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Sunday, January 31, 2010

Philosophy on Facebook # 13 - Your Moment to shine

Alright since my last post i talked about the moments that have you feeling down and out, this time i wanted to talk about the moments where you can shine. These moments are where people can really flaunt and show their stuff. Highly publicized events such as sporting events like the superbowl gain alot of media notority and are highly valued in the publics eye. The players on these teams have been given basically a shot of a lifetime to prove their worth and beat the other team. Everything that they have worked for is being condensed into a single game. You can obviously imagine how much pressure that the football players must be feeling. the more eyes that are on the person performing the more the weight of the world comes crashing down on their shoulders. The more important the event is and the more things put on the line then the higher the intensity level and the more vital their performance is and therefore the more pressure on them to succeed.

These times where you are put on the spot are where you put your skills and everything you have worked for to the test. it is where you cultivate everything that you have accumulated up to that point. Its is the proving ground to see if you are worthy and in this case worthy to be crowned superbowl champions. As i mentioned with pressure your poise plays a major role in the outcome of the match. if you get put on the spot and all eyes are on you than you might suffer a nervous breakdown and therefore choke when it really matters. This is why preparation is vital in success because not only does the repition help you to calm your nerves but as you all know practice makes perfect and therefore increasing your chances for success when it comes to the real game.

Losing the game would be one of the biggest disappointments those players have probably ever undergone but it isnt necessarily a portrayal of your performance but rather the situation wasnt optimal for you to succeed. Sure its a possibilty that your team could have played like crap and the other team had more heart and deserved to win more than you. This isnt always the case however as sometimes things just go wrong no matter how much you prepare for the situation or how well you actually perform. Sometimes the game winning field goal could have been right on target but a sudden gush of wind pushes it just wide. That sucks for the kicker but he could have been as prepared as he ever would have been and would have made the field goal in any other situation. This makes me conclude that sometimes forces beyond your control unfortunately can affect your outcome. Another example could be if youre on a show like american idol and you are bound for greatness but your reputation is terrible from the publics perspective. then regardless of your skill you most likely wont win because the voters dont want you to win. Thats why it isnt just your skills and abilities that can determine if you fail or succeed, but your overall image and possibly just plain dumb luck. with that said, it can never hurt you chances if you go into situations with a positive outlook and being as prepared as you can. when it comes down to it just try your best because thats all you can do.

- Allan Nicholas

Monday, January 25, 2010

Philosophy on Facebook # 12 - Stuck in a rut

Hey guys this one i want to talk about those off days that people have every once in a while. As you probably know things will inevitably take a turn for the worst and can leave you with a negative disposition. These ruts that we have are an essential part of life because they keep us grounded in reality and also allow you an opportunity to cope. If nothing bad ever happened to you, your expectations could potentially extend past what is realistic. Like if you seem to be the best boxer in your area and go undefeated you probably will get cocky and challenge others that are beyond your skill level. The harsh reality is that there is always somebody out there who is better than you and when you meet that person you will be in for a rude awakening. This is why having things not go our ways sometimes can be so critical, especially in your decision making process. When things dont go your way because of your own mistakes then you learn from them and dont make the same mistake the second time. The exception is those you are classified are "insane", where you go into a situation repeatedly the exact same way and make the same decisions expecting different results. This decision making and mistake learning process is basically how humans operate. We wouldnt get anywhere if we kept making the same mistakes and these mistakes occur on these off days. While sometimes things are not our fault and completely out of our control, stuff happens and we need to learn how to deal with it the right way to move on with our lives.

When things go wrong, whether within our control or at the whim of outside forces, their ramifications all leave different effects on the victim. If you just make a simple mistake its no big deal and you get over it. The more dire the consequence of the negative event, the longer it takes to recover. This recovery period is when people dont feel like socializing, and act depressed as well as a lot more symptoms. Your coping mechanisms allow you to get out of this slump faster or slower than others depending on your viewpoint. Like i said in my previous post your perspective is a huge factor in what you can accomplish and it also allows you to get out of these ruts. If you think positive and think that whatever went wrong was no big deal or that some good came out of it, then your recovery will be quicker and you can be back on your feet and operating normally in no time. The opposite goes for those who feel like theyre helpless and the whole world is against them when something goes wrong.

These off days however can have negative effects in themselves. If you are feeling sad or think that nothing can go right for you in a crucial time, then you life can really suck. An example is when youre taking a test. If something bad happened the night before then it will most likely negatively impact your performance on that test. Whenever something goes wrong and during the recovery time necessary to get you back to your normal self, your abilities can be stunted and thus your performance negatively impacted. If you are going to a job interview that can make or break your career and your car breaks down on the way there then you will most likely not get the job. If you have a positive outlook however, and also a very nice interviewer, they may be willing to support you in your times of need and possibly reschedule your interview.

Your environment, as with many other circumstances can also help you in your time of need. If you have caring and compassionate people around you they will try their best to get you out of these ruts and help you recover faster. You might also be able to recover faster in tougher surroundings. An example is if you have parents who basically tell you to suck it up and get over it then you will build up a resistance to negative situations and be able to get back up faster when they knock you down. The one situation that definitely wont help you handle your problems effectively is if you get everything your way. If you are basically spoon fed and then get blind sided by a problem youll then have no idea how to handle it because you have no experience in situations that take a turn for the worst. i think it is important to realize that things wont always go your way (except at like burger king lol) and you have to figure out ways to deal with it ahead of time and be prepared. If you live with this mentality you will be able to accomplish so much more and not be stuck in the ruts that will happen to you eventually whether you like it or not.

When these bad situations occur you are most likely given an option to quit OR stick things out. You are much more likely to tough out bad situations instead of giving up if you know how to deal with it productively. Think what life would be like if the colonists decided to turn back right when they hit a bad storm. They realized that they had to suck it up and that the journey ahead of them would be hard but the rewards on the other side would be worth it. While the werent greeted and welcomed on their arrival to the u.s., their hard work and ability to cope with everything that was going wrong allowed them to build a foundation for one of the greatest civilizations in history. Just think of what youre capable of if you endure all the negative consequences that come in life. You will emerge a better person if you know how to deal correctly and basically anything is possible you are able to get back up when life knocks you down.

Friday, January 22, 2010

Philosophy on Facebook # 11 - Is the glass half full?

Hey back again. I read over my last post and realized 1. i spelt success wrong (embarassing lol)and 2. i dont think i truely believe in thomas edisons quote "I have not failed 1,000 times. I havesuccessfully discovered 1,000 ways to NOT make a light bulb" at the end. First of all why would you need 1000 ways not to make a lightbulb if the purpose of your experimentation was to make a light bulb. the only positive aspect of finding your failures is to learn from them and build upon them. I dont follow the way he said it in the fact that in my opinion those other 1000 ways are basically useless in your original intent to make a lightbulb. They may yield unexpected or undesired results that could end up being beneficial in the long run as many achievements and discoveries in history happened on accident. If he reworded it in a way where he said those 1000 attempts ultimately led to the invention of the lightbulb then i would have 100% agreed with his quote. This in turn led me to think about why he phrased it in that particular way and it is because of his perspective.

Thomas edison must have had a particular temperment that led him to perservere through all those supposed "failures" and continue on to make on of the most revolutionary inventions that greatly affect our lives these many years that have taken place since then. I know plenty of people who would have probably given up after try 100 or 50 or possibly even less. His perspective i can gain based on that quote was basically a glass half empty half full scenario. He had to have been optimistic and confident in himself during his experimentation or else he would have given up way before that. In a society where technology has allowed for almost instantaneous satisfaction, we as people have developed a sense of impatience when things dont go our way the first couple trys. The main difference is that our technology has fortunately experienced and will continue to experience exponential growth, allowing us to hopefully and most likely take less than 1000 trys to complete our goals. This however isnt foolproof and if youre on the forefront and a pioneer of a new area completely undiscovered then there is a chance you can never succeed your goals. An area that exemplifies this well that is very prominent nowadays is the space frontier and the possibility of terraforming the surfaces of nearby planets for human colonization. While we are still in early forms of this people as we speak are probably running simulations using trial and error or other methods to find the best way to go about solving this goal that may never yield attainable results or could provide verification that we could someday live on mars.

The way you go about solving a goal and the chance of you successfully achieving desired results is all dependant upon your own personal perspectives and viewpoints. If you are optimistic then you will more likely align yourself with thomas edisons viewpoint and think of it as building upon your mistakes to get closer and closer to accomplishing whatever you were trying to do. If you are a pessimist then you will probably feel like you have been wasting your time and accomplished nothing and therefore be less motivated to continue with your progression. Realism falls somewhere in between these points however as the radicals and extemists of optimists and pessimists can have unrealistic outlooks on the situation at hand. If you are too confident in your possible success, you can in a sense set the bar too high as well as your expectations and in no way achieve results anywhere near the level you planned for. Vice versa goes for pessimism where you can accomplish so much more but dont have faith in your abilites to take the next step. Realism in my opinion is an outlook that takes into consideration the resources, restrictions (i.e. time constraints), expected and desired results, and all other factors that play a role in achieving the final outcome. If you aim too high there is always as possibility of disappointment and if you aim to low you are stunting the growth of your own potential. As with many things, your outlook is one more thing that requires a healthy balance. Your dreams are what set the basis for what you want to accomplish and while your goals may be fantasies at the time of inception you must pepper in some realistic perspectives in order to create a recipe for success in accomplishing them.

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Philosophy on Facebook # 10 - Succes is what you measure it

Wow 10 posts already i hope i can get to like 100. its midterm week so i got some extra time to write this. As midterm week comes along i find that alot of people are stressing about how well theyll do on the midterms and in turn they worry about their grades. This makes me kinda laugh about how much importance people place on one test. Sure you need to do well in school to make it through the game we call life, but one test wont make or break you. Im not saying that stressing is a bad thing and it can help push us and pressure us to want to do good but too much is definitely a bad thing. This is why i want this note to be about success and how it varies from person to person.

Success's definition is an event that accomplishes its intended purpose. As i said before the ultimate influence on you is the environment you grow up and live in. This means that the environment has skewed our opinions one what is successful or not. One major enviornmental impact i believe is the pressure that society places on us. This could be our teachers our friends and even our parents. Our parents try to make the best life for their kids and by getting good grades and pressuring their children to do the best the kids can they feel they can build a fondation to make the childrens lives great. They sometimes get caught up in this and dont realize when they are pushing too hard. Sometimes its not even the parents fault at all. Sometimes the kids themselves are overachievers and put the pressure on themselves. I am like this sometimes. I dont get grounded if i get bad grades and my parents dont pressure me to do good. I put the pressure on myself to do good and when sometimes i dont get a good grade i get mad and feel like i failed myself. Then i realize its not the end of the world and who gives a crap what happened one time. I coulda been as well prepared as anybody else and i just had a brain fart or something that caused me to panic or something that made me forget everything i studied so hard to remember. I now go into things with the outlook that if i tried my best then thats all i can ask for and if i do bad so what ill do better next time. People put too much pressure on themselves or others that they become sleep deprived or worry so much that it actually decreases in their chances of "succeeding."

Competition can also be a cause of pressure as people always try to do better than their peers and hate seeing their friends do better than them. Jealousy is a constant result and can hurt peoples friendships. While competition can spur innovation in the business space it isnt as healthy in the area of education. it can possibly make students do better as they aspire to be as good as their peers and they get the feeling that theyre fighting others for the chance to get into a good college. There is plenty of room in college and there are alot of great colleges out there for everybody and you dont need to fight and compete against others but it is better to collaborate and work together (thats why i believe we should have group test ; P)

People's ideas of what is perfect for them and what they aspire to do and achieve can be skewed by the media. Tons of people think being rich and famous is successful for them. While this might be true you dont need to be wealthy or have alot of friends to be happy. Success usually brings happiness because you get a sense that you accomplished something and you sure dont need alot of money to be happy. Sometimes it does take money to make you feel better though so its impossible to say what one person should want to succeed in. You can succeed even in your failures by learning from them and succeeding in a different way. Like thomas edison said I have not failed 1,000 times. I havesuccessfully discovered 1,000 ways to NOT make a light bulb

Sunday, January 17, 2010

Philosophy on Facebook # 9 - What's in it for me?

Back again guys! This one i wanted to kind of piggy back on the last one about cynics and self interest and talk about the incentives and what gets people to do things. I think there are 2 major things that get people to carry out their daily lives and they are incentives and motivations. These 2 more often then not, overlap each other. While these two may seem pretty similar i feel like the main difference is that motivation can also come from within where incentives are carried out by external forces beyond a persons control. Motivation can also be caused by external forces. An example of it from the outside is a coach giving a motivational speech intended to pump up the players on a team. A person can set up their own incentives for themselves but i believe it requires an external force. An example is when youre trying to lose weight you get a treat after working out a lot. You set up a reward system for yourself to get you to lose weight.

Now that we have that out of the way I want to go in depth on the two. Incentives can be both good and bad things. A bad incentive is something that forces you to do something and you arent MOTIVATED to do it because someone else is making you. They could be threatening you to do something you might not want to. If someone was holding up the convience store you work in and wanted all the money in the cash register you were manning, you would give them the money against your will because of the incentive of keeping you life. This is how demagogues like hitler operated so effectively because they would use tactics of fear and force to control a tight regimen and build a ruthless empire.

A good incentive would be something that gets you MOTIVATED to do something without hurting you or causing you to do something against your will. This could be a prize based reward system. Its amazing how much prizes get people to do things. The staple of this is with the crane game and other arcade games that get people to spend their extra change in hopes of winning a prize. I have seen too many a times where people spend a dollar on a most likely rigged gamed in hopes of winning a new ipod when they could be using it for other more important things. Another example that doesnt require the consumption of your hard earned cash is the xprize foundation. It is a very amazing program that achieves great things by coaxing people to push the limits of their intellectual capabilities by offering lots of money to the winners of their competitions. One competition in particular was privitizing the space travel industry and having the first private company get an unmanned craft into space and onto the moon. They are funded by google (which of course seems to have unlimited resources even in this economic recession) and theyre offering 30 million dollars to the winners. They have gotten lots of teams to try and land a space craft onto the lunar surface. Its amazing how much money can actually make the world go round. It is why people go to work everyday; to provide for their families with the money they accumulate from working.

Money isnt the only incentive however, as many people have their own ways of getting through the day. Someones motivation to getting up every morning and going to work is to get their wallets stuffed from their paychecks. Others may get up looking forward to do something cool in their job. This is why I feel you should really do something that you enjoy because if you dont, you wont have a connection with your job like you would if you had a passion for it. If youre just doing it to make mullah then you will probably take the job less serious and do the job poorly compared to someone who loves doing it. You will most likely take everything you do to heart if you are interested in the field of your job while if you arent you are more likely to half ass things and do a crappy job. If that was how everyone dealt with their job then cars would break down even more than they do now and medicine wouldnt be as effective as it is and the list goes on. Everything you cherish would be flawed if the inventor or manufacturer didnt have a passion for quality and getting things done correctly. This is however a double edged sword because some greedy business people want to insure quality only for the fact that it will attract more potential customers to purchase their product or service.

What gets you up in the morning to do what you do is really up to you. You will more likely get something done and do it better if there is something at the end you are working for. Like previously stated it could be for money or the feeling of a job well done. There are countless reasons why people do what they do and it really depends, like i said in my very first note, the current environment you are in when a situation arises. If you make a new years resolution to lose weight you require the motivation to want to be skinnier, the incentive of fitting into the new pair of jeans you bought, and for this situation, the discipline of sticking to the plan and not going off course by eating mcdonalds for lunch.

Thursday, January 14, 2010

Philosophy on Facebook # 8 - The Cynic in all of us

Hey guys. Im back after a very long week which still isnt done but I finally got a little break so i decided i'd write another note. I got the idea for this one in english class with the words of the week. When I heard the word cynic I felt like it had a very negative connotation. Its "official" ms o'connor definition is one who believes human contact is motivated by self-interest. It is basically implying a sense of selfishness in the person. I looked at it in a different light however and came to the decision that everyone is a cynic in one way or the other but definitely not in as harsh terms as the definition would put it.

One prime example for how this definition would be fulfilled in its negative connotation would be with rich people and the supposed "friends" that come with the increase in wealth. It's amazing how much more popular a person can get when word spreads about how much money they have. People believe that if they make friends with important people they will get to reap some of those rewards. If you were to hang out with a rich person they might be willing to spend their money on you or in a way let you in on the lavish lifestyle only the wealthy can afford.

One possibly not so negative way to look at an example of a cynic would be with networking. Networking is the term used to describe the act of making contacts and establishing relationships with people. This is used to build a group with which you can refer to and possible acquire help from in the future. Ms lerner uses this technique especially for the intern mentor at hammond so she can make contacts with people in positions of interest that would be possibly willing to mentor students. She said where ever she goes she always tries to make friends with people or build a network so she can help us students reap the benefits of those who she knows. Sometimes the saying "its who you know" is applied to real life whether we like it or not. If a job opportunity is in contention between you and a person whos best friend's dad is the boss then they will likely have a much greater chance at getting the job regardless of their abilities compared to you. If they are less capable than you but they have connections and friends in high places then the sad truth is that they will probably claim the job over you.

Being a cynic doesnt have to be a bad thing however. The reason I feel like we are all cynics is because of our social needs. Everybody wants to have friends or other people who they can build a social network around. We are motivated by our self interests to be friends with other people and interact with them. These motivations dont have to be selfish however, as you might like hanging out with somebody because you like to make them feel better or they might make you feel better. I know this is especially with my friends. Even through my busy life I try to make ample opportunities to spend time with the people around me who I have special relationships with . When im with my friends or my girlfriend, no matter what we are doing, it makes me feel better being with them and I can tell they feel the same way too. I could want to be friends with somebody because I feel like they are a genuine good person and I want those kind of people around me. They could also share similar interests with me or something beyond words could make me want to interact with them more.

There are probably many other ways to look at relationships but another one I want to talk about is the special relationships and what you would be willing to do to keep them. What I am talking about is making sacrifices for the people you really care about. I could be a cynic because I want to do whatever is in my power to make somebody else's life better. My self interest would be making others feel better. When I make other people around me feel better I get my own kind of "reward" in a sense with the warm tingly feeling in my heart. I cant really explain what this feeling is or why it forms but the sense of making others around me lives better fulfills my own self interests in a way. Not everybody feels this way however as people on numerous occasions take advantage of others for their own personal gains. While being called a cynic might not seem like a compliment there are ways that being concerned for your own self interests can be a good way to deal with the relationships in your everyday life.

Sunday, January 10, 2010

Philosophy on Facebook # 7 - Socialization of Tech

When I talked about the future and how our childhoods will seem horrible compared to our childrens and grandchildren I never even considered the social aspect of tech. Unfortunately based on the way we live currently, the future will seem bleak in my opinion. I feel like as technology gets more advanced and becomes even more developed the more the way we socialize with people will change. I feel like we will become more reliant on our tech for socializing with others than actual physical interactions. Look at it in the views of our parents and grandparents. Some of our grandparents dont even have computers and of those that do rarely use it and probably dont know how to utilize it to its full potential. Most of them are reluctant to trust technology to do things that they used to do whereas kids nowadays always want the next new shiny toy to play with. I recently got the droid phone running the google android os that basically allows my phone to do whatever the heck i want it to do. Most adults just want a phone to make calls. I find it funny how tech has developed the phone into being more of a texting device than something that makes calls.

One of the most important topics coming up in the next years will be human-computer interactions and the way humans interact with their technology and what they use it for. It is pretty ironic how the first "computers" were actually people doing computations. The first computers werent machines at all rather human beings. That sure changed when people like bill gates and things like the ARPANet came along and started paving the way for the tech we have today. As tech becomes more advanced we will use it to basically take the weight off of our shoulders and take responsibilities off of us. They also are used to make things easier and faster. I think people in the future will find new and creative ways to use technology. The social part will be greatly affected because it is basically becoming like a moderator between humans. There are millions of people on facebook and other social network sites who use tech to connect them to all their friends. As time goes on we will become more dependent on technology for our social interactions and might actually interact less with people face to face and more through our computers and technology. I envision something like in the movie Wall-E where people become so dependent on tech that they cant walk and instead use hover chairs and become so fat. While im not advocating it will be as drastic as this you can start seeing trends of this taking place. America's obesity rates are growing rapidly and technology is a major factor in this as kids spend less time exercising and outside but rather sitting down on a couch or chair watching tv or chatting with people on facebook.

This is pretty depressing because i'd hate to see my child sitting inside all day instead of going outside and getting fresh air. This is also because I have a bias and my parents taught me that you need to exercise and go outside. I feel like it will be less important to our children and their children because they wont be born in a society where you have to go outside. Even now you could still live a life (whether happy or not or even healthy) without ever stepping foot outside. You can have food and whatever commodities you could ever need delivered right to your house from the internet. You could also socialize plenty on facebook skype xbox and other mediums. I would never want to do this nor do i think it should be done but its possible. In the future you will have even more outlets of things like entertainment and at some point to people it may seem even more appealing to stay indoors then go outside. This is why i feel that its important to integrate a healthy lifestyle into technology. Things like wii fit are great for exercise but still dont really do the trick. I feel like technology companies should start integrating things that provide incentives for living a healthy lifestyle.

If we dont do things like this we could be doomed because laziness will surely ensue as technology makes our lives easier. This i believe can screw society over as people will be less likely to be motivated to do things. If important people in history suddenly got lazy they probably wouldnt have done anything. If isaac newton got lazy and didnt decide to go outside and sit under the apple tree heck we might not even have calculus today. It is paramount that we teach ourselves and the other people around us to be motivated to do what they dream. Technology as it advances will definitely hinder this natural drive in humans to change the world around them because the tech will make it seem as if that person has everything they could ever want around them. Hopefully we can change that.

Philosophy on Facebook #5 - Memories of your past, the good and the bad

Alright guys this one i wanted to talk about how i feel our memory works. Obviously your memories are the things you remember. You remember things better in a variety of ways. You hi-light things so you remember them better and when you read something your eyes "pop" to it. You can remember things better in your head by repeating them over and over. Song also helps in memory retention. You can also make a mnemonic. These are just some ways and im sure there are many more ways people remember things. I want to talk about people remembering things and the mood they bring when you remember things. Youre brain remembers things by utilizing instantaneous and working memory, long-term memory, recognition, relearning, and recall. Im not even going to pretend like i know what these mean becuz i dont. Thats what scientists say how it works and since i dont have a phd in brain psychology im going to trust their right lol. Somehow using these things, your memories carry a certain mood with them when you remember them. If you remember your first rollercoaster or any moment where you enjoyed doing something you will feel happy when remembering it. This brings me to the point where people remember more happy memories than sad ones. Your brain just wants to remember happy moments and are more biased to remember them. In the long scheme of things you are definitely going to remember the fun you had with your friends in school than getting a bad grade in a class. This however doesnt apply to everybody as people with depression are an exception. When youre depressed you arent in a happy mood at all and it seems like nothing can make you happy. You then go searching through your mind for something to cheer you up and you can only think of negative things because of your already negative mood.

I have been a witness and i hear other people do this as well but when i day dream i find that my memories of my past seem better and happier than the current situation i am in. I think this is somewhat of a coping mechanisms that we have. It helps use realize that our lives were happier in the past and helps inspire hope within us that the future may be like the world in our memories. It could happen that our memories actually didnt turn out the same way we remember them. I have been told from people that i remember a situation that involved me differently from the way they remembered it and their version seemed to be a little more morbid than mine was. In a way its a reflection on how your life changed from being "happy" to the way it is now. It can also be used as a reference or model for improving the way your life is now to the happy way you felt in the past.

These memories are so important because they let you recollect on the past whether it be happy or sad and see what you have done in your life so far. Your experiences can teach you many things especially if you remember the mistakes you make and the ramifications that came with your past decisions. As many people have said before those who dont learn from their mistakes are doomed to repeat them.

Saturday, January 9, 2010

Philosophy on Facebook # 6 - The Media

Back again guys and this time im posting this on the blog and i have it set up so once something gets posted here it automatically gets posted to facebook as one of my notes but idk if anybody can get tagged in it or not. Ill probably just add you guys after it gets posted.

Alright so lets get into the next topic I want to talk about which is the media. I am always amazed about what gets the front page news on major magazines and whats on the homepage of nwewsites like CNN everyday. It shows a lot about what is important to our society. It also could show what the major networks and the big companies want us to see. They have the power to direct our attention to what they want us to see.

Obviously there is an innate curiousity in humans about scandals and gossip. People love hearing about the next outrageous things people do. These leads me to celebrities and how they are at the center of what most of us care about in the news. We love hearing about things like how tiger woods cheated on his wife with possibly a whole bunch of people. We like hearing about things that break our expectations. We always thought tiger was a good man who would never commit infedelity. We like hearing about "juicy" stuff that can entertain us and possibly make people feel better about ourselves. I think the our whole infatuation with celebrities and hearing about them screw up is based on our want for them to be on our level. Celebrities are usually richer, more famous, or more attractive than the average person. When they do something dumb it brings them down to our level and we realize they are normal people with not normal who make mistakes. It is even the case sometimes that their situation is worse then ours. I sure know that i wouldnt want to be in the situation britney spears got herself in a little while ago.

Another thing I wanted to talk about was the point i brought up earlier in that we only see what the media broadcasts or makes available for our consumption. Im sure that what the public finds important has an affect in what the media plays. If they didnt show what we wanted to see or read then we would obviously stop going to them as a source for news. If like cnn changed from being a general news source to only posting news about cats then people who dont want to read about cats would stop going to cnn. While this is pretty obvious i think it is an important point to make because I feel like people just assume what they think is important will make the news. It is ultimately up to the people who make the media available up to the public to decide what is on everybodys tv. Think about it, if fox news is making a segment on the iraq war, they and other news outlets are our only options of finding out whats going on over there. we cant all just get up and go to find out for ourselves so we have to see it from their perspective and we dont know what we arent seeing and whats behind the scenes. while im not advocating a conspiracy theory it is very possible and most likely some info is being withheld form the public. Whether that is good or bad is up to you.

Nowadays with technology and social networking sites like facebook and twitter there are so many more outlets for us to get our info from. I could find some guy on twitter who lives in iraq who can give me a raw unedited report about what is going on over there. An interesting trend that is rapidly growing is the democratization of media. You can easily set up your own podcast and tell people about what youre thinking. This blog is an example where I am writing stuff for you guys to consume. Anybody can make news. You dont have to be a celebrity or do something outrageous to get noticed by people anymore. There is an audience out there for everything. Check out the site ustream.com and you can see there are thousands of broadcasts out there. I typed in "puppy" and i got 1251 LIVE streams. Yes thats right LIVE so as i type this there are that many people just making videos of their puppies and just on that one site. Its crazy! A couple of years ago you were limited to what the major networks felt like showing you but look at where we're at now.

You must take this with a grain of salt though because as more information is out there for use to consume, it is important for us to realize that anything we read has a possiblity of being wrong, misleading, or a straight up lie. One benefit with major news outlets is that they double check their sources and try to get as big of an understanding of the situation before they release anything. Some do a poor job like the report about how the fire went down at our school. FYI it wasnt a trashcan that caught on fire in the cafeteria lol. They had all their facts wrong but with a major network that is less likely to happen. With twitter people can post things within seconds of it actually happening. CNN would take way longer but probably be more accurate. An example of what im talking about occured during the aftermath of the disputed Iranian election. Twitter automatically exploded with tweets of rumors of what was going on and some were false and others true. Here's what Andrew Keen said about this event with respect to twitter and cnn. "It’s actually very difficult to know who is behind many of the tweets coming out of Iran. Real-time news is the most double-edged of weapons: its immediacy, by definition, compromising its reliability." With so much more news out there it becomes even more important about who you trust for providing you with accurate information. The famous author george orwell was very concerned about the fact that humans were very trusting and almost always willing to believe whatever they were told. I guess that concern will be put to the test as we keep getting told more and more each day.

Monday, January 4, 2010

Life is short so how are you going to live it?

Back again guys! So im not really getting as many comments and feedback as I wanted to but who knows maybe a whole bunch of people are reading this stuff and just not putting out their opinions on the topics I talk about. So instead of a weekly thing im going to write whenever I have time to and im inspired to talk about something. right after I take a shower and before im going to go to bed is perfect because its surprising how inspired you can be after you take a shower and have time to think lol.

So this time I wanted to talk about why people think life is short. Im trying to figure out for myself whether I believe if life is short. One reason if feel people think life is short is because they want to experience more of life. I never have enough time in the day to do everything Ive wanted to do. Ive come to realize that I'll never read every book, see every film, hear every piece of music, visit every country. I'll never see the trees I've planted grow to full maturity. Another reason could be because most people are probably unsure what the future holds for them. Whether you are religious and believe in an afterlife, you could be worried if you are going to end up in heaven or hell. If you are and atheist then you could be wondering what happens after you die. Its tough to not be able to do everything you want to do before you die and when you're about to move on there is always going to be things you will regret not having a chance to do. That’s the reason priorities are so important because you want to be able to do as much of the things that are important to you as you can before you die. Also people don't want to leave everything they've known behind. its tough to realize that one day you will have to give up your parents and even say goodbye to your kids for maybe forever. One good thing is that most people's acceptance of this fact grows with age. Most older people are realizing this fact and are content with the life they have led. One problem of this fact is with the younger people in society who sometimes feel they are invincible. This could lead them to doing some really dumb shit like driving drunk which not only could end their lives suddenly but other people around them too. One important thing that comes with realizing life is short is the fact that it can also be taken away at any second. While it could be very unlikely any of us could drop dead any second due to some crazy disease we've never heard of, theres always a chance it could happen. This leads me to my next point that my very wise 8th grade reading teacher, ms reider, told me. She said that you should never go to sleep mad at someone because you never know if you're going to wake up to make amends with them. It would really suck if you got in a fight with someone you cared about and they died before you could make up and apologize to each other.

I also feel that life is really a relative concept. When you get older a year can fly by without you hardly noticing it. To a child, a year is nearly endless. While 50 may seem young to some of us to die at, to a cat it seems like you are ancient. To a fruit fly it would be the same as living when the big bang occurred to us humans. Speaking of the big bang, life is perceived to humans as short because our lives span such a small scope in the history of the universe. Humanity as a whole could seem to be going by like a blip compared to the whole scheme of things. its hard to think of and wrap your head around this concept but it really is important to try to make the best of all the time you're given to spend on earth. You never know when it could end so you just have to really do things like it will be our last and try to be as prepared as you can for the day when your times up.

Our Childhood sucked...

...well atleast compared to what our childrens will be like. I dont know about you guys but when i grow up i wanna be a dad and give my kids all the opportunities i didnt have as a kid. This is one but not the only reason why their childhood will be better. We always try to make their lives better than what we had when we were kids. We will always try to provide for them better than our parents provided for us and have them do whatever they want to do. This means giving them all the resources they'll need to succeed. The main reason why I feel their childhood and whole life for that matter will be better than ours is because of technology. Think about it back in the day of our parents they just had little toy matchbox cars and if they were lucky saturday morning cartoons. Think even later than that like with our grandparents and for fun they would push a wooden hoop with a stick. When we were kids we were starting out the video game era. I still remember late night mario kart races as some of the most epic and memorable times of my childhood. Nowadays kids have basically limitless forms of entertainment with the internet. They could visit addictinggames.com for a quick game of tower defense or go on youtube and watch some baby dance or whatever they find fun to watch. Now realize that none of this stuff was available a couple of years ago. Just think a couple of years ago people would have thought the wii was using voodoo magic or something crazy like that lol. Just think in a couple years what the ever advancing technology will have in store for us. You yourself can look on youtube and see some of the amazing prototype technology that will be commercially availble by the time we are adults. One of my favorites is with multitouch user interfaces like with the microsoft surface programs. The possibilities are endless. Going back to the first point where we as parents try to make the best for our children, we will be indirectly helping them when we go to work. Besides the obvious fact that youre bringing home the bacon when you have a job you are also helping progress humanities quest for developing better technology. Im not sure about what you guys want to do with your lives but i know i wanna be on the frontier of working with all this cool tech. I want to be making like jetpacks or something crazy youd see in a science fiction movie lol. Regardless of what you want to do you are still helping to make technology better. For instance a janitor helps by requiring better cleaning utilities. You make think this makes no sense but see my logic here. I feel like anybody is capable of innovation and making the next greatest discovery. I feel if there is a void needed to be filled then there is nothing stopping you from filling it. What i mean by this is if a janitor feels like an average mop and broom arent cutting it, theres nothing stopping them from thinking up the next greatest cleaning tool. With this mindset there is nothing stopping our future grandchildren from teleporting to our future retirement homes lol.

The Heart vs, The Brain

Back again! So this time I decided to go back to the old english quartly assesment question that asked if you would rather have a heart or a brain. This was obviously a figurative question because you obviously couldnt live without either lol but i choose a heart as i feel many others did too. I feel like there are 3 angles to look at it. The perspective I was seeing at the time was having emotions and being able to have sympathy and all the other parts that come with having a heart. I felt like if you only had a brain then you would make cold calculated decisions with no regards for those involved. You would do what had to be done using the least amount of effort time and resources. I kind of paint a picture like of a dystopia with a terminator twist where the world is run by machines who dont bother themselves thinking about the lives they are affecting and the consequences of their actions. While this world might be as close to perfect efficiency as you can get, it seems hardly desireable to live in because there would be no emotions at all. You couldnt love or have any other feelings. But this viewpoint is completely biased because its coming from a person with a heart. Lets play devil's advocate for a bit and see why people wouldnt want to have a heart. one big advantage i see is not having your heart get in the way. whatever you do your hearts always has a chance of conflicting with your personal interests and emotions. what some people nowadays are finding troubles with is mixing work and your social life and that almost always ends in disaster. it also happens that a heart could be a major weakpoint in a person. devastation can occur when someones heart gets broken. if you want to get something done, itd probably be best that your heart wasnt broken because that could severely hinder what you are capable of. With both of these sides basically pro and conned i think a compromise is in order to make life the happiest and most fulfilling. You need a brain in order to realize what needs to be done and how you are going to do it. You need a heart though to realize the implications of your actions and hopefully to prevent a person from doing anything rash such as commiting a murder. I feel like this healthy balance is where your conscience comes into play. i feel like its the combination of your brain and your heart blended into one. it basically is where a person weighs everything involved in making a decision or doing something. whether you realize it or not your conscience is bascially involved in everything you do and it just depends on the situation how big of a role they play. they take into consideration what needs to be done and what the possible courses of action are. a persons morals and their values come into play and their sense of right and wrong do to. to kind of referance my previous note, their environment kind of sets up and develops a persons sense of right and wrong. to be a truly successful person you need to utilize both your heart and your brain and not have one dominate the other.

Environment Makes the Man

Kinda like what victor is doing this is my first post in what i hope to become a weekly thing were i just write a little bit about what i notice and my thoughts on stuff. I wanna kinda develop like people commenting back and just mkae like a network where people just talking about stuff like whats on their mind and deep stuff that really makes you think. If you read this and werent tagged then just ask and i will next time. Hopefully I'll get time soon over break to write another one and i think the next ones gonna be about the brain vs. the heart and logic vs. feelings. But for know this ones about a person's environment and how it makes the person. Hope you enjoy it!

With all of the war and terror that basically populates the major television networks today, it’s hard to miss all off the terrible conditions people of the world have to live with. It’s pretty obvious that us as American citizens have got life pretty good. This had led me to deduce that we grow up and become the people we are today by the environment we grow up in. One way is with our nurturing or sometimes not as nurturing parents. They instill values and morals (or lack their of in some cases) in the growing up children of this nation. We also have an extremely well educational system, and while most of you wont agree with me, it is an essential part in becoming a well rounded adult. The amazing environment we are privileged to have isn’t available to everyone. People of warring countries and poverish states don’t have nearly as many opportunities as we do. Young children in Iraq probably don’t have the parents who are willing to help them grow and become what they want to be. They don’t have any good education systems. People in American also have the money and the resources to be able to do what they want. Most people can go to college if they have the desire to. Think of all the possibilities like some child in Afghanistan grows up to find the cure for cancer but his work will never come to fruition because he doesn’t have the opportunity to work in a lab and actually develop the cure. With so many people dying for no good reason, it’s amazing what they could accomplish with the necessary resources and tools. While its not possible for everyone to have these possibilities I think most of us take for granted what we have and don’t take advantage of all the opportunities available to them. It makes me so mad when people just sit around and waste their lives when they could be doing something great for everybody. Most people lack the motivation to really find out what their good at and what they love. If more people develop their skills then the world will definitely find a way out of the rut it’s in now.

Sunday, January 3, 2010

Empathy vs. Apathy

Being empathetic has just as many negative outcomes as being apathetic. Empathy (caring) has been romanticized ever since we were young as the ideal state of mind. We're all supposed to care about each other. Apathy (not caring) has been implanted in our minds as being bad. Since we should all care about everyone, it is bad to not care about someone or something. Unfortunately, just as the "happily ever afters" we grew up with were wrong, so was this. Caring has just as many bad outcomes as not caring. It sounds ludicrous when you first hear it, but it's true. Empathy leads to pain. Anytime you care about someone or something you give them power. The amount of power depends on the amount of care you give them. If you care about someone absolutely, it's the same as giving some absolute power, and as we all know absolute power corrupts absolutely. Apathy on the other hand allows you to keep all the power. It's a selfish thing to do, but if you don't care about anyone or anything then your as close to invincible as you can get. Being apathetic may even intrigue others to show empathy toward you in hopes that you will return the favor. This gives apathy even more power. However, apathy falls under the same problem as empathy. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. If you block out all feeling and all emotion, you'll end up losing everyone around you, and even though you won't care because you are apathetic, you will lose the power you once had. There's a balance you have to find. A balance between caring and not caring. You have to care enough to keep the people close to you, and not care enough to not let them hurt you. There's a point at which you will be maximizing power, and that point is when you will be the happiest. At that point, you will be having the maximum amount of enjoyment with those around you as you can without setting yourself up to get hurt.

Empathy will make everyone around you happy but hurt you.
Apathy will hurt everyone around you but make you happy.

Communication

We all passed Biology (hopefully). We learned about Darwinian evolution and how organisms are always becoming more complex and advanced (although I don't 100% agree with Darwinian evolution, but that's a different topic for a different note). If humans are the most complex and advanced organisms on Earth, why is that so? What is it about us that makes us so much more advanced compared to other organisms? I've thought about this for a while and decided that it's our ability to communicate that separates us from other organisms. No other organism has developed a language as complex and intricate as ours, our potential for being literate and being able to communicate both orally and through written works is undeniably far more advanced than any other organisms form of communication. It's our ability to communicate that makes us the species most capable of surviving.

Keeping in mind that our ability to communicate is what separates us from other organisms, we need to look at how other organisms operate. Basic organisms, such as cells and bacteria, communicate using chemical reactions and electrical currents. Cells release certain chemicals and hormones in the body to send messages, and nerves use electrical currents to relay information from the brain to other cells. Bacteria, once again, release chemicals to communicate with other bacteria. Then we have more sophisticated organisms, like dogs and other animals. These more sophisticated and more advanced organisms have a more advanced way of communicating. Dogs use verbal communication of barking pitch and nonverbal communication of body language to communicate with other dogs. A dog that wants to tell another dog that he is ready for a fight will use a deep, harsh bark and aggressive body language, while a dog who wants to tell another dog not to hurt him will use a soft bark or whimper and retreat into a submissive position. The same is true for most other animals. They have a very limited verbal communication ability and utilize nonverbal body language to make up for it. Humans on the other hand, have a good grasp on both verbal and nonverbal communication. Our verbal languages are complex and intricate, and our body language can also be utilized to reinforce our points. We also use written language to convey messages and meanings. Under Darwinian evolution, all these organisms will gradually develop more complex ways of communicating. Dogs and animals will develop better verbal communication skills under Darwinian evolution and cells and bacteria will find a more complex way than chemical reactions to send messages. How will humans continue to evolve and develop better communication ability then?

In order to answer that last question, we have to look at the shortcomings of our current form of communication. The most glaring problem with our current communication as a species is miscommunication. One person will mean to say one thing and the other person will see it as something totally different. This is not just in verbal communication. We cannot read eachothers body languages perfectly either. How many times has someone come up to you and told you you look depressed when nothing's wrong? That's a form of miscommunication. Our next form of communication we develop through Darwinian evolution would help to eliminate this problem. That form of communication would be a communal conscience. Think of it as mind-reading, but not so personally invasive. A communal conscience would allow us, as people, to understand what each other are thinking. We would all completely understand how the other person is thinking. I don't know if that would be psychically or telepathically or how it would be done, but to me, that's the next logical step that will be made. A communal conscience that allows us to understand how the people around us are thinking. Not what they are thinking, but how they are thinking. It would cut down intolerance and misunderstandings. Think of it this way. The chemical reactions of the bacteria limit what the bacteria are able to say. The nonverbal communication of the animals limit how they can express themselves in precise langauge. They can only give the other dog an idea of what they are thinking or feeling. Our verbal, written, and nonverbal language allow us to express ourselves fully, but not in a way that everyone else understands. A communal conscience would help solve that last problem. I am convinced that one day, humans will develop a way to understand how one another think. Not what someone is thinking, but how they are thinking.

Time Heals All Wounds

Time heals all wounds. We've heard the cliche now at least a million times. Usually after we have been hurt by a loved one or someone close to us, a friend looking to comfort us will tell us this. I have heard this cliche far too many times, and I have finally figured out what I find so reprehensible about it. Yes, the statement is true. Time heals all wounds. As time goes on, newer, fresher memories help to fade the old pains we've had. Hopefully these new memories are good, and sometimes it's merely a new pain that masks an old one, but either way the statement holds true. However, I want to make an amendment to the saying if I may.

Time heals all wounds, but it doesn't dull the sword.

Yes, if you give any pain time, it will not hurt you as much as it did. However, I would now like to work back to my first truth in my 25 truths note. "I forgive, but I'll never forget." I hate when someone has hurt me and then after awhile they come back and say we should be friends. We should just start over. It's easy to say that now, time has healed the wounds that were so painful in the past. But what has changed? Why are things going to be different this time? I like to think of a physical pain analogy to help people understand my next point. If you are young and you touch a burner on a stove while it is on you will burn your hand. The pain will eventually go away, and your burns will eventually heal, but would it then be smart to go back after you're hands have healed and touch the burner again? Nothing has changed. Time has not made the outcome any different. Time is not a good reason to be friends. Because a pain was a long time ago does not mean it is nonexistent. The potential is still there. Something has to change other than time in order for our new friendship or endeavor to work out. Working back to the stove analogy, if the next time you went up to the stove and you were wearing oven mitts that would be ok. The circumstances have changed. If one of us has changed, then there is reason for re-evaluation. I'm not going to put my bare hand on the burner again. Not unless you can show me what has changed to ensure I won't get burned. It only makes sense.

Now just because you may get burned by the stove doesn't mean you should fear it or avoid it. The stove has uses. Likewise, just because a person has hurt you in the past doesn't mean you should fear them or avoid them. That's not showing forgiveness. You also don't have to make everything like it once was though to show forgiveness. Forgiveness just encompasses a specific situation or event. It is certainly possible to forgive someone and not want to be close to them because of the hurt. Because even though you can no longer feel the hurt now, doesn't mean it isn't there
Time heals all wounds
Change dulls the sword

Music

Music is a huge part of who we are. That got me thinking what it is about music that makes it so meaningful to us. Now I don't have any of Aristotle's work to go off of here, this is all my own. To me, music is unique in that it satisfies the most innate human desires.

Humans are creatures of habit. As much as some people may enjoy spontaneous action and change, deep down our human nature drives us to repetition. That's why humans establish habits (both good and bad) and why it is so difficult to break habits. A song never changes its words. It is comforting to be able to listen to a song and know what's coming up next. Know what line is going to be sung next. Know what chord is going to be played next. Subconsciously, it allows us to anticipate what will happen in the song and therefore establishes a sense of knowledge and comfort.

Music also plays off of people's innate desire to be able to relate themselves to situations. Even though I've never been in a position to save a life, I still take a lot out of The Fray song How to Save a Life. I relate to my life, my situation I'm in, and as my situation changes and my life changes how I see the song changes. The song doesn't judge me for it. The Fray doesn't criticize me for having the wrong interpretation of the song. There is not right or wrong. No matter what the song is actually saying, your mind establishes connections to the theme of the song and the lyrics of the song that you can find comfort in. Our connections we make with songs also make us feel more understood. Even though a song does not say exactly what we feel, we make connections to the song based on how we feel and it is tantalizing to think that the artist (a complete stranger) feels the same way as you do. Even if you completely miss the point of the song and your connection is not the same connection the artist was trying to establish, it destroys our fears of isolation and loneliness.

Working off that feeling of isolation and loneliness, music is always there for you. It's a human voice with melody and harmony (so it is pleasing to your sense of hearing) and it is always there. On demand, anytime you want it. It's not like a person. Music has nothing to do but be there. It's never too busy and never gets tired of saying the same story over and over again. We get to hear the same story over and over again, and even though it may get tiring after a while, we get the opportunity to discover something we might have missed before. It's a perfect retelling of a story we can relate to.

My final philosophy on why the human mind loves music so much is its ability to help memory. Like a photo album, music evokes a lot of emotion and remembrance from us. We all have songs that make us think of people, places, or events (at least I do anyway), and sometimes when those important people, places, or events get pushed to the back of our minds it is refreshing to remember that. Music is the easiest way to recount the memories or someone/something, good and bad. Every time someone hurts (usually a girl...actually basically always a girl) one of the first things I do is I go through my ipod. I start listening to songs. I usually only have to listen to the first few lines of a song before I find what I'm looking for. No matter how many or how few songs I have on my ipod, I can always find a song that I can easily relate to that person. And I play it over and over and over again. It gives me an opportunity to think about that person. Think of what she meant to me. I can block everything out and just focus on the words of the song and how it makes me feel. What memories start to surface and which ones fade. It may make me depressed at first, constantly thinking about such a strong pain, but it helps me re-establish myself. It helps me reflect on what happened and helps me move on, but at the same time, when I start to drift too far away from the lessons I learned from my past hurts, those songs are always there to get me back on course, keep me focused on my principles and beliefs and help me learn from my mistakes.

Soul

So I'm going back to the thinking of Aristotle again for my next philosophy. Aristotle claimed that everything in the universe with proper structure also had proper function. You cannot build a chair correctly without it functioning as a chair and you cannot build a shelter correctly without it functioning as a shelter. If you build a chair poorly, it will function poorly and if you build a house poorly it will once again function poorly. Structure and function therefore have a direct correlation. One affects the other. Now his examples were primitive compared to our standards and I know that you immediately began brainstorming things that can have structure without function that exist today. Rest assure, everything that has proper structure has proper function. Aristotle's claim still is true today. One of the examples you may have gave to counter his claim is a light bulb. It's function is to light up, and you can make a light bulb but that does not mean it will light up because it can't without electricity. However, you would be missing the actual function of a light bulb which is to allow electricity to flow through it. The electricity's function is to produce light, but I've digressed enough.

You are probably wondering what structure and function have to do with the title of this note, soul. Well it is actually our advancements in technology that prove the existence of some sort of soul. The human body's function is to live and it is also structured to do so. The human body is so fascinating in the sense that it has so many mechanisms to sustain life. Its ability to regenerate from injury and operate under strenuous conditions is impressive. However, eventually the human body can no longer perform its function. This is death. However, people can die with perfect structure. With modern medical technology, you can take a corpse, hook it up to several machines, and have it pump blood, force the lungs to breath, get the heart beating again, and even get blood to circulate to the brain. Yet, even though all these process that usually take place in a live body are being performed, the person is still dead. The body has its proper structure, but lacks its proper function. This phenomena implies that there is a structure to the body that is destroyed that we cannot fix and that we cannot see. It has no relation to the biological aspects of the body. This would be the soul. Not the spiritual soul that you are probably thinking about, I'm not saying your soul dies when you die (that's up to your own beliefs), but when I say soul I mean more like psyche. The fact that a human body can have all its biological aspects and still not be alive forces the notion that the body is more than just flesh and blood. There is an intangible part of the body that has the same amount of influence over the body's function as the physical aspects of the body. In addition, since we have already established that everything with structure has function, than the fact that the human soul has influence over the human body's function implies that the soul has structure. Not concrete physical structure of course, but structure in the sense that there is something about the soul, or psyche, that can be injured or destroyed that is unrelated to the physical structures in the brain or body.

If you take this philosophy to heart, you'll understand that when people don't die of old age it isn't by chance. The day that person died is not random. Something happened to their "soul" that day at that particular time that disrupted its structure. People always talk about how in a hundred years technology will be so amazing that people will live so many more years than they do now, but at some point medical technology will only be able to keep people alive for so long. The physical components of the body will be perfectly healthy, but the "soul" will deteriorate. Until science can explain the phenomena of the soul, immortality, or near immortality, will always be out of reach.

Love and Lust

Some of you may have already heard me say this, but I just want to get it on the record. Aristotle, my favorite thinker of all time, once ran into the dilemma of ranking the human senses, taste, touch, hearing, seeing, and smelling. He stated that touch was the least complex of the senses because every living creature had a sense of touch and touch satisfied the most primitive, sexual drive (get all the giggles out now...calmed down? good, go on). Because taste was nothing more than the sensation of food or drink touching your tongue and worked off the same basic principles as the sense of touch he ranked that the second least complex. Smells close relation to taste made it the third most complex, because you need smell to taste and the real main function of smell is to help in taste. He struggled deciding between hearing and seeing as the most complex of the senses until he thought of emotions, in particular, lust. Seeing is the most complex sense because it is difficult for the human mind to grasp its sensations. For example, when you see an attractive person of the opposite sex the thought of them engulfs you at least momentarily. Your brain is trying to figure out what it is about that girl or boy that makes it so you can't look away. There is no real objective definition of beauty because it is so indescribable. It is difficult to explain why someone is attractive, they just are. Our minds try relentlessly to explain it, but the sense of sight is too complex for us to fully grasp. That sensation of sight is unrivaled by the greatest sensation of sound, which at best may get a song or tune stuck in your head. The subconscious curiosity your brain has to figure out why you find another person so attractive is what forms lust. Lust is merely the preoccupation of the brain on the complexities of the sight of an attractive person. We can't explain why we feel this way because it is too complicated, we only understand the feeling of it.

So if that is lust what is love? Lets say love is an emotion, like lust, but it is different in the sense that its complexities lie in a person's perspective and is not derived from a sense. Lust is the ultimate sensation of sight. Lust can be described using words describing how someone looks. Love cannot be described using any sensory words. Now usually love encompasses lust because we usually love people that we find attractive, but if I were to ask you what sense makes you feel love what would you say? Sight, hearing, touch? Love does not fit under any of those senses. At the same time though, love cannot be compared to the emotions of happiness, sadness, or anger in the category of emotions not associated with senses because love MAKES you feel all those emotions. This is where my philosophy comes in. If we agree a sense causes an emotion (sight causes lust, sweet food causes happiness, pain causes anger) and love has the capability of causing these same emotions, maybe love isn't an emotion at all. Rather than describing the difference between love and lust and one being a serious and the other being a crush, maybe we should think as lust as an emotion and love as something totally different. My philosophy is love is a sense. It's not a traditional sense in the way that you can see and hear all sorts of things, but it is a sense that causes feelings what it senses its ultimate sensation. Then you can even take it a step further and say that the sense of love encompasses more than just the love felt for another person. The love of a sport is nothing more than the sensation of the "love sense." If you consider love to be a sense it becomes the sense of abstract emotion. Just as all the senses, it has positive and negative sensations, and the sense of love does not only feel love, it also feels hate and dislike. Basically, the love sense is the sense of any abstract sensation that one either emotionally approves of or disproves of. Now I'm not saying love is not an emotion, because it is. I am saying that Brian and Amy, Sam and Sam, and Alex and Tarin, just like you guys see one another and hear one another, you guys love one another. You don't happy one another. Love encompasses two meanings. It is the emotion felt from the ultimate, positive, sensation of the "love sense."