Now I own three people.
They call it saving lives. I call it purchasing.
And I'm calling it "Greedtaking". It is deeply rooted in the traditions of the 'New World', like Thanksgiving, but it celebrates the other side of the spectrum.
Instead of each person bringing some food to share at a table of friends, each person gets as much food as he or she can and stores it in a little dark room for a week of private feasting. I call this disaster scenario- just like if a meteor were going to strike earth, everyone would be in a mad rush to clear out the supermarkets of all food items. Those that don't collect enough food to survive the restocking period will perish, and rightly so. Natural selection. Survival of the fittest. Darwin.
In the case that there is a disaster, we will know exactly how to survive. The key is to hoard everything for yourself. The victor will repopulate the globe. If we had a national crisis, and everyone did the thanksgiving routine, we would last for one day. Though- a glorious day it would be...
I wish we reproduced with spores. Life would be so much easier.
Also, we should have mating calls. With the vibrant, inflatable doohickies.
Just to disrupt the classroom if nothing else.
I just want to see a bunch of guys doing their mating calls and releasing spores around a girl. That would be the funniest shit...
Today I saw tired faces. Everyone looked like they had gotten 4 hours of sleep, but there is no coincidence here... There was a midnight showing of Harry Potter: And the Goblet of Fire.
But this is the kind of thing you see the day after a huge party that lasted all night, yet I don't think people approached it the same way- Or did they? Most parents would say, "No, just wait until you can see it and get a good night's sleep at the same time" "You can wait."
So did people just not tell their parents, and instead sneak out in the middle of the night? Did somebody tie bed-sheets together and scale down the side of the house like it was forbidden or illegal?
"Up yours, Mom and Dad! I have a life of my own, and I'm using it to see Harry Potter!"
What happened to the rebellious youth... Some people had to make something of it, you know? It couldn't be just sneaking out for harry potter. Surprisingly, every other person had a coincidental schedule before then. "First we went to the concert, got drunk, smoked pot, then had a tornado tournament drag race in our souped up hondas, and Jason got in a fight with Kenny, and haha, fucking broke a bottle over his own head and started waving it around ...anyway, and then we saw harry potter. Just cause, you know. Why not?"
Because nobody wants to be caught in the situation where they are out late, but don't do anything cool. "Oh, you saw harry potter last night?" "Yeah" "I did too, man. Who did you go with?" "myself" "Oh, but you were at least drunk, high, hallucinating and bleeding like I was, right?" "...no" "In that case, you're a fag. The fuck is your problem, watching Harry Potter, PERIOD? ...christ..."
Because you have to make uncool sounding things sound cool somehow, and that's usually done by mixing cool shit in with it. "What? You and tim had sex? That's the epitome of gay..." "We were hellla drunk." "Oh, haha, that's the epitome of AWESOME."
Lame situation: yesterday I played on the jungle gym at a preschool by myself.
Solution: Yesterday night me and 20 of my friends ate wild mushrooms and played on the jungle gym at this preschool, and fucking synchronized our movements until the whole fucking thing collapsed, and then we fell asleep and the next morning we were awoken by crying children.
This isn't one of those things I can straight out answer. It confuses me, but I'll try to explain what I'm asking myself and what I know about it:
"Why am I a human? Why am I who I am, and not someone else?" There are many brains out there, yet I am perceiving reality through this one. ...Why?
It's a tough question. Obviously, if you were an animal of some sort, it's a question you would never ask. So part of it is that- It might surprise you that you're human as opposed to any other creature, because as a human you can make that realization about yourself and question it. As a human, we can also ask, "Why am I this particular human? But consider if you were able to switch your perception to a different one- Whoever took your body would now be asking the same question you just asked, and you would share the same concerns as the person who's brain you entered. This is all hypothetical, but if everyone looked through a different set of eyes every... 12 seconds, nobody would have the capability of realizing it, because memory is still part of the physical world, and spirit doesn't share this quality. So whatever force, or spirit, transfers between minds every 12 seconds is the same as all the other spirits. If not, we would observe it.
But that still doesn't explain anything. The spirit was hypothetical, it doesn't exist.
The brain is the only element that applies in this scenario, you are a product of it. When a brain develops, it must think, and consequently becomes another object capable of defining itself as a "Me".
But beyond that, when I contemplate this subject i just get stuck. I come up with an answer that isn't an answer at the same time. We are all the same, in that each brain can be in the same conundrum. They wonder why they are who they are just as you do. So lets assume that consciousness is not created, it is divided, and each of those divisions can experience something else, but only the thing it experiences. Our brains cant simply divide, we have to start from basics and work our way up using DNA. But if you were created through mitosis, you would consider your mom the same person as you, relatively. But the way in which we reproduce ourselves results in entirely new memories, and perspective of time (in that we look back and notice we're further down the chain than our parents). But otherwise, we're the same people as our parents, so you could in theory say that you and your parents were once one, not divided.
But this has to be the most confusing subject I've ever encountered. It hurts my brain to think about it.
Here is something that I know, that other people should. It's the nature of gravity.
Surprisingly, many people do not understand what gravity is. These are the people who think that if you leave earth's atmosphere, you become weightless and float around, because there is no Gravity. There is. In fact, there is the same amount of gravity, relatively, as on the surface.
So why do you float in space? Well, first you must understand that these astronauts are in Orbit. If you throw an object on earth, its path with gravity is a curve, the faster you throw it, the less curved this travel is. If you throw it around 18,000 mph, the curve matches the curve of earth, and it will not hit the ground. We have to do this in space, because we don't feel like burning up.
We float because we are in constant freefall. Or rather, because our surroundings are falling at the same rate as us, so it seems like we have a O net force to that surrounding.
What would we have to do to completely escape gravity, and not be in freefall? Well, you even if you escape earth's pull a sufficient amount, you are still in freefall around the sun. And worse yet, freefall around the galaxy. After that, who knows... But what awaits us beyond gravity? It's a little known fact that time flows faster further away from gravity. A chemical process, or a clock, will go faster at the top of a skyscaper than it will on the surface. This could point to the very nature of gravity itself- which I have discussed in "unified theory?"
So if we escape freefall, and remain at a point untouched by gravity, everything around you will appear to stand still. You will age very quicky compared to sombody within a gravitational field. Similarly, if you were at the center of the sun, or a black hole, and could see the worlds around you... they would go by extremely quickly. You would appear immortal to them, but normal to yourself. You always appear normal to yourself.
So that's gravity. When I was little I thought if I took a bottle and used my lungs to create a vacuum, the drops would float around. In fact, this would make them heavier, but the fact was that I was completely delusional. But I was young. But this is how many ADULTS envision space! When you leave earths atmosphere, you can just stay there and float around. If you just stayed there, you would fall back to earth and never experience weightlessness except on your decent. :D
Why do you think the rockets that go to the moon are so frigging huge? And the moon is also in freefall around the earth, which is in freefall around the sun, etc etc.
I love gravity.
This subject bugs me. Do I believe in fate? Not on a small scale, but on a large scale I believe in "inevitabilities". Do I believe in choice and free will? Yes, I see it on the same scale you do, but I define it differently.
There are those who think that thought cannot be predicted on any scale, that it is separated completely from the natural world (and I can only imagine, physics.).
Ok, most people don't believe in evolution. That's despicable, but our own complexity and the ability to question our origins would lead us to believe in supernatural, because we wonder why we are human, or all creatures. This reveals a level of ignorance that I cringe to think exists. But this is not the deepest, darkest, "special hell" of ignorance. Oh no...
Recently, I suggested a bit of knowledge to a debate which included the fact that if one were to recreate the big bang exactly, life on earth would make the same decisions. But NO! Even the atheists appeared to take offense to this fact, except one or two. They insisted that determinism doesn't work in the physical or biological world. (everything naturally along certain rules and guides.)
Here's a little fact: If you are an atheist, you better believe this, because that is your entire belief. That is what separates the atheists from the agnostics. (why on earth are agnostics, who supposedly do not think it matters whether or not there is a god, participating in such debates? :P)
Choice appears the same in my view as it does in any other view. We're all looking at the same thing, I'm just defining it as being explainable. Explainable or not, the variety and complexity will still produce what we consider free choice. Nothing is deciding what we think or choose along a divine plan, but you can track the actions of a human brain if you had sufficient knowledge and computing power to simulate it.
If this wasn't the case, I don't think the brain would work.
Take the cell, for instance. There isn't any intelligence present. Or at least no consciousness, sentience, or self awareness. Yet the cell does complicated things. We have looked very closely at the cell, and everything we have discovered reveals a process and explanation that is natural, for those things that have been completely discovered. We don't say that the cell chooses to do the things it does, because we assume there is a fairly direct action/reaction response.
We're made up of these cells, so I don't see where the supernatural element comes in, which is what you're suggesting. You're saying that somewhere along the line, these cells operate in a way that is totally unpredictable even taking in the hypothetical scenario where we know everything about how these cells operate.
You make choices based on knowledge. So if you make a mistake, that's incomplete knowledge, not free will at its best. Having a brain controlled naturally does not mean one is all-knowing or flawless. It doesn't mean that if you kill someone it was something that should go unpunished. Because the punishment will impact the judgement of a brain which portrays a murderous ideology. There isn't anyone enslaved into this kind of behavior, because one is not separate from his brain. If you decide to commit a crime, you are still rightly punished even with the argument "Oh, it was my brain's fault, not mine". Additionally, you should be put to death if you think in those terms, because you're a danger to society.
There would still be right and wrong, because the basic feelings are survival traits. Right and Wrong shows underlying certainties, not free will.
Why does killing another human feel wrong? Did you decide to feel that way?
I don't know how someone can believe in these two things simultaneously: Human behavior cannot be determined on any scale, and manic depression is genetically inherited.These people also think that homosexuality is a choice, not inherited.
It's one thing to deny what we assume but cannot see, another to deny what we can see and know.
A hospital in India had a diabetic patient with an eye infection, the eye was bandaged, and the patient started complaining. "Pain is normal after surgery", they told her.
When it was time for the bandages to be removed, her eye was a gaping hole, filled with ants.
That has to be horrible to experience. But what if it were something that flew, like bees? That might be cool, actually... The bandages are lifted, and through your other eye you see them dart out. And you are labeled the mother bee.
Your eye socket is a honeycomb hive, like a cyborg. Except with bees.
Perhaps you could use them against people. "What did you say to me?" *bees buzz loudly* "You're going to regret saying that, to ME" And then you could squint your hive, and the bees would attack.
You would be the best super-villian of them all. BEEMAN!
I'm an idiot.
This theory is wrong for one, plain and simple reason: There isn't enough water for a global flood.
Here's a better Noah theory... Most life-forms are about 50% water, right? Well, maybe god makes it all drain out of the sinful folk or whatever. And then there's Noah, who misheard God's message and got all paranoid, thinking that there was going to be a massive flood... So he built a massive boat. Then he rounded up all the animals he could before the time came. He looked on his sun-dial, said a little prayer or whatever, and held on for dear life. But there was only a little water... It was like the kind of wave that skims across the sand on a beach.
Well, Noah was clearly embarrassed. He had this big ol ark and all, but it was merely splashed. But there was nobody around to laugh at him, and none of the animals cared, so he figured he could just fabricate most of the story to make it more interesting. As for the ark, he was hoping he could just float it over to a mountain as proof, but he might have just burned it.
Hell, maybe it wasn't so big. Maybe he made a canoe but figured nobody would know how big it was anyway.
Something I like doing is randomly asking "Did I say that out loud?", and then the people around me will pause for a second, "Uh, no... I don't think you did..." And then with a great sigh of relief, I'll say "Thank god for THAT."
This works best when a group of friends inexplicably goes silent. Or my favorite, on a first date, when your walking her to the door.
So, I volunteered for the special election. I woke up at 4:30am, got to my polling place at 6:00am, and stayed there till 10:00 pm.
I now officially know everything there is to know about voting. I think when I'm eligible to vote, I'll screw everything up just so I can handle it like a pro.
And I will never, EVER, get annoyed with the people working at the booth. It's a dull job with slave wages. Hell, I'll tip them.