Subtle Senses

I went to watch The Golden Compass today. I read the His Dark Materials trilogy quite some time back, so the memories are rather fuzzy about the exact details of the original books. However, I really missed the part about the armored ice bears. Frankly, that all reminded me of the Narnia film, what with the Queen and her polar bears.

Anyway, thoughts of The Subtle Knife made me think about the subtle senses. The use of subtle senses is apparently best without conscious control. Or perhaps it may be more accurately termed as logical control. Interestingly enough, intuitive things by definition do not work when logic is pulled in. That is because hard logic plays no part in the control of these aspects. It's sort of like how you can logically think about how to lift your arm through control of the muscles, but no amount of logic will actually move your arm.

Communal Celebrations

Watching the mindless masses swarming around the Christmas season leaves one to wonder at the sensibility of these communal celebrations. Sure, some call them holidays or holy days or even seasons of joy. Many regard these celebrations as having a "festive mood" and thus worthy of the attention.

However, this is all quite senseless, really. For one, people like being individuals yet adore throwing their individuality away just so they can indulge in a bit of sinful herd mentality. Also, time just passes and pretty much ignores whatever people try to slap onto it. A New Year's day or Christmas would really be quite arbitrary. You don't technically get a "new year" after Dec 31st. You just get another sunrise.

Perhaps all this is just to prevent people from feeling like dumbasses for tossing their dignity to the wind and letting their hair down at an arbitrary time. Big whoop, let's rave like there's no 2008 on Dec 21 because I felt like it! Given the nature of straitlaced modern adult society, such activity would be quite frowned upon or deemed silly. It's just too bad that people love to tie themselves in knots over self-made rules.

Watching Your Levels

In aesthetics, there is a great emphasis placed on horizons to be leveled (especially when there isn't an intention to unsettle the image somewhat). On the surface, this sounds perfectly reasonable. The human perceptions are reputedly so fine-tuned that humans are able to perceive when a photo is tilted.

This is all well and good until you realize that the human idea of level is not so much a perfectly horizontal true horizon, but a perceptual imaginary horizon that is drawn even when the picture isn't leveled. All in all, it is probably an evolutionary step to allow humans to be able to stand upright with reference to that imaginary horizon. It's terrible in other contexts, especially when you know that you didn't tilt anything, but everyone else insists that something is tilted in a shot.

Life's Tapestry

There is the comfort of comfort. Comfort is the opiate of the masses. It could take the form of religion, achievement, an ideal or any other lie cooked up to conjure meaning out of life. How true is conjured meaning? It may be a construct made to deceive ourselves into believing that we are enlightened.

Life is a tapestry of many threads, and we need to weave the threads into a coherent whole. It would be foolish to cling to a few threads and call it a tapestry. Much as doing so would be comforting, it does little to hold reality together. Besides, anyone with half an eye would be able to see that it is merely a conjured illusion to deceive oneself.

Of course, weaving is hard work. That is why some prefer to bank everything on a single thread. Yet without the variety of the other threads, a single thread breaking would be devastating to the coherence of the life in question. What would happen, then?

True Nature

I can preach about courage, but why do I hide my true nature? Am I alive? Have I truly lived? It is hard to live a half-life, being un-dead for having no life yet not being actually dead. A strange sort of limbo, and something that most would do their utmost to avoid.

What happens when one cuts loose, however. Does one lose the illusory self and become what one truly is? Many believe that it is to be avoided, for in doing so one is no longer oneself. But it could be far worse to become the mask, losing one's self in the process as well. Of course, there comes that need for self-control so as not to alarm everyone else to the extent that it becomes difficult to do anything without people fleeing in terror...

It's Obvious

Ok right, so someone cooks up a really odd theory about the presidents Lincoln and Kennedy. http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylc=X3oDMTFtMXI2N3ZvBF9TAzI3MTYxNDkEX3MDMzk2NTQ1MTAzBHNlYwNmcm9udCBwYWdlBHNsawNGUC1Ub2RheUludA--?qid=20060718102928AADth6z&fr=hp
Maybe I'm odd or a conspiracy theorist, but it seems that nobody is willing to come up with an explanation for these weird happenings. Me? I don't really believe in coincidences. And when there are too many coincidences, it really should ring a bell in someone's head.

That much should be obvious: These two presidents are the same person! In fact, they could well be a variety of daywalking vampire. It all fits. Clearly, they have much in common. It is a common joke amongst immortals having little references to past discarded identities. I mean, these two presidents did come back and the loose ends were neatly tied in with assassins...who were likely accomplices! So yeah. If anyone really wants to see a significance in all this, they need only look towards vampire lore.

Guns 'n Surveillance

There can be few things as disturbing as knowing that humans really are animals that are incapable of disciplining themselves. Give them the right to bear arms and we wind up with shooting sprees in school (not that I disapprove, of course. It reduces the human population, after all) So in comes tighter controls and surveillance.

In a technologically advanced society, surveillance can go a whole lot further than it used to. Besides the classic spying on others with real spies, it is a breeze to use night vision equipment, telephoto lenses and even tiny unmanned drones to do all that. There are tagging technologies and magic eyes in the skies.

Despite all this, it must be noted that humans are animals incapable of disciplining themselves. The common peasants have proven this. However, what makes the elected leaders of these unwashed masses so certain that they are entitled to legitimate uses of violence? What makes the commoners so sure that their leaders will not be using their authority for personal gain? Bah. Humans.

If you meet the Buddha...

I suppose that since this koan preaches about killing, I'll just go with it. Sounds like fun to kill Buddhas. Of course, this would probably apply to just about every religion that preaches against idol worship. Like the Buddhas, the idols can be internal and external. They could be a golden calf or even that random false prophet that comes along and claims that God has changed Her mind. I don't really understand how one would really want to worship a golden cow or believe that their God is fickle, but I suppose I've been fooled by stranger things.

Anyway the whole point is that everyone forms false expectations. They hear hands clapping
and assume that one hand clapping has to sound somewhat similar. They see a gay person and assume that he would go around trying to seduce all men. Perhaps it is time to kill all these false Buddhas and at least work towards some level of enlightenment.

Break It!

There are rules to be broken, regulations to flout! So why are you sitting around on your law-abiding butt? Of course, some would balk at being anti-establishment. After all, there are always penalties to flouting rules. Still, nobody ever seems to question why rules are there in the first place. They are not just "there for a reason". It would be far better to know exactly which reason that was and whether that reason was valid in the first place. Hence, I think it is unwise for one to dismiss anti-establishment people offhand as troublemakers. After all, they may well be performing everyone a valuable service...

Koff Koff

Perhaps people have no common decency. Of course, since I have this wonderful absolute faith in the innate goodness of humanity, I shall have to assume that it is my poor fortune that has led me to have a bunch of humans coughing at me and around me...without covering their snotty gobs. Clearly, it is their gobs that cause the most trouble since it has the largest aperture and smell a whole lot worse than their porcine snouts. Then again, I have recently recalled that I did not, after all, have any real faith in the innate goodness of humanity or their pathetic plagues so I say: Cover up when you sneeze and cough!

Hidden Ovulation

There's this odd assertion that the ovulation of women is "hidden". Understandably, women do not develop all sorts of odd symptoms like swollen red butts when it's around that-time-of-the-month. However, it would be too hasty to assume that ovulation is hidden just because humans (mainly men) are incapable of sensing its coming. I think even a human would be able to scent the difference when someone is about to ovulate. If not only the sense of smell, then perhaps the weird feelings that pop out of nowhere when you're actually experiencing it? Or the heightened senses and certain friskiness? Well, perhaps some are just unwilling to admit it to themselves...