#42 Life in lines

I decided to do up a UML diagram of life thus far. It's helped put a few things into perspective. The only problem is that I'm finding it easier to put in a lot of downers, mishaps and failings as opposed to successes, cheer-ups and lucky days. To be without thought could perhaps be to be without unhappiness. Defaulting to glum seems to be a factory mental setting. That has to be a way of adjusting that. As it stands, perfection would fail to satisfy, especially given the imperfect mind perceiving it.

I'll keep at it, trying not to list any major depressing significant events (e.g sackings, heartbreak, financial loss etc.) It would appear that society has an important role in individual happiness. A society of one is unlikely to be happy.

#41 Time marching onwards

It's been 7 months since I checked GE. I dusted off the old posts and left a short update.

Thusfar I am the sum total of no achievement whatsoever of worth to mankind. Arrested development is mine face in the dictionary. Writing helps, albeit in an impractical way. Where it will end is hard to know.

Happy April Fools day. Conficker.c passed without incident. Within my faculties, day pass, and I estimate less and less ability. I simply do, be, and am. A cursor may blink a thousand times, but patience waits for godot. There is importance here - mark the passing of time in any way possible lest it seem like so much sand in a desert.

#40 Up and coming

Oh you know. Motorcycle test is all I'm doing right now. I won't might not get it, but that's not a problem. Real life might not have undo, but it does have redo.

I've learned. That's the important thing.

#39 All fail

Only plan D remains. A near complete relapse into contrived reality has occurred. It has become a near acceptable alternative to the commonplace goals of the mainstream. None are sought, none are asked for. Both await external change.

The simple thing could be just a kind word at the right time.

Why should I wonder or wish? What is desire but an end unto suffering? Could the ultimate end of technology be a way to stop desire? How different would the world be without need? Boring?

And so we resort to the simple. Try. Ask. Do. What could possibly go wrong?

#38 Smashing Dreams

Only plan B left now. We live for hope. We must hope the community is better with our membership. I wish perhaps that I was someone else, if only for a day. Gumption's rising, so soon I'll change. It's so much time, but so much better spent.

It has already been stated that life as our choice is a 4 to 1 shot or 2 to 1 with a form of faith. We can better these odds again by leaving behind a legacy of some kind, usually through writing or being written of.

Thus, we do not despair. We must work on the legacy. Action is the thing. When all the din and blizzard noises have been quelled, we are left with action, sometimes a choice of action. This is free will.

Less time spent is more time saved. If it's general enough it can apply to everyone, but making it general makes it less effective. We'll contrive a reality from our own minds and faculties so that our minds need not bear the burden of the unanswerable. It is life we deign not face. So a life of our own, by our own, on our own is the result. We spend no time together. This is not the acceptable norm. This is not the common tie that binds. Of one or many, our acceptable norms presented as culture ensure we can bridge the gap between the one and the many.

The cause of frustration is that the greater half cannot accept the humdrum or the routine. It bargains with the lesser half to try and at least obtain the most remarkable routine available. It is a war of attrition. The lesser half could be happy without existence. There are levels of existence it is ready to accept. It is realities and the greater is fine high ideals.

I would save time reading what is already written. It is however my principle recreation to discover that I have independently concurred with the giants beneath my feet. These discoveries are what bring a peaceful silence to my mind.

Practicality demands we consider only things applicable to social situations. The common, the banal, and the ordinary are all perfectly acceptable. It is time to change, in a world where change is the only thing that stays the same.

#37 Being who you are

And knowing who you are - That's more important. It is perhaps the quest of life.

I was watching a documentary about Muslim extremists there the other night. Twas a fair an equitable case, but Dad spotted a few Israeli jibes under the table as it were. No such thing as an unbiased opinion. Facts? Those are just commonly held mass accepted opinions. But at least they're something we can all agree on. The ideas I got from the documentary were that some people, when exposed to circumstances which preclude the establishment of healthy ties, will invariably establish ties that bring the individual no good. These ties spread, and society suffers for it.

The documentary highlighted a caveat of free will, and reminded me of a line I read in a Warhammer book 15 years earlier. 'An open mind is like a fortress with its gates unbarred and open'. True enough then that life will present us with individuals who have persuasive language and ideas.

Keep track of your ties that bind. In my case, reading books means I'm less likely to become an Islamic extremist. I'm kidding of course :p

What I mean is a good set of books that you can bolt opinions of your own to will do a better job than a few hours listening to misguided rhetoric. Someone who doesn't know who they are can be easily misled into being someone else for another persons use.

Identity has quantifyable value. It's the currency of the celebrity world.

It is my hope that with the Internet, world peace will become a possibility. There are still language barriers to overcome, but now at least, for the first time, a means of international open dialog exists. With a little know-how and a few button presses, I can get talking to just about anyone else on the planet.

#36 Personal struggles with the vaguries of reality

Now we all know children suffer horrific nightmares. It's been documented. That's just them trying to rationalise existence. Dangerous business altogether.

I've gone back to reading Plato. Nothing has really changed since his day and ours. I did realise something though. The reason you can never be happy where you are, in that happy medium is because your brains wants new stuff. It needs to learn in order to grow. Such is the same with people. We learn to grow, and grow to learn. This is hard, therefore it is worthwhile. It's the routine that really kills you. Like I said before, you are (or sometimes I am) the sum total of collected memories. The old tree falls in the forest again. Only now, there might be a camera in the sky to see it. The most noble of occupations then might be the development of technologies to ease the human burden. It certainly gives cause to the Luddites to complain. Think back to the yesterdays before mobile phones and the internet. Was it easier? Was it happier? Can you remember?

By this merit, the most useful exercise is the development of your memory. Paramount to this is a means of committing things to long term memory. Forgetting the past repeats mistakes in the future. Though because human memory is invariably fallible, we must instead rely on our technologies. Writing and its offshoots. How abhorrent would it be if we found something truly static?

We are living in a most interesting age,
when the word has been freed from it shackling page