2010.01.21 On Mimicry and Conditioning
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
This is the malady of preconceptions. You let someone else think your thoughts and form your opinions. This is the disease of society. This is the great schism all human beings must opt either overcome or fall victim to.
2010.01.21 On the Pitfalls of Admiration
Admiration is the furthest thing from understanding – Aizen, Bleach
When you are so swept up in an emotion such as Admiration you often neglect to question anything being said or done by the object of your attention. You lose your ability to think or see critically, if at all, reality. That is not to say one should not admire another, but never to such a degree that it hinders your ability to think clearly and for yourself.
“Sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their illusions destroyed.” Nietzsche
“Time weighs down on you like an old, ambiguous dream. You keep on moving, trying to sleep through it. But even if you go to the ends of the earth, you won’t be able to escape it. Still, you have to go there- to the edge of the world. There’s something you can’t do unless you get there.” Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
“The man who embraces a new paradigm at an early stage must often do so in defiance of the evidence provided by problem-solving. He must, that is, have faith that the new paradigm will succeed with the many large problems that confront it, knowing that the older paradigm has failed with a few.” – Thomas S. Kuhn: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
2010.01.18 Give 100% To Really Learn
Those who have strong passions, create strong self-destructions. – Tara K. Harper
And it is out of fear of that self-destruction and what that might mean that prevents people from living passionately. Do not fear the future, do not hold the past to be ultimate truth–for the future is not the past, no two people are the same, and with every minute your life is changing.
Live passionately! Live fully! Give one hundred percent, surrender yourself to the world, to life, to love. Only then will you learn anything about yourself.
“But who can say what’s best? That’s why you need to grab whatever chance you have at happiness where you find it, and not worry about other people too much. My experience tells me that we get no more than two or three such chances in a life time, and if we let them go, we regret it for the rest of our lives.” – Murakami
2010.01 On Speaking Your Mind, Standing Up For Your Ideas, and Communicating Your Needs
“I found that when you start thinking and saying what you really want then your mind automatically shifts and pulls you in that direction. And sometimes it can be that simple, just a little twist in vocabulary that illustrates your attitude and philosophy.” — Jim Rohn
If there is one thing most people fail to learn it is the ability to disagree, to stand up for your own opinion, and to stand up for what you believe in. Once you learn how to speak your mind, strategically, and without fear, you will find that you will come to know yourself.