Five Over the Limit
It seems to me that my biggest problem (and from what I can see, a lot of humanity's) is higher cognition. In my world, my mind wanders to what I should change in myself or whether or not a concept is bullshit or the best answer to a relative problem. The problem is that there are no answers in this realm; only theories. They can be good, but more often than not (in my head) I don't trust them enough to make them fact when I've already heard a different theory.
So cognition's purpose outside of giving humans the ability to drive themselves mad? For solving problems when they need to be solved.
And in our current world this isn't required as much as it was, say, when we had to fight to survive and were only learning about our world. Now we are at the level where we use our cognition positively to solve issues that are based on the world we humans have created, which isn't nearly as dense and full of life as the world outside of us is. When there's some downtime from my thinking about people or making things fit which were never designed to in the first place, I use my cognition for new ideas. Otherwise, I let my sub-conscious be my guide; the parts I don't have to think about. Because there's never any indecision or question when it's in the moment, and I think that's the way things should be. It's a shame life has to move at that slower pace because of how much we've advanced. But at least, in my world, I can still go five over the limit.
Something out of Nothing
Going along with my earlier thoughts about cultivating the growth of my mind, I started wondering of a way to come up with new ideas without the need for an external idea, such as that from another person. I couldn't think of any way to create something new in my mind, large enough to grab onto and run with. I also can't think of any idea I've ever had in my life without some kind of knowledge about something else that helped me formulate this new idea.
And then I posted a tweet where I was about to go on a tangent about something and I realized that by writing an idea down or otherwise outputting some kind of information from my mind, it becomes a new piece of information from which new ideas can be formed. This recursive process can help new ideas based on new ideas etc. etc.
This says a lot about the mind. If the mind was the only thing in existence--no other minds, no trees or planets or universe--it would have nothing to do, no way to grow or develop or establish new things and, I think, it wouldn't even exist in the first place. It seems like the mind works in twos. Alone it just is. No growth, nothing new, just a single speck. With another thought--something as simple as a sound--a chain-reaction is set off and new ideas are created. Over the years, the very thoughts that created what we currently know at an older age become buried by the constant events that are happening right now. But they all started somewhere. And future ones will do the same.
A Mental Plateau
In my health class the other day, my professor was talking about how, through routine exercise, your body gains and gains and then levels out in a plateau-like fashion. In other words, with the same workouts--same intensity, duration, mode, type, etc.--your body gets used to it and, eventually, it can literally no longer grow from the activity.
Since the mind is contained in the body (and it's of more concern to me) I started to ponder if it fell under the same restrictions. At first I didn't believe it did because, I mean, it's the mind. It has to be different. But I'm starting to think otherwise.
It's like this: when a place (city, street, house, etc.) is new to you, you grow; change promotes growth. After you spend enough time in that town or area, it starts to look bland and not nearly as interesting as it was when you first arrived. You don't spend nearly as much time thinking about the place because your mind has become accustomed to it; you've reached your plateau. You get in a relationship and out of the honeymoon stage-- you've reached your plateau. I would guess this is why people naturally argue in a relationship; your brain needs to grow and it can only do that with some kind of shift in the dynamics. So arguing upsets the stability of that level, unpromoting state.
In the context of my own head, I was fighting with the idea of stability before I started to doubt instability and fight that. I'm now seeing that I want to promote the growth of my mind-- this came after this morning, when I thought that seeing emotions and all these pseudo-human-attributes as what they are--bullshit--was going to lead me no where. It's a good thing I'm getting better at killing off my negative thoughts. So, since I am going to continue promoting the growth of my mind, I need to keep running. I need to keep changing things up. And, as a result, I won't have stability. In fact, stability will cause me to plateau and then what am I fighting for?
Absolutely nothing.
Space
Today I spent a lot of time reading about the new things Virgin Galactic will be doing with its commercial trips to space and how badly I want to go there. And I thought about how if I could look down upon the earth in the darkness of space, the world would seem so small and insignificant to what I was experiencing. And how much I would love it.
Then I thought about how I wouldn't think of people, I wouldn't think of the issues that plague the world or my daily concerns; only this blue marble that I could stare down upon. And how if I went out farther to look upon our solar system it would be so small; farther to look at our galaxy and how small and remarkable it would be; and then if I went to the edge of the universe, it would all be so small. And I feel like if I took one step further to the outside of our universe, it would all be contained in this tiny ball that from my view on earth, to me right now, looks so vast.
And it would look like what's inside my head. When viewed from a spot where everything is small, nothing matters. It is all contained, small and insignificant. And well-- I don't know how else to express the kind of relief and tranquility that would give me. If my mind is that small, viewed from the right distance, and my environment as well, nothing matters so much that it must be overly-contemplated. When I think so much I zoom down to a small level on an Earth of thoughts which isn't even at the most basic level to understand everything that occurs. I feel like if I could look down at the entire universe and could understand what that meant to me there, I would be able to understand what it meant on this relatively micro level.
Assigning Meaning
When you break everything down in life, you soon learn that nothing in life has an inherent meaning. I might've said this before, but now I'll take it a step further.
The only fool-proof way to have meaning to anything in your life is to assign a meaning to it. By the time you're the age you currently are, reading this, you've already assigned meaning to many things; fairly universal objects you've assigned meaning to would be money, time, your mortality, family, possibly spirituality, etc. But what about those things you don't quite have down so much as these? A common phrase I hear is "I'm [so many] years old and I still don't know what I want."
The truth is you'll never know. In fact, you'll never know anything for sure in your lifetime.1 Scary thought, possibly, but in this case it is a matter of choosing-- realizing that ultimately, all the decisions you make come down to you. Confidence is such an envied personality trait because it take a certain kind of individual to be so certain of oneself. Anyone who has this trait has had the balls to disregard external forces for one second, make a decision on what he/she likes, and just go with it. The same is required when deciding what you want.
On a personal note, when you break existence down as much as I have, you get to the point where you have all the pieces spread out before you and the only thing left to do is find out what to do with them, because they do you no good on their own. This is probably where the cliché "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade"2 comes from.3
Some people are content working 9 to 5 all their life, retiring, and dying at a "reasonable" age. Some would rather do what they want to regardless of the standard. Some want kids, some don't want to get married. Some people believe in a higher power, some don't. These are all examples of different assigned meanings, each one specific to the individual who created them; it's in our nature.
1 For example, a discipline such as science involves using precedent and a created method to produce meaning out of rationalizations and logic; essentially nothing says the results produced are correct besides a set of guidelines.
2 In fact, life itself is lemons and, really, lemonade is simply one option.
3 It's always interesting how clichés usually have some kind of ridiculously true meaning to them but aren't ever explained. So when used when giving advice or something similar, the effect is next to nothing due to the fact that the phrase only scratches the surface.
Positive and Negative
This is life in a nutshell: you and the world. Inside you, there are two classifications of thought: positive and negative. Inside the world, you have an infinite amount of you's, each with an infinite amount of thoughts that fit these two classifications except you don't have control of these you's (we'll call them external you's).
You are like a points system. Positive thoughts give you a point and negative thoughts take away two points-- one for the negativity and one because the effortless nature of negative thoughts dictates that you have room for one more negative thought. Naturally, this is a recursively repeating downward spiral.
Negative thoughts don't get the credit they deserve in our world; in fact, they almost always sneak completely below the radar. On an individual basis, negative thoughts are the creators of depressing music; they're the birth of sad movies, paintings, and stories. They're the synthesis of your own negative thoughts and/or negative thoughts from external you's (and only these two things). On a broader scale, they're what most religions would define as "evil." And they come so easily because they are humanity's "default" setting. They are the things that happen to you that make you change yourself (for the worse), rather than enforce your current behavior. In psychology, they're appropriately named negative punishment. In philosophy, they're named subconscious motivations. These are the things that "just happen" early on and by the time you reach adolescence they have become a part of you.
Positive thoughts are the ones that build you up. They are the birth of smiles. They are the birth of laughter. They are a product of freedom from yourself and the world around you. Most of the time, however, they are so fleeting that they only last in these short moments of joy and laughter. And it is the nature of these transient thoughts that makes them the most rare of thoughts that can be thunk-- it makes positivity so rare that it can hardly be said to exist in our world at all.
So, ultimately, you have two ways to view life (since it is all relative to you): positive or negative. If positive thoughts are more appealing, know that they need to be fought for. If you're in the opposite side of the spectrum, step outside of you and view yourself as if you are really an external you. You simply need to realize where you are in relation to where you want to be.
At the end of the day, all that needs to be remembered is this: life is simple. People are complicated. Complication always overpowers simplicity, which is why our world/life "is" so complex. It doesn't have to be for you.
The Human Experience
We should all think twice about our existence. Not everything that is accepted by the crowd is true. The measurement of time and space could simply be a product of our intellect, just as state lines or manufacturing processes for Twinkies are. Our universe could be a tiny electrical spark in someone's mind-- a fleeting thought. We could contain an infinite amount of universes in our own minds. There's too much we don't know about the world we live in to not give what we "know" a second glance. Think. Step outside the norms and "proofs" and consider something only few dare to share with the world.
It's not comfortable. And it's not easy. But it's liberation. It's the closest you can come to heaven without dying. Embrace the thoughts and understand the power you hold simply in your mass of neural connections stored in what you know as your skull. Embrace something you don't know or what is not widely accepted and you will be unbound from the world you know as reality.
You're not the most important thing in the world. You may not have an inherent meaning. But meaning gets assigned as it is learned and experienced, simply by existing as an intellectual being. Run with this and don't let the dark places in your mind overpower the positive, because they will always be the first to occur to you. Nothing bad will ever happen to you in life unless you view it as such.
This is all part of the human experience-- stay thirsty, my friends.
Putting a Title to a Situation
This isn’t the best thing to do. When I say situation, I mean anything that ranges from a state of mind to an environment to a relationship with another person. And this is why it seems, to me, to be a bad way of thinking.
I’m ever-changing; every day in my head is a different one. One day I might think I’m the shit because I can’t find it in me to care about anything anyone around me thinks. Another day I’ll think I haven’t changed at all and am accomplishing nothing. But I should avoid thinking them both. You see, the whole reason for changing myself has been an effect of me realizing that the cards I was dealt until this point in my life [when I finally gained some control] have been shit. Well, this same shit that I speak of occurs when I think of something solid—one of these titles; it essentially does the same thing as the obligations and expectations I’ve learned since birth that have screwed with my head: gives me something to abide by.
And that’s no good. In fact, that’s the whole point of not blindly accepting what you’re told from birth: you become a slave to these ideals and are never truly free (I’ll clarify free later). Yes, of course my parents had some things right that helped me become a good person and someone I actually like; but, just as well, they had some things wrong, similar to the other 6.8 billion of us—none of us have it all down, hence my personal never-ending quest for some kind of answers.
..And my search for freedom. What I mean by free is simple: truly your own thoughts; your own feelings; you. Obviously, in our social world this is a lot more complex than simply stating it. We’re all a product of society in one way or another, and it takes time to differentiate between causes for why you think/act the way you do and what novel conclusions you’ve come to on your own, using all the information you’ve gathered from the outside world. It’s not impossible, just difficult. So what I meant before was that realizing what inside your head is you and what is them will make you free. It keeps you in society but it keeps you above all the unreasonable and non-thoughtful ideas that have become reality in our world. In other words, you’ll be the one at the end of the day who isn’t upset with their life because they don’t have someone or because they are poor or any other so-called “necessity†that has been taught by the masses.
Putting a title on a situation infringes on freedom because it also rules-out flexibility more than it should. I’ll use “dating†as a title for an example.
Let’s say I’m dating a girl. I’ve known her a few months, but only really gotten to know her for the past few weeks. I think I like her; regardless of the reasons, I’ll leave it at that. Now, because of the dating title and inherent obligations (again, they’re already present based on society), if I meet another girl that I start to like, this is “bad.†For one, if I like her more than the girl I’m already with, I have to convince said girl that I want to “leave†her and break the expectations she holds me to as a result of our title. Even if I don’t decide I like New Girl more than Current Girl, if Current was to find out, again (depending on how invested she was in her expectations of me) I would affect her emotions negatively. This all seems silly to me—especially because of the expectations factor.
If you lower your expectations, you can’t be let down—this has been my mindset for a good while, because you can always go up. And once I internalized the fact that I can’t control anyone besides myself, it was even easier to give up all expectations I have in other people. But this is the main problem with having these titles I speak of. If you’re Current Girl in the example I mentioned above, you will have your “heart broken.†This will bring an onslaught of over-analyzations, what-did-I-do-wrong’s, the whole enchilada. This isn’t good for Current Girl, or any other human being, for that matter, that experiences this destruction of their expectations. So, quite simply, why do it?
On those days that I feel like I am completely free from what people around me think, it’s great. I consciously realize that I am, in fact, free from what all these other people think about me, and more subconsciously realize that nothing can bring me down—that is, until I let them in. This only brings me down because I expect that no one will affect me. If instead I walk around feeling free from the people around me and simply ride it—not recognize it—then I can continue to live it, all the while remaining flexible when I have to interact with people close to me, such as friends—people I do have to let it, even if it’s just a bit. In this case, it’s about managing your thoughts and when you start to realize how good of a mood you’re in or how on top of the world you are, you have to stop it and literally distract yourself. This keeps you free from not only others but also the darkest parts of yourself, which is half of the struggle in life.
What will this new age hold?
Lately I’ve become interested in what major societal changes are going to occur in this “Information Age†we’re currently living in.
In my daily visit to Twitter today, I saw that “#thingsdarkiessay†was trending and then shortly removed. Upon a search I saw @studentactivism tweeted this:
Overnight black South African tweeters trended #thingsdarkiessay. In SA "darkies" is inoffensive. But when the US woke up hell broke loose.
This is a clear case of different cultures clashing. Yes, Twitter is US-based and having that as a trending topic on the home page of one of the largest sites on the web could compromise its image. To my slight surprise, not a whole lot of Americans seemed offended.
But what does this mean for this increasingly global society?
I see more and more cultures blending. New ideas are being shared constantly and with more speed than ever before. Naturally, as someone deals with others outside their own little private social circle, they change their viewpoints—they have to if they’re not the majority, for the simple fact of fitting in. And this is where I see society going.
Granted, with the internet and these new tools for communication, ignorance is being perpetuated just as fast as (if not faster than) new ideas and actual rational thought. But thus is our existence. As long as humans are around, there will be ignorance and irrationality. And above all, I think an evolved society will eventually be the one to rise.
Archives
- July 2010 (1)
- April 2010 (2)
- March 2010 (3)
- February 2010 (4)
- January 2010 (9)
- December 2009 (3)
- November 2009 (5)
- October 2009 (2)
- September 2009 (1)
- August 2009 (1)
- July 2009 (2)
- June 2009 (1)
- May 2009 (1)
- April 2009 (3)
- March 2009 (7)
- February 2009 (3)
- January 2009 (5)
- December 2008 (3)
- November 2008 (2)
- October 2008 (6)
- September 2008 (3)
- August 2008 (8)
- July 2008 (6)
- June 2008 (6)
- May 2008 (3)
- March 2008 (2)
- November 2007 (1)
- September 2007 (3)
- August 2007 (4)
Categories
- Blurbs (3)
- Concepts (1)
- Day-to-Day (2)
- Driving (1)
- Experiences (2)
- Experiments (1)
- Ideas (4)
- Overcoming Time (1)
- Internet (6)
- Miscellaneous (4)
- Music (1)
- Personal (7)
- Philosophy (6)
- Photography (4)
- Projects (9)
- Quotes (2)
- Rants (5)
- Realizations (7)
- Reflections (5)
- Stream of Consciousness (1)
- Thoughts (35)
- Life (6)
- Uncategorized (6)
- Writings (1)
