E-mail has slowed down to nothing. I got no e-mail of any kind this morning. Not even any spam. I went to the Thomas website to see if I was still a member. Yep, in fact, me and the moderator are the only people who have posted for the last three days. Scrolling down the home page to where there is a chart that shows the history of monthly numbers of e-mails back to it's beginning in 1999, February has typically been a slow month. The slowdown probably has a lot to do with it being winter.
I watched a couple more of the TED talks this morning. Why would I not? No e-mail to read and respond to. Might as well listen to some experts carry on about their field of expertise. I seemed to be attracted to listening to people talk about DNA this morning. The link below was particularly fascinating to me because the guy talks about evolution, and in fact calls the next iteration of homo sapiens, "homo evoluti".
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/juan_enriquez_shares_mindboggling_new_science.html
Enriquez is not only interesting, but has a great sense of humor. It's difficult to tell some of these speakers from professional stand-up comedians. They're that good.
At least the sun is shining today. Not a cloud in the sky since the cold front passed through last night. I've been clearing out one area of my house lot between here and the paved road. I've planted several asparagus plants and a fig tree in the general area. It's on the south side of the woods around my house, so clearing that area up will give more room to plant things that need a lotta sun.
I'm trying to burn off a brush pile out in the edge of the wood that's been there rotting since last spring. The problem is that the rain that preceded the cold front got it all wet. It doesn't burn like it would if it was dry, so I have to help it along with scrap paper and some Coleman fuel I keep just for burning stuff. There is not much open flame to consume the wood swiftly, but it does smolder and burn a little at a time, and then I have to repile it to get it burning again. I'm getting some cardio vascular exercise. I just got up to check the fire and it had gotten out into the woods with a stiff wind. Miraculously, I was able to contain it before it got away from me bringing humiliation in it's train.
“ Far from idleness being the root of all evil, it is rather the only true good. ”
— Soren Kierkegaard
I am was familiar with this philosopher's name for a while without knowing too much about his philosophy. I liked the quote above, so I Googled up his name and started reading. Interestingly enough, the Wikipedia article stated that some people consider Kierkegaard as the "Father of Existentialism". I didn't read that much before I got the connection with existentialism from my recent reading of Sartre.
I still couldn't explain existentialism even after having read Sartre and acted in some of the Theater of the Absurd dramas. I do know I'm interested in the same things that the purported Existentialist philosopher's write about. I enjoy reading their opinions without feeling emotionally met for the doing of it. It's just a rap. It's merely something to say when performing speech seems required at the moment.
I seem to have moved to some spot in my thinking where I take everything I'm gonna say from my audience's projections about themselves. I don't actually have "to know" very much specific data to carry on as if I do. I really do. It's just not about me. It's about and for the other.
I get them to tell me what they like and/or dislike about practically anything, and thereby gnow what they like and/or dislike about themselves. How could I not? If the other seems like a politically oriented person I ask them to tell me what they like about their party's major figure. Then, I ask them to tell me what they don't like about the other party's figurehead. Asking them to tell me what they like or dislike about Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan have worked well for the last decade or so.
The way this works is one of the most paradoxical abstractions I'm aware of. It is what it's not, and it's not what it is. With the question being: Do you really want somebody like me to gnow what you like and dislike about your own person better than you do?
If I were to ask you what you liked and didn't like about anything, much less your views on politicians, whatever you described, either yea or nay, would be about who-you-think-you-would-be.... if and only if... you were them instead of you. You're not them instead of you. They're not you instead of being themselves. They don't do what they do for your reasons nor you for their reasons.
So, what's the big deal you might ask. The big deal is that 99.44% of homo sapiens don't realize in real ti-me that they're projecting their own idea of themselves on to and upon the behavior of other people. They don't "bring it on home to Jesus", as it were.
Al Pacino asks in one of his movie roles, "Are you talking to me? Are YOU talking to ME?" Confronting a real-life criminal (like the one in the role Pacino was playing in that movie) is not a good time to realize that you have betrayed your own cause by projecting your own unseemly careactoristics upon a "wiseguy".
To prevent that from happening is not an easy task. First of all, you gotta realize what you're doing in real-time. Most people never get beyond this initial step in the process. They identify with their own idea of themselves too tightly to be able to stand back from their personality and see it for what it is. It's something they created themselves that they have to take responsibility for or the jig is up. Taking responsibility for the persona you created yo'self by haphazardly adopting a nebulous group of previously existing rules of conscience is a somethingness most people rather not go toe-to-toe with for either love nor money.
The recognition of the self that's also you as others "see" you, requires that you find something in yourself that you didn't create or originate like you did your persona. There is not much of it to be found in any case. When you see just how much baggage you have to wade through to find it, you'll realize just how prolific an artist you've been. The needle in the haystack you're looking for is what the other sees you as, that you don't see yourself as. It's a bit tricky to figure out. Besides, what the other sees as the real you to them, that you don't see as you at all, is surely a "self" of your's just as much as the Self that you think the real you is.
I do not attempt to tell the God's own truth here because I don't know what the truth is or hardly ever. I try to capture the drifting thoughts that randomly appear in my imagination for reasons I may not understand. I don't know if the content I capture with these words is true or false. The Comments settings are turned off to prevent me from having to defend what amounts to little more than fanciful, sometime crude speculation. Great moments in our lives never return.
