Speakeasy Literature

Man, this weekend may pull a roadrunner on my animus*. Two novels were bought at my local for-profit literature emporium, Bookpeople, after extensive credit card verification. (One has not used plastic capital since a couple months before the credit crisis). I intended to find a copy of H.G. Wells' Men Like Gods, but nonetheless my journey took me back to Chuck Palahnuik, whom the populous may know as the writer of Fight Club. "Choke", the new movie that recently premiered in cinemas, was also articulated by Chuck, so with that book I also picked up a random novel about the social complications of superintelligence in a society that advocates repression of thought: How I Became Stupid by Martin Page. That one will certainly be intriguing.

No real big ideas or questions to examine today, just a series of quaint observations. If anything, the benefits of tribalism circled about, but nothing serious.

Being in an apartment and other buildings this week got tiring real fast, so a read and a stroll around the local park by the lake shore was a keen choice for the day. May do that again tomorrow. It was pretty ace to see differing tribes/families sharing the same paths and bridges. (One universe, one love = excellente). I noticed most people out there for objectivist reasons, which is fair enough when no harm is intended, but not many in the park just to be in the park.

From walking about, I snagged a few images with the theme of nature taking over the domain of man. Rather great that nature still limits the power of man, instead of man thinking it is superior than or master to nature. That kind of arrogant thinking is unsustainable and we're learning very quickly the survival of our species is not yet secure in an infinite universe/superverse. Man likes having a hundred buildings for every five trees...something is clearly wrong. Man likes to think it is special, but it's not. We're not the center of the solar system (Aristarchus, Bruno/Copernicus), not the center of the universe (Hubble), and not the only tool-using, intelligent species to have existed on earth, and highly likely the universe (anthropology 101, Sagan).





After strolling the avenue like a Lithuanian millionaire, I reached a big hill, and sat down while the sun retreated from view. Right by the auditorium in that area is a couple of elegant, rhythmic fountains in moving in forcibly programmed harmony. There was the usual pack of kids enjoying life, adults gossiping/taking their mind off worrying about kids, and geriatrics enjoying themselves not caring about what others think. This links a couple concepts, from observations that I've had, that collide into each other:

1. The two wisest stages of life are youth and old age
2. Most people in between those periods like to think they actually know anything or everything, due to constant job occupation keeping them from asking too many questions
   
3. The first step to wisdom is to know that you know nothing
   
4. Time is an illusion
5. Civilization represses the imagination
6. Profit seeking corrupts the evolutionary process

I'll write a bit more on those concepts later.

*The word animus is derived from Latin, I can't really explain the definition (complicated), so look it up yourself