Ultraparadoxical

My Uncle’s favorite quote is “People don’t change”.  When I was a kid at family parties I remember him saying this as a response to hearing about what someone in our family experienced or just talking about current events.  I would hear one of my cousins saying how her boyfriend was treating her like shit and she couldn’t believe that he was acting that way.  Everyone in the room knew the guy was an asshole but she seemed not to be able to see it.  She thought that things would be different over time.  She could have saved herself a lot of time and heartache by listening to my uncle.

It got to the point where my brother’s and sisters would poke fun at him for saying his line and try to beat him to the punch before he could say it.  Back then I really didn’t get it.  As I got a bit older I thought that he was totally wrong.  People DO change… I mean, as a child I thought I was changing all the time.  The way I acted changed dramatically as I grew up and I felt like almost as if I was a different person.  Since then I have realized something.  He was right. read more »

“Success” in America has less to do with actual talent than any time in recent history.  We have forsaken competence, responsibility and intelligence in our country and replaced those attributes with shallow illusions of each.   It has been all around me lately in my workplace, in popular entertainment, and watching the government in action.  It aggravates me at times but mostly I just join in with a sense of apathy and embarrassment.  Incompetence and stupidity are part of every day life and in some aspects is accepted and embraced as a positive thing.  I cannot speak for much of the past as I have only experienced the last 30 years personally but it seems to me like talent, perseverance and commitment used to be things that guided Americans.  Now attitudes seem to be different. read more »

As a person gets older a perception that has been generating over the course of a lifetime takes hold and things become far less dynamic over time.  As a child a person is constantly in flux and their perception changes at a rapid pace.  Events and experiences major and minor can completely change someone’s view on existence and the things going on around them.  As someone ages the way that they perceive the events going on around them solidifies and their focus increases but their ability to take in their surroundings from different viewpoints decreases.  This is positive for a deeper understanding of the “chosen” perspective but it is detrimental to one’s ability to broaden one’s perception on a person’s environment.

Everyone can remember seminal events from their childhood that changed how they take in the world around them.  These events are numerous and many of then caused radical shifts in how we live our lives today.  Every single event changes us as we proceed through life but there are only certain things that can really impact the way that we process the information that is constantly flowing into our sensory mechanisms.  As we age fewer of these perception changing events occur and we become more set in our ways.  Events happen and we use our existing perception mechanisms to process the events.  Rather than changing the way external events are processed a person uses the mechanisms already entrenched to perceive the events happening in a familiar way. read more »

Dreams are so fascinating to me because everything is so random and logic does not apply the way I use it in every other part of my life.  It is so jumbled and fleeting yet it can compel me to do things or infuse me with real emotion. ”I had the most fucked up dream last night…” usually precedes a convoluted story that makes no sense the the person hearing what the speaker dreamt.  Invariably the story ends with “… I don’t know, it’s hard to explain… but it was fucked up”.  The reason it was fucked up is because interpreting a dream is like translating a language that is different for each individual.

The subconscious contains all of the urges, impulses, intentions, perceptions, thoughts, deductions and feelings we have ever experienced.  Most of this information stays cordoned off in the recesses of our subconscious and may only bubble up as an instinct, idea or at times a rational thought in our waking lives.  Our minds have evolved and developed a rational sense that is unparalleled in the animal kingdom.  Having the conscious and subconscious working in tandem is a uniquely human characteristic and elevates us to be able to think in infinite terms while the subconscious unites us with our instinctual heritage in the animal kingdom.  I imagine when we are able to more clearly determine exactly how animals think that we will discover it is very similar to our experiences in the visceral simplicity of a dream-state. read more »

“Everything happens for a reason.”

I hear it all the time whenever someone talks about things that have happened to them in the past.  Why do so many people believe that to be true?  The idea that events are culminating into some grand plan which will eventually put the individual in some sort of more evolved state or “right” position is part narcissism, part blind faith and 100% bullshit.  In reality there is no “reason” for any of the disparate events that befall us.  There are any number of realities that could have culminated based on actions that we take throughout every second of  life.  There is one reality that we perceive and it did not come into being because of a reason but rather because we took a specific set of actions that led us to our “current state”.  People attach a significance to an event after the fact in order to help make sense of their reality and achieve a more ordered state to their perception of the world around them. It may help people process their current reality and help them feel better about it but it is logically false. read more »

This idea is something that I have been thinking about for a while and it has to do with the overall perception of well being that any person feels in any situation.  Pretty broad, I know, but the thought process behind it is so simplistic yet is completely opposite from how people percieve the current situation in life versus their past and their future.  Confused yet?  I am.  This is the first time I have really put these thoughts down in writing so bear with me. read more »