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You don't need to read this. This is not the blog you are looking for. |
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Every now and then I have a "short" idea and put it here. I am an old man, and not just on the outside. Even my inner self has become bald, hunched, and wrinkled. So if you have even a smidgen of vitality flowing in your veins, you might find what I say to be insufferably archaic, old-fashioned, perhaps even antediluvian. I don't really expect anyone to read this blog. Except me, of course. But if you do happen to read it and like to argue, then please comment, because I will argue about almost anything. Entry with the most comments is "Invalid Entry" 
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| I love Science. I like knowing how things work. But Science doesn't know everything. Science loves data. Science uses the experimental method. "Let's find out if the data support our theory." But to understand things that way you need to be investigating something that you can repeat over and over while varying different aspects of it to see how it changes. There are plenty of things in the universe that fit those requirements, but there are some biggies that do not. Thoughts, for example. We all know we have a lively mental life inside our minds complete with self-awareness, emotions, and ideas. And we all know we have a brain inside our skulls. We assume that the two are intimately connected... but how? It's very difficult to make the transition from cells and chemicals to my feeling of being me. And it's very difficult to experiment with something that is never the same thing twice, a noticeable characteristic of the flow of thought. It might possibly require an entirely new way of thinking about reality if we are ever going to understand thought. If anyone ever does achieve that new way of thinking, it might not be a scientist, even though Science has brought about new ways of thinking in the past. Like all of us, scientists grow up in the current state of human knowledge. That is our reality, our world view. We all share it and hardly know it exists because it is the foundation of everything. No one knows what the next reality, the next world view will be. It will take a person who is truly "open-minded" in the grandest sense to help us get there. |
| Everyone understands that it takes motivation to get anything done. A loose definition of motivation might be the desire to do something but it's more complex than that. It's really the desire to do something in spite of not having the desire to do it. For example, I have the desire to write a novel but I am not motivated to do it because I know I would not endure throughout the entire process. Or someone might have the desire to get married but not the motivation because they don't want to deal with the process of finding someone they can marry. I think the key word is "process". We want the end product but we don't want to engage in the process required to get it. So how do you become motivated? Only by accepting that there will be things you have to do that you don't really want to do in order to get to where you really want to be. Or to look at it another way. To become motivated to go from A to B, you must make yourself examine the path from A to B, know it thoroughly, acknowledge the obstacles, and commit yourself to overcoming them. |
| I jest. I know he can't run for a third term. But do the Republicans know it? It's surprising how much energy right wingers waste being anti-Obama when he is no longer a factor. Any Democrat who runs in 2016 will be perceived by the public as not-Obama, so there is no longer any benefit to right wingers in being anti-Obama. Nobody cares. Assuming a good Democratic candidate, the Republicans only have one person who can win the presidency in 2016 and that person is Chris Christie. Let's see if they nominate him. |
| After 19 votes... Always tell the truth ... 16% Will tell a lie to avoid trouble, to avoid hurting someone's feelings, or because it seems like the best strategy for getting what they want ... 84% Tell a lie just to be lying ... 0% These results seem reasonable to me. Although, in my opinion, the people who say they never tell a lie are lying.  |
| There are countless trillions of things in the universe, so perhaps it would be best to first consider the case of one thing. Given some one thing, does it really matter? Interestingly, it seems entirely dependent on viewpoint. For example, Bob loses his job. From Bob's viewpoint it's very important. From his wife's viewpoint it's very important. From his neighbor's viewpoint it's important, but not very important. From the viewpoint of someone in another country who never heard of Bob, it's of extremely little importance. From the viewpoint of a resident of another planet, it's even less important than THAT! And so on... And of course, we can take the viewpoint toward smaller instead of larger... From the viewpoint of Bob's children, it's important. From the viewpoint of Bob's dog, it's not particularly important. From the viewpoint of the fleas on Bob's dog, it's not important at all. So now let's reconsider the general case of does anything really matter... Answer: Only if it slaps you in the side of the head.  |
| If you have complaints about creative blockage, the inability to create, then you might consider whether you are focusing too much on the product instead of the process. Maximum creative flow occurs when the process has top priority and not the product. What does that mean? If you write a poem or paint a painting, the period when you are putting it together is when the process is occurring. The final completed version of the poem or painting is the product. Once what you are working on becomes a product instead of a process, then it's time to shift attention away from it. It's time to focus on the process of creating the next work. Ideally one would lose count of how many products one has produced. One would be aware only of the need to engage in the process of creation. For maximum creative flow, one should not be looking at what one has already created. That which has already been created should be shadows in the background. The spotlight is on the current creative process. That's what has your mind enthralled. You will never have writer's block or any other kind of block if you make creative flow your goal. And that means directing your efforts into maintaining the process. This is why it's better for an artist/writer who desires income from his work to have a sales agent, so that the artist/writer can focus on the process and not the product. Here's a concrete example of the difference... Writer A focused on the product. He wrote a novel and tried to sell it, got rejected 27 times, gave up and never wrote again. Writer B focused on the process. She wrote 5 novels before anyone was willing to publish one. She's been selling novels ever since. |
| When I made fun of the saying You can be anything in life if you put your mind to it I didn't mean to imply that I believe the opposite, that you cannot be anything in life if you put your mind to it. I fully understand that to be anything in life you have to put your mind to it. I just resented the implication that results are guaranteed. For every person that puts his mind to it and becomes something in life, there is another person who puts his mind to it and becomes nothing in life. There is not a one to one correspondence between effort and reward. The level-headed realist should understand that. |
| Is there a misconception that historically human society is progressing from a "more prudish" state to a "less prudish" state? Actually, many ancient Romans had paintings of penises on their walls and sculptures of men with erections in their homes. The Greeks put sex scenes on their household pottery. We tend to view ancient civilizations as less erotic than they really were because over time prudes destroy the erotic historical artifacts and preserve the non-erotic artifacts. I think the primary motivation for prudish behavior is parents not wanting their underage children to engage in reproductive acts. So they put prudish injunctions on them: "Don't get naked with your friends. Don't let anyone touch or see your privates." There are only two ways to develop from that. Internalize it and be a prude. Or rebel and engage in acts of public nudity and/or sexual excess. Fortunately, there are still some parents who are neither prudes nor perverts and raise kids who have no problems with nudity or sex! Those families probably don't have sexual images on their dinnerware, but hey! Japan will eventually get around to creating that.  |
| This is so obviously not true that it makes you wonder if the proverb writer was a shut in who never saw the sky. And why was his false saying propagated? And why do people believe it? Did you ever notice that much of conventional wisdom is filled with things that aren't true but which are just things people WISH were true? Here's another good one: You can be anything you want to be in life if you just set your mind to it. Hahahahahahahaha! Omigosh! Who writes those things? |
| A muse? What is this? Your good, old time, pan theocratic religion? A god for everything? Okay, let's say no one seriously believes there is a "muse" outside of us in a spirit form or whatever... So the muse is INSIDE us?! What the heck would that be? A schizophrenic area of the brain? A cluster of brain cells gone renegade who now believe they are the source of artistic themes and ideas? THERE IS NO MUSE! There are no muses! Never were, never will be. If you have been looking for a muse you are sadly deluded. Get a grip on yourself, reassess your life goals, and get on with your life. |
| ... I would go to bed early. For an old person the problem with death is not the dying. We've accepted that. The problem with death is not knowing WHEN you will die. It makes it difficult to do good financial planning if you don't know whether you will be alive for another 20 years or just another 20 days. |
| No, because the country is not headed in ANY direction. No country is. People live their lives. They work. They get married. They raise kids. They don't band together in a group of millions and go anywhere. Countries do not have directions. Historians have directions. Commentators have directions. Anyone can say "Blah blah I think Australia is headed in the wrong direction blah blah..." But you know what? Australia is not going anywhere. It will still be sitting right there in the ocean a thousand years from now and the people will still be working, getting married, and raising kids. |
| Rice tastes yucky by itself, but it tastes WONDERFUL with anything else in it! Beans, gravy, tuna melt, sausage bits, etc. Potatoes, on the other hand, not only taste great when combined with other things, they taste great just being potatoes! Conclusion: Potatoes are a higher form of food life than rice. |
| One of the many things that surprises me is how so many people believe gold will have some value in an "end of the world" scenario. Really? People are starving. There isn't enough food. And you are going to offer to trade starving people some shiny metal for their food? I don't think so. The value of gold is actually dependent on civilization NOT coming to an end. Only in a civilized world is gold jewelry valued highly. Only in a civilized world are there any industrial uses for gold. Only in a civilized world are there people willing to pay a high price for gold because they think it will save them if things become uncivilized. |
| No. Because inevitably there would come a day when I had nothing to say and I would make the mistake of saying it anyway. Nothing destroys a writer's credibility more than when the reader realizes what he just read has no entertainment value or any other value either. Benjamin Franklin said it well... "Speak only to inform, persuade, or entertain." Have you read his Autobiography? Probably the best one you will ever read in terms of self-improvement. Should be mandatory reading for teenagers. |
| I am sure you have noticed that some blogs are filled with the trivia of everyday life, some blogs are filled with musings about why life is trivial, and some blogs are filled with affirmations of the glory of life's spiritual quality. Maybe there are some other categories as well. I'm not a scientist. I only play one on the internet. I suppose it's a question of focus of attention. And I suspect people who have hard lives are more likely to focus on the spiritual while people who have easy lives are more likely to focus on everyday ordinary things. But that's just my suspects. I am not a detective. I only play one on the internet. I myself have been capable of a feeling of awe from time to time, especially when contemplating the size and intricacy of the visible universe, but my general mindset is that life happens. It's just what it is. I would feel I was adding unnecessary assumptions to it if I started daydreaming about celestial beings or intelligent cosmic forces. Although, those are great concepts to include in stories. But why do some people take spirituality beyond the story stage and make it part of their reality? Why do other people insist that their own reality be "scientific" and based on observation only? Are there actually two kinds of human minds? I don't know. You probably hoped I did know when you read the title of this piece. But I am not a wise man. I only play one on the internet. |
| Happy Father's day to all you dads out there. I don't have any children, but I don't feel bad about that. I just pretend my child would have been a terrorist and killed dozens of people. So by not having a child I have saved the lives of dozens of people. I am proud of that! |
| Something out of nothing... It certainly seems that way when facing a blank page, doesn't it? But all I need is a starting point. If your mind is working well, you should be able to take anything and run with it. For instance... a big red car. You already see scenes involving that car, don't you? This is how my way of creating works. I select something that seems to be a useful starting point. It could be an object, a character, a setting, even a title. I know pretty quickly whether it is an idea generator or not. If it is, then it's just a question of how far do you want to run with it. In my case, usually not very far. |
| I know! You immediately want to object, don't you? So did I! But I have thought this through and I think I am right. I just finished creating a very cool poem and it was one of those that just sort of tumble out of your head, seemingly with very little effort. As I was admiring the beauty of it and crying tears of joy at the awesomeness of my wonderfulness, I got to thinking: How the heck did I do that? Because if I knew, maybe I could do it more often. It happens that I was reading a book about creativity last month where the author debunked the notion that there was anything mystical or supernatural about creativity and pointed out it was just normal mental processes at work. To sum it up, here's what seems to be going on. When you create something, let's say a poem, you have an idea in your head of what a poem should be. It's going to have lines, it's going to rhyme, and in my case it's going to be funny because that was the kind I was trying to write. So then what do you do? You need a starter line, of course, to get you going, and that can be virtually anything, but once you have that first line down, you are immediately constrained. You know that the next one, or the one after the next one, must rhyme with it and have basically the same rhythm. So in your head you are thinking of all the possible next lines, but submitting them to a rule-based examination! If you have been doing that sort of thing a long time then you are probably pretty fast at it. I know I am. Eventually here comes a line tumbling out of your head, but it wasn't formed freely. It was forged in a restrictive environment. Rhyme, rhythm, and meaning. It had to past those three tests. It just happens so fast it seems mystical. But if we thought so slowly that we could follow every step of our own mental process, then we would get hopelessly bogged down in it! So if you want to be more creative, do two things. Learn the rules and... PRACTICE! The more you create the better you become at creating.  Something that contradicts everything already said: Naturally, as the rules become better known, there will appear on the scene... rulebreakers! And THEIR creativity will arise from the way they break the known rules. Usually, they have their own private rules that they are following, because otherwise they would have no "style" and you would be unable to recognize their work. For example, it's obvious my definition of poetry rules as needing to rhyme and have a regular rhythm has long since been broken by various poets who abandoned one or the other or both. Nevertheless... Learn the rules... and PRACTICE! |
| I don't think I am the only one. I think millions of people have seen ghost spiders... It's night and the lights are off. The room has to be dark to see ghost spiders. You see a spot on the wall and you are not sure but as you stare at it... yes, it's moving! If you are near a light switch you can turn on the lights, but... there won't be anything there. You saw a ghost spider. |
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