Human beings are so bizarre. It took many years before I could grasp adequately the combinations of relations that can exist among numbers of sentiment-ridden friends. In my head, it’s all graph theory: vertices, formations in a ‘Z’, bridges and nodes with adjacency matrices and relational costs manifested in humans as motivation and want. I get the feeling that typical people come to the conclusions I have by experience alone, meaning trial and error in frequency, or perhaps it’s by upbringing. Thinking it out mathematically does take me a while longer, but I need more evidence than just the empirical. I’m convinced that the best of us enjoy living for amusement. The things that we as a species can plausibly endeavor to do, above any contempt, they are life’s profoundly cruel jokes on whatever existence we hope to find important. That… more →
I think we’re a pretty responsible group. You and I, I mean. The audacity to dive into such a lengthy body of text, is it habitual or a shot at betterment? Perhaps we’re into displeasure. Things like drinking tea, and reading novels or persisting through thirty minutes of better nate than lever, they require a degree of enlightened perspective or philosophy that generally coincides with responsibility. So I say, we are a pretty responsible group. How much effort does it take? I’d say a whole damn lot. Effort, if the universe can be said to exert such a thing, in its relentless irony poking into our lives1. Responsibility is a rather abstracted term when you examine it. When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to haul ass, such presumptuous words as responsibility come into use. In… more →
Given the final futility of our struggle, is the fleeting jolt of meaning that art gives us valuable? Or is the only value in passing the time as comfortably as possible? What should a story seek to emulate? A ringing alarm? A call to arms? A morphine drip?
[The Fault in Our Stars, John Green]
Before you write, before you speak, before you even think: you must establish one point of context. That is, abstraction. When you’re truly free to think as logically, as broadly and imaginatively as your endowed mind enables you to, there should be no boundaries, nothing irreverent or sacred above scrutiny. That is the naive but understandable way in which the rationalist and the realist perceive reasoning. But following this, all meaningful inquiry digresses into futile fundamentals—the point to it all. It is because of this that the… more →
What if life had a save/load button? Just one save file. You can save and load anytime you’d like, but here’s the catch: every change is reverted, including your own memory. Would anything change? Seriously, you wouldn’t know how many times you’ve reset, you wouldn’t know the outcomes, but you would know when you last saved. Saving is conscious. At the end, it’ll feel like you never did reset at all. The problem with super-power speculation is, of course, they never come true and therefore aren’t practical. But with a little introspection, you can make this one come to life.
Like maybe, I’d find something exciting and dangerous like hang gliding off a mountain, and save right before I leave. Then, if I survive, I’ll continue playing. If I don’t, I’ll reset1. But ultimately, there is no outside force playing our… more →
