’round by learning English.
   1. Language learning is about one-point communication. If you can speak to someone in any one language proficiently you’re mostly wasting time by learning how to speak to them again in another language. Move on, learn how to speak with people you cannot communicate with at all, don’t waste time reinventing the wheel.
4. The language of people you greatly respect and desire respect from. Most people learn a language outside of their own simply because they’re immensely interested in its associated culture; you’ll run into a lot of people that learn Mandarin because they find Chinese history and literature fascinating, people who learn Italian because they love the food and find Italian women beautiful beyond compare, and people who learn Esperanto because they’re language nerds – for all the reasons that people learn a language outside of utility, they’re learning it as a form of respect. Continue Reading →

Most of the longest novels I’ve ever read were written by regular people in their spare time. Not well-known authors, just random regular people you run across online who post their works for free.

For example, on the Western half of the world, Continue Reading →

Somewhat quoting Frederick Burnham, “Foremost, she holds a complacent belief in the unending plenty of our natural wealth.”

By this I mean she holds a smug belief that the limits of Man, as self/creator/thinker, are nonexistent and good and positively bountiful (‘positively’ loosely defined by her as ‘positive,’ which is vague and leaves it up to her to define the terms however she wishes, which she does). And that Man has all right to do whatever they wish and can, a limitless perspective, in/with/and to the world. A world which is strictly limited (limitless is impossible).

She smugly thinks the world’s resources are limitless and to thus be used by those who are limitless; this is a false belief stacked on top of another false belief. Picture a being who believes the building/ business they create is so grand and positive to the overall picture that deforestation, genocide, pollution, &c. are all just and necessary and in a sense reversible.

That’s why a lot of people liken her to a sociopath. That’s why she’s wrong.

A lot of good can be done if people just replace ‘people, men, women, &c.’ for ‘culture’ in their vocabulary. Ex. “I love black… culture.” “Man, sometimes I can’t stand white… culture.” “Wow, you really like asian… culture.” “I hate m… male culture.” “Wom… female culture, right?” “You talk like a whi… someone raised in a white culture.” “You don’t act like a gir… someone raised by female culture.” It’s the word people really mean to use anyways.

There are good and bad aspects to every known culture, and thus to everyone raised in and by those cultures. When you use ‘culture’ you’re giving the conversation enough room for someone to say, “You know what, I can’t stand that part about my culture too.” When you point at people instead of the cultures they were raised by you starve the conversation of common ground to build a rapport off of because everyone is too busy defending themselves.

#HaveBetterArguments

DANCING!

I wish more people took classes on dancing, especially freestyle dancing (break, hip-hop, jazz, ballet, &c.).

Beginner

At the onset dancing and freestyle dancing are a mixture of fitness, improv, public speaking, and acting. Freestyle dancing saved me from my anxiety and shyness while giving me a fitness habit that’s great for my health and a life skill that’s surprisingly too useful.

At first dancing, especially for an anxious and shy person, is a struggle. You make excuses like how other people make excuses not to go to the gym. The best way to win against yourself is to do what I did, sign up for a bundle of expensive classes. Like that alarm clock that shreds your money Continue Reading →